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After a 14-year-old girl abandoned her newborn baby in a shed in Townsend in October 2000, two Blount County women were determined to do something to prevent a similar incidents in the future.

So Lisa Yount and her friend Shawna McConnell worked with law enforcement officials and legislators to create Tennessee's safe haven law -- which allows mothers of newborns to surrender unharmed babies to designated medical facilities within 72 hours of birth without fear of being prosecuted.

They also co-founded Blount County's A Secret Safe Place, which is a statewide organization that aims to prevent newborn abandonment and educate the public about the safe haven law. Leaders of A Secret Safe Place are hosting an upcoming fundraiser.

A Christmas Shopping Extravaganza, hosted by leaders of A Secret Safe Place, will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at First Baptist Church Maryville in the old fellowship hall

For more information or to be a vendor at the event call 865-254-2208.

Since 2004, at least 22 newborns across the state have been saved as a result of the safe haven law, which went into effect in 2001.

According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway -- an organization that provides information family and children issues -- about 47 states have enacted safe haven legislation.

Yount said there are many programs available to women in difficult situations. A Secret Safe Place helps close the gap between programs that provide other resources such as sex education or adoption information.

"A Secret Safe Place -- that is for the one who realizes the unthinkable," who has kept her pregnancy a secret and with time running out doesn't know what to do, she said. "It closes the gap and offers her one more option -- one last chance to make a life-saving choice."