By By trueactivist.com
Indiana installs its first-ever baby drop-off box for mothers to surrender their unwanted newborns.
Indiana’s first ever baby drop-off box has just been installed in Fort Wayne where new mothers can drop off their unwanted newborns anonymously.
Baby drop-off boxes are incubated boxes, typically installed in exterior building walls, where mothers can drop off their newborn babies usually up until 31 days of age to anonymously surrender their child.
The Knights of Columbus of Indiana have agreed to pay for the installation of the first 100 boxes in Indiana. Each box costs between $1,500 to $2,000.
These boxes will also be equipped with a security system that notifies emergency personnel whenever a baby is dropped off and emergency responders can be at the location within minutes to care for the baby.
All 50 states already have Safe Haven laws that allow unharmed newborns to be surrendered without having to provide the mother’s name at hospitals, fire stations, and police stations. This ensures that more babies are left in safe places to receive medical attention and be cared for rather than abandoned or left in harm’s way.
Baby boxes are controversial for several reasons, but the fact that Indiana has recently signed an abortion bill that adds more restrictions that prohibits women’s access to abortions seems to be a related argument against those against baby boxes.
Credit: Chad Ryan
Some say that if Indiana had less restrictive abortion laws that more women would be able to undergo the operation and this would lessen the amount of unwanted newborns being surrendered. Growing up with the knowledge that your parent dropped you off as a newborn without any history of your past can be traumatizing and it could be avoided if the babies weren’t born in the first place.
Others point out that these baby boxes could be abused by mothers with babies over 31 days old that want to surrender their babies, which would be illegal to do at a drop box but possible considering the lack of security surrounding the locations.
Baby boxes could also prevent new mothers from receiving much-needed medical attention if they gave birth outside of a hospital and could even cause mothers to relinquish their babies before weighing all their options. About 25% of parents who initially decided to surrender their baby under the Safe Haven laws chose to instead make an adoption or parenting plan when given the chance to discuss all of their options.
There are other questions critics are posing, such as who will pay for the boxes which are just an extension of the locations already in place, but Monica Kelsey, an advocate for baby boxes, believes that a woman’s right to anonymity and an infant’s right to safety all override these doubts.
Kelsey herself was surrendered at a hospital by her birth mother and the first baby box was installed on April 19, the anniversary of the day she was abandoned.
Her response to critics is, “This is not criminal. This is legal. We don’t want to push women away.”
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In my county in Michigan you can’t even drop off pets at the shelter; you must at least come inside and answer a few questions. I’m fucking appalled at this baby box idea. What has humanity come to?
In Hungary something like this works from awhile. In big towns and in Budapest around every hospital there are incubators placed. We had a big problem with teenagers who had to go through a terrible procedure for getting an abortion. They even had to appear in front of a kind of jury to ask for it… These girls where so afraid of these procedures and they parents that they kept they pregnancy a secret as long as possible then ran away from home or give birth in secret. Babies where born in toilets and sometimes left there or some other terrible places, if they weren’t killed by they mother who was frightened almost to insanity. Since the incubators where placed, there where thousands of babies saved and adopted by families who would give anything to have children! These are life saving, so I don’t want to hear about stupid statistics saying whatever! No questions, no discussion required! Believe me, the other options for these babies can be deadly……
THis is a very good idea! A better idea would be to stop restricting the reproduction choices of women altogether so they are not forced to make such a decision
we have those in poland and we call them ‘windows of life’
are you fucking kidding me?! so instead of amending the law so it fits modern day society they put black abandonment boxes outside of buildings for mothers to anonymously abandon their baby’s? pretty sad when that’s the kind of logic we’re dealing with these days.
Good idea who knows what going on in a person’s life. Unwanted pregnancy is rock & a hard place and above all still a women problem while her own family will often have to deal with the situation with very differ outlooks that could render support or expulsion. I express no judgement on this topic. I don’t know if further down the track whether a mother/father/family can give information or a letter … that can be passed on that maybe critical i.e. health issue or something for records.
How sad and disgusting that society has reached a point that sees this as acceptable. The world has become so loose with responsibility that instead of forcing mothers to be exactly that, they GIVE them the option to ANONYMOUSLY abandon your baby. Its not enough that children in their later years have an empty place inside them because its already hard enough for adoption institutions to release the names of birth parents, but now there would be no record at all. Wouldn’t be able to imagine the psychological damage that awaits that child in the future with the knowledge they were dropped off at an ‘abandonment box’.
And for those that think that more should be done to facilitate this, more should be done to make those who CHOSE to engage in sexual activity to accept the inevitable responsibilities that go with it rather than make options available for a possible MISTAKE that may happen. Shame on all those would be mothers that would use this option. Put yourself in the babies place and tell me it you would enjoy that memorable past of your birth.
You are right! They should help the mothers and fathers to take responsibility, but I also think they should show them, what other options there are, such as adoption. People should advertise for alternatives, rather then for abortion.
Because it can’t be prevented, that everybody CAN take responsibility, there should also be insitutions that help those children that are traumatized and without any knowledge of their family.
Oh you would have them leave them in garbage bags in alleys?
Pauline, shut the fuck up, that’s why their is adoption agencies and abortion clinics, and like I said before, amend the system to fit todays society instead of antagonising this downward spiral we are on as a planet.
Is abortion really the lesser evil, than to get the chance to live at all? Who says, that the child wpnt’t be happy? I am adopted and I am traumatized, but that is not a reason for me to not life!!! When did this become a reason for abortion? What is with all the people born to poor countries, born in countries where there is war? Should they all be rather aborted?
what do they do with the kid do they leave them to get taken by a orphan or what happens do they get feed to what people who eat other people this is just a messed up world that we all live in why will they allow this to happen this very … i don`t what to call this any more
We live in a world where murdering/killing an unwanted innocent life or dropping them off in a dropbox is ok…
Sorry I should say an unwanted unborn innocent life and unwanted born innocent life*