Sense and Sensitivity

A story caught my eye this morning. It was about a baby born to an Indian surrogate mother that, by Indian law, could not have left India for Japan with her biological father because neither of her mothers (biological or surrogate) was present. It was the first time in 28 years that the Indian government issued travel documents despite that law. The baby's biological parents are from Japan.

The story had three headlines. The one on CNN's 'Most Popular' side bar read "Japanese girl leaves India" while the headline on the 'Latest News' list on the CNN home page had "Baby born to Indian surrogate out of legal limbo" and the headline on the page with the article read "Japanese girl born to Indian surrogate arrives home."

"Japanese girl leaves India" and "Japanese girl born to Indian surrogate arrives home" really bugged me. I found myself asking, 'Does it really matter that the baby is Japanese? What does that even mean?' I got the impression that these headlines were insinuating that only Japanese people live in Japan and only Indian people live in India. And well, things are more complicated than that.

I would re-write them as "Baby girl leaves India for Japan" and "Baby girl born to Indian surrogate arrives home despite legalities." They're not the best headlines because I don't think they encompass the heart of the story, but they make the baby's race less of a focal point and summarize the main action in the story.

I liked the third headline better but it had some issues: "Baby born to Indian surrogate out of legal limbo." So... who was out out of limbo? The surrogate or the baby? It also sounds like the baby was born out of legal limbo (whatever that means), which is clearly not the case. The omitted "is" makes it seems like "born" is the verb and creates a whole mess of misunderstandings. I'd change it to "Baby born to Indian surrogate escapes legal limbo."

I would change the headline on the article to: "Baby leaves India for Japan despite law requiring mother's presence." The headline on that page can easily be expanded to a three-line headline of more than 30 units per line. This may not be the best headline since "surrogate" is not mentioned and that is probably an important key word. So I guess it will have to be something like: "Baby girl born to Indian surrogate arrives home in Japan despite law requiring mother's presence."