Word: storks
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...first day of operation of Jikei Hospital's "stork cradle," earlier this month, an unexpectedly large package arrived. The new service consists of a small hatch facing the outside of the building where desperate parents could safely and discreetly leave unwanted infants. But nobody was expecting to see a three-year-old deposited in the hatch. The toddler reportedly told doctors at the hospital in the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto that "I came with Daddy," and knew his own name, which enabled authorities to identify the father...
...while the stork cradle drew the headlines, something far more regrettable happened in the shadows three days later. On May 18, a young Japanese couple were arrested after their one-year-old baby was found wrapped in a plastic bag and dumped in a gutter. Four months before, the boy had allegedly been stuffed into the luggage compartment of a motorcycle while the parents gambled at a pachinko parlor, and may have suffocated to death while they played...
...there were 30,000 consultations with child welfare offices during fiscal 2005, more than 30 times the total in 1990. Critics say that Japan's social welfare services are too passive, doing too little to head off crises until it's too late. Shortcut solutions like Jikei Hospital's stork cradle are more common, giving anxious parents an anonymous out rather than providing them with meaningful support. But an increasingly budget-conscious government doesn't appear eager to allocate the necessary funding. "The child consultation services are very understaffed and suffering hard," says Saimura...
...Jikei Hospital's stork cradle is also a reminder that options are few for Japanese couples facing unwanted pregnancies. Many opt for abortion. Japan has no legal or moral opposition to ending pregnancies, and the abortion rate is a relatively high 22.2% - 22.2 abortions for every 100 live births - and is rising fast among women below 25, despite the fact that premarital cohabitation is rare in Japan. But while abortion is common, adoption in Japan is virtually unheard of, although there are many couples eager to take in children. But the law is stacked in favor of birth parents' rights...
...Defense." Let's Face It: "Throaty Betty Hutton provides a diversion with a machine-gun-speed offering of Let's Not Talk About Love." And the Angels Sing: [Hutton] gets funnier with every picture. She is the most startling expression of natural force since the Johnstown Flood." In The Stork Club, "Her songs are undistinguished but her uninhibited way of putting them over is an eclectic mixture of Harlem and Bali, with a shout from the heyday of Ethel Merman and a gesture from the childhood of Shirley Temple." Cross My Heart "might possibly have been saved if Miss Hutton...