China's Stolen Children

I watched this documentary yesterday called China's Stolen Children. It was eye opening and scary. I cried for part of it and yelled at the TV for another part.

The movie goes through and talks about women and baby trafficking in China. Yes, people steal and sell babies and women in China. It is horrible. There was a statistic at the end of the movie to 70,000 children go missing each year in China. That is nuts.

Anyway, the movie looked at a couple of different viewpoints. First was the married couple whose son was taken from the public market. They searched and searched, called in a detective and still nothing. Their biggest fear was that he would be/was sold to another family and was being mistreated. They then cut to a little boy who had been kidnapped and was found and he told how he was beaten daily by his new family and that he thought that his old family didn't want him anymore. So sad... Unfortunately they never did find the couple's little boy or at least not by the end of the movie.

Next they talked to a young unmarried couple who found themselves pregnant. They were in hiding because they weren't 20 so they couldn't get a marriage permit and without a marriage permit you can't get a birth permit. If they were to publicly have the baby they would have to pay a large fine to the government. They were scared but wanted to do what was best for their little girl. Since you are only allowed to have one child in China, this young couple decided to sell their daughter. They were poor and couldn't afford to pay the fine so they felt that they had no choice. It was awful to watch them struggle through this.

They also talked to a man who was a trafficker. He even sold his own son after his wife died. He has another son that was too old to sell. We saw him talk with couples who wanted to sell their children and to couples who were looking to buy a child. I couldn't believe it. I always have heard that things like this happen but to actually see in was unreal. Saw this man negotiating a price for a baby, more for a boy and less for a girl. It was terrible. Terrible that someone finds nothing morally reprehensible about buying and selling children and terrible that couples find it a necessity to sell their children because they broke the law, were poor or both.

The whole thing was just so sad. At the end of the movie they stated that the One Child Law would remain in effect until at least 2010 and that while they recognize that it is creating some problems like trafficking and an imbalance in society between mere numbers of men versus women there is no definite plan to change it. WOW.

In adoption news: Please send special prayers to some families that did not make it through court before the closure and have been rescheduled for September and October. I pray they find peace in these next months as they wait to go get their little ones. There are also lots of people travelling and more that have made it through court so for the travellers, safe travels and for the new moms and dad, I hope birth certificates come quickly and error free.