Monopoly Control
Bills to legalize the use of Safe Haven Baby Boxes are vendor bills that benefit one company, Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc in Woodburn, Indiana, a multi-million-dollar ministry that is the only source of the devices in the US. The company invented the Baby Box Movement and market it, writes bills and lobbies lawmakers, produces baby boxes at its own factory, installs the devices, trains location staff, runs a hotline that refers pregnant women and new mothers to box locations near them, and holds press conferences when a newborn is left in a box. Rather than protect legitimate privacy interests of Box Babies, it uses boxed children as fundraising tools for its ministry.
Box Operation, Policy, and Practices
The signage on and around Safe Haven Baby Box locations serves as an advertisement for Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc. Some locations reportedly attempt to include their own signage that would direct parents to consider a traditional personal walk-in hand-over or other related services, which the company denies. Some locations reportedly ask to literature on local medical, legal, and other support resources available to baby box users, which again the company denies.
Instead, SHBB Inc offers their own information packet in an orange bag found inside the box. From what we have observed in SHBB Inc online posts, news stories, and in legislative and committee meetings, the packet contains advertising about the company along with minimal and possibly wrong medical and legal information. A box located in the Cincinnati-area referred mothers to a midwife in Fort Wayne, Indiana, approximately 180 miles away. The box in Norwalk, Iowa, refers them to a medical service in St. Louis 350 miles away. The information sheet on post-natal care (also online in FAQ form) is minimal and unprofessional. The Ohio Health Review Board considers the bag, “debris” as per state law, and banned the orange bag from the device, suggesting that it could be placed in a container or rack next to the box. The board also ordered the company to include Ohio Department of Health and Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services literature regarding state services and other information (we are not sue what) in the orange bag, but have no idea if the the company complied.
SHBB locations are required to inform SHBB Inc within 2 hours of a drop-off; then prohibited from announcing the case publicly until the company shapes an official announcement that appears in news and social media .In 2025, a fire station in Alabama was taken to task by SHBB Inc social media when the local newspaper reported a drop-off before the company issued an “official” statement.
Finally, SHBB Inc runs its own private “family registry.” The company’s low info orange bag includes a printed form that parents can fill out at the time of drop-off or submit any time later to the company to record health and social histories—and even include parent identities. This form compares poorly to the professionally designed detailed voluntary medical and social history forms available to parents through state agencies across the country at traditional Safe Haven locations. The SHBB Inc form is held “anonymous” and as far as we know, is not available to appropriate state agencies or child placing agencies appointed by the state to administer custody, care, and baby placement, Nor, as far as we know, is this information given to the adoptive parents of Box Babies. The company for its own unknown purposes, seems to squirrel away personal and “private” information about babies and parents that in normal adoptions would most likely be shared and the adopted individuals could later obtain.
Funding and Cost of Safe Haven Baby Boxes
SHBB Inc sells it product and service to lawmakers and the public claiming the acquisition/lease of a box is a voluntary, local initiative funded not by public funds but by voluntary donations from individuals, ministries, churches, businesses, fraternal organizations, non-profits, anti-abortion organizations, and foundations. Original SHBB legislation usually does not include state funding, but over the last few years some states have amended their laws to add taxpayer funding. Some cities have taken money from COVID, Homeland Security, and other special government accounts.
SHBB Inc initially operated on these private donations, and still collects them. but through various 990s posted online we have documented over $2 million in state and local taxpayer funded allocations for boxes (there is probably more) for a “service” that is publicized free of public funding and paid for by voluntary contributions. The company does not publicize these taxpayer funds and insists that does not take any.
Representative tax payer direct funding or through grants include, but not limited to: Indiana ($1,000,000); Arkansas ($230,000) Alabama ($20,000). Montana ($160,000), Cold Lake, Florida ($25,000), Beech Grove, Indiana ($19,000) Helena, Montana ($15,000), Big River, Montana ($15,000). New Mexico, with no box law on the books, allocated $330,000.
San Antonio, Texas, allocated nearly $450,000 for 12 boxes (reduced to 10) that remain uninstalled due to the City Attorney’s unspecified concerns about SHBB Inc’s proposed contract with the city.
Trustees at Union Township, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati, decided it was OK to pay outright the approximate $16,000 lease fee and other costs in their entirety with taxpayer money, not donations. When local pro-life conservative political watchdog Chris Hicks visited the fire station, to see what the box was about, he found the facility empty with a working box in its wall. He continued his investigation, chronicling it on Facebook and YouTube. Digging in, the over-spending trustees dug in and hired an extra firefighter to babysit the facility and keep the box running. SHBB Inc promised to fund the new firefighter but did not. (See video, courtesy of Chris Hicks.) Thus, local taxpayers were dunned not only the cost of the box but for an extra full-time firefighter at union scale with benefits Hicks reported his findings (which included other violations of Ohio law regarding maintenance and sanitation) to the Ohio Public Health Review Board. His documented report led to the Ohio Department of Health shutting down out-of-compliance boxes until problems were fixed. (See below for more safety issues.
Safety, Health, and Welfare of Mother and Child
Promotion and the availability of baby abandonment boxes discourages women from seeking pre-and post-natal care. Instead, SHBB Inc facilitates those in “crisis pregnancies” to undergo dangerous and unsafe unattended births and care outside of a medical and safe setting.
Unsafe Pregnancy and Birth Practices: SHBB Inc says that it suggests its callers seek medical and counseling services, pre- and postnatal care, safe delivery, financial assistance, etc, but its 9 minute video (deceptively called a Public Service Announcement) with over 28K views on its YouTube channel, is a step-by-step guide, targeting teenage girls, on how to keep pregnancy, childbirth, and “relinquishment-by-box concealed–a secret. The video panders the weird idea that secret pregnancy, is physically and emotionally easy to pull off, and that unattended childbirth is pristine, uncomplicated and safe. We have shown this video to professionals in OB care and child welfare, and they have been horrified by this message. Those who follow the guidance of the video could die. Their babies could die.
According to SHBB Inc, the youngest mother they have guided anonymously to the box was 12. Would you want your 12-year old daughter or granddaughter, or sister, or neighbor to follow this message?
This is the link to the video.
Health of Box Babies and Mothers: Advocates and news reports routinely claim that babies left in boxes are “healthy and well cared for:”contradicting their “fact” that their mothers would not care for them and might have killed them without the box option. We know, however, of 4 cases (very possibly more) where babies were announced “healthy” but weren’t; and another case where a deceased newborn was dropped off.
- April 2022: a baby girl boxed in Hammond, Indiana, had a stroke either during or shortly after birth and reportedly may suffer lifelong neurological problems.
- May 2023: a newborn boy was boxed in Benton, Arkansas and pronounced “healthy” though transferred to hospice 1 month after birth diagnosed with pseudo-Zellwegers (D-bi functional protein deficiency), other serious medical issues, and suffered 30-40 seizures a day. He died at 11 months of age.
- February 2024 a newborn boy boxed in Belen, New Mexico was immediately admitted to the local neonnate ICU suffering from pneumonia and hypothermia, and was hospitalized for a month.
- October 2024 : a deceased newborn was left in a box in Blackfood, Idaho. The mother was located and eventually sentenced to 10 years probation an 100 hours of community service. Moreover, in February 2024, SHBB Inc announced on TikTok that one of its Box Mothers OD’d and died shortly after boxing her baby–a suspected suicide. (The video seems to have been taken down but here is what we wrote about it)
Safe Haven Boxes are Unregulated
The USDA does not consider SHBBs to be medical devices, Furthermore, they are not tested by Underwriters Laboratory; thus, not UL certified.
According to the Quality Inspection.org website, equipment that should have UL certification includes (1) Electrical and electronic equipment (appliances, power supplies, etc.) and (2) Alarm signaling devices (smoke detectors, fire suppression and alarm monitoring).This means that your microwave, TV, nightstand lamp, and even your power cords should be UL compliant, but electrically- operated baby boxes, that contain a multiple alarm system, are not.
Importantly, manufacturers of electrical devices that are not certified and 3rd parties that utilize them—in the case of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, the state, locations and municipalities that authorize their use–could be held liable for death, personal injuries, or property damage caused by non-complaint devices.
Last year the SHBB Inc CEO said that getting UL certification is expensive and they have been working on getting it for 2 years. According to the Quality Inspection site, “A small and simple product could cost between $2-5k, requiring several samples per test, and take about 3-4 weeks to complete the testing.” More complex products can cost more $50k and take over a month. SHBB Inc’s published 990s indicate the company can well afford certification even for high-end testing. Their 2024 990 (November 11, 2025) indicates an income of over $4.5 million.
Revised February 17, 2026
Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now!
6537 S. Staples Street, Ste 125, Corpus Christi Texas 78413
(614) 795-6819
stopshbbnow.org