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Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear Oh dear!
Mirror Indy, a city paper in Indianapolis, just published a good piece on Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Inc, The Growing Backlash to Indiana’s Baby Box Empire. The title alone tells you what to expect. And I expect that while I was doing the proverbial jump for joy this morning, Monica Kelsey, CEO of SHBB Inc, was getting a big case of indigestion.
I worked with the reporter, Mary Claire Molloy on backgrounding the feature, and she hit most of the right spots. I’m especially interested in the “discussion ” between Mrs. Kelsey and Dr. Jerome Adams, the former Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Health, (later the Surgeon General under Trump 1), who went to mattress to stop their implementation:
Emails obtained by Mirror Indy show Kelsey fighting back
The state health department’s “accusations and mischaracterizations” about the safety of baby boxes, Kelsey wrote in a June 2016 email to agency leadership, are “unwarranted, ignorant (in the purest meaning of the word) and just plain wrong.”
Another section, directed at Adams. All caps:
“YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN COMING TOGETHER AND WORKING WITH SAFE HAVEN BABY BOXES FOR THE BETTERMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THIS STATE.”
Then, there’s Dr. Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe from Eskenazi Health, in Indianapolis:
“Putting an infant in a box and pretending it’s a win is a bit problematic”…“It’s just an escape hatch from the problems the state created.”
I was unaware of Dr Ferries-Rowe unti I read this…and it’s really interesting since last July Mrs. Kelsey went on social media to complain about an unnamed Indianapolis hospital that was complicating her mission life .. or as she put it: “nearly screwed up” a drop-off.
Mrs Kelsey claimed that when she called a hospital to alert the ER that a new mother was heading their way to leave her newborn in a trad safe haven drop-off, a nurse told her ,”We can’t just leave a baby unattended in the ER.” The hospital was not identified in the post, but Mrs Kelsey winkwink-nod-nodded “you can guess who.” suggesting that some kind of feud had started long before the incident. Later, a poster responded, “Eskenazi.”
I can’t find the video on Facebook where I saw the post, but I remember it clearly since I’d never heard of Eskanazi, and looked it up. (Such a strange name!) But Cafe Mom published a blog bout the incident that includes the video. SHBB Inc directed the mother to a nearby fire station, where we assume a happy abandonment took place, and Mrs. Kelsey got another notch on her bedpost.
And then there’s the Kelsey Money Machine. Any reporting on SHBB Inc must include financials . Despite claims to the contrary, the company is not poor. Go here to see links to SHBB Inc 990s for detailed documentation of the dollar-harvesting that’s going on under the guise of “baby saving.” The Promotors Page, which includes more financial information, will be updated and the tech problems fixed shortly.
All-in-all I’m pleased with the story, though I’d like to have seen a discussion of how baby abandonment boxes impact the adoptee rights movement and what the promotion and use of the contraptions say to adopted folks, especially since one of the corporation’s bigshots says adoptees who oppose boxes suffer from” mental challenges.” (Other pushers pat us on the head with “you must have had a bad experience” or condemn us as possessed.) The focus of the article, however, is the local organization, its history and practices, and I’m fine with that if it tells the truth–and it does. Truth and baby boxes, you see, are seldom compatible.
This article was also picked up by Yahoo News, so it will have wide distribution. Yay!
As of thisi writing, Mrs Kelsey has not responded to the article, or even posted it, and I don’t expect her to. She “walks with Jesus” and brooks no criticism.
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