The Arizona Safe Baby Haven Foundation was formed by a volunteer team of health care workers, firefighters, teachers, social workers, and other concerned citizens. The team’s mission is to increase awareness about Arizona’s Safe Haven Law, in hopes of saving precious lives.
The law, passed in 2001, states that a person will not face criminal charges for leaving an unharmed newborn baby with a Safe Haven provider. Our volunteers educate professionals such as social workers, firefighters, nurses, hospitals, etc on the Safe Baby Haven Law, work with pregnant women who need support and guidance, educate the community at health fairs, schools, maintain the Arizona Safe Baby Haven website and 24-hour hotline for pregnant mothers, etc. Some of our volunteers have even adopted Safe Haven babies!
Thanks to the Baby Safe Haven law, babies who might have been thrown away or abandoned are instead placed with loving adoptive parents. Also, the moms who might have performed desperate acts and could have potentially have spent the rest of their lives in jail, instead are anonymous heroes, giving their child life and protecting themselves.
All too often we hear stories of children in Arizona who are abandoned--left on the streets, left in restrooms or left in the garbage. Many of our volunteers have seen this first hand as they are nurses, firefighters and other community members who have tried to rescue abandoned babies. The Arizona Safe Haven Foundation's goal is to eliminate these horrific stories of child abandonment and to replace it with stories of successful relinquishment. They truly are a Safe Haven to mother and child.
It has been said that no news is good news. This is often the case with our Foundation. No news means that no babies have been abandoned. However, that doesn't mean that our work isn't needed! Our volunteers answer hundreds of calls on our Hotline, work at community events to raise awareness and fundraise so that everyone will know about the law. (While the Safe Haven law was passed in 2001, no money was given for the education of the law).