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| Hospital opens drop-off for abandoned babies |
| Life |
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Troubled mothers in Metro Vancouver who feel they are incapable of caring for an infant now have a place where they can anonymously and safely abandon their babies, the Vancouver Sun reported.
The Angel’s Cradle, as it is called, opened May 3 at St. Paul’s Hospital, which is run by a Catholic health agency. Funding for the drop-off was provided by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver.
The drop-off is located in an alcove near the hospital’s emergency entrance out of the range of security cameras. Thirty seconds after a baby is left in a bassinette, an alarm sounds inside to alert the nursing station. Hospital staff will not try to identify the mother, and police have agreed not to investigate, since the baby’s life has not been endangered.
Following a medical assessment and any necessary treatment, the baby will be turned over to BC’s Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Dr. Geoffrey Cundiff, head of St. Paul’s obstetrics and gynecology department, said the Angel’s Cradle came about in response to several recent incidents in Vancouver and elsewhere in Canada where babies have been found abandoned in unsafe conditions.
Just this year, a baby’s body was found in a landfill south of Vancouver after being put in a dumpster. Another had been left between two houses in East Vancouver.
“It’s our hope that we’ll never have a baby left here,” Cundiff told CBC News. “But if there’s a mother who for whatever reason does avail herself, then we want to be sure there’s a safe place for the babies.”
But while no one questions the hospital’s desire to save the lives of abandoned babies, some worry that the blanket guarantee of anonymity will create its own set of problems.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the independent Representative for Children and Youth in BC, said the inability to identify the mother means she cannot be given the support that she clearly needs. “The answer to the woman in crisis is to support the woman in crisis, and that will support the infant usually,” she told CBC News.
The Globe and Mail stated that this anonymity would mean these babies “have no medical history. They also lose the chance to be adopted by family members – father, uncles, aunts, grandparents.”
Calgary Herald columnist Susan Martinuk also noted that “the anonymity of the drop makes it difficult to investigate cases where the baby may have been harmed or abused.”
Martinuk added that Angel’s Cradle has nonetheless “brought to the surface our need to offer the most basic protections to vulnerable babies and parents. It points one more finger at the consequences of family breakdown in our society when there are no parents, grandparents or siblings to whom a new mother can turn.”
The program is the first of its kind in Canada. But the concept actually dates back to 12th century Europe, when mothers could anonymously leave their babies in a “foundling wheel” at a convent for the nuns to look after. |
