The greyness of it all

From BBC: Vietnam 'baby-smugglers' arrested:

Vietnamese authorities have arrested three women and a man for allegedly smuggling newborn babies to China.

The suspects were detained with two baby boys, aged one month and one week old, in Hanoi and Ha Tay provinces.

Hanoi police said they had also detained an eight-month pregnant woman who confessed to agreeing to sell her unborn baby to the gang.

The woman was being transferred to China, where she is expected to give birth to the child.

All the babies were sold for eight million dong ($500) each.

The police said they would be offered for adoption to couples in China for around $2,000 each, because they were boys.

Girls would be sold for half the amount, according to investigators.

This is the first time the Vietnamese police have uncovered the smuggling of unborn babies.

One of the boys has been returned to his birth mother, while the other is being looked after at a children's hospital in Hanoi.

On the one hand, what they're doing is placing a value on human life, which is inherently wrong. On the other, they're essentially taking the children away from what promises to be a life without love and care, and placing them with people who really do want to take care of them. Since they're desperate enough to buy a child, logic has it that they must really, really want one. And now, they're back in the arms of mothers that never wanted them in the first place.

On the one hand, illegal. On the other, is the illegality of it only because they didn't register their adopting agency? Is it just a matter of paperwork? Should this activity be so tightly controlled where the lives of people are at hand? Perhaps the bureaucratic barriers should be let down, and the government should instead focus on monitoring the agencies. Taking away the scarcity of the agencies would take away the price, allow proper monitoring of welfare, and facilitate better lives.

Sigh. It's never black and white.