Over the last three weeks, there's been at least one reported case of infanticide or abandoned baby a week. In one case a newborn baby was found dead outside a Jurong flat. In another case, a woman gave birth in an alley and fled leaving her newborn behind. In yet another case, a young girl was accosted by a woman who handed her a baby to mind for a while and vanished.

And these are just the cases that make it into the media. How many more "inconvenient" babies have been abandoned or are killed "legally" through convenient abortions? And this at a time when the nation is facing critically low birth-rates. Last year the birth rate hit a 14-year low with a total of 40,800 live births.

As if abandoning and destroying babies was not bad enough, we're also faced with the realization that we're slowly turning into a nation of unfeeling robots who only do what they are told or programmed to do.

How dare I say that? Well, it's certainly not a figment of my imagination; just consider the recent report in the newspapers. Several bystanders were reported to have sighted a woman who had just given birth in an alley going past them without a baby, leaving a trail of blood but nobody thought to stop her and ask if she needed help.

Heck, even if the spirit of charity were dim and weak within them, plain human curiosity should have prompted them to act. But no, it appears we have become so conditioned to acting only on order that even natural, animal curiosity has been bred out of us. But more about that another day.

To go back to abandoned babies. I know I'm committing some kind of heresy here but before another baby is killed or abandoned, before another human life is wasted, I think it's time to reverse our mindset about "baby drops" and the whole notion of motherhood.

Infanticide and the abandonment of babies are tied to the fear behind the way society promotes the idea of motherhood as the only real way to fulfillment in a woman. Maybe it's time we tried to exorcise this fear and provide safeguards for afflicted women and also redefine motherhood.

Even more urgently, the authorities should re-visit the idea of "baby repositories" at strategic and convenient places throughout the island to prevent babies being left in rubbish dumps and other unsafe places. Last year, the Government rejected the idea on the basis that it would indirectly encourage or sanction child abandonment. This may have been a good enough justification at that time, perhaps, but in light of the recent revelations, it merits another think.

The concept has worked well in countries - Germany, Italy, Hungary, Austria, South Africa - that have adopted it. One of the main reasons is because the mother's anonymity is maintained. In Germany, for example, mothers can drop their babies through a chute at a specially designated place. The baby drops onto a soft heated bed, triggering off an alarm at a nearby hospital.

A video camera is trained on the bed so staff can keep an eye on the baby until help reaches it. Notably, no attempt is made to identify or prosecute the mother. And she still has a chance to change her mind as the abandoned child is held for two months in care before being placed for adoption or foster care.

In Singapore, there are several obstacles to such a scheme's success. The biggest is arguably the fact that the deterrent here is too harsh. Women who abandon their babies are sought out and prosecuted with a vengeance. The problem is, women who abandon their babies are often victims themselves, desperately in need of care and understanding.

Indeed, the benefits of "baby drops" far outweigh the potential dangers such as an increase in abandoned babies and fathers being robbed of their rights. Secret counseling, such as we have in Singapore, obviously does not seem to be working as well as it should, so how about trying something that has been tested and proven in the West, considering how similar to the West we are in terms of economics and modernity?

The principle of anonymity should also be extended to mothers wishing to give birth in hospitals, a move that would reduce the number of mothers forced to giving birth at home or in toilets.

The "baby drop" scheme is also being adopted in the United States with several states enacting laws that grant immunity to women who hand in their babies. No identification is needed, no questions are asked.

Mothers of unwanted babies, more often than not are very young, Often too ashamed and frightened to ask for help from their elders or the authorities they end up killing their babies or leaving them exposed in dangerous places. A "baby drop" scheme would have the potential to save the lives of these babies who would otherwise be left to die in rubbish heaps.

Can a country like Singapore, whose main resource is its human capital and whose population growth is critically endangered, afford to let a single baby die?

The views of the writer do not neccessarily represent the views of Lycos Asia.

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