[2] The legislature responded in 1887 by establishing the Nebraska Maternity Home,[3] for "homeless, penitent girls who have no specific disease".
[5] A 1904 report from the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts referred to the women as "inmates", and commented on the high per capita cost which it said "seems extravagant".
Those who broke the rules were placed in solitary confinement, and their babies cared for by nurses during their punishment.
[2] In 1951, one of Nebraska's state senators called these unwed mothers lawbreakers, and claimed the home was actually "an encouragement to break the law".
Complaints over the finances reached the highest level of government, and in 1953 governor Robert B. Crosby wanted it closed; he said, "I do not think that Nebraska taxpayers are so affluent that they should indulge themselves in this exceptional activity."
Adding that she thought the home cost Nebraska taxpayers 3 cents each, she asked, "Aren't these girls worth the price of a 3-cent stamp?
[2] One notable person who was housed at Milford was Zintkala Nuni, a Native American woman who was found as a four-month-old baby after the Wounded Knee Massacre.
[9] Typically women were sentenced for a one-year term to the institution, but Nuni seems to have been placed there after her adoptive father, who may have gotten her pregnant, pulled political strings and got her committed in order to keep the matter private.