A parent in Florida may legally give up a newborn baby for adoption at hospitals, firehouses and emergency medical services stations up to seven days after birth. Parents get anonymity and won't face criminal prosecution unless the infant has any signs of abuse or neglect.
Florida lawmakers, who are meeting for the 2024 legislative session, are now considering a “Surrendered Infants” bill that would expand the surrender window from seven days to 30 days, and let a parent call 911 to coordinate a location with an EMS provider to give up their baby.
The goal is to prevent the very tragedy that workers with a roofing company discovered earlier this month in Hollywood — roughly 24 years after the law went into effect.
“My crew arrived to the site to start the day and I guess they realized when they were going to throw debris into the dumpster that they see a child inside,” a caller told a 911 operator on Jan. 8, in a recording provided by the Hollywood Police Department. The baby was found at 1700 Rodman Street just after 8 a.m.
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Last year, the Florida Legislature considered a bill that would have authorized hospitals, emergency medical service stations and fire stations that are staffed 24 hours a day to opt to install ventilated and climate-controlled boxes.
It would have required facilities that acquire them to check and test them regularly. The measure didn't get to a final vote in the 2023 session. Still, the boxes are not illegal in the state. While no city in South Florida has one, Newberry, near Gainesville, acquired one late last year.
A fire complex in Ocala installed the state’s first baby box in 2020 and no baby was surrendered in it until 2023. She’s now a healthy 1-year-old child who was adopted by one of the Ocala firefighters.
Across all of the state’s 67 counties, a parent can find the hospitals, EMS stations and firehouses that are able to accept babies from a parent — they have the logo of the nonprofit A Safe Haven for Newborns. It's a triangle with an adult hand holding a baby's. A parent won't be forced to answer questions, but will likely be asked if the baby has any health problems. And staff must get emergency medical attention for the baby.
"These are unexpected pregnancies with no support, no resources and basically instead of placing a baby with an adoption agency and them knowing who they are, they want that baby to have a life, but they cannot be part of that child's life," said Nick Silverio, the founder of A Safe Haven for Newborns. "They're desperate. They have nobody to turn to."
Since 2000, roughly 380 babies have been surrendered safely in Florida, according to a legislative analysis, and 63 have been unsafely abandoned, of which 31 survived and 32 died.
Over the years, lawmakers have amended the law to give a parent more options. For instance, the Legislature increased the window from three days originally to seven for a surrender. A mother may keep her name off of the birth certificate after giving birth in a hospital. Emergency medical service stations have been added to the list of approved surrender places, which also include fire stations and hospitals.
Silverio told WLRN that recently, a caller reached out not about permanently giving up her parental rights but asking for help getting a break. She wanted to deal with her depression. His nonprofit helped find a family to care for her baby temporarily.
He worries that not enough people know about their options, which may lead to abandoned babies and says getting the information to people who need it is crucial.
Another option in Florida is through a nonprofit called Safe Haven Baby Boxes, based in Indiana.
When someone calls their 24-hour hotline, the advice will be to hand over the child to a firefighter, paramedic or hospital staff first, “but if they won’t do that, you don't want to have an infant in a dumpster like in Hollywood," said its founder, Monica Kelsey.
Her nonprofit installs the device at fire stations and hospitals across the U.S. When someone opens the door, the baby can be placed in a bassinet. Once the door is closed, it locks from the outside. Within about a minute an alarm goes off to let staff know to rush to get the baby for emergency care. Meanwhile, the parent has that time to leave anonymously.
This issue especially matters to Kelsey who was abandoned as a baby herself. She's a former firefighter and medic.
Critics of safe haven laws don't question that they can save the lives of babies facing abandonment, but some worry about the emphasis on the solution and not the problem.
The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, has written that “every case of infant abandonment signals that the health care and social service system has failed a woman and her baby, for surely a well-functioning system would enable a woman either to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to end it safely and early, or, if she decided to carry to term, either to keep her child or to place it, again safely and swiftly, for adoption.”
Michelle Oberman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, points out that states focus on the surrender process and not on the mothers’ challenges. “If you were to identify infant abandonment as a problem, you would right away start to see the basic questions that we don't yet have answers to, like who abandons their baby? What are their life circumstances? What do they know about when thinking about where to abandon their baby? What might lead them to choose to abandon their child in a baby box?”
Oberman said the National Safe Haven Alliance has said these mothers include victims of human trafficking, for instance.
“Nobody wants to think too hard about the life circumstances of somebody who would put their baby in that box," Oberman said. "But honestly, if we want to do something about infant abandonment in this country, we really have to engage with the lives of the folks that we know to be contemplating placing their kids in some kind of a safe haven."
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