Women deceived

THE ARTICLE on the front page of the Sunday Los Angeles Times about a huge surrogacy scam left me stunned. Women lawyers were operating a baby-selling ring!

The surrogates were required to give birth in California. Because, apparently, California is “one of the only” states where the adoptive parents can be listed on the baby’s birth certificate without actually going through an adoption. In other words, the adoption is completely secret. No one will know that the baby and parents are not biologically related.

Adoptees clueless

These adoptees won’t have the option of petitioning some court for their original birth certificates. In fact, they won’t even know that they’re adopted unless their parents choose to tell them. They might never know their ethnicity, or their medical or cultural history.

Ringleader gets rich

These unscrupulous criminals initiated their scheme in 2008. One of the ringleaders admitted that “she had carried and delivered at least half a dozen babies for the business.” Adoptive parents paid $100,000 to $150,000 to call one of these infants their own. So, the big-boss-baby-carrier made a tidy sum on her own efforts alone.

In my opinion, these women should go to prison. But maybe there’s another way for them to use their legal acumen. Maybe they can pay their debts to society for this outrage while under modified house arrest.

Battered women’s shelters, orphanages, the guardian ad litem program, and other causes that have to do with women and children could use their services.

Here’s an idea. Let’s seize their assets and donate them to the Open Records movements.