BY DAVID HENCH

MaineToday Media, Inc.

When Liam Brown was born at Maine Medical Center in December, it was cause for celebration. His parents, Erica and Chris, were understandably proud.

The good news was published in the Portland Press Herald, and the family from Windham provided additional details for an expanded feature.

If Liam were born at the Portland hospital today, the announcement may not make the paper.

Maine Medical Center, the state's largest hospital, has stopped collecting information from new parents and passing it on to newspapers, as part of a national trend aimed at preventing abductions of infants.

Mercy Hospital in Portland says it is likely to follow suit in the near future.

Hospitals are increasingly focused on the safety of new parents and infants, because of rare but high-profile reports of infants' abductions.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which publishes a handbook for health care professionals on birthplace security, recommends that hospitals not provide identifying information about newborns that could facilitate abductions.

"The odds of this happening, given the millions of babies born in this country every year, is highly unlikely, but we all need to be aware of it. Unfortunately, it happens," said Cathy Nahirny of the Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "It's very hard for many of us in the world to believe there are really some unpleasant people out there who are going to do something evil, be it rob you, assault you or steal your child at any age."

Publishing even the hometown for a new baby with a unique name could make the baby easy to find, she said. Beyond the danger to the newborn, facilitating publication of the information could expose a hospital to liability.

The center compiled data from 1983 to July 2008 and found that, nationally, 254 infants younger than 6 months were abducted, three of them in 2008. Most were returned to their families unharmed.

There was one abduction in Maine during that period. In 1996, a woman took an eight-hour-old boy from Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor after posing as a nurse saying the baby needed blood tests. The woman had pretended to be pregnant for several weeks, stuffing her clothes with towels, then announced to her family she had given birth.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has identified a handful of cases nationally in which it believes birth notices were used to locate the infants who were abducted.

Nahirny said parents should at least be informed about the potential consequences of publishing identifying information in the newspaper.

"If parents understand there's a risk -- a very, very, very small risk but a risk nonetheless -- that something could happen and a child could be abducted and harm come to the parents, then they can make an informed decision," she said.

For the same reason, the center also discourages parents from calling attention to the arrival of a newborn at home with balloons and signs.

This summer, Maine Medical Center stopped asking parents if they wanted to fill out information sheets for the newspaper. It will let parents contact newspapers on their own to provide that information.

"This is just another way of us trying to make things as secure as we possibly can," said Kathleen Hale, associate vice president of nursing, with responsibility for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital, including obstetric and pediatric units.

Providing the information was always voluntary for parents; the hospital just opted not to facilitate the process.

Eastern Maine Medical Center has not collected the information for years, for privacy and security reasons, a spokesperson said.

Mercy Hospital has not yet set a date for when it will stop collecting the information, said the hospital's spokeswoman, Diane Atwood.

"It is a strong recommendation from the Center for Missing & Exploited Children," she said. "It is something that we need to take seriously, so the hospital is going to be moving in that direction."

Those hospitals in Maine that continue to provide the information to newspapers say parents must given written consent before the information is forwarded.

"We're happy to supply it and we don't plan to change that policy, because the parents love it," said Sue Hadiaris, spokeswoman for Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford. "They can choose whether they want the information to go to the newspaper, and which newspaper."

At Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, most parents do ask that the information be distributed, said spokesman Randall Dustin.

"We get written permission from the parents, certainly," Dustin said. "It's all voluntary."

Erica Brown said she never considered that a birth announcement might be considered unsafe, and she thinks the issue may get less attention in this relatively rural state.

Announcing a birth should be up to the parents, she said. "People in Maine always, I think, feel more safe, or think we're safer than we are, because anything can happen anywhere."