Mission
Stop Baby Boxes is an adoptee-centered “non-partisan” website, a place for heretofore often opposing groups–adoptee rights activists, adoption reformers, child welfare practitioners, and traditional Safe Haven law advocates–to discuss and oppose legislation and utilization of Safe Haven Baby Boxes (both generic and specific name) in the United States. This site serves as a legislative and educational resource for these groups, the public and media. It includes up-to-date legislative tracking, individual state news, national, and international news stories, oppositional statements from organizations, critical readings and reports, pictorials, and a blog. Ultimately, SSHBBN is a resource for the public and the press. It is a tool to de-propagandize the Safe Haven Baby Box myth and set the record straight on how SHBB rejects best-practice standards in child welfare, foster care, adoption, pre-and post-natal care, exploits vulnerable women, commodifies children, and endangers the adoptee rights movement.
While we disagree among ourselves on the efficacy and use of traditional Safe Haven Laws which codify “legalized” newborn abandonment under certain conditions and have often disagreed vocally and publicly on the issue, we agree that Safe Haven Baby Boxes their use sets a dangerous, reactionary, and archaic precedent that rejects best-practice standards in child welfare, adoption, and pregnancy care. We believe that the SHBB movement endangers the entire adoptee rights movement with its cry that “women demand anonymity.” In fact, in some states, adoptee rights OBC access bills and SHBB bills run side by side. We believe that anonymously shoving an inconvenient newborn into a hole-in-the-wall deposit box at a fire station or hospital harms vulnerable mothers, fathers, and babies.
We believe that SHBB should not be “just another choice” by which parents abandon inconvenient newborns.
SCHBBN is not affiliated with any organization. We do not recognize Baby Safe Haven–New England as a legitimate Safe Haven organization. We do not support public or private harassment of Safe Haven Baby Box organization officials and associates or supporters.
Go to our FAQs for details.
Submissions
News/Blogs are the heart of SSHBBN. If you would like to submit a blog or commentary in opposition to Safe Haven Baby Boxes please contact us through our contact page. Since we can get talky ourselves, the length can be up to around 750 words or thereabouts. We aren’t picky. Shorter pieces, however, are always welcomed. We are also happy to link your writing to our Critical Readings pages.
About the Publisher
Marley Greiner is the Executive Chair and co-founder of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. Adopted at 9 weeks of age, she obtained her OBC and other identifying information in 1980. She holds a BA in English and Political Science from Malone University, an MA in American History from the Ohio State University, and is ABD (all but dissertation for the Ph.D.) in American History from Ohio State. She also attended Herzen Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. Marley’s academic interests include organized crime (a perfect fit with adoption studies), Progressive Era studies, consumerism, Ohio history, and film studies. She has presented papers on adoptee rights, Safe Haven laws, adoption ethics, and adoption in film and literature at various conferences throughout the US, (Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture, Bastard Nation, the American Adoption Conference, Ethica, the University of Akron School of Law, the Center for Adoption Law and Policy at Capital University Law School, the National Organization for Women, the Oregon Adoptee Rights, Association, and the Donaldson Adoption Institute.)
Since 2005 Marley has published over 1200 entries in her influential Daily Bastardette blog covering all aspects of adoption. Other blogs include Children of the Corn (documentation of the 2008 Safe Haven Nebraska Fiasco); Nikto Ne Zabyt–Nichto Ne Zabyto (a Memoriam for Russian adoptees abused and murdered by their forever families;) and End Child Exportation and Trafficking in Haiti (widely read documentation and commentary on trafficking after the 2010 earthquake.)
Marley has testified before numerous state legislatures in support of the restoration of the right of adoptees to access their original birth certificates and in opposition to Safe Haven and Safe Haven Baby B x Laws. Her op-ed pieces have appeared in newspapers throughout the country, and she has appeared on local and national television, including CNN. Since 1980 she has been a regular contributor to the Columbus Free Press, the oldest continuously published alternative newspaper in the US, where she reported on abortion and adoption issues, and central-Ohio christo-fascist activities. For several years she sat on the board of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism. She currently lives in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Staff
Staff is here, there, everywhere. Like the Safe Havened Baby Boxed, and their parents, they have been anonymized for their own good. Our Chief of Staff, however, is not anonymous. Meet Angelika, the Personal Assistant Cat. Angelika’s duties include ‘net surfing, filing, archiving, security, running the printer, and entertaining guests. She is so dedicated to the cause that she only accepts treats for her hard work.
Thanks
Carolyn and Charles Counterman, Dawn Geras, Gregory Luce, Erik L. Smith, Lauren Sabina Kneisly aka Baby Love Child, Lisa Munro, Maureen Flatley, Sasha-Soier, Shawna Hodgeson, and all of the wonderful supportive people and organizations in AdoptionLand that keep up the good fight daily for our and their truths.
Misogyny has not been completely wiped out anywhere. Rather, it resides on a spectrum, and our best hope for eradicating it globally is for each of us to expose and to fight against local versions of it, in the understanding that by doing so we advance the global struggle.
Mona Eltahawy