Net cafes becoming delivery rooms for poor pregnant girls

Around 8 p.m. on Sept 29, a 30-year-old woman gave birth in the restroom of an Internet cafe near Yokohama Station. Then, says Shukan Shincho (Oct 16), she returned to her booth and resumed reading her manga comic book. About 40 minutes later, a cleaner found the infant in a plastic garbage bag by the sinks. She called police. By the time they arrived, the infant, a boy, had stopped breathing. They successfully resuscitated him.
“Are you the mother?” they asked the 30-year-old woman. She denied it, but a female officer, pursuing the matter, found the woman’s panties soaked with blood. She was taken to hospital, and subsequently charged with abandoning her baby.
Net cafes began as venues for cyber-surfing or manga-reading in the privacy of a quiet cubicle. The “working poor” phenomenon turned them into places of nightly refuge for people who, though in many cases employed, find a fixed address beyond their means. Now, Shukan Shincho fears, they are seen by a growing number of rootless pregnant women as a delivery room of last resort.
The Yokohama case was not the first of its kind. Last November, a 23-year-old woman gave birth at a Net cafe in Saga City, Kyushu, and left the baby in a train station coin locker. She was given a two-year sentence—suspended for three years—for abandoning a corpse
Net cafes aside, gynecologists are concerned about a growing number of women who go through an entire pregnancy without medical care and then abruptly show up at a hospital at the onset of labor pains. There are risks of various sorts involved—most, though not all, of a medical nature. The gravest, of course, is death—the infant mortality rate in such cases is an estimated 18 times higher than normal. Premature birth and infectious disease passed on from mother to child are two others. A fourth is the possibility of not making it to the hospital in time. Births have been known to occur in the ambulance while the crew frantically searches for a hospital able to accommodate the emergency.
The principal non-medical risk is financial. Only one-quarter of mothers in this situation pay their hospital bills, Shukan Shincho hears from the Kanagawa Children’s Health Center. Twelve percent are runaways, reports a separate study cited by the magazine. Twenty-seven percent are not enrolled in the national health insurance program. Failing to enroll, they forfeit a 350,000 yen lump-sum maternity allowance.
“There are no precise statistics,” says Masataka Togashi of the NPO Independent Life Support Center, “but my feeling is that the number of women in their 20s and 30s with no place to live is rising.”
Shukan Shincho recalls with a shudder the string of “coin locker baby” episodes of the 1970s—a seeming epidemic of babies abandoned in coin lockers. “Are Net cafes,” it demands, “the latest substitute? Let’s put a stop to this appalling story before it goes any further.”

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Blue_Tiger at 01:03 PM JST - 21st October

The headline of this story makes it sound like Jr. Hi. and High School Girls are doign this.

Newsflash:

20- and 30-year-old women do not classify as "girls"!

They are grown women who should know the difference between doing what is right and wrong. Of course, in this day and age where the perpetrator is handled as fragilely and carefully as the victim, it should be no surprise that this is a growing trend. After all, look at the sentences that the 30-year-old in Yokohama, and the 23-year-old in Kyushu, both received for abandoning their newborns (the 23-year-old's died, making her a 2nd degree murderer): the latter received a two-year sentence suspended for three, and the former basically seems to have received the same, or a lighter sentence....and the latter's baby died thanks to her abandonment. Again, this is all nothing more than a grotesque symptom of selfishness.
Nordon at 02:10 PM JST - 21st October

Remove the doors in net Cafes.

They can be in cubicles, but there needs to be some ability for the owners to check up on the condition of their equipment, rooms, and the occupants.
ALHQQ at 09:14 PM JST - 21st October

Last November, a 23-year-old woman gave birth at a Net cafe in Saga >City, Kyushu, and left the baby in a train station coin locker. She was >given a two-year sentence—suspended for three years—for abandoning a >corpse.

She should have been given a more hefty sentence, I do think they call this murder. 2 years is unacceptable!
rtrhead1 at 11:08 PM JST - 21st October

>

Births have been known to occur in the ambulance while the crew frantically searches for a hospital able to accommodate the emergency. >

does this strike anyone else as ridiculous? hospital - emergency. if you can't handle an emergency birth, you have no right being called a hospital or even being open. you are worthless.
notimpressed at 11:10 AM JST - 22nd October

In a country supposedly worried about a dropping birth rate, you'd think they would make it free, easy, and safe for giving birth. For a "hospital" to turn away a pregnant woman in labour should be criminal. It amounts to throwing a harmless baby to the wolves, not to offer to help. The selfishness lies not only with the woman who would drop a sprog on the floor then read a manga like laa dee da, but with a society that would see only thier own inconvenience/expense, before the needs of a baby about to enter the world. That includes the hospitals, and the government.
notimpressed at 11:11 AM JST - 22nd October

Oh and by the way....if you are old enough to be pregnaant, you are no longer a 'girl'.
rtrhead1 at 05:06 PM JST - 22nd October

eh, beg to differ. ever heard of sexual abuse? rape? girls getting taken advantage of by older men? hello incest. that's a pretty narrow way to look at it notimpressed.
nodame at 10:32 PM JST - 22nd October

if you are old enough to be pregnaant, you are no longer a 'girl'.

Umm... a 5 year old girl once gave birth in Germany, is she not considered a girl?
usaexpat at 04:50 AM JST - 23rd October

Sammi33 right on the lack of sex ed here but wrong on the availability of contraceptives. IUDs, Depo and the ring are for sure available as my wife has done all three in the past 12 years. The point of this article really is just a wake up call that Japan has an underclass just like all developed nations. That fact alone is news to many Japanese from the working class to the wealthy. Like all developed nations the underclass is usually under or un-educated about life in general and how to live better than animals. Throwing money at the social saftey net is only part of the equation. The real problem is that the cohesion of Japanese society has started to break down.
Orchid64 at 10:03 AM JST - 23rd October

Balanced views gets you labeled Japanophile, but not everyone can be a brunt out jaded English teachers.

I can't help but note the irony of calling for balance in the same sentence as a heavily prejudicial statement about anyone who puts forth a negative view of Japan.

Certainly two births under unusual circumstances does not indicate a trend, but there haven't been only two of these cases. If you do a search, you'll see that there have been other cases that were not cited in this article. One occurred in a net cafe on October 3 in Yokohama, for instance. There's also the well-known "baby hatch" situation where mothers abandon their babies. It had been shut down for awhile, but was reopened and is seeing notable business, particularly in a country where the birth rate is low and adoption is nearly unheard of.

The problem is that Japan's large middle class is starting to separate into lower class and the safety nets, which have largely been part of the family structure, are changing. It used to be that family took care of their elderly, less financially well-off, etc. members. Now, they're doing so less and less and there's nowhere else for them to turn to. The culture hasn't experienced such things long enough to set up services or to educate people about which ones are out there.
nigelboy at 10:35 AM JST - 23rd October

Certainly two births under unusual circumstances does not indicate a trend, but there haven't been only two of these cases. If you do a search, you'll see that there have been other cases that were not cited in this article. One occurred in a net cafe on October 3 in Yokohama, for instance

I believe it's the same one mentioned in this article.
notimpressed at 10:44 AM JST - 27th October

I didnt say you are old enough mentally to be having sex, but if you are biologically ready to reproduce, you are no longer a girl, you have become a woman. And therefore have the responsibility that comes with the ability to bear children, to both your own body and to the child. And nodame...thats sounds like a freak occurance, which has nothing to do with this story. Maybe you didn't notice teh ages of the "girls" in this story, 30, 23....not girls. Don't know where you came up with the word incest from, no incest mentioned here either, maybe you meant paedophilia, well, there are no children in this story except the ones abandoned on the floor of a cafe. Why do people feel the need to over-react to a single sentance without understanding it, or the preceding sentences before they rattle off reactionary garbage?
SpanishEyez37 at 02:06 PM JST - 27th October

In the end , women or girls, please use birth control. Thank you.
oberst at 08:58 AM JST - 28th October

anyone claims those pregmant girls are not Japanese yet ?
ptolemy at 02:30 AM JST - 31st October

Shukan Shincho better be careful, if 2 Channel finds out that they are doing this story and its translated, it'll end up like the Mainichi Wai-wai and the Japan Times Tokyo Confidential.