On Monday night, someone deposited a newborn girl in the baby box at Bethesda Hospital in Basel. The girl is fine. She is under medical care, and the child protection authority has already appointed a legal representative for her. It's the fifth baby deposited in that box since it opened in 2015.
In Switzerland there are eight such facilities, spread across Basel, Bellinzona, Bern, Davos, Olten, Sion, Zollikerberg and Schwyz. They are thermal alarm spaces installed in hospitals, where a mother who is without an exit can leave her baby without being identified, without criminal consequences, and with the certainty that the child will receive immediate attention. Since the first one, which opened in Einsiedeln in 2001, 32 babies have gone through one of them in twenty-five years.
When it happens, the KESB, the cantonal authority for the protection of children and adults, takes charge of the process: legal representation, temporary foster care and orientation towards adoption if the mother does not reappear within the established period. The mother is never actively sought. The system exists for exactly that.
Most people who have been in Switzerland for years do not know that this exists. And in many other countries, it directly doesn't exist. It is the kind of device that Switzerland has been working discreetly for a quarter of a century without announcing it with posters.