SASKATOON – Digging through garbage in search of an abandoned baby. It was the scene at the Saskatoon landfill in 2010 as police searched for a baby girl.
The young mother of that child was back in court this week facing charges for abandoning her dead baby in a garbage can before it was taken to the city’s landfill.
For years, Lori Isinger, a member of the Royal University Hospital auxiliary, has been pushing for an angel’s cradle in Saskatoon.
“I think the more options that are open, at a time of distress makes things much easier” Isinger said, referring to the baby drop box.
It’s a place in hospitals where an infant can be placed anonymously inside a cubicle. The mom leaves and 30 seconds after the door closes, an alarm sounds to alert hospital staff of the child’s presence.
Attempts to open an angel’s cradle in Saskatchewan have failed.
“We’ve hit a road block” said Isinger.
The Saskatoon Health Region denied our request for an interview, saying only that its priorities are set by the provincial Ministry of Health and the province has not identified an angel’s cradle as a priority at this time.
“We’ve not made this a priority because we believe the prevention of child abandonment is a more viable option than providing easier access to a place where you can abandon a child” said Duncan Fisher, the province’s special advisor to the deputy minister of health,.
Programs like the angel’s cradle are common in Europe and the first Canadian cradle opened in Vancouver’s St. Paul’s hospital in 2010.
A few months later, a baby was placed in it for the first time and another has been dropped off since.
Dr. Elisabet Joa, the head of the Obstetrics & Gynecology Department at St. Paul’s in Vancouver, says it has eliminated unsafe abandonments there.
“There were infants found in Burns Bog and other situations in the past and that hasn’t happened since the development of the angel’s cradle” she said.
Two additional cradles opened this spring in Edmonton.
Neither have been used yet but Gordon Self, Edmonton’s Covenant House vice-president says that in itself is a success.
“That child is at risk of being left in a garbage bin or a back alley. We have to think about the child and have to make sure first and foremost that the child is safe, then we can sort out the other details.”
There’s no way to know if an angel’s cradle would have changed the circumstances of the Saskatoon case currently making its way through the legal system, but given the fact so many young mothers have committed the unthinkable act of abandoning their baby – Isinger says the option needs to be made available here.
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