More Thoughts on The Baby Box Legislation

I can’t stop thinking about the safe haven baby box legislation in Indiana and how archaic and wrong-headed it seems to be. Wrong-headed that the state may not even know it has another citizen it is responsible for as babe’s guardian, as it’s optional whether or not to tell the state, or they can just contact an adoption agency when a baby is left in a safe haven box. When there is no documentation of the babe to even give to the state other than the baby was left in a safe haven box, let alone provide the merest bits of knowledge of where and who brought the babe into the world, they are just left with the fact they were left in a box to tell the child – it sure seems both archaic and dehumanizing at the same time.

Growing up I had little to no knowledge, other than the made up story told to mom and dad by the county social worker in charge of finding homes for babies given up at birth. It was hard enough dealing with that little bit of info, but at least I knew my mother’s surname as dad had it on the receipt from my stay in the hospital with a surname that pointed to where some of my ancestors came from, but a baby left in a box won’t even have that smallest of snippets of knowledge.

It also brought up memories for me, memories I didn’t want to think about, including how often I’ve mentally recited my mantra of “It’s not if they leave, it’s when they leave”. Over the years from the time I was still a child to now, the wording has changed, but it’s still an active participant in my head today when something brings it to the surface. When you weren’t kept to start with, it sticks with you as to what you can expect life to be like, when you weren’t even worth keeping by your mother and what that says about you as well. And I know I’m not alone in feeling that way, imagine how hard this will be for safe haven babies.

And yes, I know people have other explanations, but the reality is the reality, you weren’t kept.

Even all these decades later – I still expect everyone in my life to eventually leave, I know they’ll see something in me that I can’t see. I also know these feelings I’ve always had are feelings other adoptees from my era still have, or had.

Maybe it will help you understand what I mean from a post I wrote in 2013 Everyone leaves…

Now imagine what a child may feel growing up that was left in a box when that’s their starting, and only story. Imagine how hard it would be to explain that to a child, a child who as they grow older likely have big feelings about what was done to them. A child who will also have all the typical questions that will be left unanswered, as my questions were left unanswered. At least my story included the context that society did not accept bastard children (no, mom and dad they didn’t use that word but I figured out it meant the same as illegitimate and that having sex before marriage was taboo and bad). That societal view may still be part of the child’s reality, or not, as times have changed since then for many people, so hopefully these babies today won’t be tainted with that making them suspect, at best, bastards as worst.

From the sheer amount of Baby Boxes in play today across the states, 98 in Indiana alone, expect many more of these stories to become part of adoption. Going backwards, instead of forward, I don’t see how it won’t become a stumbling block to the child, as it was in our days of stranger adoptions.

Thankful for Gregory Luce who does so much for adoptees and brought this to my attention. Indiana Senate Creates an Adoption-in-a-Box Pipeline

Indiana SB345 here