Maine is expected to get its first Baby Box, a device created for at-risk mothers to surrender their newborns safely and anonymously.
Rumford Fire Chief Chris Reed told News Center Maine that a new fire station being built downtown is expected to have a baby box. The box would “by all accounts, be the first such installation in Maine,” according to the report.
“It’s a prime location,” Reed said of Rumford. “There’s not a lot of services here that would be available to a newborn mother in Rumford.”
Reed added that the town has high poverty, drug use, limited family resources, and the Rumford Hospital closed its maternity ward in February of last year.
“Why would you want to place a baby where it’s at high risk anywhere, whether it’s where it shouldn’t be outside, in bad conditions, left alone in a car?” Reed said. “It’s a last-minute option to give the mother an option to place the baby in a safe location.”
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 outside, exterior walls of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals that can be accessed from 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 quickly removed and sent to a hospital for a wellness check. From there, the baby is usually placed into state custody and often quickly adopted.
Maine’s safe haven law passed in 2002 and allows parents to surrender a newborn to medical services provider, including hospitals, police stations, doctor’s offices, and fire stations. In 2021, Republican state lawmakers passed an amendment expanding the law to allow for baby boxes.
“However, the 2021 amendment compelled the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to write specific rules dictating how boxes could be implemented around the state,” the report states, noting that no such rule has been written yet.
A DHHS spokesperson told the outlet the department “expects to propose rules during calendar year 2024 through the administrative procedure act process outlined in statute.”
Reed said the fire department has already received donations and noted that the funding for the box is entirely donation-based.
“If we save one baby, it’s worth it,” he said.
