The term covers a wide variety of situations and degrees of economic, social, and physical coercion.
In some cases there is overlap with commercial surrogacy, where the male partner buying the baby also provides the sperm.
[4] Most of the discovered baby factories are found in Southern Nigeria, with high incidence in Ondo, Ogun, Imo, Akwa Ibom Abia and Anambra.
[11][12][13][14] In October 2011, seventeen pregnant women (thirty according to some sources[15][16]) were found in Ihiala, Anambra, in a hospital of the Iheanyi Ezuma Foundation.
[3] In 1990s, it was rumored that child snatchers commonly roamed the country in Guatemala, which has lax laws regulating adoption.
[18] In the 1980s, staff in some hospitals in Sri Lanka were involved in rackets of kidnapping newborns for international adoptions.
[14][8] There have been relatively few allegations that some child harvesting programs provide infants to be tortured or sacrificed in black magic or witchcraft rituals; this seems to be a concern in Nigeria.