Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization

 

“Legalized” Baby Abandonment Laws:

Baby Drop Boxes

A new “legalized” infant abandonment movement has emerged-–separate from the 20-year-old Safe Haven Movement, which advocates the “legal abandonment” of newborns by the personal handover of newborns to the staff at specific locations such as hospitals, fire and police stations. Baby Boxes (not to be confused with baby boxes distributed to the parents of newborns by hospitals) resemble bank and library book depositories and contain a device similar to a baby incubator. They are installed in the outside walls of designated services, such as fire and police stations and hospitals.

To deflect medieval negative images of mothers (or others) stuffing babies into a box in a wall, promoters have begun to refer to the boxes as benevolent-sounding “newborn incubators” or “newborn safety devices” making them sound like infant car seats.

Baby Box organizations, with the support of state Right to Life affiliates, churches, the Knights of Columbus, along with a handful of health delivery organizations, and misguided civic groups and individuals with little experience in child welfare or adoption, are working to pass bills throughout the country to legalize Baby Boxes. Two major Baby Box organizations currently exist in the US: Safe Haven Baby Boxes in Indiana founded by Monica Kelsey and The Hope Box in Georgia. Both consider their advocacy a “Christian ministry.” Assuming that Roe will be overturned, Kelsey claims that Baby Boxes will stand as a frontline defense against the “murder of newborns,” she assumes will follow. Hope Box, is also concerned with decreasing abortion but claims that Baby Boxes are a weapon against sex trafficking. Prostitutes, sex-trafficked women, and sexually abused women, for instance, will be able to safely and legally abandon their newborns to protect them from pimps who plan to sell the babies for sex. Both groups have relationships with private adoption agencies.

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In 2015 Baby Box bills were introduced in Indiana after a spike in newborn discard cases along the state’s drug highway and in Missouri. Since then bills to amend Safe Haven laws to include box use have appeared in at least a dozen states and passed in Arkansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. One box was installed in Ocala Florida in December 2020 with no legislative change, although a bill is pending in the 2021 legislature.

The Indiana bill, an amendment to the state’s Safe Haven law, had unanimous support from both houses of the legislature but was killed on November 18, 2015, when the Indiana Commission on Improving the Status of Children, whose approval was required to enact the legislation, refused to support it. This setback, however, did not end the issue. A work-around bill was passed in 2017 that allowed Baby Box installations outside of the state’s Safe Haven law, as long as they weren’t paid for by the state. Backed by funds from the Knights of Columbus, Indiana Right to Life affiliates, NGOs. and individual donors, as well as township or county money, 51 have been funded and installed in Indiana. Baby Boxes have also been installed in Ohio (4) Arkansas. (1), and Florida (1). Nine infants have been boxed in Indiana and 1 in Arkansas. Reportedly another baby was left in an Indiana box, but it was over the age limit, and the state has refused to recognize it as both a Safe Haven and a Baby Box case. A Baby Box law passed in Pennsylvania in 2019, but none have been installed. A bill in Michigan was vetoed by the governor, who said that he believed it is “not appropriate to allow for parents to surrender a baby by simply depositing the baby into a device,” The Michigan Bill was also opposed by the Michigan Council for Maternal and Child Health. Currently, bills are running in several states (see Bastard Nation Legislative page.)

A few Arizona hospitals not affiliated with any group installed “baby shelves” at their facilities a few years ago. A box that pre-dates the movement is located in Los Angeles County and as far as we know has never been used. Kelsey says she hopes that by 2025 every state will have enacted Baby Box laws and that boxes will be installed through voluntary efforts and funding in all of them.

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Baby Boxes, shelves, and wheels have been around for 1000 years in Europe. They were phased out in the 19th century as professional child welfare procedures developed, but have made a comeback recently. Currently, ten EU countries permit privately operated boxes, Other boxes are found in South Africa (which inspired Kelsey’s work), China, Japan, (where a father tried to box his 3-year old) Malaysia, Korea, India, and other Asian countries. Boxes are currently under the scrutiny of individual governments as well as the UN, which has urged their abolition. Adoptee rights, child welfare, and adoption professionals in the EU consider boxes harmful and unethical.

For 20 years adoptee rights, adoption reform, and child welfare advocates have opposed state Safe Haven laws as inimical to child’s best interest standards, unethical, and unnecessary. Bastard Nation’s statement on Safe Haven Laws is here.

Although the current Baby Box initiative is a natural outgrowth of the Safe Haven movement, the National Safe Haven Alliance and individual state Safe Haven organizations  as well as non-members advocates—the very people who developed Safe Haven laws—oppose Baby Box laws. The most prominent of Safe Haven opposition can be found from three pioneers of the original Safe Haven laws: A Safe Haven for Newborns (Florida) Save Abandoned Babies Foundation (Illinois) and AMT-Children of Hope (New York). In 2020 a representative from the Florida organization testified against the bill in the Florida House that would legalize boxes. While Bastard Nation and allies remain opposed to Safe Haven laws we share many of their concerns—with our own specific objections.

Baby Box advocates promote boxes as an easy solution for mothers so “desperate” that unless they can dump their newborns anonymously in a box in a wall they will kill  them or at least discard them dangerously. Proponents appear to view all mothers and women of child-bearing age, as potential child abusers and murderers. At public events they, in fact, praise women who loved their babies so much they don’t kill them. They loved them so much that they saved them from themselves.

Baby Box advocates claim that even Safe Haven laws, with their anonymous “relinquishment” provisions, are tricky and dangerous. Women, to be “safe” they claim, must have the ability shortly after birth to skulk around dark obscure (but “prominent”) spots outside hospitals, fire or police stations to drop their babies into a box, like trash, and walk away. No one will ever have to know. Women, they say, “demand anonymity.

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Bastard Nation and adoptee rights activists believe the implementation of Baby Boxes:

• Replaces professional best practice standards with unprofessional and unethical “relinquishment” by letting parents abandon solely for convenience or out of ignorance with no counseling, paper-signing, or discussion on alternatives such as government and private financial and material assistance for family preservation, temporary foster care, and legitimate adoption planning.
• Denies the non-surrendering parent the right of custody and to rear her or his own child. There is no mechanism in place to prove that the “surrendering” person has the legal right to do so. Abusive, embarrassed, or frightened partners, spouses or family members can use drop boxes without consent or knowledge of the (other) parent with no repercussions.
• Disenfranchises natural parents—particularly the non-surrendering parent (usually the father)—their right to due process by eliminating their ability to locate the child; thus denying them knowledge of (among other things) the dependency proceeding to which they are a party. The Putative Father Registry, touted as a safeguard, is useless since records are filed by the name of the mother.
• Creates at-risk adoptions due to possible litigation from the non-surrendering parent or biological family members seeking custody.
• Contravenes the family reunification guidelines of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act and parts of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and tribal rights, which can cause federal litigation.
• Encourages women to keep personally or socially problematic pregnancies a secret by discouraging them from seeking family and professional communication, and seeking assistance for sexual and physical abuse, mental illness, substance abuse, and social isolation—factors that cause nearly every newborn discard. Studies indicate that once a pregnancy is acknowledged and discussed the chance of discard is almost always abolished.
• Discourages women from seeking pre-and post-natal care and to give unsafe unattended birth.
• Hides crimes such as rape, incest, and spousal and partner abuse.
• Preys on undocumented and refugee parents who can’t or won’t seek medical and social services for fear of arrest, deportation, loss of other children, and kids in cages. It forces them to give birth dangerously and secretly and to secretly abandon them if they can’t care for them.
• Does not decrease infant mortality rates. as suggested by promoters. According to the National Institutes of Health, the main causes of infant death are (1) birth defects. (2) preterm birth and low birth weight, (3) Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, (4) pregnancy complications and (5) accidents. Baby Boxes do not address solutions to any of those problems. In fact, the nobody-has-to-know-you-had-this baby ideology of Baby Box promoters exacerbates 1, 2, and 4.

Moreover, Safe Haven Laws vary throughout the country. Infants from birth to as old as 1-year  in some states can be “legally abandoned.” While we oppose all Safe Haven schemes, dumping a 1-year old with an established identity, family, social and medical history, and other connections creates huge ethical, emotional, and psychological issues for both the infant and family.

We are also concerned with issues of safety and economics.

• Operate exclusively on electronic connectivity that can be disrupted,and require backup generator support.
• Require substantial building alterations and costs associated with building permits, contractor procurement, and possibly, contracted monitoring services.>
• Currently installed boxes have been redesigned about two dozen times in the last two years. We have seen nothing to clarify the status of those boxes if and when new designs are available, or the cost and funds, and responsibility to replace them.
• Since laws will permit boxing from babes at birth to age 1, can they hold older babies? What about multiple births?
• Box procurement may interfere with state or local law mandating competitive bidding. Currently, Baby Boxes are manufactured and sold by only one company contracted by SHBB. SHBB, in facts holds the patent.

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Bastard Nation opposes Baby Boxes for myriad reasons Baby Boxes ignore the socio-economic-political causes of newborn discard: poverty, inability to secure affordable medical treatment and care; denial or ignorance of pregnancy; Draconian immigration policy and practice, substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse, shame, crime, mental illness, dysfunctional families, social isolation, and poor communication skills.

Baby Boxes are anti-adoptee, anti-adoption, and anti-family. They are a direct attack on adoptee civil rights, fathers’ rights, and ICWA. They fly in the face of contemporary child welfare practice and are a punch in the head to adoptees. Baby Boxes do not empower women and certainly not their abandoned children as they grow up, They trivialize pregnancy, commodify babies, and maintain adoption secrets and lies. Baby Boxes are promoted as an easy solution to very complex problems, and in the end, leave everyone behind. Certainly, there are better solutions.

(Revisions in this position paper will occur when appropriate)

@2020 Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
bastards.org

Updated  January 19, 2021