There’s much a to feel unsettled about with these hyper realistic dolls, and nothing comes easier than a sense of indignance. In one country, a woman pays $10K for what looks like an infant corpse; in another, poorer country, actual human babies are perishing from lack of food and medical care.

These dolls, though, are frequently functioning as therapy aids for women whose children have died, or who otherwise use them for emotional support purposes. A society that invests billions of dollars in armaments and weapons while those same babies die seems far more blameworthy than these women who are just trying to get by as they process difficult experiences and feelings.

I’ll admit, I approached this topic wondering: why not save a shelter animal from euthanasia if you need something to hold for emotional support? why not volunteer with needy children if you enjoy kids but cannot have your own? Listening to these women, it became clear to me that I don’t have the first idea of what it would feel like to be them, and neither I nor anyone else really has any business judging them over how they cope in their own lives. These dolls are no more wasteful than other frivolous things no one thinks to question — and they matter to their owners in a way I can’t understand.

All of this said, though, the dolls’ resemblance to corpses make them pretty abject to my mind, and I would not really want to spend time around someone who was talking to and handling one. I would move to another seat on a bus, for example, if one of these were taken out next to me. Or at least this is what I imagine.

video from Christina Macfarlane/ CNN