Third "Window of Life" for Unwanted Babies Inaugurated in Poland

News Release/Teresa Neumann : Jan 18, 2009
Thaddeus M. Baklinski - LifeSiteNews

"All the mothers who cannot bring up your children - do not kill them, do no not throw them on the scrap heaps, please. Leave them here in 'The Window of Life.' Let them be adopted. Give them a chance for life and love."

(Czestochowa, Poland)—According to a LifeSiteNews report, the "Window of Life of Blessed Edmund Bojanowski" was inaugurated in a convent in the city of Czestochowa recently by Archbishop Stanislaw Nowak. The "Window of Life"—the third of its kind in Poland—is a place where mothers who do not want to or cannot provide for their children, can anonymously and safely bring newborns in order for them to be cared for and placed for adoption.

Archbishop Nowak, speaking at the inauguration ceremony, said, "The 'Window of Life of Blessed Edmund Bojanowski' is a sign of hope for newborn children. It is also a means of using goodness and mercy to fight abortion. In Poland, experts say that abortion has claimed the lives of nearly 20 million children in the past several years. The 'Window of Life' in Czestochowa is, therefore, the defense of human life,"
The "Window of Life" is built into the walls of the convent. It is a warm and ventilated room with a window which can be opened from the outside. As soon as the baby is placed inside the Window, a signal alerts the nuns who come to pick up the child and provide immediate medical care.

"The 'Window of Life' was established to take note of a problem of babies thrown on the scrap heap," said Fr. Bogdan Kordula. Mothers who hide their pregnancy and do not want to give birth at a hospital can leave the baby in "The Window of Life" without any legal consequences, he explained in a Krakow Post report.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "giving up an infant without resigning parents' rights lengthens the adoption procedure. However, we must remember that there is a child's life at stake. It is better for the infant to find a new family than die."

In a Radio Poland interview Fr. Krzysztof M¹del spoke of the long history of entrusting newborns to convents for the people of the Church to take care of temporarily. "Already in the late medieval times in one of the sisters' convents in Rome the congregation opened their gate for such unloved, unneeded children. It was possible to leave the child there and have hope that [the baby] would be treated pretty well and later maybe adopted."

The nuns of the convent have said that leaving a baby in "The Window" is an extreme situation, the last hope for unwanted children, and for the desperate women for whom the cloak of anonymity is important.

The organizations responsible for establishing the "Windows of Life", which include the Catholic dioceses of the cities involved and Caritas Polska, Poland's largest charity organization, have made this appeal: "All the mothers who cannot bring up your children—do not kill them, do no not throw them on the scrap heaps, please. Leave them here in 'The Window of Life.' Let them be adopted. Give them a chance for life and love."