ILLEGAL BABY SALES

Every time I hear this kind of story, it just infuriates me. I don't think many of the adopters realize that it is their actions that allow these situations to exist. Its your money. You can stop shelling out the big bucks in order to get that proverbial baby. You can demand ethics in adoption. I only know a handful of adoptive parents that actually fight back.

Money makes the adoption world go round. Many of these third world countries are subject to this kind of corruption. There are too many stories where corruption was found in adoption. I wish the federal government would stop and pay attention to all of this.

I worry about these international adoptees from these countries. We already have too many of them being returned on faulty adoptions. What about the natural parents who didn't want to relinquish and had their children stolen from them? What about the adoptive parents who have been intentionally scammed by these adoption agencies? The law in many states treats all of us differently. We are separate under the law. When is this all going to end?

Here is the story.

NAPTIP raises alarm over activities of baby sellers in S-East

Written by Tony Edike

Tuesday, 19 August 2008

ENUGU—THE National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and other Related Matters (NAPTIP) yesterday expressed concern over the increasing number of maternity homes that engage in illegal sale of babies in the South-East in spite of theillegal sale of babies in the South-East being waged against the illicit business. Zonal Director of NAPTIP, Mrs. Ijeoma Okoronkwo who spoke with reporters in Enugu said her organization has continued to uncover such illegal activities of maternity home operators in recent times, lamenting that the operators of the illegal baby factories have continued to sell babies to interested parties under the guise of operating foster homes within the five states of the South- East. She disclosed that Abia State was the worst hit of such criminal activities, adding that everywhere the officials of her organization have visited in the state, the issue of illegal baby sales in the name of adoption was common among the people. Okoronkwo particularly named Ohafia, Obi-Ngwa and Bende among the areas in Abia where the issue of baby sales was rampant. According to her, the worst scenario was that people do not see anything wrong in paying to have the babies from the foster homes, adding that it was criminal for people to resort to buying babies in the name of adoption. She revealed plans by NAPTIP to set up a monitoring group in all communities in the five states of the South-East to ensure that no foster home is involved in baby sales racketing. Explaining that there was a great difference between adoption of babies as enshrined in the laws of the country and outright purchase of babies from foster homes, the NAPTIP zonal Director noted that what could be alarming was that in all the states, except Enugu, the much talked about Child Right Act has been passed yet there has been no reduction in the illicit trade. She said that with this law now in place in some states in the zone, the Ministries of Women Affairs were expected to prosecute such offenders but regretted that much has not been done in this regard. “The law provides that people can adopt babies or children if they wish. But there are processes. Adoption does not cost money. But in the cases of these maternity homes, the babies are paid for, which is what we want to stop. We are going to all the states to establish monitoring groups to check these homes, because we cannot do it alone, we need information we can work on and through the monitoring group, we can go after these homes and prosecute any of them involved in sale of babies”, Okoronkwo said.. Apart from setting up monitoring groups, the zonal director disclosed that her organization was reaching out to the Ministries of Women Affairs in the states to ask them to rise up to their responsibilities in prosecuting any cases of child abuse.