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If you're going to talk the talk in West Virginia about valuing the lives of babies and their mothers, you'd better walk the walk. One organization is helping communities do that in a way that provides support to parents facing the impossible, and is saving lives.
Safe Haven Baby Box officials work with communities to give parents a way to anonymously hand over their infant to another person. The most recent one was installed in collaboration with the city government in St. Albans, at that city's fire department central station.
"This is just another option or another tool in the tool box so to speak to provide an option or a way for mothers in the darkest hour or the hardest time of their life a means to turn their baby over to a safe and hopefully prosperous future," Chief of the St. Albans Fire Department Lance Carney told WV MetroNews.
The boxes allow a parent to place a baby inside and walk away, knowing that within 60 seconds an alarm will trigger to alert personnel at the facility to retrieve the baby. Once the baby has received any necessary medical care, it is eventually taken into the care of social services.
According to Safe Haven's website, West Virginia locations for the boxes include Wheeling, Moundsville, Morgantown and St. Albans. Safe Haven says it has so far had more than 150 safe surrenders of infants in its boxes nationwide.
"Having this resource today is giving women who didn't have it back then a chance today, you know, my birth mother didn't have someone to walk along beside her back in 1973, she didn't have a Safe Haven movement that is working with women to save the lives of these kids," founder and CEO Monica Kelsey told MetroNews. She said she was abandoned two hours after birth.
While the northern part of the state offers a few options for parents seeking another way, the St. Albans box is the only such option within 130 miles, in the southern part of the state.
More communities must consider adding a location. There is certainly a need. Just over a month ago, a baby was surrendered to the Montgomery County (Kentucky) Fire Station Safe Haven Baby Box. It was the 50th such surrender in the state.
Community groups and civic officials who take pride in their work to save the lives of babies must consider whether partnering to support such an option will show they, too, are willing to walk the walk.