Tuesday, August 16, 2011

There's a special place in hell...

Remember back in May when I wrote about my strange experience with the adoption and surrogacy attorney who had a "situation" for us with a surrogate whose intended parents had changed their minds? (You can refresh your memory here.)

Yeah, well that woman just pled guilty to being part of a baby-selling ring. Three women conspired to have gestational carriers impregnated abroad (because they would need proof of a surrogacy if they did it here in the US) and then told prospective parents that these women had "situations," exactly like the one told to me, in which the intended parents had decided against surrogacy, leaving this "poor pregnant woman" to figure out what to do. Turns out they were charging the adoptive parents (which is what they were since the connection between the carrier and the parents were made after both parties knew there was a baby) upwards of $100,000 and paying the carriers $30,000 and pocketing the rest. You can read about the case here.

The whole thing turns my stomach. According to Resolve, the national organization that supports those who are contending with infertility, 7.3 million people in the US are affected by infertility. While some percentage of those go on to have biological children, a significant number of people are faced with very hard decisions about how (or if) to build their families. I know as well as anyone that there are moments of pain and desperation on this journey. I think that it could be pretty easy to jump if a situation like this came your way -- a surrogate seemingly in the unthinkable position of being pregnant with no intended parents for the baby. For those who are naive, it might feel like a dream come true. For those who are not so naive, it might be tempting to turn the other cheek or rationalize your way around the situation.

But it's immoral, unethical, illegal and just plain wrong to buy and sell people, which is exactly what these three women were doing. And more than that, they were actually in the business of creating people for the purposes of selling them. Just sick.

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