Illinois is celebrating nearly three years without a baby being illegally abandoned, almost 25 years after the passage of a state law allowing parents to surrender infants legally to “safe havens."
The Illinois Abandoned Newborn Infant Protection Act allows people to anonymously drop off unharmed infants up to 30 days old at designated places — such as hospitals and police and fire stations — without fear of facing civil or criminal liability.
Babies surrendered through the program have a much better chance of survival than when they are illegally abandoned.
A baby hasn’t been illegally surrendered in Illinois since July 2023, according to the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation. That's a total of more than 1,000 days and counting, nearly double the previous record of 577 days from October 2017 to May 2019.
Dawn Geras, the group’s executive chair, said the milestone made her emotional as she thought back to when Illinois’ version of the bill, inspired by headlines she had read about abandoned children who died, was drafted around her kitchen table before it was passed in 2001.
Now some of the children who were surrendered in the first years after the legislation was passed gather in the area for a reunion of “safe haven cousins.” Many of them are now in their 20s.
