What to do with Unwanted Babies
In ancient times and in more recent centuries, newborn babies unwanted for any number of reasons including poverty, disease, infidelity etc. were left on hillsides exposed to the elements and wild animals and left to their fate. Some babies may have been collected by slavers, others might be picked up out of love by passing strangers but many would perish.
This week, a newborn baby was abandoned outside a church in Notting Hill. Emergency services retrieved the child and are desperately seeking its parents. They want to know who is responsible, why this occurred and what charges should be brought. This is newsworthy because who among us would see a newborn cast aside and do nothing to intervene? Very few. The pity, anger and horror we feel at such a crime is justified, not because most people feel it but because this treatment of the most helpless screams at our natural sense of injustice. As a society we have moved on from a place where the exposure of an unwanted child was acceptable. How many people would have been involved in the safekeeping of this child’s early days? Law enforcement, medical and social professionals, even the church the child was left at would have had an investment in this child’s welfare. As a people we were willing to invest because we were united in the desire to see this child saved. As it is, the child did not live to see it.
Around 1500 miles away in Zagreb, Croatia a church is expecting this kind of abandonment. Not in the sense that they know when a child will be abandoned but they have already installed a “baby box” or “foundling wheel” at their church, inspired to do so by the recent finding of a baby in a public dustbin. A “baby box” is a device from the Middle Ages that was installed into walls and gates of holy places that a baby could be placed into and then rotated into the premises. Nuns, monks, clergy or lay people living or working inside would collect and care for the child thereafter. Many unwanted children were saved by this arrangement.
The united outrage at Notting Hill baby’s abandonment we feel in the UK contrasts with the arguments in the Croatian press. The fact that provision has been made in advance for the possibility of abandonment is being used by those who seek to make abortion the only option for unwanted children. One group called Women’s Network Croatia argue these boxes are “dangerous” and “against the child’s best interest” listing a slew of real risks and problems with the system on their website. Other comments from unrelated individuals included similar condemnation stating these were, “another way to make women feel bad about abortion.” Presumably, in the eyes of these objectors the mother and baby are both better off if the pregnancy is terminated.
What might we conclude from these stories, and how we might consistently view the most vulnerable among us? Certainly, we seem to be agreed that abandoning babies is not a good thing, whether that be that on wild hillsides or the cold steps of a Notting Hill church, or into a specifically designed device to pass parental responsibility to those willing to take it. Do we also think that the giving up of unwanted babies to social services is a bad thing? Clearly not. As a society we do, and we should, accept children given up through the official channels.
There is another conversation here, too. A bigger one, and those at the Women’s Network Croatia have spotted it. If there are those willing to demonstrate how much they want someone else’s baby to live, unpaid and out of love, what reason should any of us have to kill any baby?
One exposure exposes another, even darker and devoid of hope.
If we can agree that the best interests of babies are not served by abandonment, however desperate or cruel the circumstances and/or people surrounding them are. Then when we can, perhaps we will also agree that babies saved from this predicament instantly start to have their best interests met? If we can agree that, then by that same human desire for the baby’s survival and nurturement we should also agree that babies should not be abandoned onto steps, or into boxes and bins at all, this should absolutely include the thousands of boxes and bins we produce annually, labelled “Medical Waste”.
Daniel Hansen: March for Life UK Content Creator
