Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

April 2020 – As part of his senior project, Hunter Wart, now 19, spent more than a year raising $10,000 to purchase a Safe Haven Baby Box (shbb.org) to be installed at a local fire station in Seymour, Indiana. He began mowing yards and collecting scrap metal as a junior in high school, and after saving the needed funds, the baby box was installed in June 2019. Then 224 days later, in January, a mother safely and anonymously surrendered her baby girl inside the baby box. The baby was only an hour old.

The system worked seamlessly, and firefighters were notified that the baby was inside the box within only a minute of her being placed there. They cared for her until an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital. Baby Mia, as Wart requested she be called, is doing well.

“I am glad that she is safe,” Wart said.

While the baby boxes are intended to be a last resort for mothers in crisis, efforts continue to spread the installation of these boxes to other communities.

“The Seymour Fire Department’s box is one of 24 installed in several states since 2016 by Safe Haven Baby Boxes,” CNN reported. “Across Indiana, five infants have been placed in the boxes over the last two years.”

cnn.com, 1/27/20