GERMANY has seen a disturbing growth in "infanticides" in the past several years. They usually occur when a mother decides she does not want or cannot keep her newborn baby. A woman may beat or strangle her baby, or just leave it in a trash can or other random location to die of exposure. Germany developed a program a few years ago in response to the alarming growth in the number of infanticides. The program involves baby "drop-boxes," and just in Berlin six children have been dropped off and thus saved. Now the four-year-old program is again the subject of news as Fox News reports that the German government, especially city councils, is launching a major campaign to advertise the drop-boxes and urging mothers to use them instead of resorting to murder.
Before Germany made the drop-boxes available, researcher Meral Burul told the BBC he found that at least 1,000 infants were discarded each year. If women are given this option, even if just one life is saved, it's worth it.
Called Baby-Klappe hatches, the baby drop-boxes are "heated nest[s] in the walls of hospitals," as described by the BBC, where mothers can anonymously leave an unwanted child.
It is an incredibly safe process, both to protect the baby and the mother's desired anonymity. The Fox News article explains that the drop-off point is well-hidden from security cameras and under tree cover or otherwise shielded from the view of the public eye. The baby is put onto a tray, slid into the hospital, and moved gently to a heated cot. Once enough time elapses for the mother to get away, an alarm goes off so nurses learn they have a new charge.
A mother has a grace period -- usually up to three months -- to come back and reclaim her child. Otherwise, the baby will be put up for adoption.
The program began in 2003, but had its criticism in Parliament before the government passed the original bill, as the BBC reported at the time.
The arguments against the Baby-Klappe are similar to arguments here in the United States against emergency contraception, safe-sex education, and other solutions to helping people who make "bad" decisions, can't handle certain consequences, or are in environments that limit the options. Fox News reports that members of the clergy and various charities think the Baby-Klappe will just encourage more women to "dump their children."
This claim is just as ridiculous as its comparable arguments in this country. At least the prevailing majority understood that, and didn't set unnecessary boundaries like having to be 18 or limiting accessibility. There is no reason to think that women will have more unprotected sex and then want to dump their children even more just because there is a safe option if something happened. Unfortunately, there will always be desperate women, stuck in a situation that makes getting rid of the baby seem like the only option. There will be women who choose to take that option. As long as there is even one woman who thinks that way and takes such measures, there should be some place where she can turn.
Of course preventative measures are important. No one wants women to even be in situations where they are too afraid to tell their own partners about being pregnant. It would be marvelous if no woman were incapable of caring for her child because of a lack of income, housing or employment. Ideally there would also be no woman who was just afraid or too emotionally unstable to handle caring for the child she carried to term. But of course there will be women in any one of these or other situations, and if a woman really thinks that the best option for her, the baby, or both of them is to discard her own child and she is willing to follow through, then something needs to be done.
Baby-Klappen are not supposed to just be another choice in child care, but they are the last resort. They keep the dumpster in a back alley from being the last resort.
Ashlee Wilkins's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at awilkins@cavalierdaily.com.
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