Federico Segarra
Manila, June 1 (BLAZETRENDS).- Poverty drives dozens of young pregnant women to give their babies up for adoption in exchange for money in the Philippines, where fathers and mothers looking for a child can “buy” a baby through Facebook for just a few hundred euros.
An example of this occurred a few weeks ago in a Manila apartment. Joyce, a 39-year-old Filipina beautician, was asking about a collector’s doll on a Facebook page. The advertiser’s response left her stunned: “It’s 20,000 pesos (about 400 euros). But it’s not a doll, it’s a baby that I’ll give birth to in a month, ma’am.”
The person speaking on the other side of the screen was Melissa, a 21-year-old Filipina who, as a result of economic precariousness and the lack of support from her family and ex-partner – who got her pregnant -, decided a few months ago to give up and give her future child up for adoption in the vast market for babies for sale in the Philippines.
“I can’t give my son a good life, I don’t have money and I lost my job when I got pregnant. It is very sad but I accepted it and now I just want to make sure that he will be in good hands ”, laments Melissa in statements to BLAZETRENDS during her second meeting with Joyce, who in addition to collecting dolls was also thinking of adopting a second child.
Although the Ministry of Social Affairs acknowledged in 2019 that there were “hundreds of thousands” of people with falsified birth records, there are no data or studies on illegal and opaque sales of babies, often carried out through social networks.
Life sentence for illegal adoptions
The Philippine government, which punishes illegal adoptions with life imprisonment and fines of up to 84,000 euros, persecutes these illegal activities that are considered “human trafficking” and that have proliferated in recent years, especially on Facebook, used by more than 90 percent of Filipinos.
“There are more and more Facebook pages where children are illegally adopted,” says consultant Wilhelmina Dacanay, from the Kaisahang Association, an NGO dedicated to the protection of vulnerable children in the Philippines and financed by the Philippine Ministry of Social Affairs.
Dacanay warns that illegal adoptions are increasing in the Philippines and explains that the lack of papers with which many of these transactions are carried out leaves children defenseless in the face of possible abandonment, with many of them “on the street before reaching 18 years of age.
Another possible mishap is the “botched sale”, when the adoptive mother regrets her “acquisition” and returns the child to the arms of its biological mother.
As Efe has learned, in this virtual market there are also barters for babies to obtain a child of the desired sex: if the buying mother decides that she wants a girl instead of a boy, she presents her case on the networks to exchange it.
Transactions with verbal agreement
Three days after their first Facebook conversation, Melissa and Joyce – who use pseudonyms to hide their true identities in the face of potential legal repercussions – had their first in-person meeting and agreed to let the birth mother stay at the adoptive mother’s house until she gave up. light to his son.
The young Melissa, with large and expressive black eyes and a native of the island of Negros (in the center of the archipelago), narrates in fluent English her hardships before meeting Joyce, who wants to adopt a baby since her firstborn has already died. emancipated and enters university this year.
“My father died from abusing drugs, and my mother is still hooked on gambling and loses what little she wins. When I got pregnant, he didn’t want to help me,” says Melissa ruefully.
“My ex-boyfriend left me as soon as he found out about my pregnancy, and I don’t want to have an abortion (illegal activity in the Philippines). I can only give my baby to someone who can afford it and take good care of it,” she adds.
Alone and desperate for her lack of income, Melissa easily found one of the many Facebook pages where birth mothers and adoptive mothers connect to shut down illegal adoption.
Before meeting Joyce, she found another mother who was a candidate to adopt her son, traveled to Manila in February to meet her and stayed at her home, but the situation soon turned into a nightmare.
“This woman locked me in a room with hardly any ventilation. She would not let me go out so that her neighbors would not see me, ”since she had assured her lover, who lives abroad, that she was pregnant by him. “She gave me rice every day and little else,” Melissa narrates.
With his health deteriorating from poor nutrition and the stifling heat of that dark room, he met Joyce on another Facebook page and managed to “escape” from captivity. Now, Melissa expects to give birth next week, and she takes refuge with Joyce, who provides food and pleasant living conditions.
When Melissa gives birth to her baby, a boy, she hopes that Joyce will go to the civil registry with the offspring and certify that she is the biological mother, after which Melissa will be able to return to her hometown and fulfill the verbal agreement between them to never see the child again. BLAZETRENDS