Safe Haven Laws and Baby Boxes

     Safe Haven Baby Boxes are implemented with the goal of preventing illegal abandonment of newborn children. Not only is the Baby Box offered as a last resort option for women, maintained with complete anonymity, but the organization itself raises awareness and offers a 24 hour hotline for mothers in crisis. 

Safe Haven Baby Box

    The primary goal of Safe Haven Baby Boxes is to raise awareness of the Safe Haven Law. These laws vary across states, in areas such as maximum age at which an infant can be relinquished, whom can relinquish the infant, and where the relinquishment can occur, but overall provide safe places for parents to relinquish their newborn infants. It provides anonymity and protection against prosecution for the infant's caretakers as well as immunity of liability for providers who accept the infants. All fifty states and Puerto Rico have some variation of the Safe Haven Law. The first state to enact this type of law was Texas, who in 1999 created their "Baby Moses Law." This laws was created in a reaction to thirteen incidents of child abandonment that year, with three of the infants being discovered dead. Kentucky's version of this law is the Safe Infants Act, which allows parents to leave babies younger than 30 days old at a designated safe place, where no one will call the police or ask for your name. The baby will get medical care and be placed with a family for adoption. If the parents of the infant do not contact the Cabinet for Health and Family Services within 30 days after leaving the infant at a safe place, the Cabinet will begin the process of terminating parental rights. The World Population Review provides a breakdown for the law by each state. 

Viral TikTok Shows How Safe Haven Baby Boxes Work

   

    According to the National Library of Medicine, more than 100 infants are abandoned each year, with approximately one-third of these infants being found dead. However, since the implementation of the Safe Haven Baby Box, the hotline has received 9,000 calls, the organization has referred over 500 women to crisis pregnancy centers and assisted in 9 adoption referrals, and over 150 infants were safely surrendered. Since the implementation of the first Safe Haven Law in 1999 in Texas, more than 3,500 newborns have been successfully surrendered. 

Newborn baby safely surrendered to the Safe Haven Box at the Beech Grove, Indiana Fire Department

    Despite their benefit towards preventing infant abandonment, scholars have offered critiques of safe haven laws, stating they do not address the root problem of infant abandonment and mortality. They argue that these laws make citizens feel like the crime is being prevented while ignoring racial, cultural, and socioeconomic issues impacting infant relinquishment. These scholars argue for more research to be done on infant abandonment so that evidence based interventions can be implemented to decrease the issue in the first place.