http://www.eyewitnessnews.co.za/articleprog.aspx?id=50520

Childline on Tuesday said adoption and abortion were considered taboo in some cultures and this explained the number of young South African mothers who resorted to dumping their babies.

Last Friday a truck driver saved a baby after it was dropped in a manhole in Montague Gardens, Cape Town.

It came just days after a 17-year-old Khayelitsha girl was taken into custody for the murder of her six-week-old son.

Cape Town Child Welfare said that this year alone there have been more than 500 cases of babies being abandoned in the city.

Childline spokesperson Joan van Niekerk said teenage mothers feared being stigmatised if they chose to have an abortion.

She said, “Under those circumstances, teenagers will not go back to the resources that are in place in order to help them.”

She said most resort to desperate measures.

“They are left in a position in which they feel the only way they can get rid of the baby is to pretend that someone has stolen it, pretend that its died or gotten lost in some way. They do not realise that usually, invariably, this will be found out,” she added.

(Edited by Lisa Bartlett)