A baby hatch or baby box is a place where people (typically mothers) can leave babies, usually newborn, anonymously in a safe place to be found and cared for. This was common from the Middle Ages to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the device was known as a foundling wheel. Foundling wheels were abandoned in the late 19th century, but a modern form, the baby hatch, was reintroduced from 1952 and since 2000 has been adopted in many countries, most notably in Pakistan where there are more than 300. They can also be found in Germany (100), the United States (150),The 'baby box' returns to Europe, BBC News, 26 June 2012 Czech Republic (88), Poland (67), Austria (16), Belgium (1) and Japan (2).
The hatches are usually in hospitals, social centres, or churches, and consist of a door or flap in an outside wall which opens onto a heated or insulated soft bed. Sensors in modern beds issue an alert when a baby has been placed in it. In Germany, babies are looked after for eight weeks during which the parent can return and claim the child without any legal repercussions. If this does not happen, the child is considered available for adoption.
History
Baby hatches have existed in one form or another for centuries. The system was quite common in medieval times. From 1198 the first foundling wheels () were used in Italy; Pope Innocent III decreed that these should be installed in homes for foundlings so that women could leave their child in secret instead of abandoning or killing them, a practice clearly evident from the numerous drowned infants found in the Tiber River. A foundling wheel was a cylinder set upright in the outside wall of the building, rather like a revolving door. Mothers placed the child in the cylinder, turned it around so that the baby was inside the church, and then rang a bell to alert caretakers. One example of this type which can still be seen today is in the Santo Spirito hospital at the Vatican City; this wheel was installed in medieval times and used until the 19th century. Another foundling wheel dating to at least 1601 is on display for visitors to Naples' Church of the Annunciata.
In Hamburg, Germany, a Dutch merchant set up a wheel () in an orphanage in 1709. It closed after only five years in 1714 as the number of babies left there was too high for the orphanage to cope with financially. Other wheels are known to have existed in Kassel (1764) and Mainz (1811).
In France, foundling wheels (tour d'abandon, abandonment wheel) were introduced by Saint Vincent de Paul who built the first foundling home in 1638 in Paris. A rotating wooden window allowed an infant to be placed (sometimes with a note or an identification sign in the form of a necklace) from the outside without the mother being visible and it would be turned in by the caretakers to take hold of the infant. One in five infants in early 19th century France was abandoned. Foundling wheels were legalised in an imperial decree of January 19, 1811, and at their height, there were 251 in France, according to author Anne Martin-Fugier. They were in hospitals such as the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés (Hospital for Foundling Children) in Paris. However, the number of children left there rose into the tens of thousands per year, as a result of the desperate economic situation at the time, and in 1863 they were closed down and replaced by "admissions offices" where mothers could give up their child anonymously but could also receive advice. The were officially abolished in law of June 27, 1904. Today in France, women are allowed to give birth anonymously in hospitals () and leave their baby there.
In Brazil and Portugal, foundling wheels (, literally 'wheel for exposed/rejected ones') were also used after Queen Maria I proclaimed on May 24, 1783, that all towns should have a foundling hospital. One example was the wheel installed at the Santa Casa de Misericordia hospital in São Paulo on July 2, 1825. This was taken out of use on June 5, 1949, declared incompatible with the modern social system after five years' debate.
In Britain and Ireland, foundlings were brought up in orphanages financed by the Poor Tax. The home for foundlings in London was established in 1741; in Dublin the Foundling Hospital and Workhouse installed a foundling wheel in 1730, as this excerpt from the Minute Book of the Court of Governors of that year shows:
The foundling wheel in Dublin was taken out of use in 1826 when the Dublin hospital was closed because of the high death rate of children there.
Modern examples
A baby hatch was installed by Door of Hope Children's Mission (Hole in the Wall) in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1999 after the pastor, Cheryl Allen, learned that a high number of newly born infants were abandoned. Pastor Allen realised that many of those desperate women and girls may well have acted differently if there had been an alternative. The church made a hole in their wall and a "baby bin" was installed allowing for mothers to leave their babies any time, day or night. The moment a baby is placed in the "baby bin" care workers on duty receive an electronic signal alerting them. The baby is taken in and the anonymity of the "donor" ensured. Baby M was the first baby that came through the "baby bin", arriving on 3 October 1999. By 2013, Door of Hope had received over 1300 babies. 148 came through the "baby bin" but most come from hospitals, police or community members and some babies have even been brought personally by the mothers.
Another modern baby hatch was installed in the Altona district of Hamburg, Germany on 11 April 2000, after a series of cases in 1999 where children were abandoned and found dead from exposure. It consisted of a warm bed in which the child could be placed from outside the building. After a short delay to allow the person who left the child to leave anonymously, a silent alarm was set off which alerted staff. By 2010, 38 babies had been left in the baby hatch in Hamburg, 14 of whom were later reclaimed by their mothers.
The Edhi Foundation in Pakistan offers a similar system.
Baby boxes are becoming more widespread in the United States after the 2022 Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization allowed states to prohibit abortion.
Reasons for using baby hatches
One reason many babies have been abandoned, especially in the past, was that they were born out of wedlock. In modern times, baby hatches are more often intended to be used by mothers who are unable to cope with looking after their own child and do not wish to divulge their identity. In some countries, it is not legal for mothers to give birth anonymously in a hospital, and the baby hatch is the only way they can safely and secretly leave their child to be cared for by others. In India and Pakistan, the purpose of baby hatches is mainly to provide an alternative to female infanticide, which occurs due to socioeconomic factors including the high cost of dowries.
Opposition and legal issues Some issues with baby hatches are connected to children's right to know their own identity, as guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child's Article 8. Another problem is that the anonymous person who drops off the infant may not have the legal right to do so, perhaps without the permission of the mother. Also, in some places baby hatches may be overwhelmed by the abandonment of sick and disabled children.
Not all countries have safe-haven laws allowing for babies to be left in designated safe areas, so it can be legally risky for a mother to surrender her baby in a baby hatch.
Those opposed to baby hatches argue that hatches do not save babies' lives, instead encouraging further abandonment by mothers rather than finding other solutions and representing a state's dereliction of duty to create social programs which might reduce child abandonment. Several European countries have passed laws allowing for anonymous birth in hospitals, sometimes free of charge, to prevent the risks associated with an unassisted delivery and to provide medical care during the birth.
Countries
Austria In Austria, the law treats babies found in baby hatches as foundlings. The local social services office for children and young people () takes care of the child for the first six months, and then it is given up for adoption. The first hatch was introduced in Vienna in 2000. , there were 15 hatches in seven of the nine Austrian states, and hatches were used 30 times between 2008 and 2016. Since women have had the right to give birth anonymously in hospitals since 2001, those anonymous births have greatly outnumbered the use of baby hatches.
Belgium In Belgium, the legal framework is absent, and abandoning babies is illegal, but in practice the babies are placed in foster care and become available for adoption after a few months. In 2000, the association ('Mothers for mothers') set up the first in Antwerp. , 18 babies have been found in the Antwerp hatch, the only one in Belgium. In 2017, another hatch was installed in Evere, Brussels, by the organization Corvia, but was banned by the mayor. Despite the Council of State overturning the ban in 2020, a new mayor of Evere again prohibited its operation in 2021.
Canada Canada prohibits abandoning a child "so that its life is or is likely to be endangered." , three babies have been left in hatches installed in Canada. One hatch is in Vancouver and two in Edmonton.
China In 2011, China opened at least 25 baby hatches ("baby safety island" in Mandarin). A medical team was supposed to pick up the infant within 10 minutes. By 2015 there were 32 across the country. The first was opened in Shijiazhuang in 2011. It has by 2014 received 181 children. The estimated number of children, was officially some 1,400 a year in total, in the whole country.
The government-run orphanage in eastern China opened its first baby hatch on 1 June 2014, International Children's Day, as a symbolic step to show the country's commitment to improving child welfare. However, it since proved so popular that authorities have had to introduce new rules to limit the number of babies and children being abandoned. In just 11 days, 106 children, all with disabilities or medical conditions, were dropped off at the Jinan facility. That is more than the 85 orphans the city accepted in 2013.
Since the opening of a baby hatch in Guangzhou, it received almost 80 infants in a month. Child Welfare Centre in Guangzhou, said it had taken in 262 children in less than two months since it opened the baby hatch. All the babies – 67% of whom were less than a year old – had varying degrees of illness. More than 90% survived, 22 babies died. The baby hatch in Nanjing was "crowded with visitors". Parents were seen to drop babies off at the facility every day.
The number of babies with congenital defects has soared over the past decade, with upwards of 900,000 such cases reported each year. In addition, at least 100,000 children are abandoned each year. Most are either disabled or girls.
Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Social Affairs confirmed in 2006 that baby hatches (called Babybox in Czech) are legal under Czech law. In contradiction to this, in March 2006, Colonel Anna Piskova, a police officer, said on Czech television that the police would look for the mothers of abandoned children. The head of the Czech baby hatch organization Statim, Ludvik Hess, complained about this statement and was officially supported by the Save the Children Foundation.