Trading with newborns
Article published from StandartNews on 2009-04-02 11:00:00Category: Society in Sofia
A week ago, sources from the Sofia City Council rang an alarming bell: all records of the babies abandoned at Sofia`s Sheinovo Hospital in the period 2003-2008 were missing. Dr. Dimitar Dragiev, then director of the hospital, declined to comment the information.
A day later, sources from the Social Aid Agency said some of the documents had been found, but doubts remain that this is an attempt to cover the traces leading to a corrupt scheme known as "trading with newborns". A women requesting anonymity told our reporter that baby trading is a very profitable business.
In a nutshell, the couples who want to adopt a child but do not want to wait for ages and deal with heavy bureaucracy, can pay a certain amount of money for a healthy baby. The Standart also learnt that this scheme works in almost all Bulgarian hospitals. The healthy, white children under three years of age are the most expensive.
So, after an advance payment a lawyer takes the future foster parents to the maternity ward where a young mother is ready to abandon her child. The mother gives birth to a healthy child, the lawyer prepares the necessary documents and the happy foster parents go home with their baby. The obstetrician is the most important participant in this corrupt scheme, because he has to talk the young but impoverished mothers, usually between twelve and nineteen years of age, that it will be better for them to abandon their child. So if the price of a healthy child is about 5,000 euro, 2,000 of it go for the lawyer, 1,500 - for the doctors and the rest - for the mother.
So, against the sum of ten thousand levs our informant became the happy mother of a healthy little girl. She does not seem worried by the fact that she actually bought her child, because had she opted for the standart procedure, she would have waited for years for he child. On the other hand, an abandoned child has found a loving mother who really loves and wants her. The law has not been violated, but only circumvented, but the question what makes baby buying necessary remains pending.
A day later, sources from the Social Aid Agency said some of the documents had been found, but doubts remain that this is an attempt to cover the traces leading to a corrupt scheme known as "trading with newborns". A women requesting anonymity told our reporter that baby trading is a very profitable business.
In a nutshell, the couples who want to adopt a child but do not want to wait for ages and deal with heavy bureaucracy, can pay a certain amount of money for a healthy baby. The Standart also learnt that this scheme works in almost all Bulgarian hospitals. The healthy, white children under three years of age are the most expensive.
So, after an advance payment a lawyer takes the future foster parents to the maternity ward where a young mother is ready to abandon her child. The mother gives birth to a healthy child, the lawyer prepares the necessary documents and the happy foster parents go home with their baby. The obstetrician is the most important participant in this corrupt scheme, because he has to talk the young but impoverished mothers, usually between twelve and nineteen years of age, that it will be better for them to abandon their child. So if the price of a healthy child is about 5,000 euro, 2,000 of it go for the lawyer, 1,500 - for the doctors and the rest - for the mother.
So, against the sum of ten thousand levs our informant became the happy mother of a healthy little girl. She does not seem worried by the fact that she actually bought her child, because had she opted for the standart procedure, she would have waited for years for he child. On the other hand, an abandoned child has found a loving mother who really loves and wants her. The law has not been violated, but only circumvented, but the question what makes baby buying necessary remains pending.
