DENVER — Sixteen years ago, a woman gave birth to a baby girl and two days later knocked on the door of fire station 2 in Westminster.
“They came over. She was holding me and passed me over. They thought something was wrong with me. So they quickly took me in and they were checking on me. When they found out everything was fine and I was completely healthy, they came back to her to try and find her but she left,” said Halle Burke, who was adopted by her family six months later.
Beyond her unusual beginning, Burke has led a relatively normal life. She runs track and field, performs in school plays and, most recently, helps get legislation passed at the State Capitol.
“I felt like that, with the help of other people, that I was able to help with the passing of a bill of something I know will affect Colorado forever,” said Burke, who was at the capitol to see Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) sign the bill on Monday.
The bill, which passed the state house and senate unanimously, requires that a lesson about the Safe Haven law be taught in health education classes.
“I feel like most of these problems would happen around teenage pregnancy,” she said. “So with the help of the teaching of the Safe Haven law at school, it will help a lot to pass that around. That idea that if you’re pregnant and you don’t know what to do, you’re not ready to have a child, that you have another choice.”
Burke has a loving family but she sometimes thinks about what would have been had her birth mother not delivered her to the fire station that day.
“It makes me feel really, to be honest, terrified, that I was so lucky. And here I am. I am at home with this loving family and everything and here are these other kids around the world getting discarded, so I felt it was really important for me to try and do something about it.”
More than 50 babies have been turned in to Safe Havens since the law became official in 2000. More than 3,000 babies have been surrendered to those sites nationwide.
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