BLACKFOOT — Monica Kelsey, who created the first baby box seven years ago, shared her story at Tuesday’s celebration of Idaho’s first Safe Haven Baby Box, located in the outside wall of the Grove Creek Medical Center at 350 N. Meridian St. in Blackfoot.
The beginning of this growing movement was actually 52 years ago in 1972 when a 17-year-old girl was raped and left to die, Kelsey said. The teen not only lived, but found the courage to press charges. As the rapist began his prison sentence, the girl began to realize that she was pregnant, Kelsey said.
Without any option for abortion, she again found the courage to have the baby and in the spring of 1973 she abandoned her 2-hour-old baby girl. That baby was later named Monica, Kelsey related in telling her own story.
Today Kelsey honors the courage of her birth mother and sees her as a hero — thinking of what was best for both of them.
Forty-three years later Kelsey was married and working as a firefighter medic in a small town in Indiana. However, she retired to pursue her passion to bring help to moms and babies in similar situations as she and her mom experienced.
Kelsey knew babies could be given up at fire stations, but she dreamed of a more private and anonymous way for this very difficult process.
In her town of 2,000 people, she was able to create the first Safe Haven Baby Box in 2016 — it helped that the mayor was also her husband.
At Tuesday’s baby box blessing event in Blackfoot, Kelsey said she never thought her small town in Indiana would use that original baby box, but she wanted it there just in case. Three years after it was installed that baby box was used for the first and, so far, only time.
Meanwhile, across the nation, Safe Haven Baby Boxes were being established. In fact, since Idaho’s Safe Haven Baby Act was amended in March, three more states added baby boxes. After just seven years, there are now 19 states with Safe Haven Baby Boxes and Blackfoot’s box is the 245th.
There have been a total of 200 babies nationwide who have passed through the boxes to a new life of greater hope.
As Grove Creek Director of Nursing Patty Killian welcomed the gathered supporters in Blackfoot on Tuesday, she noted they included providers, educators and advocates of “Saving babies — one box at a time,” the slogan imprinted on the box’s door.
Among those gathered to celebrate was Hailey Dahle who began the baby box project encouraged by Grove Creek’s Killian and Samantha Matamoros.
Also in attendance were Bingham Memorial Hospital administrators and Bingham Memorial Hospital Foundation Board members. The foundation members paid for the baby box.
Blackfoot Mayor Marc Carroll and former City Councilwoman Jan Simpson also came to celebrate this achievement as did state Sen. Julie VanOrden, R-Pingree. Carroll and Simpson worked to facilitate granting local authority to proceed while VanOrden spearheaded the legislation to extend the baby box opportunity across Idaho.
To a full tent of leaders, families and at least one doctor and nurse still in scrubs, lay clergy Simpson concluded the grand opening by pronouncing the following blessing on the box:
“We ask for your blessing on a box. Not an ordinary box, but a box that has been lovingly constructed to hold the most precious cargo … a baby. We ask your blessing (on) all those whose vision and determination created this box. We ask for your blessing on those mothers or fathers who decide to use this box to secure a safe release for their babies… and finally and most importantly, we ask for your blessing on the babies who may be placed in this box that they may have a happy and healthy future.”
Amen.