CARTERVILLE, IL (WSIL) — Illinois law allows a person to leave an unharmed baby up to 30 days old at a staffed police or fire station, hospital or emergency care facility. And to do this means you have to hand the baby to someone physically. One group says these laws are needed, but they believe more can be done to secure the safety of babies.

"The baby box is just an extension of the already existing Safe Haven Law," said founder and CEO of Safe Haven Baby Boxes Monica Kelsey.

Nearly 20 states have enacted laws to allow for these boxes. Illinois is not one of them.

"I don’t change the Safe Haven Law in any state other than the way a parent can surrender the child, which is placing the child in an electronically monitored box versus handing a child to a person," Kelsey explains.

Kelsey says these boxes have three alarms activated at different times when an infant is placed in one. These are just some of the features on every box.

"It’s also heated, it’s cooled, and the average time for a baby in these boxes that are placed in fire stations and hospital walls is right at about two minutes," Kelsey said.

Illinois law allows for a person to give up their infant anonymously … but some believe having to do it in person can take away from that privacy factor.

"That might work in some place like Chicago, where it’s a bigger area," said safe haven box advocate and Southern Illinois Resident Jennifer Glodo, "but here in southern Illinois everybody kind of knows everybody, so it’s a little harder to do. Anonymity isn’t quite as much as it would be in Chicago."

Glodo says these boxes should be made available to give people more options.

"Statistically, it helps save lives because women who are, who find themselves having to give up their child, sometimes come with a lot of shame even though what they’re doing is giving their child a chance at life. So this gives them the opportunity to do that," said Glodo.

In Illinois, for an infant to be surrendered a parent must walk in and present the child to someone on staff. Kelsey says that’s not always something women want to do.

"They don’t want to talk to anyone," she said. "They don’t want to tell anybody they’re doing this in secret. And so why not have an option for these parents to get 100 percent anonymity and allow these babies to be placed in electronically monitored boxes instead of thrown away like trash?"

But getting the law modified for these boxes hasn’t been easy and according to information received from Senator Dale Fowler, the Senate Legal Department has issues with the boxes. Senator Fowler sent this information from Senate Legal and they say, "Illinois is a Safe Haven State. Any facility/organization can register to become a Safe Haven. The use of "baby boxes" raises many safety concerns and, therefore are not utilized."

“I wanted to look into getting one put in because I just think it’s a resource that could possibly be needed, especially here in southern Illinois," said Glodo.

Another issue the legal department claims is the use of baby boxes would be an unfunded mandate that most cities could not fund or maintain, but Kelsey says they do not take state money.

"I’m going to say 95 to 98 percent of all boxes are not paid by the municipality," she said. "They are paid by private donors and people who want to give."

And with technology these days it gives places like volunteer fire departments, who aren’t staffed 24/7, to place a box at their facility still.

"They have to have a camera inside their box so they have full access to the inside of the box at all times. And actually, the camera sends notifications to their cell phones."

In fact — where Kelsey lives in Indiana is a baby box with a camera — and she can monitor it right on her cell phone.

"This actually sends a text message to my phone if there’s movement in the box. And so I will know before dispatch knows because I will get it in two seconds and dispatch will get it in 60 seconds," Kelsey says.

Glodo and Kelsey both know this is an uphill battle but one worthy of doing in hopes of making a difference and seeing baby boxes in Illinois.

“I want to raise awareness about it, is get that discussion started," said Glodo. "Because when you get more people involved, you know, you have more ideas and there would be a better way to resolve it for those rural areas where there’s not as much staff."

"It might take a while, It might take years, but done way Illinois will have boxes in this state," said Kelsey.

Currently, four states that border Illinois allow Safe Haven Boxes, those are Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa