Babies on the dunghill…
I asked my mother about how children end up in orphanages. She said that it was largely because many of the kids were abandoned. I further asked about how common it is for children to be abandoned. She told me that it was really more common than people realise. She told me that a kid was found a couple of days ago at a dunghill close to a panel-beater’s shop. The baby was eventually taken to the local federal hospital where my mother works.
…and at the motor park
I further wondered how it was possible for a person to be pregnant and give birth without anyone knowing. My mother then told me the story of a particular lady. The lady was staying in the home of a couple, sleeping in the same room with the couples children. The mother woke up during one night to hear the cry of her child in the room the lady shared with the children. She got to the room, found that the lady was not there, took care of the crying child and decided to check where the lady was. She checked the bathroom and found traces of blood on the ground. She traced the blood from the bathroom out of the house to a motor park close to the house. She found the lady holding a child, still unbathed, about to leave it at the park. My mother told me the story to illustrate that it was possible to be pregnant without it actually being exactly obvious.
What are the causes?
Why do people have kids that they can’t keep? According to my mother, it often happens when the mothers have tried to abort their pregnancies and have not been successful. Why are they not successful? I think it is because they do not consult experts when they try to abort their pregnancies. Why is that? Because abortion is illegal in Nigeria. Well, that is not exactly true. Abortion is not illegal in Nigeria, but one needs to get the signature of two medical doctors who are willing to say that the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But that is not a solution for most of the women who abandon their children. That group is largely made up of women whose main reasons for not wanting to raise a child are economic.
What to do right now?
I really find it hard to think of any solution to stop women from abandoning their babies, but I can think of a way to make sure the babies abandoned do not die. Sometime ago I watched a news item about a hospital in Germany where is it possible to leave unwanted babies in such a way as to make sure that one is unobserved, but that someone is quickly alerted that a baby has been left at the stand. The mother can leave unobserved; the baby can stay alive.
If we cannot change the economy ‘right now’ what can we do? I think the kind of system that the German hospital has would definitely be a good place to start. I also think that pro-choice clinics should be available in Nigeria. Of course, that needs legislation. I don’t know how that can be swung right now but I strongly think they should be available. And there should be a massive campaign in the media to inform people in such desperate situations about where they can get help. At this point, I wonder what on earth those well-funded NGOs that work on family health, women issues and allied fields do. I think there certainly are issues other than HIV.
