Latest news with #SafeHavenBabyBox
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Montgomery opens drop-off box where parents can surrender infants
Montgomery opened the city's first Safe Haven Baby Box on May 29, an area designed for parents to safely and anonymously surrender infants. This is the 17th baby box in Alabama, said Caitlin Kelly, a representative with Safe Haven. Four infants have been surrendered this way throughout the state. Nationally, there are 347 baby boxes, where 59 infants have been surrendered. Montgomery's baby box is at the newly opened Fire Station 10, at 1920 S. Court St. The box allows parents to legally surrender infants younger than 45 days old. When someone surrenders an infant, an alarm goes off alerting the firefighters. The box is temperature-controlled. More: Prattville Safe Haven Baby Box Prattville fire station adds 'no shame' newborn drop-off box for babies In 2024, Safe Haven opened its first box in the state in Madison. A day later, the organization opened another in Prattville. "The Safe Haven Baby Box, now installed at Fire Station No. 10, represents our city's commitment to meeting people where they are, even in moments of fear, crisis or deep uncertainty," Mayor Steven Reed said. "This box provides a safe, anonymous and legal option for a parent who may feel they have nowhere else to turn. It offers a way forward when someone is overwhelmed and just doesn't know what to do and protects the life of a newborn who deserves love, care and a future." Alex Gladden is the Montgomery Advertiser's education reporter. She can be reached at agladden@ or on Twitter @gladlyalex. This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Montgomery opens site for parents to legally surrender infants
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
The Devastating History of Baby Relinquishment
At New York's Foundling Hospital a policewoman turns an abandoned child over to a staff member. Credit - Orlando—In 2016, Monica Kelsey, a Christian anti-abortion activist, debuted an invention allowing for completely anonymous infant surrender: the Safe Haven Baby Box. A relinquishing parent simply opens the door to the device—now at more than 150 hospitals, health care centers, and fire stations across the United States—and places their newborn in the climate-controlled bassinet. When the parent closes the door, the box locks and a silent alarm alerts responders. Supporters frame baby drop boxes as a beautiful solution for all parties involved—relinquishing parents, infants anonymously surrendered, and families who eventually adopt them. They argue that this innovation protects vulnerable babies from grievous harm, though there is no reliable data to support these assertions. The federal government does not track how frequently babies are surrendered directly to professionals under safe haven laws, which exist in all 50 states, let alone how many babies are left anonymously in drop boxes. Nevertheless, conservative religious groups position safe havens as an alternative to abortion. During arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that safe haven laws 'take care' of the 'problem' of 'the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy.' This framing ignores evidence that 91% of women who are denied abortion in the U.S. choose parenting over adoption or relinquishment. How Online Adoption Ads Prey on Pregnant People Positioning Safe Haven Baby Boxes as a solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy also ignores important historical lessons about the harms caused by anonymous infant relinquishment. Charitable institutions in our country supported this practice on a much larger scale in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the results were devastating. While the technology they rely on has been updated for the 21st century, Safe Haven Baby Boxes are a new spin on a very old idea, motivated by religious conservatism and societal policing of women's sexuality and reproduction. The earliest mechanisms for anonymous infant surrender debuted thousands of years ago in Europe. Among the first were so-called 'ruota,' or wheel, systems at Catholic-run hospitals for orphans and foundlings in medieval Italy, where turntables were built into outdoor niches. A parent could place a baby on the turntable outside and rotate it indoors without being identified. Institutions dedicated to the care of so-called "foundlings" and mechanisms like the ruota spread throughout Europe in the medieval and Renaissance periods—especially in Catholic countries that heavily stigmatized extramarital sex—in order to prevent infanticide and care for 'illegitimate' babies surrendered by poor single women seeking to hide the evidence of their supposed sins. Historians now estimate that by the 18th century, as many as one third of babies born in cities in France, Italy, and Spain were abandoned. The foundling trend didn't reach American shores until the mid-19th century, when industrialization and mass migration brought huge numbers of people into cities like New York and, in turn, created conditions under which infant abandonment flourished. If a poor single woman who came to New York to work in an unstable low-wage job became pregnant out of wedlock, shame, stigma, poverty, lack of childcare options, and the anonymity of city living might lead her to leave her infant on a stoop. In the 1860s, four different foundling asylums opened in New York City to care for abandoned children. Among them was the Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1869. That October, Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, with two other nuns, placed a cradle on the stoop of their brownstone in Manhattan to secretly receive 'illegitimate' babies. That very first night, someone left a baby in the cradle on the stoop. By 1871, they had taken in 2,560 foundlings through the cradle, which was moved into the entryway but still hidden from sight to ensure anonymous surrender. The Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, often referred to as simply "the Foundling," was the only New York asylum that allowed for such secrecy. For decades, the organization received babies in a self-described effort to save their souls and launder the reputations of their poor 'fallen' mothers. In 1880, the charity opened St. Ann's Maternity Hospital, which served unmarried mothers 'seek[ing] shelter and seclusion with hope of preserving character and family reputation,' as the Foundling put it in a biennial report. The newborns would be cared for by the sisters, who baptized them into the Catholic faith. If they lived long enough to become 'run around[s],' the children might be chosen to ride 'baby trains' to go live with new Catholic families in far-flung towns all across the country, a practice that persisted through 1927. Some 30,000 children rode those baby trains. The Foundling came to participate in the orphan train movement because its Protestant counterpart and progenitor of the social engineering experiment, the New York Children's Aid Society (CAS), was seen by Catholic-run charities as 'an unqualified menace that had caused thousands of Catholic children to lose their religion and thus their only hope for eternal salvation.' By sending toddlers off on baby trains, the Foundling worked to preserve the minority Catholic faith against encroachment by Protestant charities like the CAS, ensuring that Catholic culture would be perpetuated and reproduced across the United States. Russia Is Trying to 'Erase' Ukrainian Identity in Captured Territories, European Officials Allege With a secretive system whereby women who 'sinned' by giving birth out of wedlock would be permanently severed from their children, who were then sent to live with new families, the Foundling may have propagated the Catholic faith. But it also harmed the very children it purported to save. The Foundling's own archives at the New York Historical hold evidence of how the organization's practices, which cut children off from basic forms of self-knowledge and from the possibility of ever reconnecting with their birth families, caused lifelong suffering for some baby train riders. Nestled into folders of correspondence to the Foundling from the 1980s and 1990s are requests from former riders, now elderly, seeking vital information about themselves and their families of origin. Some riders were hoping for details that would make sense of their medical histories. In 1994, a rider named Sylvia Wolk who was born in 1918, wrote asking for whatever information the charity had on her parents, an urgent request, as she and her brother, Joseph, were 'both in poor health, in their seventies, and under a doctor's care.' Sylvia wrote that she was 'desperately seeking truth before Joseph dies.' After a lifetime apart, Sylvia and her brother had reunited in 1989—and not through the Foundling. Instead, the siblings reconnected after Sylvia's search for her long-lost brother was featured on an episode of the television show Unsolved Mysteries. Joseph died in 1996, likely without ever learning the 'truth' about his ancestry from the Foundling. Other letters illustrate the frustration riders felt in the charity's withholding of basic details about their lives. Helen Macior, who was born in 1913 and rode a baby train to Illinois in 1915, wrote in a 1994 request form that she was seeking information 'to learn who I am.' The next year, she sent another letter: 'Seven months have elapsed, and nary a word. This in addition to the last five years of correspondence. . . . If there is one thing I strongly believe, every human being is entitled to know from whence they came, be it good or bad.' Yet the Foundling's system was entirely presaged on the idea that some people's origins need to be concealed. The tension between the Foundling's desire to keep unwed mothers' identities secret and the desire of former baby train riders to know about their origins foreshadows a central conundrum of modern adoption: the difficulty that adoptive children face in accessing information about their birth parents. The nationwide practice of sealing original birth certificates of adoptees and issuing revised documents that list the names of adoptive parents keeps secrecy alive. But that is changing—thanks to the efforts of adopted people and birth parents in recent years, adoptees in 15 states now have the right to access their original birth certificates. The conservative movement for anonymous infant relinquishment and supporters of Safe Haven Baby Boxes ignore this history and create a system that makes it difficult—if not impossible—for child and parent to ever learn the truth about one another. Babies surreptitiously left in such drop boxes will likely never have accurate birth certificates, and relinquishing parents swiftly lose their parental rights and any chance of legally reclaiming or reconnecting with their children. History has already taught us the harms of withholding self-knowledge and the possibility of reunification. It is past time we learn these lessons. Kristen Martin is the author of The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Write to Made by History at madebyhistory@
Time Magazine
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Devastating History of Baby Relinquishment
In 2016, Monica Kelsey, a Christian anti-abortion activist, debuted an invention allowing for completely anonymous infant surrender: the Safe Haven Baby Box. A relinquishing parent simply opens the door to the device—now at more than 150 hospitals, health care centers, and fire stations across the United States—and places their newborn in the climate-controlled bassinet. When the parent closes the door, the box locks and a silent alarm alerts responders. Supporters frame baby drop boxes as a beautiful solution for all parties involved—relinquishing parents, infants anonymously surrendered, and families who eventually adopt them. They argue that this innovation protects vulnerable babies from grievous harm, though there is no reliable data to support these assertions. The federal government does not track how frequently babies are surrendered directly to professionals under safe haven laws, which exist in all 50 states, let alone how many babies are left anonymously in drop boxes. Nevertheless, conservative religious groups position safe havens as an alternative to abortion. During arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that safe haven laws 'take care' of the 'problem' of 'the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy.' This framing ignores evidence that 91% of women who are denied abortion in the U.S. choose parenting over adoption or relinquishment. Positioning Safe Haven Baby Boxes as a solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy also ignores important historical lessons about the harms caused by anonymous infant relinquishment. Charitable institutions in our country supported this practice on a much larger scale in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the results were devastating. While the technology they rely on has been updated for the 21st century, Safe Haven Baby Boxes are a new spin on a very old idea, motivated by religious conservatism and societal policing of women's sexuality and reproduction. The earliest mechanisms for anonymous infant surrender debuted thousands of years ago in Europe. Among the first were so-called 'ruota,' or wheel, systems at Catholic-run hospitals for orphans and foundlings in medieval Italy, where turntables were built into outdoor niches. A parent could place a baby on the turntable outside and rotate it indoors without being identified. Institutions dedicated to the care of so-called "foundlings" and mechanisms like the ruota spread throughout Europe in the medieval and Renaissance periods—especially in Catholic countries that heavily stigmatized extramarital sex—in order to prevent infanticide and care for 'illegitimate' babies surrendered by poor single women seeking to hide the evidence of their supposed sins. Historians now estimate that by the 18th century, as many as one third of babies born in cities in France, Italy, and Spain were abandoned. The foundling trend didn't reach American shores until the mid-19th century, when industrialization and mass migration brought huge numbers of people into cities like New York and, in turn, created conditions under which infant abandonment flourished. If a poor single woman who came to New York to work in an unstable low-wage job became pregnant out of wedlock, shame, stigma, poverty, lack of childcare options, and the anonymity of city living might lead her to leave her infant on a stoop. In the 1860s, four different foundling asylums opened in New York City to care for abandoned children. Among them was the Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1869. That October, Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, with two other nuns, placed a cradle on the stoop of their brownstone in Manhattan to secretly receive 'illegitimate' babies. That very first night, someone left a baby in the cradle on the stoop. By 1871, they had taken in 2,560 foundlings through the cradle, which was moved into the entryway but still hidden from sight to ensure anonymous surrender. The Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, often referred to as simply "the Foundling," was the only New York asylum that allowed for such secrecy. For decades, the organization received babies in a self-described effort to save their souls and launder the reputations of their poor 'fallen' mothers. In 1880, the charity opened St. Ann's Maternity Hospital, which served unmarried mothers 'seek[ing] shelter and seclusion with hope of preserving character and family reputation,' as the Foundling put it in a biennial report. The newborns would be cared for by the sisters, who baptized them into the Catholic faith. If they lived long enough to become 'run around[s],' the children might be chosen to ride 'baby trains' to go live with new Catholic families in far-flung towns all across the country, a practice that persisted through 1927. Some 30,000 children rode those baby trains. The Foundling came to participate in the orphan train movement because its Protestant counterpart and progenitor of the social engineering experiment, the New York Children's Aid Society (CAS), was seen by Catholic-run charities as 'an unqualified menace that had caused thousands of Catholic children to lose their religion and thus their only hope for eternal salvation.' By sending toddlers off on baby trains, the Foundling worked to preserve the minority Catholic faith against encroachment by Protestant charities like the CAS, ensuring that Catholic culture would be perpetuated and reproduced across the United States. With a secretive system whereby women who 'sinned' by giving birth out of wedlock would be permanently severed from their children, who were then sent to live with new families, the Foundling may have propagated the Catholic faith. But it also harmed the very children it purported to save. The Foundling's own archives at the New York Historical hold evidence of how the organization's practices, which cut children off from basic forms of self-knowledge and from the possibility of ever reconnecting with their birth families, caused lifelong suffering for some baby train riders. Nestled into folders of correspondence to the Foundling from the 1980s and 1990s are requests from former riders, now elderly, seeking vital information about themselves and their families of origin. Some riders were hoping for details that would make sense of their medical histories. In 1994, a rider named Sylvia Wolk who was born in 1918, wrote asking for whatever information the charity had on her parents, an urgent request, as she and her brother, Joseph, were 'both in poor health, in their seventies, and under a doctor's care.' Sylvia wrote that she was 'desperately seeking truth before Joseph dies.' After a lifetime apart, Sylvia and her brother had reunited in 1989—and not through the Foundling. Instead, the siblings reconnected after Sylvia's search for her long-lost brother was featured on an episode of the television show Unsolved Mysteries. Joseph died in 1996, likely without ever learning the 'truth' about his ancestry from the Foundling. Other letters illustrate the frustration riders felt in the charity's withholding of basic details about their lives. Helen Macior, who was born in 1913 and rode a baby train to Illinois in 1915, wrote in a 1994 request form that she was seeking information 'to learn who I am.' The next year, she sent another letter: 'Seven months have elapsed, and nary a word. This in addition to the last five years of correspondence. . . . If there is one thing I strongly believe, every human being is entitled to know from whence they came, be it good or bad.' Yet the Foundling's system was entirely presaged on the idea that some people's origins need to be concealed. The tension between the Foundling's desire to keep unwed mothers' identities secret and the desire of former baby train riders to know about their origins foreshadows a central conundrum of modern adoption: the difficulty that adoptive children face in accessing information about their birth parents. The nationwide practice of sealing original birth certificates of adoptees and issuing revised documents that list the names of adoptive parents keeps secrecy alive. But that is changing—thanks to the efforts of adopted people and birth parents in recent years, adoptees in 15 states now have the right to access their original birth certificates. The conservative movement for anonymous infant relinquishment and supporters of Safe Haven Baby Boxes ignore this history and create a system that makes it difficult—if not impossible—for child and parent to ever learn the truth about one another. Babies surreptitiously left in such drop boxes will likely never have accurate birth certificates, and relinquishing parents swiftly lose their parental rights and any chance of legally reclaiming or reconnecting with their children. History has already taught us the harms of withholding self-knowledge and the possibility of reunification. It is past time we learn these lessons. Kristen Martin is the author of
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Open Arms Foundation fundraising for state's third Safe Haven Baby Box
May 26—Open Arms Foundation of Jasper County is about halfway to its fundraising goal to establish the state's third ever Safe Haven Baby Box in Newton. Nicholas Pietrack, founder of the Open Arms Foundation, said a Safe Haven Baby Box is estimated to cost around $20,000, and then there is an annual service fee of $500 for re-certification, updated trainings and testings. So to cover for those extra fees, Open Arms Foundation set its goal at $30,000. So far, the nonprofit organization has raised about $16,000 for the project. All of the funds have been donations from community members. Newton Masonic Lodge held a fundraiser breakfast for Open Arms Foundation back in April, the proceeds of which were donated to the nonprofit to help secure a Safe Haven Baby Box. In 2002, Iowa enacted safe haven laws that allow parents of a child appearing 90 days old to legally surrender that child to an emergency medical service provider. Only two Safe Haven Baby Boxes exist in the state: Des Moines and Fort Dodge. Pietrack said Open Arms Foundation wants to be the third in the state. Ever since the safe haven laws have been in effect, Pietrack said there have been 74 instances where a parent legally surrendered their child. Pietrack said the idea of the safe haven laws is to protect parents and the children in the event of a crisis. The parent is protected from abandonment and neglect charges. "It's a legal, anonymous surrender," Pietrack said. "The issue that states have discovered is that sometimes the actual act of going to somebody and saying, 'I want to give up my kid,' people are afraid to do that. They're afraid of the ramifications and the shame and the public image." Which is partly why Safe Haven Baby Boxes have been implemented in a number of states. Currently, more than 330 Safe Haven Baby Boxes have been installed throughout the United States. Pietrack said they are typically installed around fire departments or hospitals, which have 24-7 staffing. When a child is placed in the box, the door closes and a packet of information is released for the parent on what to do next and followup with information about the child. By the time the child is placed in a box, a silent alarm is sounded so that a medical provider can retrieve the baby. Dispatch is also notified. Average response time is one to two minutes. Currently, Open Arms Foundation wants to install the Safe Haven Baby Box at MercyOne Newton Medical Center. Another Iowa community that wants to install a Safe Haven Baby Box is Norwalk. Within the past year or so, an infant was born in a home in Norwalk and was discarded, leading to its death. Pietrack said Open Arms Foundation wants to remain proactive so that situations like that do not happen in Jasper County. Open Arms Foundation was created as a reaction to helping drug endangered children in Jasper County. Parents who are facing crisis often are also involved in drugs. Pietrack said a Safe Haven Baby Box extends the nonprofit's mission further by providing an opportunity for children to be safely taken care of. "If this box saves one kid in the next 20 years, that's worth it," Pietrack said. For more information or to learn how to donate, visit
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
How does Abilene's baby box work? A look inside Fire Station #7
ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) — One year ago, a new resource was brought to Abilene. It provides a safe option for new parents to surrender a newborn baby less than 60 days old, completely anonymously. Abilene becomes 1st in Texas to host anonymous program for parents to surrender infants: Safe Haven Baby Box At Fire Station #7, the Safe Haven Baby Box is located behind a brick wall to help with the anonymous factor when surrendering a baby. Abilene Fire Department Chief Cande Flores said all the person has to do is walk up, open the door, and place their baby inside. 'They put a baby inside the actual container. It has a beam that will break, and it will trip, kind of a silent alarm, until the door shuts. When the door shuts, it cannot be reopened,' Flores said. 'It's kind of an elaborate process, but it's also a simple process.' Once a baby is placed inside the box, firemen will come to the retrieval area right inside the truck bay to get the baby on the other side. Flores said that from there, the baby will be checked out and sent to Child Protective Services. Abilene community rallies for second Baby Box, after bringing the first to Texas 'The main thing is making sure the baby's healthy and that they are safe. The ambulance crew will check them out on scene, and then the baby will be transported to the hospital,' Flores said. More than two decades have passed since U.S. fire stations began accepting surrendered infants — a protocol that started while retired fireman Pete Berretta was still on the job. 'I don't think anybody really thought about it until someone else came up with it, because there had been just a few that I remember, babies abandoned here in Abilene,' Beretta said. Berretta said the new Baby Box will be especially useful during emergency calls when no one is at the station. 'I was at a very busy house, so sometimes we made a lot of runs at night, and the majority of the abandonment is done in the evening. Well, if we're out on a run and that baby's just sitting on the porch, it's not good,' Beretta said. Local pro-life nonprofit raises $20k to install safe haven box in Abilene for anonymous infant surrender Now, Abilene has a safer option. The Baby Box offers a secure way to surrender an infant anonymously. So far, it hasn't been used, and fire officials say no babies have been surrendered at an Abilene Fire Station. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTAB -
