Vietnamese Baby Trade

America will continue to pay for its invasion of Vietnam for a long time to come. One of the more ironical series of payments is for war orphans (mainly half-caste progeny of soldiers and prostitutes) on a starved US adoption market. With liberalised abortion laws, more freely available contraception and more unmarried mothers keeping their children due to relaxed social sanctions, the number of babies for adoption has fallen right off.

As indicated in a recent issue of the Sports Post unmarried mothers are often made fairly lucrative offers for their offspring and there is no doubt now that there is a black market for kids in the States.

After their previous invasion of Korea the US (conscience striken no doubt) adopted 32,000 orphans from that country in what must have been an exclusive liberal fad even better than having a negro as a best friend. Reasonably restrictive laws operated till recently in Saigon (adoptions from PRC areas are not documented) meaning that from 1965 till a short while ago only 1,300 kids were taken to the US for adoption. Now, no doubt in response to increased US demand, the waiting period has been reduced to five months and under, age restrictions and restrictions on type of parent have also been eased. Seven-hundred kids, or three times the previous average yearly rate, will be sent to the US for adoption in 1974.

With Vietnam still in a virtual state of war, families still split up, hundreds of thousands confined to concentration camps, and freedom of movement between zones forbidden by Saigon there is little hope for communication between members of split up families let alone reunification. While materially these kids may be better off, the abrogation of responsibility by Saigon that this adoption scheme implies is massive. By Saigon's continued concentration on war mongering they are unable and refuse to accept any responsibility for the welfare of the Vietnamese people because their only consideration remains one of keeping their illegal regime from falling.