In recent months, we have witnessed the lengths to which infertile women and men, celebrities, single persons, and those with nefarious motivations may go to obtain a child. From Madonna's wrangling with the government in Malawi to adopt a little girl (and skirt the residency requirement), to Nadya Suleman and her craftily orchestrated plan to conceive multiples and birth octuplets, to those spine-numbing cases like that of Korena Roberts, who murdered her pregnant friend and claimed the baby she carved from the woman's womb to be her own, we are witnessing the lengths to which people will plan, connive, donate, pay, or kill to adopt, conceive, or acquire a child.
In May 2009, standing in a cage, seemingly more suitable for cattle or dogs, an American couple, Iris Botros and her husband, Louis Andros, pleaded for release. This was the image of the couple shown throughout the world: hands gripping bars, sweat dripping down their foreheads, clothes that appeared slept in, and the look of fear indelibly marked on their faces. Their dream of bringing a child back home with them to Durham, North Carolina, was a distant plan, even fantasy. Now, in a courtroom in Egypt, they wait in a portable prison cell. Botros and Andros thought they would bring twins back home to North Carolina. Instead, the couple, accused of attempting to purchase children, awaited a trial with religious, political, and criminal law implications.