Imagine waiting in a supermarket checkout line, and instead of seeing all those tacky liberal women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, you see Smart, the magazine for the sharp, intellectual—and fashion conscious—conservative woman.
And rather than being bombarded with teasers like “50 ways to make him want you,” your eyes are drawn to “10 policy positions that will make him crazy.” That would be worth your four dollars.
Well, it’s not a magazine –yet. But you can buy the “Smart: Damsels in Success” calendar here.
I hope to one day adopt a child. Thus, I am always paying special attention to governments’ involvement in adoption processes.
Most recently, I have been disturbed by what’s going on in Guatemala:
“A year after Guatemala’s emergence as the second-largest foreign source of babies for adoption to the United States, a new push by the Guatemalan government to wrest control of the process from private agencies has stirred an emotional backlash from thousands of prospective adoptive parents in the United States.
Guatemala’s solicitor general, Mario Gordillo … worries that thousands of desperately poor Guatemalan women are being induced to conceive children for adoption by private brokers offering as much as $3,000 a baby.”
I won’t argue that this situation is incredibly sad. Yet, I am not convinced that placing a higher barrier on such an exchange is the answer. If willing women are persuaded by money to have babies, babies which other families are happy to pay for, wouldn’t that generally be a good thing for everyone involved?
The woman who sold the child benefits from receiving the money, the family that purchases the child benefits from acquiring the child, and the child itself benefits from gaining loving parents.
( Some people will attempt to debate the question: if the Guatemalan mother concieves merely in order to make money, would the child be better off if it had never been brought into existence in the first place?
Yet, I believe the question is impossible for anyone to answer, and therefore, a waste of time to debate.)
