Babies have been sold on the black market for a long time and in highly impoverished areas it often seems like a good idea when you stand to gain thousands of dollars. But inevitably, when you are selling not only the product (a baby) but also hijacking the means of production (a woman's body), illegally, gender based human rights violations are pretty much inevitable.
Call it bizarre business, but the fact is that it is booming. It could be described as a baby factory where women who suffer disability in child bearing source babies. The proprietors are clever enough, as the homes are registered as non governmental organizations(NGOs). In the homes, the operators simply source teenage girls who are pregnant and not interested in keeping the babies. In some cases, some who are desperate to make money are lured into the business. They are taken into the homes where there are men ready to make sure that the girls become pregnant.
I find this last line particularly disturbing. How exactly do they make sure the girls become pregnant? How exactly does one "become" pregnant? Are they forced into having sex perhaps?
And to ascertain that the girls are healthy, HIV and AIDs tests are conducted on the girls before being admitted. The girls stay there until they give birth. Once they are through with this assignment, they are allowed sometime before they leave the homes. Depending on their ability to negotiate, the NGOs, according to our source, pay about N50,000 for the baby. In most cases, the girls do not see the babies they carried for nine months, as there is a ready market for them.
Wow, just wow. The police have been raiding homes and arresting the girls, such as this example where neighbors were complaining that the young women were being held hostage against their will. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me-arrest the girls. Also, Nigeria doesn't have the best track record in taking care of their mother's to be.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Holding young girls hostage and selling their babies in Nigeria.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/8548
That's possibly the most horrifying thing I've read in a long time. Especially the line that was highlighted. Reading that made my eyes tear up.
Are the babies given to just anyone? It hardly sounds like they are given away to carring adoptive families; I wonder if many of them end up in the hands of child rapists. God that is awful.
This story is just all wrapped up in awful.
does anyone else think of atwood's 'the handmaid's tale' when they read this?
disgusting.
I see a lot of similarities between this story and the girls in "The Girls Who Went Away", except this is way more awful and sad.
My husband's Nigerian, and I lived there for a couple of years. I just have to add a couple of things that add to the understanding of just how oppressive this is: N50,000 is less than US$500; abortion is illegal; and it is a commonly held belief, in my experience with secondary and university educated women, that hormonal birth control can damage your ability to have children when you'd like to in the future.
Also, police corruption there is rampant - roadblocks, where bribes are required to pass, are pervasive in every neighborhood. It is common practice to take someone to jail and hold them until they provide you with money to release them - not in the formal bond sense.
I have never heard of this, but I see the possibility for it. It's crushing.
Stories like this are really disheartening, but this type of thing goes on in so many places; unfortunately, Nigeria is not the only culprit. I am pretty sure that Korea and Honduras do along the lines of the same thing in order to make money off their unwed mothers. Many countries do not offer aid to unwed mothers so they are forced to give their babies to the government for adoption, and the government profits off the adoption while the mother gets nothing. China, with its one child limitation, puts very little value on girl babies, and have been known to just let girls bleed out of their umbilical cords when they are born, and India is now the place to go to a pay a woman a cheaper fare, as compared to the American rate, in regards to leasing her whom out for surrogacy. And hell, for the most part, it is Americans who are primarily feeding into this business, allowing it to exist in the first place. And lets not forget all those lovely celebrities who are making it a fad for us common folk to adopt needy children from third world countries. Madonna even adopts children that already have families. 'Magine that...
Don't get me wrong, I am totally and utterly for adoption. There are so many children in this world who need families, if only more people wouldn't be so baby hungry. Adoption always has the potential to do good. In regards to reproductive freedom, it is within a woman's own discretion whether to have or not have a baby. If she cannot biologically have one, she has every right to pursue other ways to have a child. All I am saying is that it is important to do the research and not get your baby from a corrupt system, because, in essence, the adoption might just be perpetuating a viscous cycle of women's oppression.
In regards to the Handmaid's Tale... I swear, there can always be a connection made between that book and any form of women's oppression. It is truly a beacon... haha.