On Sunday, April 8th, a baby girl was successfully recovered from a “baby box” in the Coolspring Township of Indiana, just outside of Michigan City.
This is the second rescue of an infant from the baby-box installed on the side of the Volunteer Fire Dept. The first infant, another baby girl, was found on November 7th, 2017.
After the first rescue, the Right to Life organization posted a statement on the Safe Haven Baby Boxes Twitter page expressing gratitude for the new installation.
One-hour-old “Baby Hope” left in Safe Haven Box, doing well
For a busy volunteer fire volunteer fire department “this one call made their year” https://t.co/KyLWzzKZPW #GiveLifeAChance #ProLife #LetthemLive pic.twitter.com/dTE5lRptb7— Right to Life (@nrlc) November 15, 2017
The little girl was pulled from the box by Lt. Chuck Kohler within one minute of being placed inside.
The box is equipped with a silent alarm that alerts designated personnel when the box has been opened. Additionally, the box has a button that will also trigger the alarm, so a mother can know she has effectively alerted someone to retrieve the child safely.
The successful recovery of the children come as a huge win for Monica Kelsey, a volunteer firefighter who founded the nonprofit that oversees the installation of the infant-boxes.
Monica herself was abandoned as an infant in 1973 and has made it her life’s mission to ensure that women have a safe place to leave their baby if they can’t keep them.
Monica was visiting a South African church when she first encountered a baby-box, where unwilling mothers could safely surrender their newborns.
It was then that Monica decided she had the power to make a positive change in such a tragic situation
The visit was shortly after Monica had heard the news of baby Amelia Grace Hope, who was found deceased after being abandoned on a trail in an Indianapolis park in December 2014. The poor baby girl froze to death on the trail, just two miles from a Safe Haven location.
So deeply touched by the death of baby Amelia, Monica Kelsey decided to make her footprint the logo for Safe Haven Baby Boxes.
On the “Behind the Logo” page of the nonprofit’s website, Monica explains the reasoning behind the logo:
A newborn baby girl was found dead in Eagle Creek Woods in Indianapolis, Indiana on December 28, 2014. The newborn baby was determined to have been full term and the baby’s placenta was still attached…The footprint in the SHBB logo is Amelia’s actual footprint and she will forever be known as the defender of the Safe Haven Law.
Safe Haven laws were established beginning in 1999 due to alarmingly increased rates of infant abandonment that often led to tragic outcomes.
Now, almost 20 years later, there are Safe Haven laws in every single U.S. State. The laws differ depending on what state you live in, but you can find the laws for your state by using Baby Safe Haven’s interactive map.
The point of Safe Haven legislation is to create a way for desperate mothers to be able to safely and anonymously surrender their children when they feel they can’t take care of them.
The reason so many children were still being abandoned instead of safely surrendered is that each state has different laws for persecuting parents for child abandonment. The baby boxes remove the fear of persecution and therefore the need to abandon a child in a dangerous way.
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