NAAM Day 13: Nebraska: Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc Playing with Numbers

Earlier this week, the Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc Facebook page posted this chart with the comment:

The graph speaks for itself. It’s time for Nebraska to implement Baby Boxes. See the data for yourself on the Nebraska DCS website.

Mrs. Kelsey is correct. It does speak for itself, but not in the way that she thinks it does.

This chart comes from the Nebraska DCS website and there is no quibble with that.

But, note that it indicates the number of abandoned babies up to 1 year of age. The Nebraska Safe Haven law, passed in 2008 limits the age an infant can be safe havend to 30 days. (It was recently increased to 90) That’s a big difference, especially when newborns are most at risk for discard and murder within the first 24 hours of birth. Chances decrease with each day. There is a different pathology and motive in the abandonment/murder of older infants.

After a long hiatus from collecting newborn abandonment/death news I started again with the Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now! website in 2020. I found 3 cases of newborn discard/infantacide that falls within the parameters of Nebaska’s Safe Haven Law,

April 2020:

February 2022

November 2023

I also note that Baby Ana*, the first baby that was surrendered via trad Safe Haven in 2009, was quickly retrieved by her mother.

This FB post is a perfect example of how Monica Kelsey, the founder/CEO of SHBB Inc, manipulates numbers and public opinion. In this case, taking one set of numbers and twisting them to say what it doesn’t. Or maybe she doesn’t notice or care. The number of discards that she profers coulda-shoulda been Safe Haven cases is as inflated as the Hindenberg was before it burned out at Lakehurst.

The National Safe Haven Alliance and I both collect data. We come pretty close to each other’s figures. Unfortunately, there is no nationwide system to collect these numbers, though, so cases get collected and lumped together willy-nilly or not at all. One state (I forget which) only publishes the number of abandoned children age 0 to age 18, with no breakdown! Everything is left to the researcher’s ability to track cases and stats down and their individual interpretation of them. Mrs. Kelsey, for instance, seems to include discarded fetuses/stillbirths.

Mrs. Kelsey also complains about the difficulty of gathering sound data but that doesn’t keep her from throwing out numbers in some states that are far beyond what we have. Way beyond!

And the media never questions what it’s fed.

We have mentioned this before and asked for stat receipts, but none have been explained or published.

The truth is always more interesting than alternative facts.

Cross-posted to Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now!

*Children of the Corn: Reporting, Theory, and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska : Baby Love Child and I published this near-daily blog during 2008 Nebraska Fiasco that occurred after the Unicam passed a Safe Haven bill with no age limit. Dozens of children, some from out of state, were dropped off at hospitals, but none were of Safe Haven age. The legislature, in an emergency session, created a new “normal” bill with a 30-day limitation. When I tried to link this today, I had problems with my usual browser and switched to Edge, which worked fine.

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