‘This is a pro-life victory’: Kansas City welcomes its first Safe Haven Baby Box 

Kansas City opened its first Safe Haven Baby Box Wednesday in what one city councilman has deemed a “pro-life victory.”

Baby boxes across the nation, which now total 483, allow mothers to anonymously surrender their babies without being asked questions. Struggling Kansas City mothers can give their babies up at police stations, fire stations and hospitals under safe haven laws, but the baby box allows them to surrender their babies anonymously.

All 50 states have safe haven laws, which allow a baby to be safely surrendered without the mother facing disciplinary action, as long as the child is younger than a certain age, which varies by state.

“Every child deserves a safe start in life, and every parent facing a difficult situation should know that safe options are available,” City Councilman Nathan Willett wrote on social media.

Funding for the baby box, which costs more than $20,000 to install and will require about $600 in annual maintenance, was secured in April. To pay for the box, Willett and City Council Member Kevin O’Neill used $20,000 from the available $5 million District 1 infrastructure fund.

The Safe Haven Baby Box, the 17th in Missouri, was installed at the Kansas City fire station at 8300 N. Brighton Avenue.

The baby box is climate-controlled, and the fire station is notified immediately when a baby is placed inside so the child can be quickly evaluated.

“There’s still a need,” KCFD Battalion Chief Kelsey Whetro said about the baby box. “Kansas City has over 500,000 people here. We didn’t have one of those options here until today, so we’re excited to open that up to the community.”

Why are baby boxes important?

Baby boxes aim to prevent infants from being abandoned in unsafe places, which still happens.

A 20-year-old Iowa mother fatally abandoned her newborn baby last month in her workplace bathroom – a daycare – instead of giving the child to someone else to care for. The mother has been charged with murder.

In another highly publicized case, a newborn died after 22-year-old Laken Snelling secretly gave birth and hid the baby in her closet. Snelling was sentenced last week to 10 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and concealing the birth of an infant.

Officials are investigating after a dead infant was found at a recycling facility in upstate New York this month. The mother has not yet been identified.

Safe Haven Baby Box founder and CEO Monica Kelsey was conceived after her mother was brutally attacked and raped. Kelsey’s mother decided not to get an abortion and instead hid her pregnancy and surrendered Kelsey at a hospital shortly after giving birth.

“As the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, the reason why I started this organization was based on my beginnings of being abandoned as an infant,” Kelsey, who attended Kansas City’s baby box ceremony, said.

Baby boxes give mothers who feel they can’t take care of their newborns an option to save their children’s lives while avoiding the stigma and fear that could come with surrendering a baby in person.

The first baby box was placed in Indiana in 2016, and since its placement, no baby has died from unsafe abandonment in that state, according to the Safe Haven Baby Box website.

“This is a pro-life victory,” Willett previously told Heartlander News. “You don’t really see many pro-life victories in blue cities like Kansas City, and I think this is something that should be celebrated, because Kansas City and our region values life.”

(Photo credit: Screenshot/X/Nathan Willett, edited)