Hoosier leaders gathered Tuesday at the Statehouse to hail the 25th anniversary of a safe haven law that encourages parents to surrender infants rather than abandon them.
It “has protected the most vulnerable among us and given hope to others in crisis for a quarter of a century,” said Linda Znachko, founder of He Knows Your Name. The ministry buries “unclaimed” children — including aborted and miscarried infants — and adults.
The law was approved in 2000, after an infant was found dead outside a hospital emergency room.
Imagine “a mother gently laying her baby down, scared to go in the hospital,” Znachko said. She “left her baby, I’m sure, hoping that someone would find that child. And unfortunately, no one did until it was too late.”
The law allows the surrender of unharmed infants, without legal consequences, to emergency medical services providers like hospitals and volunteer fire departments. The handoffs can be in person, or through newborn safety devices better known as baby boxes.
Thirty-one have been surrendered in Indiana since 2017, a He Knows Your Name spokesperson said.
“These boxes are more than plastic and technology. They are mercy made tangible,” said Safe Haven Baby Box Founder Monica Kelsey.
Indiana went 11 years without finding lifeless, abandoned infants, according to Znachko.
“I actually thought that’s what we were going to be celebrating here today,” she said. But “everything changed” when a deceased newborn was discovered at an Indianapolis park in September.
“On this 25th anniversary celebration, I would like us all to recommit ourselves to … taking up this cause all over again,” Znachko said. “… We cannot allow women in crisis to remain under-resourced, under-educated in their most desperate hour.”
She welcomed Indiana’s top leaders to the stage, set up feet away from a pro-redistricting gathering.
“We are setting the trend in this nation, across the gamut, that we honor the sanctity of life,” Gov. Mike Braun said. “And I think you can count on all of us, as legislators and as your governor: we won’t let you down on that very important issue.”
He, like Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, took the opportunity to shore up his “pro-life” credentials. Both lauded the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the right to an abortion in 2022, noting Indiana was the first state to respond with a near-total ban on abortions.
“This is a good law and a good tool to protect newborns and make sure women have a pro-life option available to them at all times,” said Bray, who leads the Senate’s GOP supermajority.
He said the state should educate Hoosiers about the law and add more surrender locations.
“We’re creating a culture in Indiana that puts innocent lives first,” said House Speaker Todd Huston, leader of that chamber’s Republican supermajority. “… Indiana has installed more baby boxes than any other state in the nation.”
Brandi Koie, one of the first to adopt a baby under the law, said it’s a “win for all of us.”
“When it’s properly utilized, birth mothers who aren’t yet ready or equipped to parent, they get second chances at life. That’s a win,” Koie said. “Babies who are born into a crisis situation, they’re saved … That’s a win. Waiting arms become filled at long last.”
She spoke directly to those birth mothers.
“I want to say: thank you. You are so brave. You are so loved. You are so appreciated,” Koie said. “I want you to know that my daughter has grown up knowing that her birth mother loved her first, and that she did so sacrificially.”
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