If I Were a Drinking Cat…Albion, Indiana Safe Haven Baby Box Wackery

MEEEEOW!!!!!!!’ I’ve been working my little paws off trying to catch up with blogging. I think I have 5 blogs at least halfway finished. Each gets set aside since nearly every day some new serious baby box tom-fuckery blasts across my screen. This reductio ad absurdum below comes from Albion, Indiana (population 2,216) where a baby box was installed on April 16, 2024. (That’s how far behind I am!) I don’t know what is puffier: the WPTA-TV news story or the blessing itself.

“A young set of parents, potentially, could be making the hardest decision of their life. If they are reaching that point, the perfect place to do it is at a baby box,” said Albion Fire Chief, Bob Amber…

...“We want to make sure that if a parent is ever in a situation where they don’t feel like they can or even want to take care of a child, they should have every opportunity to get them into a safe and loving home,” said Ihire

Apparently, until April 16, 2024, those in “crisis” pregnancy or birth situations in Albion found themselves in a social services desert where public and private social and legal services, such as housing assistance, baby and mother assistance, Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, and mental health and family counseling — including family preservation options and genuine adoption planning– didn’t exist. Where the only remedy for an inconvenient baby was ditch–dumping and neonaticide.

Thanks to Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc, however, new moms in Albion now have the PERFECT shame-free solution for their “shameful ” product and problem. Moms who love their babies so much they’ll kill them (or at best drop them in a garbage can) without the beneficence of Monica Kelsey and her baby abandonment box company can with no fussy counseling and pesky paperwork, anonymously, with no legal ramifications, deposit their inconvenient and allegedly at-risk babies in a convenient box in the firehouse wall for strangers to adopt.

“These babies are being adopted. They’re given a new family. The mother chose something safe for their child, and this child gets to live,” Kelsey said.

Does no one listen to this cognitive dissonance? Does no reporter notice how bonkers this mixed message sounds and…ask Mrs. Kelsey what in the world she is talking about? I realize that local reporters (especially) are overworked, underpaid, and feel-good stories are easy stories, but has the media dumped (along with boxed babies) critical thinking for PR hackery?

The Albion box was financed partly with tax dollars at work: a Newborn Safety Device Grant from the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.

Now I need to go kick up some kitty litter.