Baby New Year tradition abandoned by many hospitals

Galin said the policy change came after several of the company’s hospitals stopped publicizing New Year’s births on their own. She described it as a preventative measure and that it was not a reaction to threats or abduction attempts.

She pointed to guidance from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which has suggested health care providers obtain parental consent and eliminate home addresses and other identifying information from birth announcements or stop providing them to media.

Still, the head of the center’s missing children division said, the tradition of publicizing a hospital’s first birth of the year is relatively low-risk.