Baby boxes, where parents can leave an unwanted baby, common in medieval Europe, have been making a comeback over the last 10 years.

Supporters say a heated box, monitored by nurses, is better for babies than abandonment on the street – but the UN says it violates the rights of the child.

It is an unlikely scene for the most painful of dramas. On the edge of a road in a leafy suburb of Berlin, there is a sign pointing through the trees down a path. It says “Babywiege” – Baby Cradle.

At the end of that path, there is a stainless steel hatch with a handle. Pull that hatch open, and there are neatly folded blankets for a baby. The warmth is safe and reassuring. There is a letter, too, telling you who to call if you change your mind.

“Dear Mother of a Foundling,

“We know that the step of giving away your child wasn’t easy for you. We want you to be sure that we are full of love for your baby and will give the best start in life within our power. And the baby should have the chance to live.

“Should you change your decision and want your baby back, return to us with full trust. We will gladly help you and it pleases us when Mother and Child can remain together. Even if you don’t, we will still help you with advice. You should know that you should not worry about having the police seeking you. Call us. We’re there for you.

“Be aware that one day your child will want to know the name of its mother. We’ll be pleased to help when you want to leave this information with us.”

About twice a year, someone – presumably a woman – treads that path at the secluded rear of Waldfriede Hospital and leaves the baby, perhaps born in secret only a few hours earlier.

That person – presumably the mother – then turns and walks away, never to see the baby again. The baby grows, but never gets to know who his or her mother was.

The word “presumably” is used because the process is secret and anonymous, so nobody knows who the people are who make that walk, carrying a baby to reverse their steps without one.

So one of the arguments made by those who condemn the system is that it may well be men who are giving the baby away, dumping him or her seems too hard a word. The critics say that baby boxes may be used by unscrupulous fathers or even controllers of prostitutes to put pressure on mothers to dispose of an unwanted baby.

Baby boxes, where parents can leave an unwanted baby, common in medieval Europe, have been making a comeback over the last 10 years

On this argument, by making it so easy to get rid of a baby, mothers are less likely to get the real help they need in their situation of great emotional trauma and even physical risk.

It is an argument the people who set up baby boxes reject. They say, rather, that they are offering desperate mothers a safe way to get rid of their unwanted babies. Those who don’t walk the path to the baby box might instead leave the baby in the biting cold of a public place.

Or, worse. A court case has just finished in Germany where a mother was prosecuted for killing her baby by throwing it from a fifth-floor balcony.

This kind of case is giving a push to the movement for more baby boxes across Central and Eastern Europe, from the Baltic states, down through Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, to Romania. The law in some countries encourages their spread – in Hungary, for example, it was changed so that leaving a baby in the official baby box was deemed to be a legal act amounting to consent to adoption, while dumping a child anywhere else remains a crime.

The proponents don’t accept that for a moment. Gabriele Stangl, of Waldfriede Hospital in Berlin, said that baby boxes save lives, and so increase rights.

At the box in Berlin, she said, there was safety backed by the full facilities of a maternity unit. Once a baby is in the hatch, an alarm rings and medical staff comes, even as the mother walks away unseen. The baby is cared for in the hospital and then fostered before going into the legal system for adoption. In the early period, mothers can return and retrieve their child, but later they can’t – adoption is final.

But some mothers do return. One mother said how she had been in despair when her child was born. The father was absent, and she was young and in a state of numb shock, so she took the route down the path – and then changed her mind barely a week later.

She followed the advice in the letter she had found in the hatch and returned. She said that, for the first time, she had realized it was her baby. She noticed his hair and eyes, and realized she couldn’t give him away. Today, she returns to the unit with pictures of the child she now brings up. The baby box had given her time for her confusion to clear.

It’s hard to know the full figures of how many relent – the critics of the system say that in Germany it is well-appointed, with the best facilities, but in some of the poorer countries to the east, baby boxes are less well organized.

But at one baby box in Hamburg, for example, there have been 42 babies left in the last 10 years. Seventeen of those mothers have then contacted the organizers, and 14 have taken back their child.

Steffanie Wolpert, one of the organizers of the system in Hamburg, says it has to be better than providing no facilities at all.

“In 1999, we had five babies abandoned and three of them were found dead.

“So we thought about this situation, and why it happened, and found a new way to help children to stay alive.”

But the critics, like the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, are not convinced. They say that baby boxes are a throwback to the past when the medieval church had what were called “foundling wheels” – round windows through which unwanted babies could be passed.

Maria Herczog, a child psychologist who is on the committee, said that a better alternative, now as then, was more understanding and help for mothers in difficult circumstances.

“They send out the mistaken message to pregnant women that they are right to continue hiding their pregnancies, giving birth in uncontrolled circumstances and then abandoning their babies.”

There is no clear right or wrong in this. It is an argument between well-meaning people. The one voice never heard is that of the mother who walks the path with the baby she bore secretly hours earlier, to return without the bundle. Her tears can barely be imagined.

Baby boxes by country:

• Germany – 99

• Poland – 45

• Czech Republic – 44

• Hungary – 26

• Slovakia – 16

• Lithuania – 8

• Italy – 8 (approx.)

• Belgium – 1

• Netherlands – 1 (planned)

• Switzerland – 1

• Vatican – 1

• Canada – 1

• Malaysia – 1

• Also exist in Japan and the US

Source: UN Committee on the Rights of the Child