For the Indiana boxes, the state Department of Health officials issued a report voicing concerns that the incubators could be a liability. Kelsey believes that the boxes are safe, and the anonymity afforded by the new baby boxes will encourage more women to follow the Baby Moses laws rather than illegally abandoning their infants.

In her mid-30s, Monica Kelsey learned her life began in tragedy. Her mother, at the age of 17, had been attacked, raped and left for dead. In the aftermath of her assault, she decided to have an abortion, still illegal in 1972. But at the underground clinic she had a change of heart, according to Kelsey’sautobiography, and continued with her pregnancy. Later, she would abandon her infant when Kelsey was two hours old.

More than four decades later, Kelsey is now a volunteer firefighter and anti-abortion advocate. She’s among those leading the charge to install climate-controlled baby boxes — places for mothers to anonymously deposit their unwanted children — across Indiana, the first of which were placed at the end of April.

“This is not criminal,” Kelsey recently told the AP. “This is legal. We don’t want to push women away.”

The boxes work a bit like a cross between a library book drop-off and a people-pod you might find in a Japanese capsule hotel. Padded and kept at comfortable temperature, the small box automatically alerts emergency responders within a minute of a baby being deposited. Kelsey told IndyStar that the incubator locks after a baby is placed inside, and any baby left in one will be retrieved within five minutes.

The first receptacle was recently embedded in the brick wall of a fire station in the Indiana town of Woodburn, near the Ohio border. Another box followed in Michigan City. Each box costs between $1,500 and $2,000, according to Kelsey; Indiana’s Knights of Columbus will fund the initial batch of 100.

Baby boxes are legal thanks to so-called safe haven legislation, also known colloquially as Baby Moses laws. In 1999, then-governor of Texas George W. Bush signed the first Baby Moses bill into law, in the wake of 13 dead infants found in Houston trash bins.

All 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C., now have some form of such child abandonment laws. Abandoned infants must be no older than a certain age;Indiana’s law stipulates children under 45 days old may be anonymously dropped off at a firehouse, hospital or police station.

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