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…
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