Fighting infant abandonments with boxes

Community members in Indianapolis gathered at a cemetery chapel late last month to honor a baby girl who was found abandoned in a local park on Labor Day. The Marion County coroner later determined she was at least 30 weeks gestation, likely born shortly before she was found. Police have still not released any information about her cause of death or her mother.

In early October, Linda Znachko claimed the baby from the coroner’s office to arrange her funeral. Znachko is the founder of He Knows Your Name, a nonprofit that names and buries abandoned babies who are found dead. The organization named the baby Haven Grace Hope in reference to Indiana’s safe haven law that allows women to safely surrender their newborns at designated locations.

In addition to spreading awareness of the law, Znachko’s organization also partners with Safe Haven Baby Boxes, which installs infant surrender boxes in safe haven locations. There are at least seven fire stations, one hospital, and one baby box within about 5 miles of the park where baby Haven was abandoned.

Thanks to the growth of safe haven laws, the number of safe surrender sites across the country—typically fire stations and hospitals—has surged into the tens of thousands. All 50 states now have laws allowing parents to legally and anonymously surrender an unharmed infant. The National Safe Haven Alliance estimates that parents have safely surrendered more than 5,200 babies since the first such law passed in 1999.

Evidence suggests that safe surrender sites have had a measurable effect on the rate of deadly baby abandonments. In California, the number of illegally abandoned babies began declining after the state passed its safe haven law in 2001, while the number of infants surrendered safely has risen.

In addition, the number of baby box sites—where parents can anonymously surrender a newborn to the care of the state—has roughly tripled since WORLD’s previous reporting in early 2023. Safe Haven Baby Boxes, the primary provider of these devices in the United States, has installed nearly 400 U.S. baby box locations, with new sites opening each month.

Yet abandoned babies continue to make headlines with alarming regularity. Last month, police in New York City found a newborn girl, wrapped in a blanket, alone at the base of a staircase in a subway station. In September, residents of an apartment complex in Austin, Texas, found a newborn girl in a dumpster. In both cases, the babies survived and authorities later located and arrested their mothers. But in late October, police in Los Angeles found an hours-old baby girl dead in an apartment near the University of Southern California.

More than 40 infants are still illegally abandoned in the United States every year, according to the National Safe Haven Alliance—and just over half survive.

Some child welfare advocates say expanding anonymous options like infant surrender boxes are the next step to save more lives. Others argue the boxes lack oversight and do not address the root issues that lead to abandonment. They say the real solution is spreading awareness about existing safe haven laws. While both camps desperately hope to reduce dangerous abandonments, disagreement over the best method persists.

Baby in a box

Police in Columbus, Ga., were called to a motel in September after a bystander heard cries coming from a dumpster. There, officers found a newborn boy. First responders took him to the hospital, and authorities later arrested the baby’s 22-year-old mother.

“Georgia law provides a safe, legal way for a newborn up to 30 days old to be surrendered,” the Columbus Police Department wrote in a subsequent statement. “A dumpster is not a safe haven.”

While Georgia’s safe haven law allows a woman to surrender her baby in person at a hospital, fire station, or police station up to one month after giving birth, the state does not have any baby boxes. Republicans in February proposed an amendment to allow the boxes in the state, but legislators sent the bill back to committee in April just before the legislative session ended. In New York, legislators have proposed an amendment to the safe haven law to allow the boxes, which lawmakers will consider in the upcoming legislative session. Meanwhile, California does not permit the boxes under its safe haven law.

This summer, a newborn girl became the first infant surrendered via a baby box in Montgomery, Ala. “We opened the station in May, and by August we had our first surrender in the box,” Assistant Fire Chief Craig Carr Jr. told me. “She still had her umbilical cord.”

More than a dozen boxes have been installed across Alabama since the state updated its safe haven law in 2023. When the city of Montgomery began planning to build a new fire station last year, Carr advocated for installing one in the building. Even though the fire station is already a safe haven location, handing off a baby to fire officials requires a face-to-face interaction. Carr argued that having an option for women who do not want to speak to anyone could save even more lives.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen what happens in the alternative,” he said. “We’ve had babies that were abandoned in trash receptacles or bathrooms.”

Safe Haven Baby Boxes has helped local municipalities install at least 386 boxes across the country, according to a map on its website. The temperature-controlled, ventilated box is built into the wall of a fire station or other safe location and triggers an alarm when a baby is placed inside. The nonprofit installed its first box in 2016, and now about half of U.S. states permit them.

The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate the boxes for safety or functionality. But locations that lease boxes from Safe Haven Baby Boxes have to follow the organization’s testing requirements before and after installation.

While safe surrender laws seem to have reduced deadly abandonments, it’s less clear the effect that baby boxes have had. For one thing, their reach is limited, with just a few hundred box locations nationally so far, compared with tens of thousands of existing safe haven hand-off locations.

Safe Haven Baby Boxes declined to speak to WORLD for this story. However, in a dedication ceremony for a newly installed baby box at a Hamilton, Ohio, fire department on Tuesday, organization founder Monica Kelsey told attendees her group had seen 71 babies surrendered in its boxes to date, including two in Ohio in the past 12 months.

Anonymous surrenders

Last year, a group of about 100 physicians, child welfare experts, and legislators signed a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services. They asked the agency to oversee the boxes, which they called “unregulated modern versions of medieval foundling wheels with substantial safety and legal risks.”

The group said the boxes are not federally approved and can hide crimes such as rape or incest, deprive a child of information about their identity, and remove the opportunity for a parent to speak with a trained professional about other options. “Not having direct contact with a human being, there’s no opportunity to offer the mom any kind of supportive services,” said Dawn Geras, founder of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation in Illinois.

Geras, who later helped found the National Safe Haven Alliance, advocated for her home state to adopt its safe haven law in 2001. Since then, state legislators have amended the law at least eight times, adding or changing requirements such as how old the baby can be or what information sites must provide to parents. “We’ve learned things that we didn’t know back then,” Geras said.

But none of those amendments included allowing baby boxes. While Geras, who signed the HHS letter, said the boxes have helped raise awareness about safe haven laws, she still believes calling the safe haven hotline or speaking to someone in person are better options because mothers have a chance to receive help themselves.

“In 25% of the cases, we’ve been able to help the parent make a parenting plan and actually keep the baby or make a traditional adoption plan, both of which are better than safe haven,” she said. Baby boxes and staff at safe haven locations offer mothers a packet of information about services available to her and her legal rights, but Geras says the human-to-human connection is a key part of making sure parents fully understand their decision.

In Florida, Nick Silverio, founder of A Safe Haven for Newborns, has also pushed back against the boxes. “If a baby has been abused, neglected, or potentially trafficked or kidnapped, a trained professional at a fire station or a hospital can recognize this and can contact the [authorities],” he said. “With boxes, it’s not the case.”

Silverio launched his organization in 2001 and now partners with emergency responders, hospitals, and child welfare agencies through the group’s referral help line and safe haven awareness efforts. The nonprofit has helped 74 mothers place their babies directly with an adoption agency and assisted six parents in regaining parental rights after they surrendered their babies, something that would be more difficult with baby boxes.

“The other issue, which has not been addressed by really anybody at this point, is that there’s an unsecured opening in the side of a fire department,” Silverio said. “And with the world today, somebody could put something in there and unfortunately blow the place up.”

Kelsey, the Safe Haven Baby Boxes founder, responded to similar concerns in a 2016 video, saying first responders risk their lives every day and there had not been any reported instances of someone placing a bomb in an infant abandonment box.

In a document posted on its website, the nonprofit rebutted many of the common concerns about the boxes. The organization agrees that infant surrender, whether in person or in a box, should be the last resort, and it promotes other services like hotline referrals and in-person surrenders. It argues that increasing the number of baby box sites will ultimately increase their success at preventing illegal baby abandonments.

An ongoing challenge

While debates over the effectiveness of baby boxes continue, safe haven advocates say education about the laws is still the best way to inform women about their options. Illinois, Tennessee, and New Jersey have passed laws requiring high schools to teach students about state safe haven laws. Across the country, signs mark safe haven locations and highway billboards display a national hotline number and information about where to seek help.

In Florida, Silverio developed an app that allows high school and college students to gain community service hours by volunteering for his organization. Students can create safe haven awareness videos, posters, and articles, or they can host a baby shower to collect items for organizations that help mothers in need. While they gain service credit, the students are learning about safe haven laws and spreading awareness at the same time, he said.

Heather Burner, executive director for the National Safe Haven Alliance, said the variations in state laws make it harder to make sure women know their options. “You have nonprofit organizations like ours that are really trying to do the outreach and the work, but to do that on a national level is incredibly challenging,” she said. She advocates for a federal safe haven law. “I think having some minimum standards across the board would be really, really good, because then you don’t have a three-day law and a 30-day law with states that are right next to each other,” she said.

Regardless of why a woman may consider giving up her baby, advocates agreed that she should know all of her options and have the opportunity to accept whatever help she needs to keep her child. “Safe haven is a beautiful, life-saving law,” Burner said. “But it should also be the last resort.”