IOWA CITY — A Davenport woman gave birth in a University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics bathroom on Mother’s Day and attempted to flush the newborn down a toilet, believing it was stillborn, authorities said. 
 
 According to a UI Department of Public Safety criminal complaint, 22-year-old Ashley R. Hautzenrader entered a bathroom in the John Colloton Pavillion at UIHC around 9:24 p.m. May 8 and delivered a baby into the toilet. Hautzenrader told police she did not know she was pregnant before entering the bathroom. 
 
 The newborn was not crying, leading Hautzenrader to believe the child was dead. Police said she attempted to flush it down the toilet. Hautzenrader then placed the child in a pillow case and put the baby in a trash can, police said. She then cleaned the bathroom and left. 
 
 UIHC employees later found the baby alive in the trash can. Officers confronted Hautzenrader, who admitted to putting the child in the trash can. 
 
 UI spokesman Tom Moore, citing federal health privacy law, said the hospital cannot say whether Hautzenrader was a patient at the hospital or comment on a condition of the baby. He said that identifying the employees who discovered the baby would give “clues” to Hautzenrader’s private health care information. 
 
 Moore said the baby was found “shortly after delivery.” 
 
 Interim Public Safety Director Lucy Wiederholt said the incident remains under investigation and the police are not sharing any more information. 
 
 Online court records identify Hautzenrader as the petitioner in a paternity and child support recovery case filed in Scott County in May 2015. 
 
 Iowa has a Safe Haven Law that allows parents to leave a newborn up to 14 days old at a hospital without being prosecuted, according to the Iowa Department of Human Services. The law was enacted in 2002. 
 
 Moore said the process to bring a baby to the UIHC under the Safe Haven law “is very easy.” The newborn can be brought to any location in the hospital — including reception desks, clinics and inpatient units — and turned over. 
 
 “The child will be accepted and cared for with no questions asked,” Moore said in an email. 
 
 The UI does not keep records on the number of children turned over under the Save Haven law, Moore said. 
 
 Hautzenrader was arrested and faces one count of child endangerment, an aggravated misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison. ||||| A woman is accused of giving birth, attempting to flush the baby down down the toilet and abandoning the baby in a trash can in Iowa City. 
 
 Twenty-two-year-old Ashley Hautzenrader, of Davenport, faces a child endangerment charge. 
 
 According to a criminal complaint, Hautzenrader gave birth in a bathroom at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics late Sunday night. Police said Hautzenrader told them that she did not know she was pregnant. 
 
 Police said Hautzenrader thought the baby was dead when she tried to flush the baby down the toilet. She is accused of later placing the baby in a pillow case and leaving the baby in the trash can. 
 
 UIHC employees later found the baby alive. 
 
 The criminal complaint said Hautzenrader admitted to leaving the baby in the trash can. 
 
 There's no word on the condition of the baby this morning. 
 
 Hautzenrader faces a maximum of two years in prison as child endangerment without injury is an aggregated misdemeanor. 
 
 A judge put her on supervised release following her initial appearance in Johnson County court Tuesday morning. 
 
 A public defender will be appointed to represent Hautzenrader. ||||| Police believe she gave birth to the babies and then killed them during the past decade, according to a police news release. 
 
 On Saturday, police responded to a call from Huntsman's estranged husband  who was initially identified by police as her ex-husband  about a dead infant found inside a Pleasant Grove home where Huntsman lived until 2011. Officers arrived and found the body of a newborn infant, who appeared to be full term, according to the release. 
 
 Police obtained a search warrant for the home and found six more babies packaged in separate cardboard boxes inside the garage, said police Capt. Michael Roberts. 
 
 Investigators learned that Huntsman allegedly gave birth to the infants, then killed them, over a 10-year period, the release adds. Her estranged husband is believed to be the father, but investigators are still working on DNA tests, Roberts said. 
 
 At this point, police are not pursuing charges against the estranged husband, Roberts said. 
 
 Police said two people are living in the Pleasant Grove home at this time, a rambler which is split into upstairs and downstairs apartments. 
 
 The estranged husband's parents own the home, and Huntsman's three daughters still live there, said longtime neighbor Sharon Chipman. The eldest daughters are around 18 to 20 years old, while the youngest is now about 13, Chipman said. Chipman hasn't seen the daughters since the news broke. 
 
 The estranged husband had been cleaning out the garage on Saturday getting ready to move back into the house this summer, Chipman said. 
 
 "He was finally coming down to help take care of his family  and to run across that, It would devastate him," Chipman said. 
 
 Chipman had noticed that Huntsman had gained and lost some weight in the years she lived there, but Chipman never considered that she was pregnant. 
 
 She was a great neighbor, and Chipman even trusted Huntsman to watch her grandson, when he was a toddler, for years. 
 
 "She took good care of him. She was good. This really shocks me," she said. 
 
 Aaron Hawker lives next door to the house and has known the family for years. He had been watching police come and go from the house all day and also never thought Huntsman looked pregnant. 
 
 He described her as a great neighbor, and her husband as "a good guy." In fact, Hawker saw and talked to Huntsman's husband just Saturday morning. 
 
 Megan Huntsman has no criminal record, aside from a 2011 traffic citation, according to a search of Utah court records. 
 
 This is not the first time Utah County investigators have had to handle a case of a mother allegedly killing her babies. 
 
 An Orem mother, Darcie Jo Baum, secretly gave birth three times and let the infants die. 
 
 The final birth, in 1999, cost the 26-year-old her life; she bled to death after delivering an infant son into a basement toilet where he drowned. 
 
 Baum's second-born son, Draye, was the only child to survive. 
 
 He was "her life," Baum's mother, Vickie Austin, said after Darcie Baum's death. Each night at bedtime Baum sang, "You Are My Sunshine," as the boy nodded off to sleep, Austin said in 1999. 
 
 Utah has had a Safe Haven law on the books since 2001, allowing biological parents to anonymously give up custody of their newborn child without facing any legal consequences. Intended to save children's lives, the law tries to prevent women from abandoning infants in places such as trash cans and bathrooms. 
 
 The Utah representative who originally sponsored the law, then-Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, had heard the media coverage of one young Utah woman who left her newborn in a drawer in her parents' home. The baby was found days later, dead. 
 
 In 2012, officials said that at least one baby a year has been left at a Utah hospital since the law took effect. Exactly how many babies have been saved in Utah is difficult to determine, because some women call the Safe Haven hotline at 1-866-458-0058 to learn about resources such as adoption, pregnancy health information and programs that provide financial support for keeping a baby. 
 
 The hotline is open 24 hours a day, every day of the week. For more information, go to utahsafehaven.org or follow them on Twitter at twitter.com/UtahNewborn. 
 
 mmcfall@sltrib.com 
 
 Twitter: @mikeypanda 
 
 Editor's note: Because of the vast violation of The Tribune's commenting policy, comments for this story have been disabled.  
 
 Safe Haven law enacted to save babies' lives 
 
 Utah has had a Safe Haven law on the books since 2001, allowing biological parents to anonymously give up custody of their newborn child without facing any legal consequences. Intended to save children's lives, the law tries to prevent women from abandoning infants in places such as trash cans and bathrooms. 
 
 The Utah representative who originally sponsored the law, then-Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, had heard the media coverage of one young Utah woman who left her newborn in a drawer in her parents' home. The baby was found days later, dead. 
 
 In 2012, officials said that at least one baby a year has been left at a Utah hospital since the law took effect. Exactly how many babies have been saved in Utah is difficult to determine, because some women call the Safe Haven hotline at 1-866-458-0058 to learn about resources such as adoption, pregnancy health information and programs that provide financial support for keeping a baby. 
 
 The hotline is open 24 hours a day, every day of the week. For more information, go to utahsafehaven.org or follow them on Twitter at twitter.com/UtahNewborn.
– A 22-year-old woman allegedly tried to flush her newborn baby down a toilet before abandoning it in a trash can at an Iowa hospital on Mother's Day, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports. According to the Gazette, Ashley Hautzenrader delivered the baby into a toilet in a hospital bathroom Sunday night. Police say Hautzenrader later told them she wasn't aware she was pregnant before entering the bathroom, KCRG reports. Hautzenrader allegedly tried to flush the baby down the toilet because it wasn't crying and she thought it was dead. Police say she then placed it in a pillowcase and put it in the garbage. Hautzenrader cleaned the bathroom and left. A hospital spokesperson says the newborn was found "shortly after delivery." Its current condition is unclear. The hospital won't say if Hautzenrader was a patient or why she was there. She was arrested Monday and charged with child endangerment, a misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison. She was released from jail and placed on supervised release. Under an Iowa law, Hautzenrader could have legally turned her newborn over to the hospital.