Anonymous Isn’t Safe: Michigan’s Baby Box Bills Hurt the Most Vulnerable
Boxes Are for Trash, Not Babies:
Why Michigan Must Reject HB 4067, 4068 & 4369
As adoptees and advocates, we are sounding the alarm: baby boxes are not safe, ethical, or humane. They are legalized human trafficking, trauma sealed in metal, and they are a dangerous step backwards for the rights of children, mothers, and families in Michigan.
Let’s be absolutely clear: We hate baby boxes. We hate what they represent and we hate the lie they tell—that it's possible to anonymously and permanently separate a child from their mother separate without causing lifelong harm. Adoptees from the closed adoption era will be the first to tell you—we don’t need papers to find who we come from. Stories are published all the time about babies left on doorsteps, benches, and in garbage bags who all found their biological family. We can also tell you that there is nothing that feels “safe” about losing your Mom. Baby boxes strip children of the most basic human right: the right to know who they are and where they come from. No medical history. No birth date. No ancestry. No truth. Just a silent drop, a sealed door, and a life built on questions that can’t be answered until they go searching for them…and often they will!
These bills—HB 4067, 4069, and 4368 will turn Michigan into a dumping ground for the adoption industry.
Let’s not pretend this is about helping women in crisis. A woman in crisis is not going to be looking for a baby box. Statistics show that infant abandonment is already extremely rare, and that those in crisis do not use these devices. This legislation does nothing to address poverty, domestic violence, substance use, lack of access to reproductive health care, or postpartum mental health—the real reasons people feel they can’t parent.
What baby boxes do provide is an easy legal loophole to traffick infants into a multi-billion-dollar industry. And yes, we said traffick. Because when a baby is anonymously surrendered, there is no oversight, no consent, and no way to know if the person leaving the child even had the legal right to do so. A coercive partner? A trafficker? An abusive parent? The box doesn’t care. The box just closes.
What happens to these infants? They are quietly funneled into the private adoption system, where they’re matched with prospective adoptive couples—often for tens of thousands of dollars. The process is frequently pushed through counties known for “adoption-friendly” judges, where oversight is minimal and questions go unasked. Agencies often bring in their own contracted investigators who produce reports claiming that no biological family members can be located or are willing to step forward.
On the surface, it all looks legitimate. But behind the paperwork is a system built to meet demand not protect the rights of children or their families.
These bills promote secrecy, not safety.
HB 4067 allows the use of anonymous baby boxes for infant surrender, bypassing human contact or support. No one will be there to make sure that this woman is not being forced or that it is even the mother placing the baby and not someone else!
HB 4069 rewrites Michigan law to provide legal immunity to anyone who uses one as long as the infant is under 72 hours old… but how exactly will they know when they won’t come with any record of birth, and what do they propose they will do with these supposed anonymously placed babies who don’t fit that criteria?
HB 4368 adds protocols for reporting the deaths of these abandoned infants—yes, that’s part of the plan too. If you put a dead baby in the box, don’t worry - your probably protected!
Seriously!! This is the best we can do as a society for vulnerable mothers? Design systems for when the baby dies in the box?
We deserve better. Women deserve better. Children deserve the truth!
Adoption should never begin with shame, secrecy, and silence. Baby boxes guarantee all three. And worse, they frame abandonment as compassionate, as if severing a mother from her newborn without support, information, or accountability is an act of love.
It’s not. It’s an act of erasure. And we refuse to be erased.
Michigan lawmakers: this is your chance to reject dystopia.
You are voting on whether or not to legalize a system that treats infants as anonymous property and pretends trauma isn’t real. Do you want Michigan to be the kind of state that installs hatches in fire stations for newborns like libraries have drop offs for books? Is this really how we want to “help” families?
Because adoptees are watching. We are speaking. We are organizing. And we are not going away.
Overview of This Terrible Legislation
HB 4067 – Expanding the Safe Delivery Law to Include "Newborn Safety Devices" Introduced in February 2025, this bill would amend Michigan’s existing safe delivery law (Probate Code, Chapter XII) to allow newborns (up to 72 hours old) to be surrendered via “newborn safety devices”—commonly known as baby boxes—installed at emergency service locations that operate 24/7 Michigan LegislatureLegiScan. It prescribes specifications for these devices: temperature control, anonymity features, automatic alerts to staff, and design visibility into the container and says the Department of Health and Human Services must publish their locations and certain data on its website Michigan LegislatureLegiScan.
HB 4069 – Penal Code Revision to Recognize Baby Boxes as Safe Surrender This bill changes Michigan’s penal code to explicitly include surrender via a newborn abandonment device as an acceptable alternative to the current Safe Haven Laws where infants are turned over to a human who can evaluate the situation and try to potentially help the mother. It ensures no criminal charges for abandonment if parents use these devices to relinquish newborns within 72 hours of birth, but it doesn’t indicate how anyone would know the infant’s actual birth date if they come with no legal documentation. LegiScanBillTrack50. HB 4069 is tied to HB 4067—both must pass for either to become law Stop Baby Boxes Now! BillTrack50.
HB 4368 – Dead Infant Reporting Protocols Introduced in April 2025, this bill amends the Public Health Code to require death reporting for infants who die after being surrendered via baby boxes. It mandates confidentiality by listing such infants as “Baby Doe” on death certificates and omitting identifying information so we are not sure how anyone would be held responsible for the death. It basically protects the privacy of someone putting a dead baby in a box. BillTrack50LegiScan.