by The legislative season is winding down for the year. Although some states virtually never go out of session, many have closed down and others will shortly. I would be lying if I said this has not been a busy year. Nearly 40 baby abandonment box bills were introduced*—some to authorize the use of boxes themselves. Others are ancillary to established laws, such as attempts to provide taxpayer money to fund boxes, even though SHBB Inc continues to maintain the fiction that they don’t take taxpayer money. The barrage of bills was overwhelming. Now a tiny handful of bills remain active, and some will go nowhere.
Fortunately, only 3 states so far have enacted laws to authorize box use this year: North Dakota, South Dakota, and Florida. Passage in Florida was no surprise. Sen. Lauren Book, the longtime bulwark against boxes, is no longer in the legislature, and although there was opposition, none had her ability to kill the bills introduced in each chamber. As a Home Rule State, Florida already has 7 boxes in place legally without the imprimatur of the state legislature. Baby Zoeey in Ocala (2023) is the only catch. The case received international media attention when a firefighter “rescuer “and his wife adopted her—a highly unethical adoption to be discussed another day.
Michigan still has 3 bills pending (two authorizations and one ancillary if the first two pass) and might be acted on. The New Jersey bill is a repeater that never goes anywhere, and the Illinois bill is effectively dead, exiled to the House Rules Committee. All baby box language was stripped from a bill in Utah, and an amended bill increasing the age of babies eligible for trad safe havening was enacted instead. Five ancillary bills were enacted, and the Missouri governor is expected to sign the sixth.
The big story is the number of bills killed outright, died in committee, or held over for possible action in the 2026 session. Just because a bill is held over, however, does not mean it will be reactivated.
While the number of bills to legalize use of baby abandonment boxes continues to increase; the number of passages decreases ( 2023: 8; 2024 3; 2025: 3). Dead bills remain steady (2025: 6; 2024: 7; 2023: 6). The big increase has been the passage of ancillary bills, indicating that, once boxes are legal, then all sorts of mischief (public funding, increased age limits, boxes in school curriculum ) can be expected.
See the SSHBBN 2025 Legislative page for details of the bills and individual state pages for news, testimonies, stats, and other details.
We send a huge thank you to our friends and colleagues who worked diligently and strategically to kill passage of Safe Haven Baby Box bills throughout the country. You stood hand-in-hand with adopted people, current and future, to stop the baby box abrogation of our civil right to our own birth records, identities, histories, and collective dignity.
Moreover, you brought to lawmakers and the public the truth about the physical/mental/emotional/legal dangers that the archaic baby box movement and its pernicious ideology that anonymous birth, and legal child abandonment pose to pregnant women/ new mothers and their babies individually and as a class.
It is great working with you!
*Some states had companion bills. While we follow all bills, we did not include duplicates in our stats (ex: Alaska’s 2 bills were companions, so we have counted them as one as far as final disposition is concerned.)
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