By Carolina Puga Mendoza 

TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—Parents in distress will soon be able to call emergency services to pick up their newborn baby if they decide to give up custody and cannot drop it at a designated “Safe Haven” location like a fire or police station.

Due to amendments made by the Senate, House Bill 1230will return to the House floor for review. The bill, authored by Rep. Ryan Lauer, R-Columbus, will allow parents to call 9-1-1 so emergency responders can take custody of a baby. Lauer said there might be circumstances in which parents can’t drop off the baby themselves, whether for transportation or other reasons, and calling emergency services will still give them the option to safely give up the newborn.

“[It’s] absolutely going to be the hardest thing that they’re ever going to do, and in these cases that we have, the parent believes it is in the best interest of the child, and the state has an interest in protecting those vulnerable children and to avoid the unthinkable,” Lauer said.

In 2016, baby boxes became an acceptable option for the Safe Haven law. If a parent does not want to be seen, they can drop off their baby in the box and leave; the boxes trigger an alarm that brings someone to collect the baby. At the moment, the boxes can only be installed in fire departments and hospitals.

House Bill 1032, authored by Rep. Randall Frye, R-Greensburg, could expand the locations where the baby boxes can be installed. The bill would allow any facility that has emergency staff on standby to be a location where babies can be dropped off. This would allow rural areas that don’t have hospitals or fire departments nearby to still provide a safe option for newborns.

Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, created the nation’s first baby box in Woodburn, Ind., in 2016, and to date, Indiana owns 53 of the baby boxes out of the 60 total boxes nationwide. Ohio falls second with four boxes. Indiana’s existing Safe Haven law offers baby boxes at fire departments and hospitals, where parents can give up custody of their newborn child anonymously without repercussions.

“[Communities] need something that is going to give women a last-resort option to keep their child safe, and when people understand the program and they understand the success that’s happening here in our state, they want to be a part of that,” Kelsey said.

According to U.S. News and World Report, as of July 2, 2018, there had been 1,419 babies illegally abandoned nationwide, with only a third of them found alive.

The Safe Haven law only applies to babies who are 30 days of age or younger. If the parent does not change their mind and come back for the baby, then the medical staff will take custody of the baby and proceed with the Indiana Department of Child Services, according to the child welfare manual, the procedure guide for the Safe Haven law and abandoned infants.

The North Vernon Fire Department in North Vernon, Ind., is the owner of baby box No. 6. Fire chief Michael Cole said that a child was abandoned at a church’s steps, only two blocks away from their fire station, in 2015. That event encouraged him to contact Safe Haven Baby Boxes and start the installment process.

“We wanted to build the baby box, raise community awareness that this was here, so that a situation like 2015 wouldn’t happen again that could have been a very tragic situation,” Cole said. “This allows the community to bring a child to a safe place where it can be treated, taken care of and evaluated with what hopefully was a positive ending and not a tragic ending.”

Cole said the department paid for the box through community donations and with the help of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization for men.

In 2018, three newborns were left in baby boxes in Indiana and 49 parents gave up custody of their babies by directly handing them to a firefighter or hospital nurse.

The Safe Haven laws are known by multiple names across the nation, such as the Abandoned Infant Protection Act, Haven Infant Protection Act, the Baby Moses law, the Infant Haven Law and Daniel’s law, among others. Each state handles them differently.

In Texas, for example, the law says the parent must directly hand the baby to an employee who works at a hospital, fire department or emergency medical service. In New Jersey, the parent can remain anonymous and must drop the baby at a hospital emergency room or police station.

According to a brochure from the Child Welfare Information Gateway, as of 2016, around 16 states and Puerto Rico allow parents to drop off newborns only at a hospital or emergency service provider, but 27 states allow fire departments to be a location to drop off babies too. Five states allow parents to call 9-1-1 to take custody of a baby, and five states allow churches to be a drop-off location as long as people are in the facility.

Regardless of state, the laws offer medical attention to the newborn and then allow child services to take custody of the baby. As long as the baby does not show signs of abuse, there won’t be questions asked.

The Ocala Fire Rescue in Ocala, Fla., installed Florida’s first baby box in 2020. Chief Shane Alexander, originally from Indiana, said he knew about two babies being abandoned in his area, one of them being left at a rest stop. According to A Safe Haven for Newborns, a foundation to eliminate infant abuse and abandonment through education and prevention, in 2020, Florida saw 14 newborns given up through the state’s Safe Haven law.

“If we can get the word out and educate the community that this is available to them anonymously, well then hopefully that will prevent children from being left in dumpsters, being left in areas, you know, basically to not survive,” Alexander said. “If a mother has an anonymous way of giving their child up, that removes that stigma from whatever issues that they may have.”

It took six months for the OFD to install the baby box in the department. The cost of the baby box averages $10,000 and includes an air conditioner, heater, generator backup, silent alarms to notify dispatch and an automatic lock. There’s an annual fee of $200-$400 for checkups.

The box gives the parent between 60-90 seconds to leave the scene before dispatch retrieves the baby. Alexander said firemen check the box every four hours to make sure there have been no malfunctions and no babies dropped off.

According to New Jersey Safe Haven’s history of Safe Haven law, Alabama was the first state to have a pilot program of a Safe Haven law in 1998. Then Texas became the first state to pass the legislation for parents to give up custody of their newborn anonymously in 1999. In 2000, Louisiana, Alabama, Minnesota, Indiana and many other states passed Safe Haven legislation as well. To date, all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have enacted a Safe Haven law.

“We have to take the tragedy that these women are going through and make it better for them,” Kelsey said. “And that’s what Safe Haven Baby Boxes is all about, it’s taking the crisis and helping these mothers walk through it, whether it be by a safe surrender or by an adoption plan or maybe even a parenting plan.”

FOOTNOTE: Carolina Puga Mendoza is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.