Underground Adoption; Baby Brokers Ruthless Money-Grubbers: Hightower, Tann, CAC | Missing Baby Gabriel

Underground adoption rings spread out as incessant widening ripples below the surface of legal adoptions. Human consideration is unheard of and money lights the eyes of greedy ruthless people who use children as objective pawns- they dangle darling babies before grasping parent-wannabes even though it means the babies' natural parents will suffer heartbreak for the rest of their lives.

Underground adoption is essentially a business triangle. The three parties are: the mother or couple who give up the baby, the desperate infertile adoptive couple, and the baby broker- either an individual or an underground adoption agency- who sees babies as profitable commodities.

The reasons why either a natural mother or father or both parents give up a baby are manifold. A common reason comprises the circumstances of a mother who believes she doesn't have the emotional or financial means to raise her baby. The father isn't around and she has no family support. And her religion forbids abortions.

However, sometimes, the mother is forced to give up her baby. The following examples of a few historic baby brokers and their brokering practices show how.

A Few Famous Baby Brokers and Their Brokering Practices.

For more than fifty years in the twentieth century, health-care professional Ruby Hightower ran her Hightower Health Home in Texarkana Texas through which she sold babies on a cash-only basis. Young pregnant women who didn't know where else to go were well taken care of there. Some willingly gave up their babies for adoption. Others were told their babies had died at birth. They were drugged during the birthing process and afterwards. Yet, some mothers didn't believe Hightower and went to court. Babies' caskets were exhumed. They were empty. Hightower never saw an ethical problem with her black market activity.

The director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, Georgia Tann was considered to be leading adoption expert in the 1940s. But she was a ruthless baby broker whose arranged nationwide adoptions were at times illegal. To keep supplied the high demand for babies, she stole babies- sometimes from the backyards of poor families. Leaving bereft parents in her wake, Tann placed the stolen babies with moneyed clientele for a high price.

Tann also obtained babies by telling the young mothers under medical care that their babies were stillborn when in fact the babies were born alive and healthy. State officials not only turned a collective blind eye to Tann's black market activity but also adopted children for themselves through her organization. Film stars Joan Crawford and June Allyson & Dick Powell adopted from Tann.

Dr. Mary delivered more than four thousand babies but kept no records of their births. She gave away babies to any family who wanted one. The law couldn't touch her because she listed the names of the adoptive parents on the birth certificate.

Twenty-first century example of baby brokers.

Many of the 465 facilities in the Care Net of the fundamentalist Christian Action Council (CAC), have crisis pregnancy centers to which they decoy women with deceptive promises of free pregnancy tests and so-called abortion information only to psychologically strong-arm the pregnant women into having the babies instead of abortions and into putting their babies up for adoption to devout Christian families chosen by CAC or affiliated adoption agencies or attorneys.

These pregnancy crisis centers are known to bully women who do want to keep their babies into giving them up for adoptions. About 2,500 pregnancy centers sponsored by The Pearson Foundation, the Heidi Group, and Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice are portrayed as medical facilities but are not licensed as such. Volunteers rather than medical professionals typically staff them. In addition to their income earned from adoptions, these crisis centers received $60 million in government funding from 2001-2006.

The black market business of trafficking babies for underground adoption is a deep-rooted worldwide problem. Nearly everyone involved can pay a nasty price- including the parents who sometimes have to give back their illegally-adopted baby. The supply and demand is out of balance. There is such abundant money in underground adoptions and an insufficient supply of babies in the world.

Can underground adoption be stopped? If the huge demand for babies were to dwindle, then baby brokers and underground adoption agencies would fail to thrive or even to survive. But not while countless couples who cannot bear to stay childless create demand and will pay from $20,000-$100,000 per baby. Their demand caters to people who are unethical and greedy. And while the human race exists, so will the unethically greedy. Ironically, most ruthless baby brokers are of the gender stereotyped as nurturing- female.

Then there is the case of missing nine-month-old Gabriel Johnson. His unwed mother kidnapped him from Arizona to keep him from his natural father and legal custodian, Logan McQueary. And to put him up for an underground adoption. Baby Gabriel was last seen on the day after Christmas 2009 in Texas. Johnson may have taken him to Texas because the state's paternity and adoption laws have gaping loopholes.

The FBI, San Antonio police, and famous Private Investigator Jay J. Armes are looking for Baby Gabriel. Armes has put together a powerful investigative team that includes experts in child trafficking. He himself has saved more than a hundred children from underground adoption in Mexico.

If you have seen Baby Gabriel or know where he might be, please submit a tip to JJArmes/BabyGabriel.

Sources: immigrantships; amfor; amfor.net; wikipedia.org; articlesbase