An infant was safely surrendered to a Safe Haven Baby Box in O’Fallon, Missouri, First Alert 4 reported on Monday.
“We are grateful this resource was used as intended — to protect the life of a child and provide peace of mind for a parent in need. Everything worked perfectly, and care was started by on-scene firefighter/paramedics,” O’Fallon Fire Protection District Assistant Chief Andy Parrish said.
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, and 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 to alert 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 baby is usually placed into state custody and is often quickly adopted.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes founder Monica Kelsey created the organization in 2017. Since then, 67 infants have been surrendered around the United States, according to the report.
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.
There are eight baby box locations in Missouri. The O’Fallon location at Fire Station 3, 600 Laura Hill Road, opened in July.
The surrender follows another Missouri surrender in August at a Mehlville fire station baby box. A baby was also surrendered to a baby box earlier this month at a fire department in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
In Missouri, infants can be legally surrendered up to 45 days old to hospitals, fire stations, police stations, EMS providers, and baby boxes, according to the organization.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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