Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 1255+3-7845
614-795-6819
bastards.org bastards3@gmail.com @BastardsUnite
____________
TO: Members: House Health, Human Services, Elderly Affairs Committee
FROM: Marley Greiner, Executive Chair
RE: HB1607 – ISafe Haven Baby Boxes/Newborn Safety Devices — Opposition
DATE: February 4, 2024
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support only full unrestricted access for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) and related documents.
In addition to being the Executive Chair and co-founder of Bastard Nation, I operate the Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now website (https://stopshbbnow.org) that contains over 100 pages of Safe Haven Baby Box information including up-to-date legislative tracking, individual state updates, statistics, policy statements from organizations that oppose boxes, critical readings and reports, pictorials, videos, and a frequently published blog.
Twenty years ago I came to Concord and testified in support of SB335, a bill that restored the right of all New Hampshire-born adopted people to obtain their OBCs I without restrictions and conditions. The bill was sponsored by Senator Lou D’Allesandro (D-District 30) and heavily supported by House Speaker Michael Whalley (R-District 31). At that time, State Representative Janet Allen R- District 31) was a member of the BN Executive Committee. n January 2005 I returned to the statehouse to participate in the “opening day” celebration when New Hampshire officially became the 5th state to acknowledge legally the right of its adopted citizens to be treated on an equal basis regarding access to their state-held records of birth and identity.
Now, in 2024, HB1607 is before this committee—a bill that attacks that right of records and identity access for New Hampshire adoptees. This bill encourages a tiny tiny tiny number of New Hampshire parents to legally and anonymously abandon their newborns for adoption; thus, denying their children the right to their genuine record of birth, biological family information, history, and social and cultural context.
I cannot come to Concord this time around, so I’m writing today in opposition to HB1607 and the implementation of newborn safety devices/Safe Haven Baby Boxes in New Hampshire.
This testimony is divided into two parts: (1) A short backgrounder; (2) adoptee rights and adoption reform objections.
Background
Definition: “Newborn safety devices/Safe Haven Baby Boxes (SHBB) ” resemble a bank or library depository but contain temperature controls and other safety features similar to standard newborn incubators. Boxes are installed in the walls of fire stations, hospitals or other authorized locations to facilitate easy, de-personalized, “shame-free,” and legalized “anonymous abandonment” of newborns by parents (typically mothers) or in some states those designated by them under the authority of state “safe haven” laws. Under the current New Hampshire safe haven law, infants up to the age of 7 days of age can be surrendered legally and totally anonymously at state-designated locations, with no questions asked.
The Safe Haven Baby Box movement and Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Inc was started by Monica Kelsey in Woodburn, Indiana about seven years ago. The company is a privately owned and operated not-for-profit ministry. It is the only manufacturer and leaser of the “safety devices” in the United States today. The company is the model of Henry Ford’s vertical business model. It created a “need” for its product. It works with legislators to write enabling legislation, lobbies for passage, runs its own hotline, manufactures its own product at its factory outside of Woodburn where it employs family members, and advertises itself, (and its hotline and company information) on the outside of its devices installed on government property, making the state buildings a billboard for its services. It utilizes the children it claims to have “saved” in company advertising and events such as box blessings, press conferences, and fundraisers. SHBBB Inc is the only brand so legislation to enable boxes is a “vendor bill.”
There is no newborn/safe haven eligible discard/murder epidemic in New Hampshire. According to Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc’s own statistics only 2 newborns have been reported discarded since 2017. The organization does not offer a source for their stats or details of those cases. The only case that I have in my files is the much-publicized Eckersley case, still under adjudication, which involves a homeless, mentally ill mother.
Why We Oppose Safe Haven Baby Boxes
Adoptee rights and adoption reform organizations throughout the United States are on record opposing baby boxes,. Others oppose but have not yet made public statements. In some states, individual pioneering safe haven advocates and organizations oppose it. A list of on-record baby box opponents appears at the bottom of this letter.
What we hate is not adoption as some claim, but deceptive relinquishment practices, rooted in shame and secrecy, that lead to drastic permanent solutions to temporary problems and a population of adoptees with no birth records, identity, or history.
The causes of infant discard are not addressed by baby boxes. Dropping a baby into a box anonymously and walking away does not obviate or solve the root causes of newborn discard/neonaticide:
- poverty
- inability to secure affordable medical treatment and care
- denial or ignorance of pregnancy
- Draconian immigration policy and practice
- substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse
- shame, crime, mental illness, dysfunctional families, social isolation, and poor communication skills.
What we want is ethics, transparency, and accountability in adoption and related childcare practices, not a band-aid solution to social, political, and mental health problems that cause newborn discard to occur.
Bastard Nation and adoptee rights activists believe the implementation of newborn safety devices/Safe Haven Baby Boxes. Below are major points.
- Creates a parallel child welfare system that rejects informed consent and a full record of identifying information and social and medical histories of the newborn. Their use eliminates adoptees’ right to identity by denying their right to full and original birth and heritage records.
- Commodifies babies and normalizes “legal” baby abandonment as just another consumer choice, with no lifetime psychological consequences for baby and mother, including , but not limited to abandonment issues shame, guilt, substance abuse, depression, low self-esteem. Boxes represent state-sanctioned throwaway culture . Some critics call them child abuse.
- Replaces professional best practice standards with unprofessional and unethical “relinquishment” by letting parents abandon solely for convenience or out of ignorance with no counseling, paper-signing, or discussion on alternatives such as government and private financial and material assistance for family preservation, temporary foster care, and legitimate adoption planning.
- Denies the non-surrendering parent the right of custody and to rear her or his own child. There is no mechanism in place to prove that the “surrendering” person has the legal right to do so. Abusive, embarrassed, or frightened partners, spouses or family members and even sex traffickers can use drop boxes without consent or knowledge of the (other) parent with no repercussions. Box proponents, dismiss the very real dangerous and violent situations some women live in, advise “if their baby is taken they can call the the police.”
- Disenfranchises natural parents –particularly the non-surrendering parent (usually the father)–their right to due process by eliminating their ability to locate the child; thus denying them knowledge of (among other things) the dependency proceeding to which they are a party. The Putative Father Registry, touted as a safeguard, is useless since records are filed by the name of the mother.
- Creates at-risk adoptions due to possible litigation from the non-surrendering parent or biological family members seeking custody.
- Contravenes the family reunification guidelines of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act and parts of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and tribal rights which can cause federal litigation.
- Encourages women to keep problematic pregnancies a secret by discouraging them from seeking family and professional communication, to seek assistance for sexual and physical abuse, mental illness, substance abuse, and social isolation—factors that cause nearly every newborn discard. Studies indicate that once a pregnancy is acknowledged and discussed the chance of discard is almost always gone.
Please keep New Hampshire’s record of supporting adoptee rights intact. Recommend DO NOT PASS on HB 1607.
Thank you for your consideration.
Selected list of organizations that oppose newborn safety devices/Safe Haven Baby Boxes:
Bastard Nation, Adoptee Rights Law Center, Adoptees United, Missouri Open, Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition, Abrazo Adoption Associates (San Antonio), New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, Equal Access Oklahoma, Oklahoma Original Birth Certificates for All Adult Adoptees, Florida Adoption Council (Florida affiliate of the American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys), Against Child Trafficking, Chicago Bar Association, Louisiana March of Dimes, Louisiana Partnership for Children and Families, A Safe Haven for Newborns (Florida), Save Abandoned Babies, Foundation (Illinois), Indiana Department of Health, Mad Voters—Indiana, Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Home address: 6037 Orms Drive, Corpus Christi, Texas 78412…..Phone: 614-795-6819
Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adopter’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.