Marley Greiner | Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now | Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Right s Organization
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- stopbabyboxesnow@gmail.com
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Frequently Asked Questions |Talking Points | Legislation | Supporting Resources/Documentation
Marley is a media resource for information and opinion on Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Traditional Safe Haven Laws, Adoptee Civil Rights & Legislation, Adoption History, Adoption in Film, and Adoption and Reproductive Rights & Justice.
We Welcome Media…and Here’s Our Story
Adoptee rights, adoption reform, and child welfare organization opposition to the Safe Haven Baby Box Movement is grossly over-looked and under-represented in the media. The voice of adopted people in particular has been all but ignored..
As a result, baby box advocates, led by Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc and its founder/ CEO Monica Kelsey, are congratulated, and unquestioned in the near-daily news coverage of the organization’s reactionary and antiquated mission. This mission creates broken families, erases the identity and history of newborns, commodifies mothers and children, rejects best practice standards in adoption and child welfare, exploits vulnerable women by endangering their physical and mental health and that of their babies, and does nothing to alleviate the root causes of baby abandonment–all in the name of “baby saving.”
While the baby box and its proponents are marketed in a positive light, adoptee civil rights activists and adoption reform organizations, the forefront of baby box opposition for years, are virtually excluded from media discourse–erased from the public and SHBB Inc landscape. Baby box proponents call us “haters. ” The director of the SHBB Inc hotline and member of its board says that adopted people who object to baby boxes must be “seriously mentally challenged.” Proponents declare that we “do not understand adoption.” But we do understand adoption. That’s why we demand ethics, transparency, and accountability in child relinquishment, adoption, and related child welfare practices–practices that SHBB Inc does not offer or much care about.
Inexplicably, SHBB Inc, has been able to frame media reports (especially local) along the lines of a generic “if you doubt your parenting skills, now there’s a solution in our town: dump your baby in our Safe Haven Baby Box, and walk away. It’s easy.” (And yes, it is this bad! ) Adopted people say this is nuts!
Safe Haven Baby Box policy is presented as a word of faith “success.” Some call boxes “God’s’ plan.” Proponents. therefore, just know that boxes work. They make outlandish claims about baby box efficacy, with no documentation, studies, or other evidence to back them up.
SHBB Inc routinely asserts, for example, that baby box utilization significantly reduces the infant mortality rates in states where they are located. Boxes do not.
The organization claims that it receives no public money. It does.
Company officials double-speak that mothers who use the baby box system are potential murderers, yet tell us in the next sentence that many of the babies left in the boxes are “clean, well-cared for “(and sometimes even breastfed!) In fact, a substantial number of boxed babies they report to the press, are dressed in onesies, accompanied by toys and a “loving” letter from mom.
This cognitive dissonance, rooted in the Madonna-Whore paradigm is designed to send a contradictory message: (1) Stigmatization: without the baby box “option” women in so-called “crisis pregnancies” and birth situations will be tempted to discard or kill their newborns and (2) Congratulatory: encourage women to use boxes by valorizing those “courageous mothers” who “save their babies. In other words “You love your baby so much you didn’t kill it. or “You saved your baby from yourself”
SHBB Inc claims have been debunked by SSHBBN, adoptee and birthparent activists, child welfare professionals, researchers, scholars, and legal experts. You will find much of their work on the SSHBBN website which has hundreds of pages and posts with thousands of links .
Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now welcomes everyone. We realize that media and the public at large know little about newborn discard and neonatide, and SSHBBN is here as an educational tool to make your job easier, your coverage on newborn discard deeper and more meaningful, and for the voice of the adopted heard and respected in the media.
We encourage print and visual media, podcasters, and bloggers to check out our website and to contact us directly for interviews. We are media experienced, respond quickly, give good interviews, and can refer you to additional sources.
Media Mentions
Stateline. More places install drop-off boxes for surrending babies. Critics say there’s a gimmick, February 25, 2023
Marley Greiner, a co-founder of the adoptee rights organization Bastard Nation who also runs a site dedicated to tracking and opposing baby box legislation, argues that baby boxes can create a parallel child welfare system that doesn’t allow for informed consent for the birth parents nor a full record of identifying information and social and medical histories for the newborn.
The Daily Beast. AntiAbortion Activists Launch Civil War Over Florida’s “Baby Boxes.” February 25, 2024
Marley Greiner, the adoptee-rights advocate, has lobbied strongly against baby boxes.“There’s a whole spectrum of screw-up for adoptees,” she told The Daily Beast. “But I mean, you find out you were stuck in a box—that’s gonna cause some real problems.”
Repro Rights NOW. Activist questions validity of baby box movement, August 14, 2023
In January, Greiner testified before the Kansas House Committee on Child Welfare and Foster Care. She said the promotion and use of Safe Haven Baby Boxes is anti-adoptee, anti-adoption, anti-family, and unethical.“Baby Boxes are a slap in the face of every parent who has followed standard and ethical child relinquishment procedures,” she said “They are a slap in the face of the 6 million adopted people in the United States today who are subjected to archaic and discriminatory adoption secrecy laws such as sealed birth and court records.”
Financial Times. Turmoil over US abortions turns spotlight on safe havens for newborns, August 7, 2023
Marley Greiner, of Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now says there have been 11 babies left in boxes so far this year, more than any previous full year but still a rare occurrence. Safe haven experts say it’s too soon to tell whether this number will grow as new abortion restrictions kick in.
The New American Magazine. “Extra Births.” Safe Havens and Baby Boxes, August 4, 2024
However, not everyone is excited about these boxes. A group called Stop Baby Boxes Now! argues that they deny the rights of the non-surrendering parent, create at-risk adoptions, and potentially hide crimes such as rape and incest.
The New Republic. The Right’s New Post-Dobbs panacea: The Baby Safe Deposit Box, June 29, 2024
Marley Greiner, co-founder of the adoptee rights group Bastard Nation, was one of the few to oppose safe haven laws from the start. “We had no idea how far this would go, and nobody ever expected boxes,” said Greiner, who tracks with Luce the 19 states currently authorizing the use of the boxes. These adoptees are trying to halt the dismantling of a half-century of hard-fought rights and recognize the cruelty of a society that fails to offer economic or emotional support to pregnant women in need but encourages them to relinquish their children. “Baby boxes send the message that women demand anonymity, that sealed records or anonymous birth is what women want, and it makes it more difficult for us to unseal records,” said Greiner.
Cincinnati Enquirer. Two Ohio baby boxes closed due to staff requirement, February 23, 2023,
Marley Greiner, an Ohio native who co-founded the New York-based adoptee rights organization Bastard Nation, told The Enquirer she opposes Safe Haven laws, but said baby boxes are “Safe Haven laws on steroids” when it comes to issues with anonymity.“Adopted people have huge abandonment issues. It’s not being a box for a minute or two. It’s the lifelong repercussions of that,” she said.
The Jacobin. “Safe Haven” Laws are Key to the Right’s Push to End Women’s Right to Abortion, February 7, 2022
Furthermore, as Marley Greiner, a cofounder of adoptee advocacy group Bastard Nation, explained in the New Yorker, anonymity makes it difficult or impossible to tell if the birth mother was coerced into giving up her baby or for a mother to reclaim her child. Twenty-nine states have no procedures whatsoever for a mother to attempt to reclaim a child surrendered at a safe haven.
The New Yorker. Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game, February 7, 2022.
Moreover, when an infant is dropped off anonymously it’s extremely difficult to tell if someone has been coerced into doing so Greiner explained. “There is no simple mechanism for the surrendering parent–much less the non-surrendering parent or a relative who suspects or knows that a safe-havening took place–to attempt to legally challenge or rescind the surrender. ” Nobody wants desperate people to be leaving newborns in dumpsters, but there are few reliable statistics about neonaticide and it’s uncertain whether safe-haven laws do much to alleviate the problem.
Podcasts
What Next? . The Adoptee Rights Podcast, Soap Opera, January 18, 2022
Adoptee United’s Gregory Luce launches the new podcast and talks with Marley Greiner about the origins of Bastard Nation, the history of adoptee rights, and the growing threat of Safe Haven Baby Boxes