Do Baby Boxes Encourage Parental Shirking of Responsibility and Infant Abandonment?

The birth of life is a blessing, but practical difficulties lead some parents to abandon their children. Baby boxes offer these parents a last option, but there is controversy that they may encourage infant abandonment and undermine parental responsibility.

 

“The birth of life is something that everyone should celebrate. Parents smile, cheer, and even shed tears of joy at the birth of their children. On the other hand, there are parents who secretly shed tears afterward. These are the parents who made a mistake and had to give birth to a child they didn’t want but couldn’t erase, the parents who couldn’t handle a child born with a disability, or the parents who had a child but couldn’t afford to raise it. One of the options for these parents is to abandon their children.
Pastor Lee Jong-rak, a church pastor in South Korea, founded the Baby box in 2009 to collect these abandoned children. Pastor Lee has been running the program for 16 years now. However, as the baby box has become a major issue in the media, its existence has become highly controversial, with the pros and cons of its existence being sharply divided, and the Gwanak District Office has recommended that the baby box be removed voluntarily. Those in favor of baby boxes argue that they are a necessary facility and a “minimum safety device” to protect abandoned babies. However, I’d like to argue against their operation.
The baby box is a small steel box measuring 70 centimeters wide, 45 centimeters long, and 60 centimeters high, barely big enough for a baby to lie down. The box is placed in front of the door of the Lord’s Love Community Church, and when someone opens the door and puts the baby down, a bell rings and the pastor inside the church takes the child inside the building. After a medical examination, the child is placed in a temporary care center. It’s a sad state of affairs. Baby boxes were originally created to protect babies from being abandoned on the side of the road, but despite their good intentions, they have several problems.
First, baby boxes may encourage infant abandonment. Despite the original positive purpose of protecting abandoned babies, the biggest problem with baby boxes is that they encourage infanticide, as they create an environment that encourages parents to abandon their children. For parents who can’t afford to keep their child and are struggling to decide whether or not to abandon them, baby boxes make it easier to do so. There is a concern that it’s easy to abandon a child when you know there is someone else who will take care of it. “Of course, it will save the baby’s life, but won’t it have a huge impact on encouraging infant abandonment?” I think. For those who are already thinking about abandoning their babies, the baby box may motivate them to do so. “I’m worried that parents who can’t keep their children will easily abandon their children when they see the baby box,” says one citizen. In fact, according to data from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the number of infants abandoned in Baby Boxes has been increasing steeply every year.
Those who favor the continued operation of baby boxes and argue that they should not be torn down counter the claim that they encourage infant abandonment with another reason: the Adoption Special Law. They argue that the spike in infant abandonment is not due to baby boxes, but rather to the complexity of the adoption process under the revised Adoption Special Law. According to the National Police Agency’s statistics on the number of infant abandonment cases nationwide, there were 52 cases in 2009, 69 in 2010, 127 in 2011, and 139 in 2012, and the number of infant abandonment cases has been increasing since 2008. In 2012, the year the Adoption Special Act was amended, the number of infant abandonment cases increased by 12 compared to 2011, the year before the amendment, which is significantly lower than the increase of 58 cases from 2010 to 2011, so it is difficult to conclude that the increase in infant abandonment occurred after the implementation of the Adoption Special Act in 2012 complicated the adoption process. Furthermore, according to the National Police Agency, 62 of the 139 total infant abandonment cases in 2012 occurred up to July, before the Adoption Special Act was implemented, and the remaining 77 occurred after August, which is not a significant difference, so even if we look at a narrower time frame, we can argue that the claim that the Adoption Special Act is the cause of the increase in infant abandonment is flawed. On the other hand, the number of infants abandoned in baby boxes according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government showed a significant increase in the number of cases from 2011 to 2012, with 67 cases (75%) in 2012 compared to 22 cases (25%) in 2011, indicating a significant increase in the number of cases since the baby box issue was raised. As the frequency of media exposure increases, the number of infants abandoned in baby boxes increases.
According to data from the Seoul Child Welfare Center, the number of abandoned children found in Seoul, including abandoned baby boxes, increased from 21 in 2010 and 31 in 2011 to 69 in 2012. This shows that the increase in the number of children abandoned in baby boxes does not correspond to the increase in the total number of abandoned children, but it is almost consistent with the data from Seoul, where baby boxes are installed. Moreover, the number of abandoned infants in baby boxes out of the total number of abandoned infants in Seoul was 4 out of 21 (19%) in 2010, 22 out of 31 (71%) in 2011, and 67 out of 69 (97%) in 2012, indicating a sharp increase in the number of abandoned infants in baby boxes and a decrease in the number of abandoned infants in general. From this, it can be said that the presence of baby boxes increases infant abandonment.
Even if these statistics do not prove that the problem of infant abandonment is not due to the revised Adoption Special Act, experts analyze that “the revised Adoption Special Act, which changed the adoption system from a ‘notification system’ to a ‘court authorization system,’ was misleadingly communicated that a record would be kept between the child and the child’s mother and father.” Contrary to the misinformation, once the adoption process is finalized, the birth parents are not listed on the child’s family relationship certificate, but only on the adoptee’s adoption relationship certificate. In other words, although birth registration is required to obtain an adoption license, there is no record of the child after adoption. Therefore, the claim that the revised adoption law indiscriminately exposes the fact that the birth mother gave birth to the child is not true.
Of course, the revised special law requires a family court decision for adoption, and the mandatory birth registration has complicated the process by making it more time-consuming, but these are not the direct causes of infant abandonment. The important thing is that once the adoption process is over, there is no record of it on the basic paperwork. However, not even the ward officials are aware of this fact, so few people know about it, which discourages single mothers who come to adopt. If they had known that the birth of their child would not be recorded on the family certificate, would they have left their child in a baby box? Would they have chosen to keep their child if adoption agencies, the media, and the government had given them the right information? As she struggles with her unwanted pregnancy, she is misinformed that the new adoption laws will force her to disclose the birth. She learns that there is an option to keep the baby, called a baby box. This makes it easier for them to choose to keep the baby without thinking about keeping it themselves. This is why it’s important not to mislead people into thinking that the problem of infant abandonment is due to the new adoption laws. As we’ve seen, there are only statistics that show an increase in infant abandonment in the area after the installation of baby boxes, but there are no objective statistics that show an increase in infant abandonment since last year, when the new adoption law was implemented.
Second, Baby Boxes are privately run, unlicensed facilities, and it is strictly illegal to raise children in them. It is another criminal offense to voluntarily care for a child who has already been illegally abandoned in an unlicensed facility. Even though they may have been founded with good intentions, there are other licensed care facilities, so it’s sadly not right to run these facilities on a private level, as there are alternatives that don’t necessarily involve baby boxes. Abandoning a child is legally punishable, so the state should step in and solve the problem. In other words, this is something that should be done through due process and should be handled by the government, not by individuals. Why not relax the standards a bit more and increase the number of places where you can easily leave your child? The Ministry of Health and Welfare already operates the 129 call center, as well as the National Child Protection Center and the Seoul Child Welfare Center. If you call one of these organizations, you can get confidential counseling on the situation of not being able to keep your child and help you make legal options that are better than baby boxes.
Third, baby boxes can provide parents with an easy option to avoid their responsibilities. As a parent, your responsibility and duty is not only to protect the life of your child, but also to ensure that your child grows up healthy and happy. However, baby boxes may seem to offer a simple solution for parents to shirk this responsibility and leave their child in the care of society. This can lead to parents failing to fulfill their responsibilities and, as a result, shifting the responsibility to society. Rather than addressing the very real problem of parents’ inability to raise children, relying on methods such as baby boxes can dilute the sense of responsibility parents have for their role as parents. Instead, we need to encourage parents to act more responsibly and find more fundamental ways to solve the problems they face.
The Baby Box, which aims to protect minimal life, exists as a last resort for infant abandonment. The founder of the Baby Box, Pastor Jong Rak Lee, is looking forward to the day when these boxes are no longer operational and will be demolished. The very existence of baby boxes is bittersweet, but this is not a problem that can be solved by appealing for recognition. Baby boxes are unlicensed, illegal, privately operated facilities that have the potential to encourage abandonment by creating an unhealthy environment for infants and should be removed for all of the issues raised above. However, it is also important to analyze the background of these baby boxes and to ensure that the government provides more facilities to protect abandoned children. What should society do to prevent infant abandonment? Social awareness of single mothers and unmarried couples needs to be improved. In addition, national and social support for single mothers and unmarried mothers needs to be more active to prevent child abandonment and promote adoption. In many cases, single mothers and unmarried women are unable to raise children on their own, even if they want to, due to lack of housing, unemployment, or lack of childcare services. If the government actively tries to solve these blind spots, I think the problems can be greatly improved. First and foremost, we need to think about pregnancy and childbirth a little more carefully and take responsibility. I am against the existence of baby boxes, but I hope that there will come a day when they will be unnecessary and not operated because there are no more abandoned children, even if they are not tried to be removed, as Rev. Lee Jong-rak hopes.”
As shown above, we have added a third section to the middle of the article, which addresses the issue of parental responsibility shirking and emphasizes that the easy options offered to parents by baby boxes can lead to a weakening of moral responsibility.