Handel in Zuigelingen ontdekt - Baby Export van Europa naar Amerika
De Heerenveensche koerier : onafhankelijk dagblad voor Midden-Zuid-Oost-Friesland en Noord-Over?ssel
04-12-1952
Infant trade discovered Baby exports from Europe to America
NEW YORK (P.A.). Florida police have unmasked and locked up a gangster gang whose job it was to establish and maintain a profitable trade in infants. For some time now, the attention of the American detectives had been drawn to advertisements placed in the major American newspapers, in which prospective mothers were asked to contact a certain address in person (or by telephone). Childless couples who wanted to adopt a baby could also report to the address in Florida.
The police there obtained information indicating that an international organization of criminals was involved in the trafficking of infants. This trade already started in 1919, but took off after the Second World War, even if it was alarming. The gang of criminals, which is especially concerned with this kind of crime, finds some support in public opinion, which has a Puritan aversion to children born out of wedlock and to unmarried mothers. Because that has more or less encouraged this form of crime. It has been found that babies from Europe are smuggled into the US and sold there to the highest bidder. Illegal childless couples take in babies—whose parents are unknown, or want to stay that—for which, of course, a lot of money has to be paid.
The official offices, which are in the U.S. arranging the adoption of infants are slow and the requests to these agencies far exceed the offers, so that childless couples often end up turning to an illegal agency. There, unmarried mothers are already selling babies before they are born. Among these young mothers are fiancees of soldiers who fell or have been reported missing in Korea, unmarried mothers who fear a break with their parents, and finally the many mothers who earn too little to raise the newborn.
It has also been found that unscrupulous doctors and lawyers in the U.S. lend a helping hand in this form of crime. They act as intermediaries and receive a certain premium for their work. A very fashionable clinic, located on Madison Avenue in New York, also provides its "mediation" in this matter. Headmistress, a Mrs. Georgia Tann, has made more than half a million dollars from this "baby business." The "gang" is very cunning. The children are often transferred to the foster parents by planes from American airlines. The children wear the address of the parents on a cord around their neck. More than 1000 little ones travel in this way every day. In the United States, 70,000 children are legally adopted each year; however, the illegal adoption is approx. 10 times higher! The prices one has to pay for an "illegal" baby range from 200 to 10,000 dollars. All this shows that the police have done a good job.
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