Legal Rights of Neonates in India: Birth Concealment, Abandonment, and Safe Surrender

AI Summary

Drivers of neonatal abandonment include poverty, gender bias, social stigma, perinatal mental health vulnerability, and gaps in accessible maternal support.
Clinical priorities: immediate resuscitation, safeguarding the infant, systematic, accurate documentation, and mandatory reporting under Indian law.
Legal and policy responses emphasise safe surrender initiatives, a rights based approach, institutional protocols, and perinatal mental health services to reduce preventable harm.

Neoreviews. 2026 Jul 1;27(7):e407-e413. doi: 10.1542/neo.27-7-026.

ABSTRACT

Neonatal abandonment, concealment of birth, and unsafe surrender, which is defined as relinquishment of a newborn in unprotected, nonmedical settings such as public places, refuse sites, or private locations without supervision or care, remain persistent public health and medico-legal challenges in India. These events occur as the result of a combination of poverty, gender bias, social stigma, perinatal mental-health vulnerability, and gaps in accessible maternal support. For clinicians, immediate priorities include resuscitation, safeguarding the infant, ensuring systematic and accurate documentation, and in India, initiating mandatory reporting. In this review, we provide an overview of India’s current legal framework and summarize evolving safe surrender initiatives, clinical and forensic challenges, and recommended strategies to reduce harm; comparison with approaches in other countries is also included. A rights-based approach, along with institutional protocols and perinatal mental-health services, may reduce preventable neonatal morbidity and mortality while supporting vulnerable mothers in India.

PMID:42379601 | DOI:10.1542/neo.27-7-026

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