Newberry unveils Safe Haven Baby Box

The interior of the Baby Box

BY AMBER THIBODAUX

NEWBERRY, Fla. – The City of Newberry unveiled the opening of its new Safe Haven Baby Box at Newberry Fire Rescue Station 28 on Thursday, marking only the second Safe Haven Box in Florida and one of 185 in the country. The Baby Box is located near the front door of the fire station and offers a safe, anonymous way for parents in crisis to surrender their newborns in a secure, warm, and medically-equipped setting. Once the box is opened, three silent alarms sound, ensuring that any surrendered infant will receive immediate attention and transportation to a hospital for medical evaluation. There is also an orange bag inside the box that contains instructions and resources for the mother, including what to expect after giving birth and options for further assistance. The padded box is climate-controlled and locks from the outside once the baby is in and the door is closed. 

Families prepared for foster care with the intention to adopt will be able to provide a home for these infants within 30-45 days.

The founder of Safe Haven, Monica Kelsey, traveled from her home state of Indiana to Newberry for the “Blessing Ceremony” and spoke to a crowd of about 30 people gathered on the lawn. 

Monica Kelsey

“It is a good day to be in Newberry, Florida… because today, we are allowing women a 100% anonymous option if they choose to surrender their child legally, anonymously, lovingly, in a Safe Haven Baby Box – and that is a good thing,” Kelsey began. 

She praised the City of Newberry for taking a proactive approach toward saving children who may otherwise not survive and referenced a recent incident in Palatka where a baby was found abandoned over Thanksgiving weekend. 

“There was a baby abandoned in your state about an hour and a half from here… and that’s not happening where there’s boxes, that’s not happening in the cities where boxes are at. That’s happening in cities where there’s not another option for those parents,” she continued.

“Last week we had a baby in a box in Indiana, so there was a box available for that parent, but there wasn’t a box in this town an hour and a half from here.”

According to Kelsey, since the founding of Safe Haven back in 2016, there have been a total of 38 babies surrendered in boxes and 133 “hand-offs” directly to fire department staff. 

Kelsey revealed the driving force behind her mission to save unwanted children when she shared her own story of abandonment as an infant: “I’m going to take you back a few years so that you guys can understand where the passion comes from. I’m going to take you back to August of 1972, when a young 17-year-old girl was brutally attacked and raped and left alongside the road… This 17-year-old girl was strong enough to press charges against the man who had raped her, and he was arrested, and he was charged – but that wasn’t the worst of it,” Kelsey said.

“When her life was finally getting back to normal, she found out she was pregnant. She was hidden for the remainder of the pregnancy and gave birth in April of 1973 and abandoned her child two hours after that child was born. That child was me,” Kelsey said.

Kelsey said she now proudly stands on the front lines of this movement to fight for other children who weren’t anonymously and lovingly placed in a Safe Haven Baby Box. Her mission is to give other women the option to surrender their child safely, allowing the child to “have a set of parents that every child deserves to have.”

Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe

Newberry Mayor Jordan Marlowe thanked the community for coming together in support of the initiative and commended Newberry Fire Chief Mike Vogel on his leadership in launching and overseeing the project from start to finish.

“This was a community effort,” Marlowe said. “We partnered with the Opioid Task Force, we had barbeque sales and T-shirt sales – but we also had community members stand up and push us over the edge. This would have taken a long time to raise the kind of money that we needed,” he added.

Marlowe took a moment to acknowledge Newberry resident and local business owner Jordan Fairfield and his wife, Jen, who donated the final $10,000 needed to complete the Safe Haven Baby Box project.

“Everybody has agreed that this is something we hope that we never need, but we’re glad that it’s here if we ever do. I love that we have the opportunity to give a woman who’s in a traumatic situation and faced with unimaginable decisions–we’ve been able to give options to her so that we can bring that child in, we can save that child, we can make sure that child grows up safe and healthy, and hopefully happy.”

Newberry Fire Chief Mike Vogel

Newberry Fire Chief Mike Vogel said that his fire station has always been a “safe haven” for babies and pointed out the difficult situation mothers may face when confronted with the reality of surrendering their baby.

“There’s those fears that I can only imagine that would go through somebody’s mind, thinking that they’re being judged for their character, giving the baby up – not to mention ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to a fire station and they’re going to try to talk me out of it’ is hard enough,” Vogel said.

He explained that this project is personal to him, having adopted children himself and sharing that his wife was also adopted: “This is just an option that is going to help give them that [anonymity] that they may need. We always welcome [the mother] to knock on the door and hand it to us, but this is just another option for them to take.” 

The fire department staff received formal training prior to the installation on how to handle the situation in the event that an infant is left inside the box.

For more information on the Safe Haven Baby Box organization, click here.

The exterior of the Baby Box
  • I cannot imagine anyone using the baby box, my wife and I had three and now they all have their own. My Children were a Blessing to me and, now their children still bless me, they are pros and cons to the baby box, but, if asked, I would have to come down on being in favor of it, better safe that sorry.

  • It’s a sad social and cultural commentary that such things, and their alternatives, exist.

    As technology progresses, humanity declines.

    • Precisely. It is the ancient problem of the separation of the sciences and the humanities. As technology progresses, humanity declines.

  • I pray for any woman in a position to feel that abandonment of a child is her best option. But what a wonderful effort for the community to value life enough to provide a safe haven box as an alternative to abortion.

    Adoption is a blessing for the child, for the adoptive parents, and in these tragic cases, for the birth mother.

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