Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Potential Birth Mothers -- Portable Incubators

Radio Australia reports on pregnant women being trafficked for their babies:
First world demand to adopt very young babies is driving a new twist in people
smuggling, particularly in Asia.One of Australia's senior law officers says more and more, smugglers are trading in pregnant women - the perfect incubators - for access to their newborns. Australia's Chief Federal Magistrate John Pascoe is presenting a paper on the issue to the LawAsia conference in Singapore, which is looking at children and the law.

Pascoe says this trafficking of pregnant women for access to their babies is a growing trend, and puts the numbers "in the thousands rather than in tens or hundreds."

It reminds me of an incident several years ago in Texas. As I remember the details, an adoption agency was encouraging women from Mexico to cross the border illegally to have their babies and relinquish them in the U.S. so that the adoptions could be handled as domestic adoptions rather than more difficult international adoptions. Certainly not as bad as the Australian report of trafficking, but still troubling. Anyone else remember more details of the U.S. case? I haven't been able to track anything down on it.

2 comments:

Jeff and Madeline said...

No I don't remember that, I do know that many people came across in CA, but that was for citizenship.
This is sad and sick.

Anonymous said...

"JOHN PASCOE: There were eight babies in the boat. They were packed in styrofoam fish boxes, that were punctured in order to enable them to breathe and put very crudely, this is seen by traffickers as not a particularly good way of moving children because there are health consequences and it is seen as both safer for the child and safer in terms of detection for them to move the pregnant mother across the national boundary."

Oh, wow, I guess this is just another example of trafficking as a "buzzword." And maybe $$ is involved. But no matter. The presence of money does not = corruption. Apparently.

Absolutely shameful.