Photo: PexelFollowing the passage of anti-abortion laws in the US, the use of baby boxes in safe homes, which allow parents to legally leave their children, has increased. All 50 states have safe dock laws. Some experts believe that they removed the need for the right to abortion
Three years ago, a safe house in Carmel, Indiana, set up a baby box for those who want to anonymously surrender a baby. It looks like any other bookcase in the library. However, no one used it until this April, somehow right after the ban on abortion in the United States of America.
The newborn boy wrapped in towels, as the first baby to reach a safe home in this way, was reported by all the media as a "moment to celebrate". Later that month, a baby girl was left in the baby box, and by the end of the summer, three more babies were found in other such boxes in the country.
Baby boxes are part of the safe haven movement, which has long been closely associated with anti-abortion activism. Namely, opponents of abortion offer mothers a safe home as a way to anonymously give up their newborns for adoption and thus avoid abandonment or even infanticide.
Over the past five years, more than 12 US states have passed laws allowing baby boxes, and all 50 states have safe home laws that protect mothers from criminal charges of child abandonment. The most famous among them is the "Harvest Moses" adopted in Texas in 1999, after several babies were left in garbage cans.
The judges' attitude about the safe home is positive. It is said, for example, that safe haven laws offer an alternative to abortion by allowing women to avoid the "burden of parenthood," and even that the existence of those laws obviated the need for abortion rights.
However, many adoption and women's health experts believe that surrendering a baby to a safe haven is a sign that a woman has "fallen" through the cracks of the system, and state that she may have been hiding her pregnancy and giving birth without prenatal care, or may be suffering from domestic violence. drug addiction, homelessness or mental illness, all of which need to be dealt with differently.
If a parent uses a safe haven, "there's a crisis and the system has already kind of failed," said Ryan Hanlon, president of the National Adoption Council.
Surrendering babies to safe homes is still rare - last year only 115 in the entire country, which is negligible compared to over 100.000 adoptions and more than 600.000 abortions per year.
However, these unfavorable indicators have encouraged even more activists who promote the safe home, while also fighting against abortion. Thanks to them, the states of Indiana, Iowa and Virginia are trying to make the process of sending babies to safe homes as easy as possible.
Monica Kelsey is the most famous activist among the safe home lobbyists. A former nurse and firefighter, she grew up with people who adopted her when she was abandoned by her teenage mother, who was raped. She installed the first baby box in 2016.
She told the media that the baby stays in the box for an average of two minutes, and the box works so that as soon as the parent opens it, a temperature-controlled hospital cradle appears, and an alarm is activated for the staff of the safe house and the police station. As soon as the baby is placed in the cradle, the box closes and the parent cannot open it again.
In Indiana, which has the majority of baby boxes, state law does not specify a time limit for terminating birth parents' rights after a baby is placed in a safe haven or for adoption. Also, biological parents are unable to choose who will adopt their children, and adoptees are left with little or no information about their biological family.
S.Ć./NYTimes/RTS
Read daily news, analysis, commentary and interviews at www.vreme.com
The student movement and future MPs are seeking an agreement on who decides on the composition and program of the new Government, writes "Vreme" in its new issue. While the consultations are ongoing, the program of more than a thousand pages is already ready
For Aleksandar Vučić, the consequences of the change of his government will be economic collapse, departure of foreign investors from Serbia, mass layoffs, jeopardy of pension payments, instability of the banking system, spread of crime. All in all - a cataclysm
In the midst of the arrests of politicians and businessmen after the defeat of the Aleksandar Vučić regime in the elections, the controversial businessman Zvonko Veselinović traveled to Turkey.
The Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade rejects the report of the Supreme Public Prosecution Commission as "malicious" and "baseless", accusing its members of exceeding their powers and intimidating prosecutors.
The Student Movement announced that representatives of the Student List will not participate in Informer TV programs. As the reason, they cite years of violation of the professional and legal standards of that television.
At the moment when the institutions of the Republic are destroyed, when Vučić's octopus is still alive, when people are disgusted by the injustice and the stench left behind by the Essenes regime, we have, as Machiavelli said, only civic virtue as the fuel with which we can return to the beginning
The four independent members of REM are an example of perseverance and civic responsibility. Rodoljub Šabić even, upon leaving the premises of REM, after the sentencing of the Informer, experienced that the Essenes insulted him, hit him with their hands and feet. But that too will soon be over
Vučić pardoned the batterers and Dijana Hrkalović. The election winners should abolish the sultan's power that allows one man to run afoul of the entire judicial system
Interview: Branko Stamenković, public prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office
A black picture and the breakdown of the rule of law subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
