FORT DODGE, Iowa (LifeSiteNews) — Iowa has become the latest state to receive its first Safe Haven Baby Box as part of a community reaction to a preventable tragedy.
Pregnancy Help News reported that the 2022 drowning of a newborn by the parents shortly after giving birth in a bathtub prompted residents of Fort Dodge, Iowa to raise the roughly $15,000 needed to purchase and install a Safe Haven Baby Box at the local fire station.
The boxes are designed for mothers to securely and anonymously deliver babies to a safe place where they will be taken by professionals for care and placement with a willing family. They are equipped with heating, cooling, and a silent alarm to ensure a baby is attended to shortly after placement. Once a baby is placed in a box, it then locks on the outside so passersby cannot take or harm the child.
While the exact details vary, each state has a safe haven law under which mothers who have decided they are unwilling or unable to raise their babies can leave them at certain locations, such as fire stations, hospitals, or police stations, without fear of legal punishment.
“There have been abandoned babies for decades in this country, even prior to Roe v. Wade being overturned,” Safe Haven Baby Boxes executive director Monica Kelsey said. “Abandonments have never decreased. The only time that they’ve really decreased is when we start seeing the success of education and awareness and the last resort option of anonymity.”
“I spent two days in Fort Dodge with [the local firefighters] because I did the training there and then we did the blessing the following day and I’ll tell you; they are some of the best firefighters you will find across this country,” Kelsey added. “They’re very oiled. They were asking questions. They sincerely wanted to know what they could do to make sure that this didn’t happen again in their community, and so a shout-out to the Fort Dodge firefighters because they are some of the best I’ve ever met in this country.”
The option of safe havens undercuts some of the most commonly invoked rationalizations for abortion: the difficulty, expense, and career or educational impact of raising a child. They, along with adoption/foster services and crisis pregnancy centers, remain as vital to pro-life efforts as ever now that abortion may be directly prohibited. Fifteen states currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that enforceable pro-life laws could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 abortions a year.
More information about Safe Haven Baby Boxes, including their exact locations across America, can be found at the organization’s website. More information about safe haven laws, resources, and other types of safe haven locations can be found at the website of the National Safe Haven Alliance.