CV NEWS FEED // The founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes stated recently that saving infants from abandonment is a bipartisan issue, rather than a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” one.
“I stand on the front lines of this movement as one of these kids that wasn’t safely, legally and anonymously placed in a Safe Haven Baby Box by a parent that wanted me,” CEO and founder Monica Kelsey told The Mississippi Clarion Ledger (MCL). “I fight every day for women and children in this country to make sure that their lives turn out different than what mine did at the beginning. This is my legacy, and I will forever be their voice.”
Kelsey knew that she was adopted, but learned as an adult that she had been abandoned as a newborn at an Ohio hospital. Kelsey and her husband later decided to make helping mothers and their newborns their full-time mission. She founded Indiana-based Safe Haven Baby Box Inc. in 2015 as a way to give mothers in crisis the ability to safely and anonymously surrender their newborn.
“I believe I was made for this,” Kelsey told Indianapolis Archdiocese newspaper The Criterion. “To be able to save the lives of children, because my life was saved.”
Kelsey told MCL that this mission “is bipartisan. This is not a pro-life issue. This is not a pro-choice issue. These babies are born. And I think all of us would agree that a baby being left in the dumpster for 6 hours versus a baby being left in a baby box for 3 minutes wouldn’t be best.”
Connected to fire stations, hospitals, and police stations, Safe Haven Baby Boxes are temperature-controlled baby bassinets with sensors that notify emergency personnel when an infant has been placed in them. The personnel respond and retrieve the child within minutes, and then provide him or her with medical care if needed.
“We had to start educating people that these boxes were safe and that babies were only in it for a matter of minutes. But, I think the majority of people now understand the program and support what we’re doing,” Kelsey told MCL.
After the child is rescued, Child Protective Services then places the infant in foster care and later, up for adoption.
Safe Haven laws protect mothers from legal prosecution for surrendering their child, and vary slightly depending on the state. The Safe Haven law in Indiana, for example, “allows for the anonymous surrender of an infant up to 30 days old at designated locations with no worry of prosecution,” according to The Criterion.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc. has installed 206 boxes across the nation. MCL reported that “the organization said 43 babies have been surrendered at their baby boxes since 2017.”
>> Read: Florida Nonprofit Helps Mothers Find Safe Havens For Newborn Infants <<
Melissa Sullivan, an executive director at a Mississippi crisis pregnancy center, told MCL, “There are so many situations where the mom may have made some bad choices related to drugs, or it could be related to sex trafficking, and she is trying to keep the baby safe.”
“But rather than giving judgment, we just want to say thank you to the mom for keeping her baby safe,” she said. Sullivan and her husband adopted an infant who was surrendered at a Safe Haven Box.
“Personally, as an adoptive mother of a Safe Haven baby, I think about the biological mother all the time, all the time. And how grateful I am that she cared enough about her baby to make sure that he was safe. She wasn’t able to take care of him, but she knew someone could,” Sullivan said.
