CV NEWS FEED // After a full-term, deceased baby was found abandoned at a South Dakota recycling center on August 6, South Dakota Right to Life is advocating to install “safe haven” baby boxes for use around the state.
While nothing is yet known of the circumstances surrounding the baby’s death, Dakota News Now reported that South Dakota Right to Life wants to create options for parents faced with difficult decisions about their babies.
“Most women don’t want to choose an abortion it’s just they’re feeling like they don’t have other options, they’re just afraid and they don’t feel like they’re in a place where they can handle a child,” said South Dakota Right to Life Associate Director Jenn Lee, according to Dakota News Now.
One option to help mothers in crisis is a “safe haven” baby box, which is built into the walls of some fire stations.
“When a young woman gets there, there are no cameras, anything like that, they open the box, it’s climate controlled, they place the baby inside safely in a bassinette type container, and then as they close the box, an alarm goes off in two different places,” Lee said, adding that the alarms tell first responders to immediately retrieve the baby.
Though all 50 states have safe haven laws, meaning that a parent can surrender a baby at any continuously-staffed hospital, fire station, or police station, only 19 states have baby boxes, which many parents are more likely to use thanks to the anonymity the boxes provide.
According to Dakota News Now, the baby found at the recycling center was the third deceased infant discovered in South Dakota since 2017. In 2021, 31 babies across the U.S. were placed in unsafe locations, a number which Dakota News Now said has improved since all states enacted safe haven legislation.
According to Dakota News Now, Iowa is the only state bordering South Dakota that has a baby box, making it more difficult for parents in the area to decide to surrender their babies.
