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WINDHOEK, Namibia, September 19, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Hardly a day passes that a newborn or preborn baby is not flushed down a toilet or left at a dump in the capital city of Namibia, according to the Namibia Press Agency. The news agency reports that some 40 babies a month are discarded in a city of only 350,000.

The report builds on a 2008 report from the Legal Assistance Center, which found that “at Gammams Water Care Works in Windhoek they discover an average of 13 bodies of newborn babies each month amongst the human waste flushed down toilets.”

Paul Goseb, 28, found a baby girl wrapped in a plastic bag filled with flies while scavenging around a dump for aluminum to sell in February. Goseb said his 15-year-old friend “nearly collapsed when he saw the dead baby. It’s both our first time, seeing a dead baby…and it is not good.”

In another case reported just this week by Allafrica.com, a baby boy was found in a toilet in the village of Omulathitu. Despite having spent the night in the latrine, the boy has survived. Charges of murder and child neglect may be filed in the case. 

According to press accounts, the African nation’s Women in Action Development chief Veronica De Klerk blamed the indifference on a pervasive culture of violence against the young and against women.

A survey conducted into the problem of “baby dumping” in the country found that the number one reason for the practice was fathers denying their paternity of a child.

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Members of the ruling South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), a socialist party, claim the dumping prove the nation must liberalize its abortion laws. A post on the party’s website states, “People in [post-apartheid] South Africa have access to legal abortion across the country, and it is very rare to read stories about babies being dumped in plastic bags in valleys and riverbeds there because there are specialized clinics that by law can perform abortion in safer conditions.” 

In 1999, the nation dropped plans to liberalize its abortion laws after polls revealed the nation almost unanimously opposed to the measure.

After a 22-year-long terror war, Namibia was granted independence from South Africa on February 9, 1990, by then-president F. W. de Klerk.