NTD Television

So this has gotta be one of the stranger pieces of news I've come across recently. A hospital in China is advertising babies for sale!

That's right, and apparently it's something that has been going on for ages, and though still taboo, its pretty open.

Chinese media reported on Monday that this ad was posted on a wall at a hospital in Henan province. It simply said, "babies for sale" and gave a contact number.


So a reporter called that number, and the woman on the other end was indeed selling babies. She said baby boys are available for 36,000 yuan, and baby girls for 24,000 yuan. I'm not even going to bother converting that into US dollars, because this whole idea that you can buy babies is completely absurd.

But apparently, not everyone shares that view. The woman on the phone promised that all the babies on offer are healthy. She said that the babies were not kidnapped -- like that's supposed to make this okay---and explained that most of the babies are unwanted children of single moms who can't care for them.

She even offered to have the babies inspected, and it sounds like there were quite a few of them to choose from.

She then boasted that she had sold 40 babies this way, and assured the reporter that the entire process was completely safe.

Oh my goodness, what is this world coming to?

Sadly, this kind of thing has apparently been going on in China for a while. The reporter who looked into this ad later went to an adoption center and pretended he wanted to adopt a child. Guess what the lady told him? Apparently none of the kids there were healthy--they all had some sort of growth impairment or mental disability. According to the lady, that's because child selling is quite common, and all of the healthy babies that were available, were already bought through other means.

So why do people buy babies? Well, it's because of China's birth control policies. Most couples can only have one child, and for parents who can't conceive naturally, they need to look for alternatives. And because there are women who can't care for their babies, a wacky supply chain is therefore created.

Of course all of this is illegal. China has adoption laws that prohibit the sale of babies, but of course, those laws only mean something if they are enforced. And obviously not much is being done to enforce these laws if there are these types of ads popping up in Chinese hospitals!

Crazy piece of news, huh. What do you think about this baby for sale ad? Leave your comments down below.