Saving Unwanted Babies

April 6, 2007 — -- Japan, not without some controversy, has joined a growing list of countries offering so-called "baby drops" -- safe havens where parents can anonymously drop off their unwanted infants.

The Catholic-run Jikei Hospital on the island of Kumamoto, 550 miles southwest of Tokyo, has just been given permission to install what hospital administrators call the "Cradle of the White Stork."

The "stork's cradle" is a small incubator bed accessible through a small window in the hospital wall. An alarm bell rings within minutes after a baby is anonymously left in the incubator, signaling nurses to retrieve the infant.

The idea is patterned after programs in Italy as well as Germany's "baby box," initiated by a Christian organization in Hamburg in 2000. Today, more than 90 such drop-offs are located throughout Germany.

"We want to save both the children and the mothers," Jikei Hospital director Taiji Hasuda told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "The children are not the ones responsible for their birth."

The plan came about after a series of high-profile cases in which parents reportedly abandoned newborn babies in parks, shopping centers, supermarkets and even in bicycle baskets.

In Kumamoto, a university student gave birth to a baby girl last year in a washroom. Soon, the daughter was dead and the student was sentenced to six years in prison for murder. During her trial, the student wept openly about the child she said she had killed. The case received a lot of publicity and encouraged administrators at Jikei Hospital to come up with the "stork's cradle" plan.

"This hospital places great value on life," head nurse Yukiko Tajiri told reporters in Japan. "We want to widen the choices available to women."

Babies placed in the incubator will be cared for by the hospital staff and then turned over to "infant homes" or other child-care facilities. If parents of the abandoned children reveal their identities, the hospital will then try to find foster parents after obtaining the consent of the biological parents. It's a tall order in a country that does not embrace adoption.