Baby hatches raise controversy
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E-mail China Daily, March 27, 2014
It was about 4 am when four men jumped out of a taxi and left a baby at a small, nondescript house in Tianjin. A letter tucked inside the child's clothes simply noted its birthday and medical record.
![This couple from Guangzhou came to the hatch intending to give up their baby daughter, but later abandoned the idea. [Photo by Mo Weinong/For China Daily]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20140327/7427ea210acc149dc32e08.jpg "This couple from Guangzhou came to the hatch intending to give up their baby daughter, but later abandoned the idea. [Photo by Mo Weinong/For China Daily]") |
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This couple from Guangzhou came to the hatch intending to give up their baby daughter, but later abandoned the idea. [Photo by Mo Weinong/For China Daily] |
Unlike those left outside in the cold or in a dumpster, this baby was lucky.
The 13-square-meter house is warm and cozy. A crib, an incubator, an air purifier and ventilating equipment are lined up against the pink wallpaper, dotted with moons and stars.
By mid-March, the Tianjin baby hatch, which only opened at the start of the year, had received 35 abandoned infants.
Situated at the gate to the Children's Welfare Institute, a government-run orphanage, the baby hatch - also known as a babies' safety island - allows desperate parents to leave unwanted newborns, press an alarm button, and depart anonymously.
After a delay of about five minutes, someone from the institute will arrive to retrieve the child.
But facilities such as this have come under fire recently. While some people have embraced the idea, saying it protects the lives of unwanted children, critics argue that it encourages the unscrupulous to abandon such infants, which is illegal in China.
For some, the influx of abandoned babies simply highlights defects in the child welfare system.
It's difficult to obtain statistics about the number of abandoned children in China, but the 2010 China Child Welfare Policy Report, released by the China Philanthropy Research Institute, estimated that 100,000 babies are abandoned every year, most of them with disabilities and illnesses.
In July, when the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched a pilot project to set up baby hatches across China, Tianjin was one of the first cities to launch a facility. To date, there are 24 baby hatches in 10 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. A further 18 regions are preparing to open facilities by the end of the year, according to the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption.
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