In Nanjing, the new Orphan Safety House is playing its part in ensuring the welfare of abandoned children. This marks an important policy shift towards more leniency in order to save lives.
The orphan shelter was opened in Nanjing on 10th December and has already reported the placement of 26 children in their care in the first three weeks of its opening. Parents have even been traveling from neighbouring provinces as far as Anhui, Shandong and even Henan instead of abandoning their unwanted children in public places, as is usually the case. The safety house is mainly a destination for little new-borns with disabilities and diseases; the number of children with afflictions in the house constituting 98% of its total inhabitants.
Fuelled by restrictions of the one child policy and the focus on male heirs caused by Confucian values, approximately 200,000 babies are abandoned in China every year; mostly girls or children with any form of disability. Among the major factors are traditional world-views held amongst Chinese in which a male heir is sought after in combination with the “one-chance-only” reality of the One Child Policy, leading people to reject their “first pancake” to be able to try for a male and/or able heir. In other cases, the child might have been born out of wedlock, again an unacceptable fact for many a conservative Chinese. Finally, the problem may simply be financial one, with the family lacking the means to raise a child.
While the popularity of the shelter in the short space of time it has been open confirms the necessity for such an organisation, providing a place for parents to abandon their unwanted offspring has been a controversial and hotly debated move. Since abandoning your child is against the law in China, opponents of the centre argue that such a shelter would be encouraging people to illegal action and predict an increase in the number of abandoned babies. To steer clear of being perceived as condoning law-breakers, the OSH reminds people with a red sign next to its door that “abandoning your child is illegal.”
Despite critical voices, facilities of this kind are undoubtedly indispensible in order to save the real victims of this illegal action; the young human beings who are being left behind in public places. In Nanjing, numerous cases of infant deaths occur each year due to the parents leaving them in parks or outside on the streets during the harsh winter months.
Nanjing’s installation of a so-called “Baby Dump” facility in November, allowing parents to leave the children anonymously without fearing prosecution, already reflects the trend of the government to focus on providing care for the innocent young children rather than clamping down on illegal action. The Orphan Safety House is a step further and even one that is going to be rolled out nationwide according to Dou Yupei, the vice minister of the Civil Affairs Bureau.
The move is a change in attitude compared to a mere half year earlier, when China erased a grey area in the adoption field, when it banned groups and individuals from privately adopting abandoned infants. This moved received some criticism as it meant that less abandoned babies stand the chance of finding a warm and loving home with the person that found them, should they wish to adopt them.
The creation of Orphan Safety Houses nationwide is reason for celebration and a positive step in ensuring the protection of the country’s smallest and unluckiest citizens.
