“We can only begin by informing ourselves more about the ugly baby trade. It is only when we are armed with some details about this underground trade are we able to begin trying to know how to curb the practice.

A little-noticed investigative report last week makes our tragic times of feasting on poverty become even more tragic — poor mothers in Metro Manila’s teeming slums are selling newborn babies.

Reporting on the unheralded underground baby trade, Lynzy Billing of the web-based magazine Zora tells of a heartrending decision facing a poor mother, Lucia, who says: “‘I’m 50/50 on whether to sell this baby,’ says Lucia, gesturing to her swollen stomach.”

“She is due to give birth in two months’ time. ‘Filipinos don’t need to worry about finding people to buy your baby,’ she says. ‘Once I decide, there will be a couple who’s looking on that day also.’ It’s word of mouth in her neighborhood of Tondo, Manila’s largest slum.”

“Once the baby’s fate is decided, the buyer will meet Lucia at the hospital the day she goes into labor, and that person will leave with the baby.”

“Lucia is already a mother of five. Once born, this will be the second child she has sold.”

Lucia’s story tells us the business of selling babies to those who can’t have babies seems ongoing for some time. Shock and indignation do not even begin to describe what to feel about the selling of newly-born life by the poor, largely uneducated Filipinos struggling to survive.

But we cannot condemn. We can only begin by informing ourselves more about the ugly baby trade. It is only when we are armed with some details — alarming these details may be — about this underground trade are we able to begin trying to know how to curb the practice.

Our densely populated slums are no strangers to underground trafficking of living humans and human body parts. Years ago, the so-called “transplant tourism,” involving mostly the sale of healthy kidneys by the poor to wealthy Filipinos and foreigners, thrived in the bowels of our slums.

Although the government in recent years made it harder for organ traffickers to exploit the poor and the vulnerable, it hasn’t been able to totally eradicate the lucrative illegal kidney sales.

Organ trafficking has even kept up with the times: advertisements for healthy kidneys are found on social media. Just last September, Channel News Asia (CNA) reports of some 14 desperate Facebook users, in need of quick funds, advertising that their kidneys were for sale.

CNA further reports that “typing something along the lines of ‘kidney donation Philippines’ or ‘kidney for sale’ in the Facebook search bar will reveal countless posts by organ brokers, kidney patients and hopeful sellers who want to leverage social media’s reach to complete a deal.”

Organ traffickers exploiting social media to further their clandestine trade behind the anonymity of the Internet is worrying.

But the NBI’s cybercrime unit regularly scans the Internet for suspicious organ trafficking activities and has scored some successes. Nonetheless, organ trafficking remains a thriving and lucrative business.

Social media platforms are also aware of the abuses. But it seems not much is being done to curb these advertisements.

Similarly, in the baby trade the web magazine Zora says, “Babies are sold on Instagram, Facebook, and other channels, including outside public hospitals and from Manila’s slums, where six out of 10 women have either sold or know someone who has sold a baby, according to women in slum neighborhoods.”

Beyond social media, Zora also reports that “outside Manila’s hospitals, baby agents organize deals initiated by doctors from inside the hospital walls. It is a booming business, with agents and doctors taking the bigger cut. The lack of security guards or CCTV systems means deals are rarely recorded.”

It also seems that baby agents “are reassured that the authorities don’t have any idea of the scale of the sale of babies. ‘We are discreet and communicate through SMS. No need for background identification of each other. It’s just an open secret,’ says Lynn, a dealer working in Navotas.”

Zora reports the baby dealer’s work involves the “looking for babies to sell and organizing deals, including the price, timing of the exchange, and the paperwork. If there is no birth certificate, one can be easily and quickly forged in Recto, Santa Cruz, Manila and costs P500.”

Moreover, Zora says baby dealers are now “working with babymakers in Navotas and says foreign men have sexual intercourse with babymakers to make blue-eyed babies, which are easier to sell, and at a higher price.”

It seems blue-eyed babies are going for P100,000, while the price for Filipino babies go for P10,000.

The National Bureau of Investigation says it is aware of the problem, but is hardly making a dent. “To my knowledge, my unit had rescued only one baby from the agents/sellers,” confesses a senior NBI official.

Anyone caught selling babies can be charged for child trafficking under the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2012, with penalties of a minimum six-year prison sentence and fines of P50,000.

Given the magnitude of Manila’s slums, baby dealers have safe haven. But what is equally disturbing is the connivance of unscrupulous medical personnel.

Dodgy medical personnel are nothing new. Reports on organ trafficking allege certain medical professionals mastermind the illegal transaction and transplant surgery of human organs themselves, with one doctor confessing of one scheme as “an ‘all-in package,’ meaning they’ll recruit the donor and make arrangements for the operation. Payment will be made through them and they’ll be the one who distributes it to the team.”

Increased hospital regulations helped turned the tide against organ traffickers, impressing upon us the baby trade can similarly be stopped by official action.

We immediately need to do these things because as Zora warns, “beyond the transactional drivers of baby trafficking lies a far more sinister side to the business — child pornography.”

It seems that if some illegally trafficked babies don’t go to adoptive parents, “some babies end up in illegal orphanages that are involved in the sex trafficking trade,” with illegal orphanages even purposively buying babies for child pornography.