albion
11-05-2005, 09:59 PM
Europe addresses abandoned baby problem
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9816532/page/2/
Scandal 'in a civilized land'
This summer, the grisly discovery in eastern Germany of nine newborns whose remains were stuffed into flower pots and a fish tank in a garden fueled calls in that country for more places where mothers could secretly drop off unwanted babies.
“It is a scandal that in a civilized land mothers must bring their children into the world in train station toilets and bathtubs because they are too afraid to go to a hospital,” said Dr. Juergen Moysich, chairman of SterniPaark, a group that organized the “baby slot” program in Hamburg, Germany.
Hamburg started its program in 2000 after a newborn was found dead in a garbage container. The first “babyklappe” was put at a day care center near the train station in a poor neighborhood. So far, 22 babies have been left at Hamburg’s two “slots,” with seven of those infants later reclaimed by their birth mothers. Three babies were handed over directly by mothers who called SterniPaark’s hot line, the group said.
In the more than five years since the introduction of baby slots in Hamburg, only four infants — three of them dead — have been found abandoned in the city. That is fewer than were found in 1999 alone, when five discarded newborns were found.
In all, Germany now has 78 “babyklappe” facilities, and about a dozen more are planned in various cities.
Babies abandoned in Hungary, Austria
In Hungary, 34 infants have been left in a dozen incubators around the country, generally near hospital entrances, since 1996. In Austria, 12 infants have been slid into a “babyklappe” in the last five years.
Baby-slots would help “a woman who is desperate but who wants to save her child and doesn’t have the courage ... to go to a hospital,” said Enrico Guida, health director of Annunziata’s maternity and pediatric hospital.
Guida said that after this summer’s cases of abandonment in Italy he began sounding out colleagues about putting a baby-slot either at the hospital or somewhere else in Naples, which has some of Italy’s poorest neighborhoods.
Apparently no central office keeps track of the total number of women who resort to the Italian law on anonymous births, but a small sampling indicates there are few. Of the 1,300 babies born last year at Annunziata, six were anonymous. In Rome, where 25,943 babies were born in 2004, the number was 26.
An anti-abortion group, Movement for Life, has placed a half-dozen “cradles for life” near convents in Italy over the past decades, but says no babies have ever been left in them. Nobody knows how many newborns are discarded each year because the crime can easily go undetected.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9816532/page/2/
Scandal 'in a civilized land'
This summer, the grisly discovery in eastern Germany of nine newborns whose remains were stuffed into flower pots and a fish tank in a garden fueled calls in that country for more places where mothers could secretly drop off unwanted babies.
“It is a scandal that in a civilized land mothers must bring their children into the world in train station toilets and bathtubs because they are too afraid to go to a hospital,” said Dr. Juergen Moysich, chairman of SterniPaark, a group that organized the “baby slot” program in Hamburg, Germany.
Hamburg started its program in 2000 after a newborn was found dead in a garbage container. The first “babyklappe” was put at a day care center near the train station in a poor neighborhood. So far, 22 babies have been left at Hamburg’s two “slots,” with seven of those infants later reclaimed by their birth mothers. Three babies were handed over directly by mothers who called SterniPaark’s hot line, the group said.
In the more than five years since the introduction of baby slots in Hamburg, only four infants — three of them dead — have been found abandoned in the city. That is fewer than were found in 1999 alone, when five discarded newborns were found.
In all, Germany now has 78 “babyklappe” facilities, and about a dozen more are planned in various cities.
Babies abandoned in Hungary, Austria
In Hungary, 34 infants have been left in a dozen incubators around the country, generally near hospital entrances, since 1996. In Austria, 12 infants have been slid into a “babyklappe” in the last five years.
Baby-slots would help “a woman who is desperate but who wants to save her child and doesn’t have the courage ... to go to a hospital,” said Enrico Guida, health director of Annunziata’s maternity and pediatric hospital.
Guida said that after this summer’s cases of abandonment in Italy he began sounding out colleagues about putting a baby-slot either at the hospital or somewhere else in Naples, which has some of Italy’s poorest neighborhoods.
Apparently no central office keeps track of the total number of women who resort to the Italian law on anonymous births, but a small sampling indicates there are few. Of the 1,300 babies born last year at Annunziata, six were anonymous. In Rome, where 25,943 babies were born in 2004, the number was 26.
An anti-abortion group, Movement for Life, has placed a half-dozen “cradles for life” near convents in Italy over the past decades, but says no babies have ever been left in them. Nobody knows how many newborns are discarded each year because the crime can easily go undetected.