A hospital in southwestern Japan where women can give birth anonymously said Tuesday that a teenage girl who gave birth in December has become the first person to use the system, the only one of its kind in the country.
Jikei Hospital in Kumamoto Prefecture, which became the first facility in the nation to offer so-called confidential births in December 2019, said the girl only disclosed her identity to the head counselor of the hospital and has already been discharged.
The hospital decided to introduce anonymous births amid a rising number of women choosing to deliver without medical assistance to keep their pregnancies a secret. But the system has yet to be legislated in Japan due to numerous issues such as how to register the child.