Pamela Stenzel was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, giving a talk about the benefits of Safe Haven Baby Boxes when a woman pitched her a difficult question.
In a conservative-leaning Midwestern city such as Sioux Falls (population 202,100), are the baby drop-off boxes just a “solution in search of a problem?”
The answer came the next day on Aug. 6, when workers at the city’s recycling center found the body of an infant boy left in the trash.
Stenzel, the director of development at Safe Haven Baby Boxes, said the incident highlights a troubling trend: mothers abandoning their newborn children in growing numbers out of fear, lack of education, or desperation.
The patented Baby Box is a climate-controlled enclosure built into the exterior wall of a designated fire station or hospital to allow anonymous placement of a newborn baby.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said that six abandoned babies were found this fiscal year in Houston, compared to four in 2023 and just one in 2022.
In 2021, the group said that authorities found 31 babies in dumpsters, backpacks, or other dangerous places. Twenty-two of these children died.
Recent cases tell only part of the story—like the newborn baby who was found dead in a duffel bag near a Chicago fire station on Jan. 15, 2022.
Stenzel said that the discovery of the baby wouldn’t have been horrific had it not been avoidable.
This year, Safe Haven Baby Boxes created a spreadsheet containing the newspaper headlines of 26 deceased abandoned newborn infants and 18 others who survived.
Thinking Outside the Baby Box
Stenzel said that it all comes down to making right choices—like the choice her biological mother made after a sexual assault at age 15 left her with an unwanted pregnancy.Her mother could have solved the pregnancy in many ways, she said. She chose to give her up for adoption.
Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, had a similar story, Stenzel said.
Kelsey’s mother was sexually assaulted at age 17, became pregnant, and left Kelsey in 1973 as an infant.
“Monica was fascinated by that,” Stenzel told The Epoch Times. “On a Delta flight back from Cape Town, she wrote down her plan for Safe Haven Baby Boxes on a beverage napkin.”
The company dedicated its first Safe Haven Baby Box at a fire station in Woodburn, Indiana, on April 29, 2016. There are now more than 250 Baby Boxes in 19 states.
The cost of installing a Safe Haven Baby Box, depending on the location, ranges from $11,000 to $16,000. They include an interior door that enables a medical worker to remove the baby and secure him or her from inside the building.
The laws allow for the surrender of unharmed infants and newborns to legally designated recipients, such as hospitals, public safety facilities, and churches.
These children then become wards of the state and are available for adoption.
The service includes a 24-hour hotline where women can receive counseling free of charge.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes says the hotline has received more than 9,000 calls in the United States, referred over 500 women to crisis pregnancy centers, and assisted in nine adoption referrals.
The company has logged more than 150 legal Safe Haven surrenders via Safe Haven Baby Boxes or through first responders or medical staff across the United States.
Stenzel said the company is working to establish permanent baby box locations in 20 states by the end of 2024. One is currently in the works in Prescott, Arizona.
“It’s really been in the past two years where the growth has been crazy exponential,” said Stenzel, who attributes the growth to an increasing awareness of safe haven laws and box locations.
Eight newborns were surrendered to Safe Haven Baby Boxes in 2022. The number jumped to 17 in 2023, with 12 more surrenders in the first eight months of 2024, Stenzel said.
Stenzel said she doesn’t see a connection between the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned of Roe v. Wade and the broader use of baby boxes.
“The politics goes two ways,” Stenzel said. “Some people say, ‘Look at all these abandonments. It’s because we don’t have access to abortion,’ which is ridiculous. We’ve been having abandonments forever.”
Stenzel said there are many reasons why a mother or father will choose to surrender their newborn. One is poverty. Another is drug abuse, and another is “pregnancy denial.”
She said pregnancy denial is when the mother does not want the father or family members to know she is pregnant out of fear of personal shame or potential child abuse by a partner.
“It’s tough to overcome societal stigma,” Stenzel said.
“The more people know, the better the chances are that a mom is going to use [the Baby Box]. No mom is doing this because she has other options. It is the last resort option.”
A mother will have about 30 days to legally surrender a child, depending on the law in each state, and 60 to 90 days to reclaim the child, Stenzel said.
The Bigger Picture
Arizona’s 2001 Safe Haven Law identifies safe places where mothers can anonymously surrender their unharmed babies without fear of arrest or prosecution.The locations include any designated hospital, ambulance, adoption agency, on-duty fire station, or church. Some hospitals provide drop-off drawers for surrendering newborn babies.
However, not every story has a happy ending.
Between 2000 and 2006, the Maricopa County Medical Examiner received 767 deceased babies under 9 months old.
“While the statistics of the numbers of babies abandoned and left to die by new mothers are not complete, newborn abandonment has been a continuing problem in our society,” the group says.
Heather Burner, who heads the Arizona foundation, is also executive director of the National Safe Haven Alliance.
Burner said the alliance had seen a significant increase in mothers surrendering newborns in recent years.
While Burner said she thinks Baby Boxes are a good idea, “they are one idea and part of a comprehensive plan,” she said.
“All of the options are important because we don’t know what a mother needs,”
Stenzel said Baby Boxes are sometimes the best option for the conflicted mother of a newborn.
