Beijing opens dozens of new baby hatches for abandoned children
Guangzhou ( AsiaNews) - Chinese
authorities have opened 25 new "baby hatches" , where parents can
leave their babies and thus save their lives. Over
the next few months, the government has ordered that every city have at least
two "hatches".
According
to Xinhua, since the first "hatches" were opened in 2011 there are now about 25.
Within the first 15 days of opening in Guangzhou, 79 babies were abandoned.
The parents leave their child in
the "hatches", consisting of an incubator and a bell. After
placing the newborn, they can ring the bell, which rings with a certain delay,
to allow parents time to disappear into anonymity .
The
majority of children placed in "nests" have disabilities or serious
illnesses. In
all likelihood, the parents abandon them because they have no money to deal
with the medical care.
It
is estimated that at least 10 thousand children are abandoned each year in
China.
The new policy of "hatches"
is a corrective to the one-child law that sought to prevent unwanted births or higher
quotas than those set by the population control offices through severe fines
and violence.
This
has often led to the abandonment of girls. The
important fact is that both girls and boys are being placed in the "hatches".
And
this is exactly why the government decided to widen strictures of the one-child
law, allowing couples in which one partner is an only child, to have a second
child.
Several women interviewed about
this so-called relaxation of the law have commented that it is useless. They add that many families are no longer
able to support the costs of raising and educating one child in the cities let
alone two.
The
situation is different in the countryside where, in addition to the abandonment
of girls, there is another problem: the presence of second and third children,
not registered in order to escape the fines imposed by the Office of Population
Control. It
is estimated that this "anonymous" population could count as many as 60
million unregistered children.
22/09/2016 11:02
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