Authorities trafficking 'illegal' children

A research group that aims to expose the myth of overpopulation has evidence that some Chinese officials are trafficking children who are born to couples that have already reached the state-imposed limit of one child.

Steven Mosher heads the Population Research Institute (PRI) and reports that when population police discover the extra child, they first demand a fine three to five-times the family's annual income.

"If the family can't pay that fine, and this is a huge fine by anybody's standards, then sometimes, population control officials in South China will take the child from the parents," he explains. "They will then turn around and sell that child to a state-run orphanage, which, in turn, will put the child up for adoption."

And that agency charges a hefty fee for the service. In effect, the babies are treated like property of the state, ready to be sold.

"This is child trafficking; this is something that we have passed laws against in the U.S. Congress, and yet it's happening in China, along with infanticide, along with the abandoning of baby girls at birth," Mosher laments. "We now find that some of these little boys and girls are being trafficked as well, some of them across international borders."

He adds that Chinese press is reporting it, and PRI sources have confirmed it in at least two provinces. So the PRI president suggests the least the United States can do is issue a moratorium on adoptions from those provinces.