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Safe Haven Baby Box Founder/CEO Monica Kelsey often says that someday one of, “her” Boxed Babies will grow up and take over her business. This idea now extends to firefighters; that is babies “saved from the dumpster “will join their local fire department in eternal gratitude. Witness this:
I know this will grind Mrs Kelsey’s gears, but I personally know a few firefighters, one a retired FD captain who is also adopted, that loathe baby boxes and what they promote: anonymous relinquishment, adoptee displacement, and destruction of our civil rights, not to mention irresponsible legislation and public policy (the hallmark of contemporary US political life).
If Mrs Kelsey wonders why we hate boxes, she should bone up on the history of the original Safe Haven Movement and how it was godfathered by the late Bill Pierce, founding president of the National Councill for Adoption, shortly after the passage of the Bastard Nation/Helen Hill Ballot Measure 58 in Oregon. The measure restored the right of all Oregon-born adoptees to their OBCs, and kicked off the 2rd Wave of the Adoptee Rights Movement.
Pierce not only opposed document access. He opposed open adoption and kinship placement. He was adamant that anonymous “non -bureaucratic relinquishment,” as he called it, was a tool to combat the “danger” Measure 58 presented to the adoption industry’s stranglehold on adoptee autonomy and rights. He feared rightly, in the wake of the Oregon victory, that adopted people across the country would organize to take control of their records, rights, and lives. SH laws were not a perfect solution by any means, but they created a wedge. They made an exception to our core mission: leave no one behind.
Importantly, Dr. Pierce saw safe haven laws as a weapon not only against us, but the burgeoning fathers’ rights movement and the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which he claimed was racist since it greatly limited the ability of white folks to adopt native children.* As an opponent of abortion, though on the liberal side of most other issues, Pierce was able to bring in a range of support from “right to life” and conservative political organizations, and churches The SH movement became essential to “the Culture of Life” brigade, now the show runner for SHBB Inc. (See Carol Sanger’s seminal article in the Columbia Law Review, Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life.) , Also the book, Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice, by Lauri Oaks.
These organizations and individuals with one weird exception, had no anti-adoptee bias or agenda. Though most opposed abortion, they were looking for a way to address newborn discard and welcomed Pierce’s assistance. The messy politics of adoption were unknown to them and did not occur to them until we brought it up. Today, those trad organizations, although SSHBBN disagrees with them on safe haven laws, have been a, valuable and strong voice opposing baby boxes. Notably, they have never stood in the way of adoptee rights legislation or the overall adoptee rights movement. unlike Mrs Kelsey, who states publicly that we are a bunch of homewreckers, thugs, and haters that need to shut up. Ironically, the organizations that put safe haven laws in place now get whomped routinely by Mrs Kelsey and her ugly stick, accused of failure to understand the problem, fearing loss of support and funding–and even wanting babies to die. Seriously! Is it any wonder that the National Safe Haven Alliance rejected her membership application years ago?
Pierce died in 2004, and NCFA has distanced itself from its Piercian past; thus, erasing most of his and their safe haven involvement from the current narrative. This leaves trad safe haven organizations throughout the country holding the bag for his dirty tricks.
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The objectification and commodification of Boxed Babies is one of our numerous objections (and here) to baby boxes. Critically, objectification and commodification are key elements SHBB Inc survival–finances. The corporation over the last 8+ years, has posted dozens of happy (and not so happy) looking babies and toddlers and their adoptive parents to encourage “desperate mothers” to use its services, and more importantly, to normalize baby boxing to the public. In turn, the photo-ops, press conferences, banquets, and special interest stories fill their coffers and feed the adoption industry’s bloody maw.
Adoptive parents routinely show up in the media, echoing Rosie O’Donnell’s notorious brag to an adopted child on national TV, “God put you in the wrong tummy.”They proclaim, “this baby was meant to be mine/ours.” and “God gave us this baby.” Some say they are open to first mother contact, but the through-line of the movement and recipients’ belief system, despite saying it ain’t so Joe, is that anonymous birthmothers are just a vessel to fulfill their parental desire.
The message is (1) everyone has a right to be a parent except (2) a select class of women due, for instance, to their economic. immigration, or domestic status. I have never heard Mrs Kelsey, members of her team, or adoptive parents say publicly that economics, racism, and misogyny are at the core of nearly every discard. AND boxing. Sticking a baby in a box and walking away does nothing but normalize and even romanticize the rot. They don’t care as long as they get another notch on the bedpost.
The whole business reminds me of Georgia Tann’s advertising strategy, just more sophisticated. I doubt, though, that Tann ever invoked Jesus in her spiel and acquisition technique.
This time around, the babies are the hook for a nationwide network of adoption provider moola-grabbers. Michigan, Illinois, Florida, and now Indiana, for instance, allow SH adoptions to be handled by private adoption agencies (unless nobody is interested –fat chance!) Appropriate state agencies still maintain some control over the process, but in 2023, Indiana passed SB 345 which permits fire chiefs to make a direct adoption agency placement . One baby went from box to “forever family” in 12 hours via agency. Every case handled by the adoption industry rakes $30,000-$60,000. into agency bank accounts. According to Michigan HHS, nearly 400 trad safe haven cases are on its books . All but 8 occurred in hospitals, with most births on-site. The majority of adoptions were handled by 3 private adoption agencies. Using $40,000 as a base, that means that $16 million has run through Michigan’s Big Adopta mill.
Many adoptees consider the pimping of Box Babies , whom SHBB Inc reminds us are “vulnerable,” to be child abuse. Ask any adoptee who was paraded around by their adopters like a prize sheep or a lifestyle accoutrement, how they feel about SHBB publicity stunts. A good friend of mine, with his adopted siblings, was marched in front of the local media once a year to “celebrate adoption.” He says their adoptions were the adoptive parents’ “stairway to heaven.” Ask those adopted through the Ohio Children’s Society how they feel about the yearly “family reunion” where they were gathered into the loving arms of director Elizabeth Cady. Welcome to the freak show.
It’s really creepy when Mrs. Kelsey suggests that “her babies”, when they grow up, will take over her job, or join the fire department, or at least be happy about being shoved into the black hole in the wall.to fulfill a wanky “christian” mission. Mrs. Kelsey wondered bad enough to know where she came from. She searched for and was reunited with her birthmother. Now she agitates for public policy and laws that codify the anonymity she rejected. For me, but not for thee.
But Boxed Babies are marketable. thus exploitable. Mrs. Kelsey has been quite clear that every Boxed Baby creates an opportunity for publicity, new product, and rattling the can. $2million worth as of SHBB Inc’s latest 990.
And SHBB Inc wonders why we fight them.
*Pierce once debated on Canadian TV a group of First Native social workers and lawyers arguing that indigenous children were “better off” in white homes because native adults were drunks, junkies, and abusers. Seriously. I knew Bill quite well, and I don’t believe for one moment he actually believed that, but he was a performance artist at heart, (an undergrad theatre minor) and threw shit against the wall to see what sticks.
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Reposted from the Daily Bastardette
(No, it will never be X!)
Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now
Poke the Bear 2025
Day 29 – 1 day to go!
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