Our award-winning columnist Plight of the babies thrown out like trash
This week, to celebrate Barnado’s Adoption Week, I was asked to bring my daughter Amara into the Loose Woman studio.
She’s now seven. We adopted her as a newborn from an orphanage in Pakistan, as a BBC crew filmed me and my husband Steve every step of the way.
The Loose Women producers showed viewers a clip from the documentary. And when I relived the moment Amara was first laid into my arms, I just welled up, remembering what those three months in Karachi were like.
When I was in the middle of it, I was so focused on getting our baby home to the UK and making sure she would survive, I was numb to everything else going on.
Now it feels important to talk about the reality of life for babies like her and their birth mothers.
I remember walking into the Edhi Foundation for the first time. Adoption papers in hand, I was to meet Belquise Edhi, the woman who would decide whether we would make the cut as adopters.
It was a tatty, run-down building in a dusty, crowded street shared by homeless people, camels and stray dogs.
As I walked up the dark staircase, I stopped at the landing, where there was a white crib with a little mattress inside.
Above it was a sign which translated as: “Don’t throw your chil- dren in the trash, leave them in this cradle. Life is precious to God.”
I didn’t really understand what it meant and carried on to meet the formidable Ms Edhi, who seemed cold and emotionless.
It wasn’t until later that I realised she’s only that way because she’s spent a lifetime dealing with the worst humanity is capable of.
She helps the most vunerable people in Pakistani society – babies, females of all ages, and the mentally and physically ill.
She has collected body parts of newborns tied up in plastic bags from rubbish dumps. She has pulled babies from the trash with umbilical cords still attached.
She has rescued girls dumped in the street because they’d been raped – bringing shame on their families. She has helped 13-yearold girls give birth after being sexually abused by relatives.
I asked her about the cradle I had seen. She told me that there are about 400 Edhi cradles scattered through Pakistan, at bus shelters, in malls, at roadsides.
So a desperate mother can put her unwanted baby in the cradle, ring the bell and walk away.
Once that bell has been rung, an Edhi worker come and bring the child to the orphanage.
Then I realised nearly all the children we met were girls, along with a handful of disabled boys. Because in this country of crippling poverty, girls are seen as a burden.
But the saddest thing was Ms Edhi’s matter-offact comment to me that day, meant as a kindness.
“When I give you a baby, if you find there is something wrong with it, bring her back and we’ll give you a new one.”
There are no statistics on how many children suffer in this way; the government does not even bother to count.
So I pray the new Prime Minister, former cricketer star Imran Khan, will make these kids’ rights a top priority. Because unless he sets an example, their suffering will go on and on.
And when I look at my bright, beautiful daughter and think how her life might have turned out, I know this has to stop.