The state of Kentucky received its 31st Safe Haven Baby Box recently and more are on the way, according to the state’s Right to Life executive director.
Kentucky Right to Life provides a $1,000 grant to help pay for Safe Haven Baby Boxes, providing an incentive to place a box in a community.
“It’s what we call a matching grant with our chapters throughout the state so they can help that community purchase and install a Safe Haven Baby Box,” said Addia Wuchner, executive director of Kentucky Right to Life.
“The baby boxes don't belong to them obviously,” Wuchner said, “but to help the community, they could be a spark in their community, working with their community, and have that $1000 incentive match to get started.”
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The newest Kentucky baby box came in February to Hopkinsville, a community of more than 31,000 people in the western region of the state, about halfway between Paducah, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn. This was also the 201st Safe Haven Baby Box in the nation, coming on the heels of baby box #200, installed in Indiana also earlier this year.
“It's remarkable achievement for Christian County,” Wuchner said, “and heartfelt thanks to everyone whose efforts made Kentucky Safe Haven Baby Box #31 possible.”
A registered nurse who served in the Kentucky legislature for 14 years, Wuchner stays updated on state politics, particularly regarding pro-life issues. She views Safe Haven Baby Boxes as a positive way to help women who are unable to care for their babies and a strong alternative to abortion.
“It allows parents to have every opportunity to make a decision to give their child a chance at life,” she said. “They're never abandoning their children, they're making a better plan, a better choice. They're making another choice to safely place their children in in the loving care of someone, something they're not able to give at that time.”
Tweet This: Safe Haven Baby Boxes allow parents to have every opportunity to make a decision to give their child a chance at life.
More baby boxes will be installed soon in more communities in the state, Wuchner said.
Monica Kelsey started Safe Haven Baby Boxes to prevent the illegal abandonment of newborns and provide birth parents with an anonymous way to safely surrender their babies.
In 2016, the first box was installed in Indiana, where the Safe Haven Baby Boxes organization is headquartered. Fifteen states have baby boxes installed, primarily at fire stations, but also at hospitals and other emergency service locations. Indiana has the greatest number. Kentucky and Arkansas also have many Safe Haven Baby Boxes.
A few years ago, the Kentucky legislature passed a law to help clarify how the boxes would be in Kentucky and how they would operate, Wuchner said. The anonymity piece is critical, she said.
“Even with safe haven laws, women and girls were not protecting their children and taking them to hospitals or fire stations,” Wuchner told Pregnancy Help News.
She desires to see at least one Safe Haven Baby Boxes in all 120 counties in Kentucky, she added, and a friend of hers hopes for more than 150 baby boxes.
The presence of and the anonymous component of Safe Haven Baby Boxes are important to Wuchner personally. In her career as a nurse, she witnessed the heart-wrenching downside of there not being such an option.
“I was a nurse in an emergency room years ago when a duffel bag was brought in,” she said. “Everyone knew what was in the duffel bag, and no one wanted to open it.”
Inside was a deceased baby girl. Wuchner and the other hospital staff named the child Molly.
“We became aware of the fact this wasn't a mother who didn't love her child,” she said. “It wasn't a mom who just tossed her child aside – it was a mom who had tenderly wrapped her baby daughter in the blanket and laid a small stuffed toy on the baby's chest and placed the baby in a duffel bag and left the bag in a public place hoping that someone would find her. No one came and that the night was too long and too cold. When I speak about baby boxes, I often say that the safe haven box is for all the baby Mollys.”
Every state has a Safe Haven Law. However, stipulations, such as age of the age and places for surrenders, vary. Find out more about these laws HERE.
Wuchner hopes to be able to place posters about Safe Haven Baby Boxes in high schools, much like providing an 800-number for human trafficking or suicide prevention posters in strategic locations.
“There’s an opportunity for a young woman who may find herself with an unplanned, untimely pregnancy and she's been concealing it,” Wuchner said. “How important it is to know that there's an alternative, there's an answer for her to consider.”
As more boxes come to more towns in Kentucky and across the country, Wuchner envisions more babies’ lives saved and communities coming together in that endeavor.
“I see such community pride in having a baby box in their community,” she said. “They're doing something to help the mom and to combat what could be a horrific circumstance.”
