A “baby box” for abandoned newborns has sparked a row in Croatia, with women’s rights groups calling for its removal, saying it is an illegal “Trojan horse” for anti-abortion campaigners.
The modern form of the medieval “foundling wheel” — where unwanted babies were left at churches — was built into a convent wall in February in a quiet Zagreb neighbourhood.
Motion sensors set off an alarm on the mobile phones of the nuns inside and of a Catholic anti-abortion group when the hatch is opened. The angle of a security camera guarantees the person leaving the baby cannot be seen. But will they come running to catch the person leaving the baby? It is aimed at preventing infanticide. A case of a newborn baby boy left in a bin in a park near Zagreb last year led to it being set up. The child survived after being found by two teenagers.
In Croatia abortion is legal but has become less accessible as a majority of gynaecologists in public hospitals refuse to perform them on moral grounds.
The baby box may sound like a good idea, but “ultimately it’s again to make women feel bad about abortion, offering an ‘alternative’,” one woman passerby said. Another said “it’s about an alternative to infanticide, not about abortion ban.”
Official bodies warned that abandoning a child is a criminal act in Croatia and the social policy ministry has launched an inspection.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has been warning against “baby boxes”, asking countries to find alternatives. But at least 10 European countries — Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland — have similar “baby boxes”, according to the Zagreb group. They also exist in China, India, Japan and the US.
Official figures show there were six cases of infanticide in the last decade in Croatia.
SOURCE: France24, 25 March 2025. © AFP. PHOTO: © Damir SENCAR / AFP