I hate being right about this kind of stuff

In my January post, "In Defense of Child Trafficking," I (yes, seriously) argue that the black market for adoptions should be liberalized. In sum, I contend that making adoption-for-cash illegal leads to abuses and general criminality in the same way making drugs-for-cash illegal does.

I also argued that it's hard to see how a free market for adoption "victimizes" anyone any more than the current system, the system that involves, instead of adoption-for-cash, adoption-in-exchange-for-bureaucratic-nightmare alongside a thriving (and criminal) black market. Indeed, I contend that the present system produces far more victims, especially in states where the bureaucracy effectively amounts to an outright adoption ban for certain classes of parents.

Now, to the untrained eye, the following comments (click here for the full article) from the very intelligent blog, This is Not My Country, is an example of why I'm wrong.

Its author tells us:

Bulgarian authorites broke up a five-member ring that was bringing pregnant women to Greece to give birth . . . Each baby was sold for 15,000 euros, while on many occasions, the gang foced the women to deliver prematurely by having a c-section, so as to avoid arrest as their leave [temporary visa] had expired.

She goes on:

. . . In fact, in some cases, the masterminds of the ring would grant loans to their perspecitve [sic] victims, charging exhorbitant rates, thus forcing them to sell their babies . . . to repay their debt.

Forced c-sections? Forced sales of babies by loan sharks? If this is what we're seeing in adoption right now, then surely legalizing cash adoptions would lead to a dystopian nightmare. Indeed, I could not improve upon the author's righteous anger:

There are so many things wrong with this, where do you start? Who are the doctors performing these early c-sections? . . . eight years for forcing women to undergo surgery and to sell their babies? Are the lives of these women and children worth so little?

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Imagine, though, for a moment, a world in which adoption-for-cash is legal. I can for certain say two things about that world that are an improvement upon the present state of affairs.

1. Supply would meet demand. Unlike the world we live in, where there is a glut of homeless and impoverished children and ironically also a huge number of parents who are waiting for years - some hopelessly - to adopt, a world of liberalized adoption laws would allow supply to meet demand: every hopeful couple who desired a child would be able to take that infant instantly out of poverty and into a (hopefully) loving home.

2. For-cash adoptions would be humane, and regulated. Unlike the world we live in, where all for-cash adoption is illegal and all of it must be prosecuted criminally if discovered, a world of liberalized adoption laws would allow authorities to recognize for-profit agencies that treat adopters and adoptees humanely and with the care that this delicate situation deserves, while sanctioning those that do not.

Neither of these two points addresses the above author's implicit concerns about the "cheapening" of human life. And in the final wash, I'm afraid I can't address them adequately. A world of legalized for-cash adoptions may well involve mothers who have children for no other reason than to meet the demands of those who cannot.

The thing we have to ask ourselves is first - whether that would be so bad and second - whether it's worse than the world we live in, the world in which I face the same legal sanction if I kidnap a mother and force a c-section to get her baby as I do if she voluntarily bears a child so that my wife and I may adopt it.





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