The Battle against Legal Abandonment

The Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan is seeing an unending stream of 'legally' abandoned children. As many as 2,000 infants are relinquished every year in accordance with a family law that seems to reflect the nation's socialist history. The number is particularly high in the capital of Astana where large-scale development is attracting people from the regions coming in search of work. Many babies resulting from encounters between such men and women end up being legally abandoned. The program delves into this troubling social problem by looking at a children's home for "relinquished" infants and a mothers' home for solo mothers who have decided to keep their babies.