Can someone please help me fix up this sentence (in bold)?

Ms. Smith, in the case in re Smith, abandoned by leaving it with a foundling hospital. Ms. Doe, in the case before the court, also abandoned her baby, Jack. She left it with WAS, an adoption agency. Both women abandoned their babies. Both the foundling hospital and WAS would arrange for further placement.

To make things more clear, break up long sentences and make them into shorter sentences. Good luck. Legalese is a difficult language.

I was going to attempt to answer this as well, but then I was like, ”...Ms. Doe…WAS…babies…“Great Answer” for @Sunny2!”

Another possibility, eliminating what seems to me to be distracting redundancy:

Likewise, in the case before the court, Ms. Doe left her baby, Jack, with WAS, which would arrange for his further placement.

(It is not clear from the original sentence that she knew WAS would arrange for the baby’s placement and that that was her intention in leaving him (not “it”) there, or if that was a later result outside her consideration. Is that a point of any consequence?)

It seems to me that “Likewise” brings the appropriate parallels into play and that it is not necessary to use a loaded, judgmental word like “abandoned” for Ms. Doe’s action unless you want to arouse antipathy toward her.

I agree that long sentences can sometimes be made clearer by breaking them up; but sometimes longer sentences with subordinate clauses preserve relationships that are lost with a series of short declarative sentences.

Here’s one for your consideration:

“Similarly, Ms. Doe (case _____) abandoned her baby, Jack, by leaving him with WAS. She hoped that, like the foundling hospital in [case], WAS would arrange for Jack’s further placement.”

The main thiing I did was avoid making the sentence artificially impersonal. For instance, there’s no need to say “it” when we know the baby was male. It’s a true story used to illustrate a point, right? So it’s OK to keep it specific.

I also think breaking it up would work. Here’s my take:

“In the case before the court, Ms. Doe similarly abandoned her baby, Jack, by leaving him with WAS. WAS, like the foundling hospital, would arrange for his further placement. ”

“In a similar way” means the same as “similarly,” so I used that. The baby should be referred to with the appropriate gender pronoun, rather than “it.” I’ve heard it said that referring to a baby as “it” is a tell that someone hates babies. Not that it stops me.

I think @Jeruba is right about not using the word abandoned. Left is a fairly neutral word. If you wanted to go with a different connotation, you could try rephrasing that first sentence to something like “In the case before the court, Ms. Doe similarly entrusted WAS with her baby, Jack.