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. It invented the Baby Box Movement and marketm 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 to box locations near them, and holds press conferences when a newborn is left in a box. Rather than protect legitimate privacy interests of the infant, it uses boxed children as fundraising tools for its ministry.
Control of Box Operation and Practices
SHBB Inc says publicly that each box serves as an advertisement for the box company; therefore, the company controls the signage on and around boxes. (The signage itself, is a literal advertisement for the ministry.) Some locations have reportedly attempted to include their own signage that would direct parents to consider a traditional personal walk-in handover. They have asked to make information sources available about medical issues mothers can experience and localized information on medical, counseling, legal, and family services, etc, but the company reportedly refused these requests.
Instead, SHBB Inc offers their own information packet in an orange bag found inside the box. From what we have seen, the packet contains minimal and possibly wrong information. A box located in the Cincinnati area referred mothers to a midwife in Fort Wayne, Indiana, approximately 180 miles away. The information sheet on post-natal problems (also online in FAQ form) is minimal and unprofessional. The Ohio Health Review Board found the bag to be debris as per state law, banned it from the device, but suggested it could be hung on a hook or kept in some kind of container next to the box door. We believe it also ordered the company to include ODH or ODJFS literature with their material (we are not sure what), and have no idea if they have complied with them.
SHBB Inc controls baby box practices and procedures. Box 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. Last year a fire station in Alabama was taken to public task when the local newspaper reported a drop-off before the company issued an “official” statement.
We have in our possession copies of SHBB Inc lease contracts and Policy Procedures in Goshen and Munster, Indiana, as well as a 5-page scathing memorandum from the Goshen Clerk-Treasurer stating his concerns about the city’s agreement with the company and recommendations regarding them. We are happy to furnish them to anyone interested in reading them. According to a recent news story, a dozen approved and city-allocated funded boxes in San Antonio, Texas, have not been installed because of the City Attorney’s problems with the contract (see below under “Cost” for more.)
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 any time later to establish health and social histories—and even include identities– to mail to the company. This form compares poorly to the professionally designed detailed voluntary medical and social history forms available to parents through state agencies across the country in traditional Safe Haven cases. 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. A comparison between the SHBB Inc form and the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services (similar to other state “information” form” is found here.
Cost of Boxes and Funding
SHBB Inc sells it product and service to lawmakers and the public by saying 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.
SHBB Inc initially operated on these private donations, and still collects them. but through various 990s posted online we have documented close to $2 million in state and local taxpayer funded allocations for boxes (there is probably more) for a “service” that is publicized being 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.
Indiana allocated $1,000,000. New Mexico, with no box law on the books, $330,000. San Antonio, Texas, allocated nearly $450,000 for 12 boxes that remain unpaid and uninstalled due to the City Attorney’s unspecified concerns about SHBB Inc company’s proposed contract with the city. In 2024 and 2025 several states have proposed taxpayer funding either in baby abandonment authorization legislation or amendments to laws already in force. Some locations have taken money from COVID and Homeland Security accounts.
Trustees at Union Township, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati, decided it was OK to outright pay the approximately $16,000 lease fee and other costs in their entirety with taxpayer money, not donations. When local pro-life conservative political watchdog Chris Hicks, who has no compunction taking on all comers, just not Democrats and liberals, visited the fire station, to see what the box was about, he found the facility empty with a working box in its wall. Hicks cried foul! He continued his investigation, chronicling it on Facebook and YouTube. Not to be beaten, 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 boxesdiscourages 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 claims 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 27K views on its YouTube channel, is a step-by-step guide, targeting teenage girls, on how to keep pregnancy, and childbirth concealed–a secret. The video panders to the weird idea that secret pregnancy, is physically and emotionally easy to pull off, and 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 its 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 video’s teaching?
This is the link to the video.
Advocates routinely claim that babies delivered into boxes are “healthy and well cared for,” contradicting their “fact” that their mothers would have killed them without the box option. We know, however, of 2 cases (there may be more) where babies were publically announced “healthy” and weren’t and another case involving a dead baby. One mother has committd suicide.
- In 2022 a baby girl boxed in Hammond, Indiana had a stroke either during or shortly after birth and reportedly may suffer lifelong neurogoical prolems.
- In February 2024 a baby boy left in Belen, New Mexico was immediately admitted to the local neonnate ICU suffering from pneumonia and hypothermia, and was hospitalized for a month.
- In October 2024 an 8-year old mother Idaho left her deceased newborn in a box.
- In February 2024 SHBB Inc announced on TikTok that one of its 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
Baby boxes are unregulated. The USDA does not consider boxes 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 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.
Recently 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.
Below is a PDF of this document
5-Concerns-Beyond-Ethical-Adoption-and-Child-Welfare-Practices