As the Czech Republic begins adopting a technological ground-level solution in the form of heated, alarm-equipped baby boxes at private hospitals, the country finds itself wrestling with questions that do little to bring about meaningful solutions.

It's inherently chilling to encounter a metal door in the wall that looks to all appearances like a library book deposit chute and imagine a parent placing an infant inside and walking away forever. But the consequences of a system that provides no options or resources for unwanted and orphaned children are far worse.

The annual International Conference on Children's Rights has just closed in Bucharest, the capital of a country that — since well before the 1989 collapse of the Eastern bloc — illustrated a horrifying worst-case scenario for societies that choose to neglect this issue.

Under the demented dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romanian couples were forced under threat of strict penalty to have more children than they could afford, thousands of which ended up in state institutions that could not afford to care for them much better. Many became HIV-infected after state-ordered blood transfusions, carried out with unscreened blood, were adopted — as incredible as it sounds — as a health measure.

The Czech Republic, even under the pre-1989 regime, never reached such levels of poverty, but there are still far too many children warehoused here. Some 20,000 are currently in state care, mainly in understaffed, underfunded Dickensian institutions. Compare that to just 6,000 children in state institutions in the much wealthier United Kingdom, which has a population six times larger than the Czech Republic's 10.2 million.

Clearly, the long shadow of communist thinking has left us with our own problems, though mercifully they're far less acute than Romania's. The pre-1989 preference of handing off babies and children with even mild retardation or disabilities persists among many Czechs, who are only now coming to accept the vastly better option of handling these problems with home care.

As Marie Vodičková, director of the Fund for Children in Need, says, "The government continues to prefer state institutions as a solution for unwanted children."

Another antiquated idea just as hazardous — still proffered by many educated young medical professionals — is that children who are handed off by parents who feel they cannot provide for them are, essentially, damaged goods no one will want.

These arguments, leveled against those who advocate safe, anonymous, well-located baby boxes and a modern adoption system to back them up, are about as well-founded as a fear of black cats.

"It's absolutely not true," says Vodičková, "that people are afraid to adopt children that have been anonymously dropped off."