When the alarm sounds at Jikei Hospital in southwestern Japannurses run up a spiral staircase to collect abandoned newborns as quickly as possible in the medical center’s “baby mailbox”, the only one in the country.
This Catholic hospital in Kumamotoon the isla Kyushu, created in 2007 this system that allows a baby to be abandoned anonymously and also offers other services such as a birth program without identification, also unique in Japan.
These initiatives have earned the medical center criticism, but its medical chief, Takeshi Hasudaregards them as a vital safety net.
“There are women who are ashamed and very afraid” because of the feeling of “having done something horrible” when they become pregnant, she explains to AFP.
“A place like ours, which does not reject anyone, (…), is very important” for these anguished young mothers.
When they hear the alarm, the nurses try to reach the “baby box” in less than a minute, decorated with a pair of storks and equipped with a small bed carefully prepared.
“If the mothers are still around, we suggest they share their story with us,” he says. Saori Taminagaa hospital employee.
The team tries to guarantee the health of the mothers, listening to them and giving them advice, and encourages them to leave information that will allow the child to know its origins later.
no one to turn to
Abandoned baby mailboxes have been around the world for centuries, and survive today for example in Germany, Belgium, South Korea y USA.
His comeback in some European countries in the early 2000s was criticized for HIMwhich considered that it went ” once morest the child’s right to be known and cared for by his or her parents”.
Jikei Hospital believes, however, that its baby mailbox is a means of preventing child abuse in Japanwhere the police recorded 27 child abandonments in 2020, and where 57 children died of abuse in 2019.
According to Dr. Hasuda, some children taken in are “the offspring of prostitution, rape, or incest,” and their mothers have no one to turn to.
In all, 161 babies and toddlers have been dropped off at Jikei since 2007, sometimes by people from across the country.
But the system continues to have problems being accepted in Japanin particular as a result of a traditional conception of the family, according to Chiaki Shirai, a professor at Shizuoka University and a specialist in reproductive and adoption issues.
The country uses a family registration system that includes the births, deaths and marriages of a family through generations. This pillar of the administrative apparatus also shapes views regarding family structure.
This “has anchored in Japanese society the idea that someone who gave birth to a child must raise it”, to the point that children are considered almost “the property” of the parents, explains Shirai.
“Children abandoned and whose registration indicates that they do not have a family are strongly stigmatized,” he adds.
women pointing fingers
Despite the anonymity offered by the system, child protection services generally try to find the family of abandoned children in Jikei. In this way, regarding 80% of them have discovered the identity of their family, and 20% found their parents or relatives.
The hospital also offers a telephone assistance service for maternity which receives several thousand calls a year, and an unidentified delivery program aimed at preventing unassisted home births.
Although it has hardly been used so far (only two births took place in this way), this system is not unanimously approved either and the government, without declaring it illegal, has not wanted to regularize it.
Chiaki Shirai emphasizes that women who resort to baby mailbox or to childbirth without identification are often criticized for not having chosen other alternatives such as abortion, legal in Japan although very expensive.
Society prefers to blame women and their “motivation” to show empathy with them or help them “is low, or totally non-existent”, laments the doctor Hasuda.
(With information from AFP)
PODCAST RPP: President of Congress: it is hardly credible that the president has not known the acts of corruption in his environment
Lady Camones added that it is important that the investigations of the Public Ministry advance in the face of President Pedro Castillo’s refusal to resign from his position.
