Mansi

There is something terribly amiss with society when couples and unwed mothers abandon children at a time when they need them the most. In a majority of unwed mothers(age 12 - 22), they are all treated as consenting adults by the men they associate with and by their own perception of themselves.
As per law, a man found having consensual sex with a woman below the age of 18 can be charged with statutory rape. This is lost to this part of the world. Least aware of this is the unwed teenager who is encouraged to abandon her child. Get her empty as quickly as possible. Private nursing homes can pull babies out of their mother's wombs when they weigh as less as 900 gms. Span your hand on the table and you've probably exceeded the size of these babies. Secret phone calls to the orphanages in the middle of the night is the last act of this hideous performance. Then there are those who endure the nine months and give birth to a child with no vision in two eyes, only to abandon him at a railway station. The orphanage retrieve this baby forty eight hours later. He's in ICU for two days and yet like most of the little troopers I saw today survived. The vision won't come back but this child's life is strong and willing. Sadly, we cannot say the same about his parents.
Orphanages don't hold out anger, disgust or even deep pain towards the guiltly life givers. Instead, in front of them, they see opportunities. For every child abandoned, even were it for a cleft lip, their goal is to locate the child in a family. First choice is given to Indian couples, but I'm afraid there aren't too many takers here.
Toddlers require equal amount of food and medicine. The government of India doesn't support infants. Orphans about five are provided a generous sum of five hundred rupees per month.
So in time, agencies look to beyond our seas. Unites States, Spain, Australia - to name a few.
The economics of inter-nation adoption is quite lucrative. Couples who've not succeeded in having their own child, others who missed the boat or some who've woken up to the need for a baby, from as far away & as exotic as India, Adoption becomes a very real road to walk down.
Money serves the purpose of the orphanage and meets the desires and needs of the parents to be. Some will even pay for their children to be escorted to their country. The first meeting for the child is in a foreign airport. Children (these very troopers) will survive anything.
I don't understand how parents adopt children who are from countries miles away from their own. Yet again, I think, adults exert their authority to displace, relocate and dramatically alter the experience of a child they bought, like they would have a car, a house or even a spouce.
Yes, the child has parents, ones who will support, love and offer it opportunities he/she mgiht not have had in an orphanage.
However does this in any way address the malaise that has adults abandoning their helpless & disadvantageous children? Does it justify the notion that we can buy and sell human lives?
There is a whole industry that lives off these sales, a larger one that fosters an environment of popular acceptance of such a value-less practice.
Were a foreigner to adopt an Indian child, it is natural to think ' wow, what a lucky kid - Is nark se toh bache!'
Who do we fool when we think the child will have a 'better life'? Who we turn to when we foster directly and indirectly the business of human lives?
Where in the budget can we find the government's revenues related to this business of human lives? And how does it juxtapose against a generous sum of Rs 500 per month per infant (> 5yrs)
There are mothers & fathers out there who are desperate to experience parenthood. Is it possible then for them to think of relocating themselves to their future child's country? How would that make as a statement for life and for every individual's right to choose, however small, handicapped or fragile?
Wouldn't adoption, the possession of an infant below the age of eighteen constitute for statutory kidnapping? Of course not, because the default guardian, the government is counting on keeping it's generous sum of five hundred rupees.
What constitutes a better life? The oldest child at the orphanage I visited is pursuing a Masters in Social Work. While her counterparts & children of the head in charge of the orphanage are studying in Australia with no plans to return to India. Children who are not abandoned and grow up in 'normal' families, who had the 'better lives' are ignorant perpetuators of this large malaise. Worser still they are the custodians of good morality when applied only to others. They refuse to let unwed mothers take a chance at motherhood, sans guilt and a deep sense of failure. They couldn't even imagine let alone put their lives & fortunes in front of another life.
In the US, I heard that some couples who are pregnant are just not ready for motherhood. They instead, if they play the game well, can have many 'parents to be' get into a bidding monetary game for the unborn child. Those who can't afford this game, instead turn to countries like India where for as less as quarter the original sum can get them a baby with just about everybody cheering them on (what I now call the 'better life' syndrome). The mothers in these cases are long obliterated from the picture. In India you don't have to worry about a mother showing up to claim her baby. It is just not an option. In a current issue of Frontline, the inter-nation business of human life has become so lucrative that babies are being stolen and then sold to foreign families. While some of the cases has been exposed, the adopted family are now worried that they might have to return 'their' child to it's natural parents. This child is now living the life of another nationality and yet, think back, on the plight of the natural parents and on every day of the 180 day gestation period.

A week end spent at an orphanage and it has been as intense as I initially thought it would be. While my role has been that of a supporter, the tolls of the business of adoption have exhausted me. Never having been an advocate of the spirit of altruism that everybody laps up in the context of adopted families, this trip certainly did add more to my understanding of the subject. While I don't go back with contempt, my value of human life has been recharged. I hope to draw from this energy in the years to come.