NEWS: £40 For a Girl

POLITICS: £40 For a Girl

£40 for a girl. No, not just for an hour or a 'happy ending', that's £40 to buy a baby girl from China.

Being sold is lousy, but some girls have it worse.

So why, if girls are so unwanted, does anyone buy them? The horrific answer is: to make sure there's someone for their son to marry.

When I was an infant my parents got offered $2000 for me by some guy on the street in Chicago.

They ran in terror.

"£40 for a girl"

£15 for a girl

After they made the transaction?

What an all round shitty business.

god, that's sad.

"Today, a trafficker in that remote and poor rural region must pay £75 for a boy and almost £40 for a girl."

Did I manage to quote right...?

Yeah, you're right.

[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by Keith]

£30, and that's my final offer.


I am so going to hell.

[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by ExcitableBoy]

wait, you mean china doesn't respect human rights?

Ironically, China actually has one of the best-run and most respected international adoption programs in the world. Their orphanages are generally overcrowded, but the care is good and children are treated well. However, giving your baby away in order to be adopted by (most likely) a Western parent/family is probably not as enticing to some as selling your baby away. Yet opponents of international adoption argue that the practice itself encourages black market baby selling (though mostly on an international level - i.e., parents offering to sell their babies to Western parents looking to adopt).

If my article on this very subject had been accepted for publication, I could direct you to it. But...damn my publishers.

It sounds kind of bizarre, but this situation has a lot of similarities with the drug war. If the adoption program in China is well run, then why don't they figure out some way to give the parents a "stipend" or something? I mean, if the alternative is an awful human trafficking racket, then why not pull the rug out from under it by removing the financial incentive?

That honestly sounds like a better alternative to me. Yes, technically, the government would be "buying" children, but it's still better... am I a sicko?

My sister's second adopted daughter must be an exception to the rule then. She's only two and has already had a root canal.

A lot of the kids do have some health problems - but compared to orphanges in, say, Romania, China's are well-run. My cousin couldn't walk or talk at all at age 2 when my aunt and uncle brought her here from China, but she learned very quickly. She had some bonding/adjusting issues for a short time (individualized attention and nurturing is obviously lacking in a vast, state-run orphanage), but now, she can't be distinguished from any other 4-year-old.

I see nothing wrong with just finding people to adopt them in this country... better they have a chance here than be sold.

things like this make me feel bad for people.

can I read it anyway?

[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by cretinsa11]

uh, more recources for ebay...



i don't understand it. poor people make babies only for the old traditions and the pension.
if it's a boy, it's good. if it's a girl, they sell it. how sick is this?

Yes, because as we all know, rural areas of developing nations have full access to family planning education and have access to and the money for safe, reliable birth control methods, so of course they're only having babies for tradition and money...

Jesus Christ, man. I always hear about this kind of thing, and it makes me so sad. Isn't the infanticide about equally bad in India as well?

Can I ask a question, and I'm completely serious.

It's okay to give your baby away for adoption, and it's okay for someone to pay to you to say, be a surrogate mother for their child, why is it so bad for someone to pay you for your child? It's just accepted that this is VERY BAD, but I've never quite heard why. It reminds me of prostitution, kind of. "It's okay to give it away to whoever you want, but don't SELL IT!"

I understand that no one would want a baby farm or whatever, but seriously, can anyone answer this for me?

Because of the fact that we want to believe that human life is invaluable, and that to put a price tag on a living breathing human being is wrong no matter what the other options are.

It's the belief that we are above that, that we are not actually slaves to money, even though in the long history of humankind people have been bought, sold, and traded the entire time -- especially those deemed worthless or unwanted by their culture.

Were there allegations of mistreatment in this article?

Would it be better to turn a girl child face down in the box of ashes that was traditionally kept under the birth-bed for that purpose?

[Edited on Jul 20, 2005 by Shalome]