Baby News: 89 Kidnapped Infants Rescued

89 kidnapped infants rescued in China

I just read an article in which 89 infants in China were rescued by Chinese police. They had been kidnapped in order to be sold. They also arrested 369 people involved in the two human trafficking rings they discovered. The article didn't say what they were sold for, but it did mention further down how trafficking in women has increased because of the tendency of Chinese parents to abort their girl babies in favor of having a son as they are only allowed one child. This causes a pretty high demand for women once those only sons grow to adulthood and can't find a wife because there aren't any women. So I don't know if these were girl babies taken to be sold, but the article kind of made me think that way.

It sounds very shocking when you read it. Not only because its horrifying how many days-old infants the kidnappers snatched, but because you immediately feel your indignation rise when you see that Chinese women abort their girls. If you are a women, you tend to take that personally. If you are a mom, its hard to imagine, period, and indeed many people commented on the article saying they don't know how someone could abort a child because it was a girl, and that they would love any child regardless of gender and not be able to abort it for that reason.

I don't agree with this. In America, we abort children because they will be inconvenient to our lives, whether because we feel they will be too young, or we feel we have enough already, or many other reasons, 99% of the time because of the inconvenience of that child. Especially if you have not had a baby before, and therefore not experienced how much you actually love your child, it is easier to make decisions on abortion based on society's pressures rather than what you might want personally.

In America, society's pressure is to be a strong independent women, career driven and going places. A child in high school or especially in college is really going to slow you up on that. Its hard to be an independent woman and have a kid too. Once you have a kid, you need people and you need people you can depend on, other than yourself. You are also responsible for and have to make adjustments in your life for someone other than yourself. That is just too much to handle for some women in America, because of society's pressures on us.

In China, I believe it is much the same. When a Chinese women is pregnant for the first time, she does not yet know the love she will experience for her child, and so it is easy for her to make decisions based on convenience and society's pressure, which in China is to have a son, because a son is considered more valuable and prestigious. A son can make more money for the family than a daughter. These are the things that matter to the poor people of China.

So before we lambast the Chinese women for why they abort their children, I think we ought to take a good look at ourselves. Our society is not the same, true, and our pressures are not the same, but still, we do in America exactly as they do in China, and some might say for a sillier, more selfish reason.