LAW enforcers last week arrested four people and rescued the two infants they were trying to sell in entrapment operations.
The babies rescued by the Philippine National Police-Women and Children Protection Center (PNP-WCPC) were a 2-day-old male infant in Angeles City, Pampanga, and a 3-month-old female infant in Baliwag, Bulacan, who were being sold for P30,000 and P130,000, respectively.
The suspect nabbed in Pampanga sought to give up her child due to an unplanned pregnancy and also because of her other child’s epileptic condition. The three suspects in Bulacan, on the other hand, cited the need for bail money for the female infant’s incarcerated father and medical expenses for her grandfather’s operation.
Earlier this month, the PNP-WCPC rescued a 12-day-old girl after she was sold by her own parents in an entrapment operation. The parents were arrested after accepting P27,500 in buy-bust money, which they intended to use as start-up capital for a street-food business selling deep-fried quail eggs (kwek-kwek) and fishballs.
Sadly, these are not isolated cases.
As of early 2026, authorities have reported a worrisome trend where social media platforms, particularly Facebook, are being used as digital marketplaces for illegal adoptions and human trafficking.
Recent reports from the PNP and the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) indicate that while the number of cases is relatively small in terms of raw statistics, the frequency of arrests and rescues has been rising steadily, from five cases filed in 2024 to eight in 2025, and six cases just in the first five weeks of this year. Between 2024 and early February 2026, 19 operations led to the rescue of 21 victims and the arrest of 30 suspects. Traffickers use Facebook Messenger for private negotiations and often post ultrasound images or photos of newborns to attract “buyers.”
Meanwhile, the NACC has identified at least eight active Facebook groups — some of them with hundreds of thousands of followers — facilitating these transactions under the guise of “legal adoption” help.
Babies are typically “sold” or offered for “adoption fees” ranging from P25,000 to over P130,000.
Clearly, the harsh penalties specified by the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act — life imprisonment and fines of up to P5 million — are not enough to put a halt to this despicable trade.
On the supply side, two characteristics of the trade point to avenues for action.
First, financial hardship and unplanned pregnancies have been identified as the primary reasons parents sell their own children. Mothers who sell their babies do so out of extreme desperation.
One way to counteract this is to provide more accessible financial and medical assistance to pregnant women in vulnerable communities.
Mothers in crisis can also be encouraged to legally surrender their children through government “safe havens,” which would shield them from the harsh criminal penalties they would face if arrested for selling their babies.
Second, Facebook remains the primary hub, as traffickers use Messenger for private negotiations and often post ultrasound images or photos of newborns to attract “buyers.”
Clearly, the government must do more to push technology companies such as Facebook to cooperate by identifying and taking down illegal “adoption” groups on their platforms. While the NACC and the PNP Cybercrime Group have already been monitoring social media for keywords and patterns related to “baby for sale” advertisements, more needs to be done to identify these illegal venues and shut them down.
On the demand side, prospective buyers should be the target of a public awareness program to drive home the point that online “adoptions” are illegal, and that in the Philippines, they can be held criminally liable and face penalties, including life imprisonment. That’s because under Philippine law, the act of buying a child is legally classified as human or child trafficking.
To its credit, the PNP has increased arrests, but from 2024 to early 2026, only one case out of 30 resulted in a final conviction, thanks to the long duration typical of court cases. If the law is to have a deterrent effect on the illegal sale of babies, the certainty of punishment must be part of the equation.
More steps can be taken, too, to streamline the process for legal adoptions, which prospective parents view as a tedious and expensive multiyear ordeal. This is in stark contrast to the black market, where they are promised a baby in days.
The Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care Act sought to address this problem by making domestic adoption purely administrative rather than judicial, eliminating the need for long and expensive court trials. But personnel and social-worker shortages, staffing delays, and technical and regulatory gaps make implementation a challenge.
For the sake of babies who cannot fend for themselves, we need to do better.
