The below op-ed, by State Senator Regina Birdsell, was originally published in the Union Leader on September 13, 2024. Senator Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead) represents District 19.
With the governor’s signing of HB 1607 and the new law taking effect in just a month, I am thrilled that New Hampshire is now on the forefront of providing robust safe haven protections for vulnerable unwanted infants.
The new law enhances our existing safe haven protections in three key ways.
First, it raises the maximum age for surrender of these children from seven to 61 days. A number of New Hampshire babies — including the well-known case of two-week-old Mattilynn Kitner in Somersworth — have died of neglect and abuse in their first months of life; this provision extends critical safe haven protections to those particularly at-risk babies.
Second, parents who use the safe haven law cannot be prosecuted with evidence collected from the safe and legal surrender of their baby. This exclusionary rule helps to address law enforcement’s previous exploitation of a child’s surrender to catch and prosecute parents for past crimes. Sadly, these actions rendered the previous law ineffective for those children most at risk. The current law prioritizes what matters most — saving lives.
Finally, the law’s expansion approves the voluntary use of infant safety devices, often called ‘baby boxes,’ by certain 24-hour staffed facilities. These devices can safely accept infants from parents who wish to remain anonymous and immediately alert staff to the presence of a surrendered infant.
You would think such common sense protections for our most vulnerable children would have enjoyed support from both sides of the aisle. Sadly, despite their protestations about caring for babies after birth, our Democrat colleagues stood in staunch opposition to this bill. I am enormously proud of our unified Republican support and defense of saving these children. It was only due to our efforts that the bill was successfully shepherded through the House and narrowly survived the coordinated efforts of Democrats to kill it.
Now that these expanded protections are poised to take effect, we can each play our part to ensure unwanted and at-risk children can be safely surrendered by their parents and saved from potential harm or even death. Encourage your church to set itself up as a safe haven by posting an external sign to that effect with staffing hours; 24-hour staffed facilities, such as firehouses, are ideal for the installation of a baby box. Consider raising awareness of the expanded safe haven provisions with your town and lobbying it to install a baby box in your local firehouse.
One comment you may hear about safe haven laws and baby boxes is that they don’t save “many” babies. Every life is precious, and for every child who is surrendered there are more who are enduring neglect and abandonment who could instead be safely surrendered. We owe it to these vulnerable children to get the word out and inform their parents that there is another way. If a single child’s life is saved as a result, it will have been well worth it.
