If you do nothing else today, the Jewish New Year, the Christian day of rest, read this article in the Los Angeles Times: "Chinese babies stolen by officials for adoption fees."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-adopt20-2009sep20,0,401407.story
Many of those daughters supposedly placed for adoption because of China's strict laws against having more than one child were actually stolen for the $3,000 adoption fee paid to "orphanages."
Read the story and weep--and know that each dollar you spend, whether for clothes or food or adoption, has effects that reverberate through the world community.
As a mother of three daughters, my heart aches for mothers whose daughter was stolen.
Even in remote villages, parents live in fear of child abduction.
"Each town has a family planning office, usually staffed by loyal Communist Party cadres who have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations. People who have additional babies can be fined up to six times their annual income... an important source of revenue for local government in rural areas."
Illiterate parents who break the birth control rules don't understand that they still have a right to keep their children--intimidated and told they have to pay fines equal to their annual income, they lose their babies.
It's all about choice--whether the issue is forced abortions and baby-napping there or legal access to abortion here.
And it's about money and education--if you have them and you live here, you have choice.
If you have neither and an unplanned pregnancy in China, your baby may be "legally" kidnapped.
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