Angel's Cradle

At her first visit doctors estimated she was about 32 weeks, but when her daughter was born they said it had actually been more like 34. Thirty-four weeks in and she had known she was pregnant for less than a week.

“It was actually horrifying,” said ----------, 19, of finding out she was pregnant. “I said, ‘…you can’t possibly be past your first trimester so you’ll at least be able to finish the year.’ I plan a lot of things so even in the midst of freaking out I was planning that this would be okay and then it wasn’t okay.”

The university student left school less than three months into her first year. Now, back at school after giving her daughter up for adoption in January 2010, she said she made the right choice.

“I’m very aware that I’m ill-equipped to be a mother. I’m not a very mentally or emotionally stable person and there’s still a lot of things I want to do and accomplish in my life,” she said.

Across Canada women face similar situations, but some with more tragic results.

A Toronto woman is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation after dumping her newborn into a trash can in Calgary on Oct. 19. The infant is still alive, unlike other babies in high-profile abandonment cases across the country. A mother was charged with manslaughter following the 2008 abandonment of her daughter in the garbage in Quebec City.

High profile cases such as these contributed to the creation of Angel’s Cradle. Modeled after Safe Haven laws in the United States, Angel’s Cradle operates out of St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, B.C., and allows for the anonymous drop-off of infants without fear of legal persecution.

Similar legislation is already in place in Europe, and the U.S. according to Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness (CCAA).

Justin Karasick, senior public affairs officer with Providence Health Care, which oversees St. Paul’s, said Canada’s first legal program was the brainchild of Dr. Geoffrey Cundiff, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Providence Health Care.

“He just witnessed over the years babies being found in dumpsters across Canada and he just thought there needs to be some sort of solution to prevent this,” he said.

Starting up the program itself wasn’t too complicated. The cradle was built into the side of the emergency entrance and the Catholic hospital received funding from the archdiocese of British Columbia, Karasick said.

No new operating capital was necessary. “It’s built right into the side of our emergency department so if a baby was dropped off emergency staff have been trained to respond,” he said.

The cradle operates with a delayed alarm. After the door is opened there is a 30-second delay before hospital staff are notified of the baby, during which the mother can leave.

After an initial assessment the hospital must report the child to B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development and they take guardianship of the baby until he or she could be placed with a family, according to Darren Harbord, a public affairs officer with the ministry.

“There is a six month residency period with the child and the adoptive family to assess if it is a good match,” Harbord said. “This is also a period of time where the birth mom may come forward if she wants custody of her child; however there would have to be proven maternity.”

Since it’s opening six months ago, the program has only taken in one child, and Covenant Health, an Alberta medical group and Canada’s largest Catholic healthcare provider, is looking into a similar program – begging the question: Is it working? The system is certainly not without its controversies.

Critics question everything from funding and advertising to repercussions for mother, father and child.

Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, has been a firm opponent of lawful abandonment for years. In the April 2003 edition of The Christian Science Monitor, Pertman outlined his reasons.

“A mother who is so distraught or so in denial that she would stuff her newborn in a trash can is not likely, instead, to ask her boyfriend for a ride to the police station,” he said. “Women in distress need counseling and support, not to mention pre- and postnatal medical assistance. But these laws don’t even pretend to offer resources to help mothers deliver healthy babies or to resolve the traumas that lead them to jeopardize their newborns’ lives.”

“These well-intentioned laws have spread so rapidly (all in the past three years) because they promise an intuitively appealing, easy fix. But complex social problems are rarely resolved through simple, feel-good solutions,” he said.

Cheryl Appell, a partner with the Dickson MacGregor Appell law firm in Toronto, said she agrees that the situation is not so black and white but said the system does provide certain benefits.

Appell, an Ontario private adoption specialist, said legally the father must be informed if the mother is looking to put her child up for adoption, something that can cause problems beyond the loss of the mother’s privacy. Programs like Angel’s Cradle could help, she said.

“The only scenario in which I could see it have a function and a use for the mother is if there is a violent father and he was technically a legal parent and she’d have to notify him and she’s not prepared to do that,” Appell said. “If a law requires notice to any father and she has extreme privacy concerns, such as honour killings, I could see that.”

For others, Appell encourages adoption. Children can be adopted by relatives, through open or closed private and public adoptions and mothers won’t pay the cost, she said. “It’s such a cost to her because she’ll never know how that baby’ is doing, there’s no looking back,” she said.

“In a private adoption, even if a mom says I never want to have a visit we usually have an agreement that says if she changed her mind she could have a visit. She’d always be able to find out how the baby is doing.”

-------- said that’s exactly how she felt. “Just because I don’t want to be her mother doesn’t mean I don’t want to ensure she has a good life, a good family.”

She said she thinks unlawful baby abandonment can be attributed to lack of information. “I think you’d have to be entirely hopeless and depressed and truthfully I think you would have to be completely uneducated about your options. If you were educated about your options you would know… your baby could go somewhere completely safe and it can all happen on your terms,” -------- said.

Under the Canadian Criminal Code, unlawful child abandonment could result in up to five years in prison. However, in an interview with CBC, the hospital said the Vancouver Police agreed not to try and find mothers who leave their children at Angel’s Cradle.

Constable Jana McGuiness of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) would not confirm the arrangement and said the department would not speak to the specifics of the issue. “The VPD would not become involved unless we were notified of the possibility of a criminal offence involved,” McGuiness said.

The idea of a Safe Haven law in Canada was brought up in Saskatchewan in 2007 following a 19-year-old’s abandonment of a baby in sub-zero temperature, but has yet to amount to anything.

In 2009, New Brunswick considered similar legislation when the Conservative party tabled a private members bill. It would have been the first province with the legislation.

Since Angel’s Cradle’s establishment, other hospitals are thinking of following suit, but controversy remains. Not everyone is convinced that Safe Haven laws actually work.

Dr. Cundiff could not be reached for comment.