Earnestine Nash-Mobley became pregnant with her first child when she was 16.
“I didn’t understand the consequences of sex,” she said. “… I was an unwed mother. What was I going to do with a child?”
She could have had an abortion or given the child up for adoption. Instead, she kept her son, raising him as she worked through high school.
One particularly hard lesson from that time still resonates with Mobley 51 years later.
“When I was getting dressed to go to prom, my mom asks, ‘Who’s going to keep your baby?’ I said, ‘I thought you were.’ She said, ‘No, that’s your baby.’ … That’s the best thing she ever could have done.”
Mobley, now married with five grown children, grew from those experiences and never regretted keeping her son. She understands that’s not always the case.
“Sometimes, babies are better off surrendered,” she said.
Mobley, as administrator for Freedom Worship Center on Taylor Thurston Road, is working with the city to install a Safe Haven Baby Box at Fire Station 1 where parents can anonymously surrender their infants without fear of prosecution.
State safe haven law, last amended in 2023, allows parents up to 45 days after a child is born to anonymously relinquish their infant, either at a hospital or fire station. It also allows for installation of baby safety devices to facilitate surrenders.
The city council on Tuesday approved placing a Safe Haven Baby Box at the fire station, provided Mobley raises the funds necessary to have it built and installed.
Mobley estimated that would take about $25,000.
“I’m going to reach out to doctors, lawyers, businesses — anybody who will see the need and help fill the need,” Mobley told The Dispatch. “… I’m giving myself 30 days to raise $25,000. That’s doable.”
What is a Safe Haven Box?
Safe Haven Baby Boxes, a nonprofit established in 2015, helps provide climate controlled boxes installed into an exterior wall of a fire station or hospital.
Once the box is opened, it triggers a silent alarm that notifies 911. When the infant is placed in the medical bassinet inside the box, a sensor triggers another alarm that notifies 911 a second time. The box’s exterior door locks after a baby is surrendered and an interior door allows first responders to remove the baby. Then the child is taken to a hospital for medical care.
From there, Columbus Fire and Rescue Chief Duane Hughes said, Child Protective Services takes over the case.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes’ 24-hour hotline is displayed on the outside of the box, and Hughes said pamphlets inside the box supply information to the surrendering party on what happens next.
In an informational packet emailed to The Dispatch, the organization claims the hotline has facilitated 130 safe surrenders in the U.S., while 39 infants have been surrendered in one of its boxes.
The National Safe Haven Alliance, another nonprofit, estimates 4,524 babies were surrendered at safe havens between 1999 and 2021, compared to 1,610 illegal infant abandonments in that span — 915 of whom were found dead.
“It beats putting a child in a dumpster,” Mobley said of the Safe Haven boxes. “Hopefully that child can be put up for adoption and go to a loving family and not be discarded like rubbish.”
The issue locally
Before Hughes became a firefighter, he heard plenty of horror stories about abandoned infants.
One summer when he was a teenager, he remembers two reports within a month of infants being left in garbage cans in Columbus.
In his three decades with the fire department, he has seen the horror firsthand.
“There have been instances when we’ve gone to locations where newborns have been abandoned, mostly at residences,” Hughes said.
Still, he doesn’t recall someone safely surrendering an infant at one of the fire stations.
“There’s the stigma, and then the thought they may face legal repercussions. ‘If I bring my baby here, you’re going to take it, lock me up or my face is going to be splashed all over the paper,’” he said. “So I think as a department, we’ve done a poor job letting the public know (the law).”
Hughes first learned about the Safe Haven boxes at a fire chiefs’ conference last year. Mobley reached out to him a few weeks ago.
Stricter laws governing abortion and reproductive rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 have Hughes convinced Columbus will see more infant surrenders, especially as access to contraception tightens.
“If you remove those options, the only thing you have is abstinence,” he said. “Historically, that has not proven to be effective.”
‘If not this, then what?’
Both Mobley and Hughes acknowledged people might be reluctant to support a Safe Haven box in their community.
“You do have people who feel it encourages abandonment of infants,” Hughes said. “Some would say it encourages out-of-wedlock births.”
To those people, though, he would point to centuries of churches offering safe haven asylum to mothers who gave up their children. His department, he said, is “continuing in that long standing tradition.”
“I would ask them, ‘If not this, then what?’” Hughes said. “… We see if they don’t have anywhere (safe) to abandon them, they end up in garbage can. It’s been by pure luck and grace, some of these infants have been found. There are many who are not found.”
Likewise, Mobley said she is focused on helping the children.
“It’s a sad subject, but it’s reality,” she said. “This is the world we’re living in today. Would you rather be willing to say, ‘I donated to that,’ or ‘I just sat on my hands and did nothing.’”
Safe Haven boxes will soon establish an online donation option for the Columbus box, Mobley said. In the meantime, those interested can call her at (662) 327-3337.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
