A NEWBORN BABY boy has been released from hospital in China after becoming trapped in a toilet pipe and police say his mother faces no charges over the incident.
The baby’s two hour rescue from a 4 inch pipe underneath a squat toilet in Pujiang county prompted horror across the globe over the last two days.
Now police say that the mother, 22 and unmarried, had kept her pregnancy a secret and gave birth unexpectedly in one of the building’s communal bathrooms on Saturday.
The baby boy, who was trapped for several hours, suffered some cuts to his face and limbs and was kept in an incubator at the Pujiang People’s Hospital. Today he was taken home from the hospital by his mother and a man believed to be the father.
(Image: Shaanxi TV via AP Video)
The man has requested a paternity test and if the baby is his he is ready to discuss with the woman how to support the child, an official at the Pujiang county propaganda office in Zhejiang province in the eastern part of the country said today. Officials have not publicly released the names of either of the two adults.
The case has raised discussion of China’s lack of proper education about sex and birthing in many schools. Unwanted pregnancies have been on the rise because of an increasingly lax attitude toward pre-marital sex.
Police concluded that the 22-year-old single woman faces no charges, deciding she did not initially step forward because she was frightened, and that she gradually had a change of heart and began to tell the truth, said the official.
The woman told police she got pregnant after a brief affair with the man, hid her pregnancy from family and neighbors, and secretly delivered the child Saturday in a rental building’s restroom. She said the infant accidentally slipped into the squat toilet and raised the alarm.
In video footage, officials were shown removing the pipe from a ceiling that apparently was just below the restroom and then, at the hospital, using pliers and saws to gently pull apart the pipe and release the newborn.
- Additional reporting from Associated Press and AFP.
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