When the Department of Social Development announced plans to criminalise the use of baby saver boxes, it reignited a deeply emotional and contentious debate about infant abandonment in South Africa. It’s an issue rooted in our national psyche and one South Africans understandably feel strongly about.

The conversations often focus on morality and policies and flare up when horrific news stories tell yet another tragic tale. But at its core, baby abandonment is about more than debates or news stories. It’s about human lives; newborns just hours or days old and women in unimaginable situations, forced to make choices no one should ever have to face.

These are women who are invisible, already abandoned by a system that largely ignores and often vilifies those at the margins; poor, Black, pregnant girls and women. These mothers are often dealing with circumstances so appalling, pain so deep, that abandoning their child seems like the only path forward.

Yet those of us who cannot imagine such pain, paint these women as immoral, promiscuous, even monstrous, as if they simply “got themselves pregnant” and heartlessly “dumped” their babies. Baby saver boxes are criticised as enabling irresponsible sexual behaviour, making it easy to “get rid of the problem.”

In my work as a Baby Line counsellor, I’ve heard those exact words and worse spoken many times. But regularly, we later learn that these women were raped, often by family members, coerced into unprotected sex, or forced to repay loans with sex.

Baby saver boxes wouldn’t be necessary if women weren’t already so chronically and systemically let down. Their existence is a symptom of a much deeper problem that we must confront. The fact that any woman feels a baby box is her only option should not just break our hearts; it should make us ask hard questions of ourselves as a society. Not just about baby savers, but about the systems that failed her long before she got there.

Child abandonment in South Africa is a quiet crisis, worsening every year. Around 3,500 babies are abandoned annually but the real number is likely much higher. For every child found alive, it is estimated that two die.

We speak daily with women who believe they have no choice but to abandon their babies. We hear the fear in their voices, the despair in their stories. Most of them are not indifferent or unloving. They’re trapped in cycles of poverty, abuse, violence and generational trauma. Many are entirely without support and lack information and access to options counselling. They simply do not have the financial, emotional, and practical resources to raise a child. When you’re scared, exhausted, and out of options, it’s impossible to see a way forward.

Baby saver boxes won’t solve these problems. They are a reaction, not a solution. But criminalising them won’t do anything either. We must also consider that the act of using a baby saver may well push a mother into more shame and isolation, making it even harder for her to seek support for her life

There is another way. We see it in our work when we take time to listen to women’s stories without judgement. When we offer compassion, reassurance and small acts of practical support. Items as small as a baby blanket or a packet of nappies. In those moments, hope takes root and many mothers choose to keep their babies and to ask for and accept help. This is the power of people seeing, hearing and supporting one another.

We call this approach the 3 C’s – compassion, counselling and connection. The 3 C’s are a simple, proactive, systemic intervention. Baby savers may save lives but in essence they are reactive. With so many abandonments each year, the problem can feel overwhelming, leading to drastic measures like baby savers. But the 3 C’s cost very little and are freely available to us all.