Grandmother Tries To Sell Baby For $30,000: Is Baby Trafficking The Next Fad?

It seems like more and more we're hearing about people who decide they don't want their children who try to sell them for a profit. Since when did this culture turn from 'I don't want my baby, so I'll give it to a good home' to 'I don't want my baby, so I'll give it to the highest bidder'?

Patty Bigbee, 45, was arrested when she was caught trying to sell her 8-week-old grandson to an undercover agent for the price of $75,000. She was able to be talked down to $30,000 before the exchange was made and she was arrested. She was charged with illegal sale or surrender of a child as well as communication fraud. Bigbee's boyfriend, 42-year-old Lawrence Works, was also arrested for being a principal to the illegal sale or surrender of a child. The boy's mother, Stephannie Bigbee-Davis, was in jail for unrelated charges and that's why the grandmother had custody.

As a soon-to-be mother, this writer has difficulty imagining why or how anyone could even dream of selling a child. Sure, when this writer was 16 and her baby sister was born there were plenty of times she joked around about selling her, but to really be able to do something like that? Besides the fact that this writer's mother would have killed her, she never would have been able to part with that precious baby, regardless of how often she joked about it.

The baby boy is now in the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families. Patty Bigbee is also believed to have been involved in other extortion plots and transactions involving children.

The fact does remain that it seems like the illegal selling of children is making the news more and more often in the past decade. Maybe that's because more and more women are having unwanted pregnancies or finding that they can't handle the stress of caring for a child? But since when did good old-fashioned adoption turn into baby trafficking? Is this the next big thing America needs to watch out for?

What do you think about this situation? Is the selling of babies something the US should start to be concerned about?