A fire station in Rapid City, South Dakota, has opened the state’s first Safe Haven Baby Box.
Communities in South Dakota have discussed bringing baby boxes to the state for years — a push that increased after the body of baby Gabriel was found at a Sioux Falls recycling center in 2024, KELO reported.
“That same week after baby Gabriel was found there was another phone call that came into Safe Haven looking for a box in South Dakota. So, there was a second baby where the mother was looking to surrender the baby and there was no box for her. But she did end up surrendering to a hospital,” SD Right to Life Executive Director Jenn Lee said.
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The new box is at Rapid City Fire Department station #1 in downtown, according to the report. In South Dakota, babies may be legally surrendered less than 60 days old and unharmed to hospitals, fire and police stations, emergency services, baby boxes, and licensed child placement agencies, according to the state’s Department of Social Services.
Baby boxes were created to deter parents from abandoning their newborns in unsafe conditions, potentially leaving them to die. Baby boxes are temperature-controlled incubators often built into exterior walls of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals that can be accessed from inside. At-risk mothers can safely and legally place their newborns inside. Once the baby is inside the baby box the outside door locks and the mother has time to leave before an alarm goes off alerting first responders or hospital staff to the child’s presence.
The baby is then quickly removed and sent to a hospital for a wellness check. From there, the infant is usually placed into state custody and is often adopted quickly.
“There are alarms that go off local here in the station as well. It’s a monitored alarm that’ll get sent to dispatch. If the baby box alarms go off and there are people right here, we respond immediately and start assessing the newborn and transport them up to the hospital,” RCFD Division Chief Brian Povandra said, adding that every employee at the station is training to respond.
“We’re very proud to be the first ones in South Dakota and the 418th across the nation,” Povandra said.
The baby box blessing and ribbon cutting ceremony is on Saturday, according to the report.
The Safe Haven Baby Boxes organization launched nine years ago in Indiana and has expanded nationwide to more than 400 locations. More than 70 newborns have been surrendered to baby boxes across the United States, according to the organization. Safe Haven Baby Boxes also says it has assisted 150 people with safe surrenders to other safe haven locations.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes also has a confidential National Safe Haven Hotline, 1-866-99BABY1, that provides free counseling and information about safe surrenders, including face-to-face surrenders.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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