St. Paul's Hospital in downtown VancouverRICHARD LAM
Geoffrey Cundiff hopes no woman ever feels so desperate that she has to open the blue and white door at Vancouver's downtown St. Paul's Hospital.
The door, near the ER entrance at the hospital where Dr. Cundiff works, will open to a shelf with a bassinette where a woman can leave a newborn baby with no questions asked. The service is set to start up next Monday.
They were once called baby hatches or foundling wheels, places where troubled mothers could abandon their babies anonymously but with some assurance that the infant would be cared for. They've existed for as long as there have been mothers who don't think they can care for an infant. In medieval Europe, they were usually run by convents and churches.
Sadly, the demand still exists in modern day Canada, said Dr. Cundiff, citing a recent case of a newborn found dead in a Vancouver-area garbage landfill, after the mother was accused of leaving the baby in a dumpster. At St. Paul's, an hours-old infant was recently found near an entrance wrapped in a towel and plastic. These stories inspired him to create a haven for abandoned newborns.
Angel's Cradle will be the only one of its kind in the country, the hospital said. Dr. Cundiff, the head of obstetrics and gynecology for Providence Health Care, said the service is needed to protect vulnerable infants.
"It would be ideal from our perspective if we never had a baby left here," he said.
If used, the drop-off will be equipped with a 30-second timer. After that, an alarm will sound, alerting hospital staff to the baby's presence.
The hospital will post signs alerting the mother to other options besides abandonment, as well as telephone numbers to a crisis line. Dr. Cundiff stressed that abandoning an infant is not the preferred option for either mother or baby. It presents a raft of problems for social services agencies who must find care for an infant without knowing its medical history or where it came from.
Women who are determined to abandon their infants are often desperate, he said. "If they've already made the decision to abandon their baby, we should at least give them a way to do it safely for the baby. You have to think about the other person involved, and that is the little baby who is in an unsafe situation, and we have to think about their overall health and well-being."
So-called baby boxes returned to Europe in the late 1990s, when the number of babies found abandoned or dead began to rise. There are dozens in Germany, but their growth sparked a debate over whether they encourage mothers to abandon their infants before thinking through other alternatives.
Infant abandonment is a rare occurrence in Canada. British Columbia's Ministry of Children and Family Development deal with about one case per year on average. It's a criminal offence to abandon a child in a manner that endangers its health. These charges are also rare, said Neil MacKenzie a spokesman for the B.C.'s Criminal Services Branch.
The Crown has approved 12 cases of child abandonment in the past eight years, he said.
Several states in the U.S. have safe-haven laws, which decriminalized child abandonment as long as the children were left at safe places.
St. Paul's said Vancouver Police have agreed not to charge a mother who leaves an infant at Angel's cradle.
If a baby is left there, the infant will be treated and handed to provincial social services. If the mother changes her mind, she can contact a social worker to discuss options, according to a hospital briefing memo.
Dr. Cundiff said he's not happy that there is a need in Canada for a baby dropoff. "The sad truth," he said, "is there are people in the world who don't avail themselves of the resources out there."