Have you ever found yourself with a baby that you just couldn't be bothered to keep? Maybe you had it in the bathroom at your high school prom and had to ditch the little bugger to go dance with your sweetie. Perhaps your baby momma up and died on you like Carey Lowell in "Sleepless in Seattle." The baby might have outlived its appeal and reached its expiration date, like a carton of cottage cheese left out in the sun.
Hell, it could have been just plain old butt-ugly.
Well, if you find yourself in this situation and live in Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, you're in luck. Jikei Hospital has installed Japan's first so-called "baby hatch," an alcove in the hospital's wall where would-be mothers can anonymously dump their unwanted offspring. Any children left there are supported by the Catholic Church until Angelina Jolie can fly in and adopt them.
The baby hatch, euphemistically deemed the "cradle of storks," is equipped with a warmer to keep deposited children from getting too cold. When a baby is placed in the slot, an alarm sounds inside the hospital, much like the way Cold Stone Creamery employees sing obnoxiously when you put money in their tip jar.
All in all, the baby hatch is a pretty brilliant idea. It gives doomed babies a chance at redemption. Most importantly, it adds a new, ironic twist to the phrase "down the baby hatch," often used to feed assorted mashed vegetables to children.
Despite these painfully obvious benefits, conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has publicly voiced his opposition to the installation of the hatch, citing his campaign platform of bringing "family values" back to Japan.
Although Abe and his cohorts can't find a law under which to block the opening of the hatch, their vehement disapproval of the plan baffles me. In an effort to change Mr. Abe's mind, I have done a little research into this invention's illustrious history.
The first proto-baby hatches on record are from Italy around the year 1198. Sanctioned by Pope Innocent III, these so-called "foundling wheels" acted as revolving doors where women could stuff their babies in one side and get a fat load of nothing out the other - a beneficial exchange for both sides.
The Pope justified his support for the wheels by saying that it kept women from killing their babies. Given what we know about popes from this era (in the words of Britney Spears, they were "not that Innocent"), he may have sanctioned the invention because there were a few too many little Innocent IV's running around the Holy See.
Over the next seven centuries, new foundling wheels rolled out all over the world. From Flanders to France and from Britain to Brazil, these wheels proved a wild success. Several had to close down because too many women left too many babies in too few baby hospitals: Apparently, dumping your spawn into a little device that ensured it would be someone else's problem forever was a pretty attractive prospect even in less enlightened times. Foundling wheels eventually fell out of use, due to a combination of the aforementioned overuse and some moral misgivings about encouraging child abandonment.
Modern baby hatches made their debut in Germany in 2000. Instead of being a revolving-door affair, they involve a heated cradle with motion and weight sensors. They are, to say the least, a tech-savvy way to throw away your seed.
In German, these high-tech hatches are called "babyklappe." Since their debut, more than 80 babyklappe have sprung up all over the country, giving innumerable women the opportunity to klappe on or klappe off. After all, they're the klappers.
Once a woman leaves her baby in the babyklappe, she is given an eight-week grace period to come and reclaim her baby without any legal repercussions whatsoever. This window gives the fraulein in question a chance to decorate the baby's room, work off all the baby weight, or maybe just take a little "me" time before committing to her infant. What more could a worried new mother need?
If she decides that she rather prefers not having to deal with the drive to the hospital to pick her little one back up, that's fine too. Then the child is put up for adoption, while it's still small and cute.
So, Shinzo, let's talk. You may have some lame reason like "family values" to protest the opening of Jikei Hospital's baby hatch, and that's all well and good. But just think about it - ditchin' babies is a rich and storied tradition, and maintaining tradition is what conservatism is all about.
Besides, in a country where the population is stagnating, abandoning youngsters is, at the very least, an improvement over abortion.
It's time to swallow your pride and take a big ol' bite of realism pie, right down the hatch.
Adam Cambier '09 would have made a good medieval pope.
