A triangular yellow sign marks this Jacksonville fire station as a safe haven for a mother to surrender her newborn baby anonymously. | Eric Prosswimmer, Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department
Published on December 15, 2023 at 3:20 pm
A state senator from Jacksonville is proposing to increase the age at which babies can be surrendered to authorities without repercussions to the mother.
Republican Sen. Clay Yarborough filed a bill (SB 790) that would allow mothers to turn over a newborn up to 30 days after giving birth, an increase from the seven days in current law.
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Yarborough did not respond to questions from WJCT News 89.9 about why he filed the bill. But his proposal is one of several developments that are refocusing attention on abandoned babies in Florida.
Yarborough filed the bill a week after a newborn was found abandoned in a backyard in Palatka, just after a 15-year-old girl had given birth.
The proposal also came as a second Florida city installed a Safe Haven Baby Box, a way for a mother to surrender a baby without ever speaking to a person.
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Right now, the Safe Haven Act of 2000 allows a mother in Florida to drop off a newborn about 7 days old or younger at a hospital, an emergency medical services station or a fire station. The mother can remain anonymous without fear of prosecution. She would face no charges unless there was indication of abuse or other issues.
Yarborough’s bill would raise the age limit for dropoff to 30 days. After that, the mother could face a charge of abandonment.
The bill also gives the mother another alternative if she cannot get to a hospital or fire station. A parent could surrender an infant by calling 911 to request that an emergency medical services provider meet the parent at a specified location.
The state Department of Children and Families does not track Safe Haven baby surrenders, spokeswoman Georgia Clarke said. Its involvement in these situations would be limited unless a report of child abuse is made to its hotline, she said.
When a newborn is surrendered, the facility can contact a licensed child-placing agency or call the hotline to be referred to a child-placing agency in their area, Clarke said. At that point, the child-placing agency takes over and their attorneys petition the court to terminate parental rights and allow an adoption.
All of Jacksonville’s fire stations became Safe Haven locations after the bill’s passage, with yellow signs at their entrances. Only one child has been surrendered under the law since August 2018, said Capt. Eric Prosswimmer of the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department.
On Nov. 30, another option to safely drop off a newborn in Florida opened its second site at a Newberry fire station, near Gainesville. Safe Haven Baby Boxes, a nonprofit based in Indiana, provides climate-controlled cubicles built into fire stations that let a mother safely drop off her child with no contact with any person.
Each box has an outside door that locks as soon as a baby is placed in a bassinet inside, and an alarm rings inside to alert fire personnel to the child. Baby Box founder and CEO Monica Kelsey came up with the idea because officials were still finding dead, abandoned babies despite states having safe haven laws, she said.
A total of 37 babies have been surrendered to Baby Boxes around the country since 2017, when the program started, Kelsey said. There are 185 boxes in 15 states. The first in Florida opened at Ocala’s Fire Rescue headquarters, where a newborn was surrendered Jan. 5.
On Nov. 26, a newborn was found abandoned in the backyard of a home in Palatka, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office reported. Officers were called to the house just after midnight to find the unclothed baby wrapped in a blanket, umbilical cord still attached, police said. They determined the child had just been born.
The person who called in the complaint told officers she did not know who had put the child in the yard. But evidence found at the scene indicated the child had been born inside the home to a 15-year-old girl, police said. The baby is in stable condition, but no further information is available at this time, police said.
After hearing of that case, Prosswimmer said the age of the mother may have been one reason she abandoned her baby in the backyard.
“Let’s be honest — when you have a 15-year-old child, they are immature and not willing to make the mature decisions that an adult would make,” he said. “If their thought is to dump a baby in a backyard, they are not considering the well-being of the child. They are concerned about people finding out, and their last thought is dropping them off at a fire station, unfortunately.”
Jacksonville does not have any Baby Boxes, and none are planned here.
To get a Baby Box, a community has to raise the estimated $20,000 to $25,000 to install a Baby Box, with $500 a year afterward for maintenance and recertification, Kelsey said.
“We don’t contact locations. They contact us when they want to do the program,” Kelsey said. “I hope that Jacksonville will ramp up their education and awareness if they do not give a 100% anonymous option, considering what just happened near there.”
