Wombs for hire: the painful price of Asia’s baby trade

As the car bounces along a rural Thai road, a baby just a few months old watches the emerald green countryside rush by from Nicha’s* lap, oblivious to the countdown that has already begun. Soon the child will be handed over to her father to be raised in China by grandparents whose own hopes of a larger family were curtailed by decades of state population control. Nicha may never see the baby she g