Edmonton hospitals setting up ‘angel cradles’ for abandoned newborns

A move by the Catholic agency that runs two Edmonton hospitals to provide so-called "angel cradles" to drop off unwanted newborn babies anonymously is likely to rile the United Nations.

Covenant Health, which operates the Grey Nuns and Misericordia hospitals, announced the initiative Monday in hopes desperate mothers will use the service instead of abandoning their babies in places where they could die, CBC News reports.

"There's some women who have dissociative mental illness and we can't necessarily reach them, but there are some women [whose] safety is in conflict with that of their baby," Angel's Cradle program founder Dr. Geoffrey Cundiff said at the announcement.

The program is modelled on one Cundiff set up at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver three years ago, the first in Canada. So far only one baby has been left in the private alcove near the downtown hospital's ER, CBC News noted.

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The drop-off was set up after a number of babies were found abandoned around Vancouver, CBC News reported.

Health authorities in Alberta began considering a similar initiative after a newborn boy was rescued from a dumpster in Calgary in 2010, according to a 2011 National Post report. The mother, Meredith Katharine Borowiec, is currently on trial for two counts of second-degree murder, related to two other newborns, and another of attempted murder involving the rescued child.

In another instance, a 19-year-old Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman was tried twice unsuccessfully for second-degree murder before being convicted of infanticide, the Edmonton Journal reported.

A push is also underway to establish an angel cradle at Saskatoon's Royal University Hospital, including a Facebook page.

Baby drop-offs are more common in the United States and Europe but the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child is pushing for a global ban on so-called "baby boxes" as an outdated practice.

"The practice of baby boxes was a form of abandonment, counter to the right of the child to bear the name of its biological parent, the Rapporteur said," according to a committee report from Austria last September. "How were mothers who were in a vulnerable situation helped, to avoid them resorting to using the baby box method?"

British psychologist Kevin Browne told CBC News last June that he supports the proposed ban.

"There's no evidence that these baby boxes contribute to the reduction of infanticide or the reduction of abandonment," Browne said.

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CBC News said there have been cases in Europe where men have used the drop-offs to get rid of babies born to women in the sex trade.

But Cundiff, regional chief of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, was undeterred by the UN's opposition.

"I think the UN is really stating one of the main opinions in opposition to the concept, based primarily on trying to safeguard a baby’s right to knowing it’s parents and family history," the doctor told News1130.

"I agree; that is important. But I think you have to prioritize things and being safe and alive is a priority to knowing your family history.”