The problems start when Nathalie Johnson (Dana Delany), desperate to adopt, goes online without parental supervision. It’s 2004, and while you could engage in human trafficking on Craigslist and Backpage then, Target didn’t yet offer BOGO sales on human infants.* Dejected after another fruitless meeting with an expectant mother, Nathalie searches for ‘adoption’ and clicks the first result. She impulsively submits an application that requires financial disclosure and is soon offered Gitta, a four-month-old from Budapest.
Surgeon husband Steve (Hart Bochner) and their adoption lawyer, Kathy (Ellen David, exuding Roma Maffia energy), urge caution. They’re based in Minnesota and the baby broker, Gábor Szabó (Bruce Ramsay) — not to be confused with the guitarist — is in New York. “I have no way to properly screen him,” Kathy warns. “This is a man we know nothing about. There’s a lot of risk here.” The red flags only multiply once the Johnsons travel to meet Gitta, but Nathalie, already a stepmother to Steve’s son, is blinded by her desire for a child to call her own.
When she isn’t joking about being “fresh out of eggs,” she tearfully bemoans her fate: “I never thought I’d be this age and not have kids.” Screenwriter John Wierick, whose varied credits range from Too Legit: The MC Hammer Story to The Matthew Shepard Story and A Godwink Christmas: Miracle of Love, takes pains to emphasize Nathalie’s sexual viability, lest it be tarnished by her infertility. She and Steve hit the sheets almost as often as she cries, and her eyes are usually brimming with tears. They grow damper still when Gábor reneges on their agreement in an attempt to sell Gitta to the highest bidder.
“How should I put this?” he tells the Johnsons in his cartoonishly villainous accent. “There are many people, wealthy people like yourselves, who are willing — shall I say, very willing — to pay a great deal for a baby like Gitta. Healthy white newborn. Like it or not — I don’t — there is certain supply and demand.” Nathalie is willing to submit to his extortion, which starts at $100k, but the more principled Steve is not. In an attempt to save Gitta from Gábor’s financial predations, they volunteer to assist NYPD detectives Perrotta (Romano Ozari) and Jackson (Claudia Besso) in taking him down.
To their surprise and ours, the detectives explain that “baby-selling’s not a felony in New York,” but instead a misdemeanor, “like smoking in a restaurant.” That doesn’t deter Nathalie, whose maternal quest for justice is more Meredith Baxter than Delta Burke. Like other Lifetime movies with equally outrageous premises, Baby for Sale was based on a true story, that of Bill and Lauren Schneider of Stillwater, MN. By 2023, when California joined the list, “adoption facilitators” were banned in 29 states; a 2022 New Yorker article offers insight into the emotional and financial cruelty of such scams.
Delany, whose post-China Beach career often fell short of her talent, runs a punishing gauntlet without slipping on Nathalie’s tears. Bochner, sporting a two-tiered hairdo that never achieves spiritual harmony, gallantly accepts that he’s only there to provide emotional support and sexy stubble. Though Ramsay brings a frightening intensity to his scenes with Gitta’s birth mom (Elizabeth Marleau), director Peter Svatek (Everything She Ever Wanted) struggles to keep up with Baby’s many changes in tone, leaving us to ponder when Lifetime might produce another film about paying for children via Venmo: The Matt Gaetz Story.
* Purchasing bespoke newborns from Portland-based Etsy merchants was still a year or two away (initially, they all wore hopelessly twee trucker hats) and babies weren’t Prime-eligible at Amazon due to laws that Rand Paul still hopes to abolish.
Streaming and DVD availability
Baby for Sale is available on DVD and streams at YouTube, where it’s chopped into 10 parts.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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