About five times a year, a Czech police officer stumbles across the discarded remains of a newborn baby.
These sad discoveries are dutifully filed in health records as the nation's "baby in a dustbin" cases, although experts say many similar cases are successfully hidden from the public record by distraught mothers who want no one to know.
But now the Czech Republic is softening its requirements for detailed recordkeeping in the public health sector -- and respecting single mothers who wish to give birth secretly.
The nation's privacy law was amended in September in a way that lets single mothers receive proper, insurance-paid medical care through pregnancy and childbirth with complete anonymity.
Moreover, the amendment means that a birth certificate for a single mother's child can be registered without the parent's names.
"To a woman who is ruminating over abortion or disposing of her newborn child, we are offering an alternative in the form of confidential childbirth," said parliament deputy Josef Janecek, who co-sponsored the measure with deputy Vilem Holan.
Janecek said he hopes the measure prevents dustbin baby cases, brings peace of mind to worried mothers, and increases the chances that an unwanted baby will be adopted rather than placed in a social institution.
The change comes after years of lobbying for secret childbirths by groups such as the Endangered Children's Fund, which operates safe houses around the country for neglected children and troubled mothers.
According to a report by the fund, the actual number of "dustbin babies" and similar cases may exceed 10 times the number recorded in government files.
A key reason for such a secret childbirth and baby disposal -- which under Czech law can lead to a murder charge -- is a mother's desire to hide the affair from parents, relatives or even the father.
In such cases a mother either waits too long or is unwilling to get an abortion.
Until now, the government's record-keeping rules made it impossible to keep a hospital childbirth secret.
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