Gadsden set to install Safe Haven Baby Box at fire station

Gadsden is about to get something, basically free, that may never be used. City officials actually hope that’s the case.

However, the ramifications should someone take advantage of what’s coming would be enormous.

The city is in line to receive an $18,000 donation from the Kids to Love Foundation of Madison to install a Safe Haven Baby Box at Fire Station No. 3 at 300 Garden St. in East Gadsden, just off U.S. Highway 431.

The measure was presented to the City Council during its Sept. 19 precouncil work session and should receive official consideration, and likely approval given the support expressed, shortly.

Kids to Love, an organization that seeks to meet the needs of children in foster care, is supplying boxes with funding from an anonymous donor, according to Brett Johnson, Mayor Craig Ford’s chief of staff.

“The donor pledged to provide the first 10 in the state to the largest 10 municipalities, and we reached out and raised our hand up," he said. “They were discussing the Gadsden-Anniston area generally, and we said we’d like to talk more about this.”

The Legislature this past session authorized the boxes at fire stations in Alabama, expanding a 2000 law that made it legal to surrender an infant up to 3 days old at a hospital without being charged with child abandonment. (The age limit was raised to 45 days.)

Boxes also are planned in Anniston, Auburn, Baldwin County, Dothan, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Muscle Shoals and Tuscaloosa, according to news reports.

It’s a simple concept: Someone who, for whatever reason, wants to surrender an infant can safely do so via the box, which looks like a large bank deposit receptacle on the outside and, basically, like a hospital bassinet on the inside.

The box will be climate controlled, secured and receive both audio and video monitoring, Johnson said, and will be regularly tested.

“An alarm alert is triggered to the fire department, 911 and all first responders to let them know that the box has been opened and something has been placed in there,” Johnson said.

“The camera immediately monitors a baby that’s been placed in the box,” he said. “We can retrieve it, do a quick assessment and get it to the hospital, then to the authorities to start its new life.”

Safe Haven founder Monica Kelsey told a New York Times interviewer last year that the average time between the alarm being triggered and first responders making contact with an infant inside is 2 minutes.

“The idea for us is we hope it never has to be used,” Johnson said, “but if it is, you can potentially save a life and that’s a win for everybody.”

Safe Haven, as an organization, advocates for laws reflected in its name, which seek to prevent infants from being abandoned on doorsteps, in dumpsters and the like. It also arranges such surrenders and provides crisis counseling service for mothers.

It’s the brainchild of Kelsey, of Woodburn, Indiana, who was abandoned as an infant by a teenage mother who became pregnant after being raped. She became a pro-life advocate and during a 2013 speaking tour in South Africa, saw a drop-off box for infants at a church in Cape Town. She told a New Yorker interviewer in 2021 that it was in response to a child being abandoned in a duffel bag there.

Kelsey returned home with an idea and in 2016 placed the first Baby Boxes at a fire station in Woodburn (where she was a volunteer), near Fort Wayne, and another Indiana city, Michigan City, about an hour east of Chicago. There are now more than 100 across the U.S.

According to Safe Haven’s website, 35 infants have been surrendered through its boxes and three others in direct contact with firefighters.

“I’ve seen this on the national news in communities across the country, and I think it’s outstanding,” Council President Kent Back sad. “We’re thankful that a donor has stepped up anonymously to do this. It provides options for people at a time when they might need them. It’s a caring thing for the city to do.”

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Gadsden set to get Safe Haven Baby Box where infants can be left