It's a very difficult concept to get your head around -- a newborn baby that nobody wants. Neither the mother nor the father wants. The child is unplanned. Unwanted. An accident.

And after the baby is born, the parents or usually just the mother is packed off home and we know that baby is heading off into a life of....Well, who knows what? Neglect. Possibly abuse. A miserable existence awaits. That baby is on the backfoot from the moment it leaves hospital.

In Australia, a coroner in New South Wales has recommended that baby 'drop off' boxes be installed in hospitals.

It's essentially a box where a mother or father can anonymously abandon a baby that they don't want.

It's not a new concept, it happens all over the world -- just not in Australia or here, for that matter. But perhaps it should.

The coroner in Australia has put forward the idea of a baby box being installed at hospitals, at the inquest of a newborn baby called lily grace who was found in a shallow grave in 2014. No-one knows who her parents are, but but what everyone does know is that she wasn't wanted.

In South Africa, I know of an organisation called 'the door of hope'.

Locally it's known as the hole in the wall.

And it is just that. It's a sort of hatch. And you lift it, and you place your baby in there and that activates sensors which alert the people who work for the door of hope that a baby has been dropped off.

Almost always, they're newborns.

Some are healthy, others are malnourished, underweight or dehydrated. There are many issues that may lead a South African woman to abandon her baby, but largely it occurs in the townships where there is extreme hardship.

But there are baby drop-offs all over the world -- I had a quick look on the net this morning. I found them in Germany. They're in Italy, Austria, Russia, the Czech Republic, Sicily, Japan, China and Poland. That was just a quick look. They'll be elsewhere too.

And as the Australians consider a need for a so-called baby box in New South Wales, I wonder if we too should be looking to introduce the concept here as well -- given our high rate of child abuse. Given the cases of neglect in this country -- it's an uncomfortable conversation, particularly in this country, it is a concept that is incredibly alien to most of us. It goes against every maternal or paternal instinct. But none-the-less, it is a concept that has the potential to preserve life.

It would probably require a law change, it would require a seismic shift in our thinking too -- but if it saves a life, even just one life, then surely it is concept we should consider.