Children, On Sale!

I recently asked my parents to dig out my birth certificate because I need it to get Rikuto his own British birth certificate. When my mum emailed me to say she found it, I started to reply…”Thanks mum! There aren’t any surprises, are there? I’m not adopted from a small African nation, am I?”

I thought it was funny when I wrote it, but the smile was wiped off my face when I searched for a particular country to put into my joke. Within seconds of my search on Google, I found this:

I can understand “Urgent Need!”, but “Reduced Fee!”? Sounds like they’re selling a product, not a person. So how much do these reduced “items” go for? About $22,000 apparently.

I’m out of my depth on discussions of adoption, and I can’t comment on the reasons for putting a price tag on a child’s head. What I object to is the wording in these “advertisements”. I know there are families out there who don’t have a lot of money yet are keen to adopt, and more power to them, but the language used here just doesn’t feel right at all. 😕

If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!

5 thoughts on “Children, On Sale!

  1. Well, it is what it is. If you (not you specifically, Nick) can buy a human, why get thrown off over the language of it? *shrugs* If they’re being sold, they then become products. It can’t be both ways.

  2. I don’t know whethet to laugh or cry, Nick. It seems so sad that people would really sell their children. I am reading a book about the hill folk on America where they used to sel their excess children because they could not afford to keep them.

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