Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) signed a bill that allows parents to safely and anonymously surrender their newborns, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Thursday.
The law allows municipalities to install Safe Haven Baby Boxes at hospitals, fire stations, and law enforcement buildings, where parents can surrender newborns less than 72 hours old with no face-to-face interaction. Wisconsin joins at least a dozen other states to pass similar legislation.
“I am glad Wisconsin will now be able to provide parents in distress an option to complete anonymity when making the difficult choice to surrender their newborn,” said bill author Rep. Ellen Schutt (R-Clinton).
Baby boxes were created to deter parents from abandoning their newborns, potentially leaving them to die. Baby boxes are temperature-controlled incubators often built into exterior walls of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals and can be accessed from the inside. At-risk mothers can safely and legally place their newborns inside. Then the outside door locks, and mothers have time to get away before an alarm goes off, alerting first responders or hospital staff inside.
The baby is then promptly removed and sent to a hospital for a wellness check. From there, the baby is usually placed into state custody and often quickly adopted.
The baby box law expands the state’s existing 2001 Safe Haven law, which allows parents to surrender their newborn to a police officer, emergency medical technician, or hospital employee without fear of legal repercussions.
The law “carried a stigma, especially in small communities, because parents were afraid others will find out they gave up their children,” Schutt said.
“Sadly, this came to a head earlier this year after a newborn was found dead in a field in Whitewater,” Schutt said. “Members of the community came to me expressing an interest in making sure this did not happen again, and I am glad we were able to find a solution and get this law enacted.”
Schutt was referencing a Whitewater woman who was charged earlier in 2023 with neglecting a child, resulting in death, and moving, hiding, or burying a child.
Under Wisconsin’s new law, baby boxes must be installed in a building that is staffed 24 hours a day, and they must be temperature-controlled, ventilated, and monitored at all times with a functioning alarm. Employees in the building housing the boxes must also physically check the boxes twice a day and test the alarms once a week, according to the report.
“Expanding safeguards for kids across Wisconsin is a priority for my administration, and this bill provides a solution that will hopefully keep newborns and infants safe from harm,” Evers said in a statement Wednesday. “I will continue to advocate for initiatives that work to make our communities and families safer, and I look forward to seeing more bipartisan bills like this in the future.”