November 15, 2008
Baby farming in Nigeria
News from Nigeria makes me perk up for a couple of reasons. One, I've spent a couple of weeks there and two, one of my closest friends is Nigerian. It's a wild place - good and bad. Today we learn that a police raid there has uncovered a baby farm. Police rescued 20 teenage girls. Here's the story;
The doctor in charge, who is now on trial, reportedly lured teenagers with unwanted pregnancies by offering to help with abortion. They would be locked up there until they gave birth, whereupon they would be forced to give up their babies for a token fee of around $170. The babies would then be sold to buyers for anything between $2500-$3800 each, according to a state agency fighting human trafficking in Nigeria, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP). But luck ran out for the gynecologist, said to be in his 50s, when a woman to whom he had sold a day-old infant was caught by Nigeria's Security and Civil Defence Service (NSCDS) while trying to smuggle the child to Lagos, the security agency said.
Another news agency adds these details about this baby farming operation;
The practice takes varying forms. One is where desperate teenagers with unplanned pregnancies, fearing ostracism by society, get lured to a clinic and are forced to turn over their babies. The girls are so intimidated many can hardly relate their experience freely. But one brave victim, an 18-year-old, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, recounted her week-long ordeal when she was trapped inside one of the clinics days before it was raided by police. "The moment I stepped in there, I was given an injection, I passed out and next thing I woke up and realised I had been raped," said the girl, who was five months pregnant at the time of her ordeal. When she asked if she could telephone her family to let them know of her whereabouts, the doctor slapped her on the face. She was shoved into a room where 19 other girls were kept; all had been through a similar experience. She said the doctor raped her again the following day. A week later police swooped on the clinic.
Another category of young women, driven by deep poverty, lease out their wombs and volunteer themselves, as regularly as is biologically possible, to produce babies for sale. "When we raided the hospital, we found four women who had been staying at the clinic for up to three years, to breed babies," NSDCS boss for Enugu state commandant Desmond Agu said. The doctor, whom police named, "had been inviting boys to come and impregnate girls," said Mr Agu. This was just one of around a dozen centres - masquerading as maternity clinics, foster homes, orphanages or shelters for homeless pregnant girls - unearthed in recent months where babies were swapped for cash, said the NAPTITP boss. Last month police swooped on a so-called foster home, not far from the Enugu police headquarters, where seven pregnant teenage girls and five workers were rounded up, residents said.
Abortion, baby farming, the exploitation and abuse of women - it's all the same demonic spirit whether it's manifesting here under the facade of a Planned Parenthood clinic or in Nigeria in a baby farm.
Did you catch how this operation was "masquerading" as a legitimate health care facility. Sound familiar? The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed a deposition in the Informed Consent case from a SD woman who was told to shut up and was medicated to calm her down so the abortion could proceed - that was right here in Sioux Falls. It's the same demonic spirit oppressing women to drink the blood of their children. These stories motivate me to fight harder.
In what I consider related news, yesterday Talibani "men" on motorcycles used waterbottles to spray acid in the faces of 15 Afghani girls. Why? Because they wanted to go to school.
The oppression of women and the abuse and slaughter of children is demonic.
Comments on Baby farming in Nigeria »
Marcee @ 4:03 pm
It's difficult to fathom things like this going on.
I think the first time my eyes were opened up to things that went on in the world was when I was in high school in the late 1980s. A friend of mine was in the library with me, working on a report for Social Studies class. When I asked her what her report was about, she said,
"euthanasia." I thought she meant youth in Asia, so I asked her what she was finding out about the kids in Asia. She looked at me with a funny face and said, it's euthanasia" and spelled it out. I had never heard of it and so she explained to me what it was. I thought it was very inhumane, and I had a hard time believing such a thing happens.
I got my Webster's dictionary out and here's the definition of euthanasia, "The act or practice of killing or permitting the death of helplessly sick or injured individuals or animals in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy."
Now, compare euthanasia to infanticide. Infanticide is just the opposite. It's the killing of completely healthy unborn babies in the most vile, painful method known to man. That's my definition. Webster's dictionary simply states that infanticide is "the killing of an infant." I wonder if Merriam Webster was prochoice. These definitions almost make it sound like it since he elaborates on the definition of euthanasia "for reasons of mercy." I don't see any mercy in that at all. Then he gives that short definition of infanticide.
It goes deeper! Out of curiosity, I looked up "abortion," and Webster's definition is, "The expulsion of a nonviable fetus." What's not viable about a fetus? The definition goes on, "Spontaneous expulsion of a human fetus during the first 12 weeks of gestation - compare miscarriage." Webster needs to get educated! My dictionary is copywrited 1987. I don't know what the abortion laws were then. Webster didn't mention late term abortion in his definition or the fact that completely healthy babies are aborted. I don't know what he means by "nonviable." Perhaps that's the term for a fetus that the doctors have said has a disease or something and is not expected to live. I have heard many stories of people, whose doctors told them that their unborn baby would not live, and those children have gone on to live normal happy lives.
For someone, who wrote the dictionary, Webster doesn't seem to be very educated, at least not on life issues.
Amy @ 6:38 pm
Hey Marcee:
The pro-death camp co-opted the term "abortion" which is a medical term for the spontaneous termination of a pregnancy and expulsion of the too young to survive babe.
The correct terms for what they do is D&X, otherwise known as dilatoin and extraction - what we call "partial birth abortion - where the baby is delivered intact and alive feet first and then the skull is punctured and the brains sucked out so the baby is dead and the head can be delivered; D&E, otherwise known as dilation and evacuation (baby torn up and delivered in pieces), D&C, otherwise known as dilation and curettage (same effect as D&E, just smaller babies as victims), induction of labor and delivery of non-viable baby, etc.,
The word abortion is a medical term which refers to a spontaneous - not intentional - termination of the baby's life. The death industry just started using the term because it was a little more sterile than the descriptive terms above.
I think our movement should go to calling it what it is and leave the term "abortion" out of our conversations. Perhaps if we use Fr. Frank's "Is this what you mean" tactics, we can break through to people. http://www.priestsforlife.org/isthiswhatyoumean/isthiswhatyoumean.pdf
Just a thought.
Ceecee @ 2:43 am
Anyone who really looks at abortion has to admit how disgusting and violent it really is. But I guarantee that the pro-aborts will take advantage of this Nigerian baby farm story to prove how evil and abusive of women the pro-lifers are. Never mind that it is far from our country, they will say this is what those who don't like abortion are like. If you are a pro-life American, you are guilty of everything that went on at that baby farm. That's what they will say. They are experts in false witness that way.
As for that woman in South Dakota who was told to shut up when she objected to being given an abortion, and was then drugged to stop her physical resistance; well that just shows how much abortion is NOT about a woman's right to choose. So don't listen to people who say that abortion must be legal to protect a woman's right to choose. Abortion stomps on a woman's rights, rather than protecting them.