The United Nation’s New Goal: Eradicating “Baby Boxes”

on June 11, 2012

When the UN is not busy accommodating thug regimes and passing resolutions against Israel, it tackles the most pressing and significant issues facing humanity—Baby boxes.  Baby boxes, or baby hatches are specially designed boxes that have been placed at hospitals all over Europe, where a mother can safely abandon her child.

The UN organization hot on the trail of this horror is the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child: a group of 18 “independent experts” that “monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”  According to the Guardian, these experts are concerned that the baby havens “[contravene] the right of the child to be known and cared for by his or her parents.”

Lest you are somehow persuaded that this issue is about the children and not the UN’s overarching commitment to abortion on demand, just take note of some of the comments made to the Guardian by one of the 18 experts.

Maria Herczog, a member of the UNCRC committee, said that the arguments from critics were a throwback to the past. “Just like medieval times in many countries we see people claiming that baby boxes prevent infanticide … there is no evidence for this.

Herczog, a prominent child psychologist from Hungary, says baby boxes should be replaced by better state provision of family planning, counselling for women and support for unplanned pregnancies.

According to the report only about 400 children have been left at one of these boxes in the last decade.  This is statistically irrelevant (by no means irrelevant for the life saved) when compared to the number of abortions in Europe.  Lifesite News noted:

 Data from national sources and the European statistical service EUROSAT show that in 2008 about 2.9 million abortions were committed in all of Europe, including the 27 member states of the European Union and 14 non-EU countries. 1,207,646 of these abortions were carried out in the EU states, which represents 42 per cent of the European total.

So the Committee on the Rights of the Child will send a note to the Czech Republic demanding they remove 44 baby boxes that will save the life of a child, but are silent to the legal extermination of 2.9 million children.

What the UN is saying: These baby boxes do not comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

What the UN means:  How dare you not abort your child.

The promotion of these baby boxes has come from the small but faithful, and truly counter-cultural pro-life organizations in Europe.  One of the first organizations to set up a baby hatch in the Czech Republic was Babybox Statim.  Founded by entrepreneur and poet Ludvig Hess, Statim has placed 50 baby hatches and saved 75 babies since 2005.

The UN expert lamented that the activities of Members of the European Parliament who where behind the promotions of the baby boxes were taking their cues from the Religious Right in the US. Ms. Herczog noted the MEP’s activities were “Very similar to the United States where we have the spread of the Safe Haven programme with baby boxes in 50 states since 1999. Now we have MEPs arguing for baby boxes and they just reject the convention.”

In the US, the “Safe Haven” laws have been enacted in every state since 2008.  Contrary to what some on the Evangelical Left have concluded, the successful campaign to enact Safe Haven legislation was initiated and promoted by pro-life organizations and those demonized as the “religious right.”  The goal was to allow the voluntary abandonment, into the custody of the state, newborn babies that might have otherwise been abandoned to die or be unsafely neglected.

Baby boxes and Safe Haven laws are just a few examples of how pro-life organizations are committed to not simply limited to the ending of abortion, but to  defending all life.  Sadly, this cannot be said for the United Nations, whose commitment to abortion comes thinly veiled in the defense of the Right of the Child.

  1. Pingback by First Links — 6.13.12 » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog on June 13, 2012 at 9:00 am

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  2. Comment by Jim on July 25, 2012 at 11:18 am

    i have seen this first hand in cape town, south africa, where a baptist church is offering a “baby drop” facility as an alternative to the mother giving birth and leaving the newborn in a public toilet or a trash dump or an open field. these mothers are typically in their late teens, have already 3 kids and this one they cannot care for, so they deliver the newborn alone and abandon the child. interestingly, the tribal culture in south african townships (apartheid carryover) does not believe in birth control nor do they honor monogamous relationships through marriage, thus aids is rampant and abandoned newborns is likely the highest in the world.

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