Last month, Switzerland opened its eighth baby hatch. Here’s what it is, and why it’s so controversial.
A baby box in the Czech Republic. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
In the first week of February, Switzerland opened its eighth baby hatch in the city of Sion. As the name suggests, parents not ready to care for a child can leave their newborn in the hatch, knowing that the child will be safe in the care center inside and that the family will suffer no legal repercussions for doing so.
How Long Have Baby Hatches Existed?
A medieval foundling wheel. Image Source: WordPress/Judith Land
While the very idea of a baby hatch has proven contentious as of late, parents deserting their newborns is anything but a new phenomenon. Economic uncertainty, unwanted pregnancies, an unsafe home environment, governmental gender restrictions, or newborn disabilities have all led families to abandon infants throughout history (perhaps as a way to avoid infanticide or abortion).
Likewise, Catholic churches and convents — staunch advocates of a child’s right to life — have taken in abandoned children for as long as they have existed. Since the Middle Ages, parents who abandoned their infants would often leave them in the “foundling wheels” of these religious institutions.
Why Are They So Controversial Now?
Fast forward a handful of centuries, and the idea is generally the same. That said, more places accept abandoned newborns now, and many more families will not face legal consequences for leaving their child behind. However, a new issue has emerged.
As Nottingham University psychologist Kevin Browne told the BBC, “studies in Hungary show that it’s not necessarily mothers who place babies in these boxes — that it’s relatives, pimps, step-fathers, fathers.” According to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), this poses a problem as there is no way to know if there was a willing mother behind the desertion of the infant or if she was forced to give her child up.
On the other hand, hatch proponents claim that if the hatches aren’t in place, those who do not want to keep their babies might abandon them on the streets — a far more dangerous fate for an abandoned child. As Swiss hospital director Sandro Foiada told Swissinfo, “The abandonment of newborns exists, and if this hatch helps us save even one, it will be worth the effort.”
Thus, the debate continues: Do the baby hatches promote infants’ rights by assuring them survival or do they take children’s rights away by making it impossible for the babies to know their origins? Furthermore, is this an appropriate way to promote family planning? All these questions are now being asked in Switzerland and beyond…
The post What Are Baby Hatches? appeared first on All That Is Interesting.