A Father Beaten, Trying to Sell Baby!!!!

Last week a couple was arrested in California for trying to sell their 8-month-old baby girl for $25 in a Walmart parking lot.

The couple, Patrick Alan Fousek, 38, and Samantha Tomasini, 20, was jailed and charged with child endangerment as well as possession of a controlled substance and a methamphetamine pipe. While in jail, the other inmates learned what Fousek did and brutally beat him, leaving the "father" with cracked ribs and facial injuries.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who think he got what he deserved for his appalling crime, but mostly I wish he'd gotten away with it.

There's a part of me that wishes some loving couple had forked over the cash and taken that baby far away from what is clearly a very troubled life. Some miracle that would seemingly drop out of the sky for a couple who had been battling infertility; or that someone who had been unsuccessfully trying to adopt stepped out for milk and came home with a baby for which she has been desperately yearning. Someone who would take the baby away with no record of the trauma into which she was innocently born.

Because now what for that baby? Will she be sent into a system of foster care? Will they give the parents another chance to be parents after rehab or prison time? How will this awful legacy haunt and affect the baby girl for the rest of her life?

If only someone would have just taken her away from it all with loving arms ...

I know there are better, safer methods and a "system" to deal with unwanted children, but oh how I wish there didn't have to be. Adoption is a wonderful, beautiful option, but I think it's often too "big" for people in such a desperate place to consider, whereas making a few quick bucks in the parking lot of your local discount retailer seems like an easy option.

We've asked before if parents should be allowed to sell their babies. And while I understand the dangers of letting that happen with no regulation, there's a part of me that wishes any parent who even thinks of selling their baby would be allowed to do so immediately. Because in most cases, I'm sure the children would be better off.

Do you think people should be able to sell their children?