Japan: toodler 1st "baby" in baby hatch

I came with Daddy, says toddler left in baby hatch

By David McNeill in Tokyo
Published: 17 May 2007

It looks innocuous enough: a two-foot, brightly-coloured box decorated with a cartoon logo of an infant being gently ferried through the air by storks. But a Japanese hospital's new baby hatch for unwanted infants has generated a sumo-sized controversy since it opened for business last week.

Already under fire from politicians who say it encourages parents to dump their children, the tiny incubator - designed for newborns - is at the centre of a fresh row since it was revealed a father squeezed his three-year-old son into one.

A spokesman for the Jikei Catholic Hospital in Kumamoto prefecture (560 miles south-west of Tokyo), said the three-year-old "did not fit the hospital's definition of a baby".

Dubbed the "stork's cradle", the baby hatch is the hospital's solution to an epidemic of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Resembling a bank deposit box, it is equipped with a monitoring camera and an alarm that goes off when a baby is placed inside. If the parents don't return within a week, the child is put up for adoption.

The move follows a similar move at a hospital in the 1990s, which was closed when a dead toddler was found inside a baby hatch called the "angel cabin".

The Kumamoto baby box was created after "emotional" discussions last year among hospital staff and local government officials. Politicians, including Japan's childless Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, then lined up to criticise it. "A mother must not leave her child or abandon him or her anonymously," said Mr Abe, who appeared to be frustrated that the hatch could not be shut down legally.

But supporters say the hospital is merely responding to the needs of desperate parents. "I'd like to see the baby hatch develop into a window for beleaguered people," said Taiji Hasuda, Jikei Hospital's president. "What is most important is to save the lives of babies."

Such arguments have failed to convince the Health Minister, Hakuo Yanagisawa, who had already made his displeasure known before the three-year-old turned up. "It is unforgivable," he said. "A child welfare centre will probably have to take good care of this boy from now on." The boy was apparently able to tell hospital staff his name, age and a description of his father, who is being investigated on a possible charge of parental abandonment.

Japan is struggling with one of the world's lowest fertility rates, and with little immigration the population of 127 million is set to plummet to just over 100 million within 50 years. Some experts have recommended baby hatches be opened across the country to help solve the problem. But the advocates do not include Sanae Takaichi, the state minister for the declining birth rate.

"Parents are responsible for rearing their children," she said yesterday. "There's a real problem when a parent ignores those responsibilities. We urge such parents to come forward and to seek counselling."