Yet, at the end of the Vietnam war, the U.S. decided to enact another mass “savior” of children project. The infamous Vietnam “Operation BabyLift” airlifted more than 2,500 infants and children from Vietnam in 1975, allowing the children to be adopted by families around the world.

This evangelistic rescue effort led to a class action suit in the Federal District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Vietnamese children brought to the U. S. for adoption. The suit, which claims that several of the children labeled orphans were not. They seek to enjoin adoption proceedings in order to ascertain if parents or extended family in Vietnam ever consented to their adoption or cannot be found. They further wish to return to Vietnam.

Then came the tsunami of 2004 that left in excess of five million people homeless, including about 1.5 million children most of whom “became” orphaned, according to the United Nations. As calls poured in to adopt victims, Save the Children issued a statement “Adoptions, especially inter-country ones, are inappropriate during the emergency phase…” With orphans being targeted by criminal gangs, in the wake of the floods, Sri Lanka banned adoptions fearing child trafficking.

And now we are faced with an earthquake with unimaginable damage in Haiti.

Unicef has stated it very simply:

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Tuesday that international adoption should be the ‘last resort’ for children orphaned by last week’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.

“Unicef’s position has always been that whatever the humanitarian situation, family reunification must be favoured,” spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said during a press briefing in Geneva.

“The last resort is inter-country adoption,” she said.

Taveau said Unicef is working to find and identify children left without parents after last Tuesday’s devastating earthquake in the country.

“We find them, identify them and register them, and favour family reunification,” she said, adding that for Unicef’s purposes, family includes uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents and more distant relatives.

Unicef expressed concern amid reports of efforts to speed international adoptions of Haitian children in the aftermath of the disaster, which is estimated to have left about 200,000 people dead.

International Social Services and the International Rescue Committee concur, stating “in general, international adoption should not take place in a situation of war or natural disaster, given that these events make it impossible to verify the personal and family situation of children. Any operation to adopt or to evacuate children that are victims of the earthquake to another country must be absolutely avoided, as was the case during the 2004 tsunami….”

Haitian “children are currently experiencing extreme stress so that a sudden shift to a new country and a new family can have a psychological impact that is impossible to measure. According to the Guidelines developed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the evacuation of such children or their temporary placement in families abroad is also traumatic. It is considered as an added disruption to the injury already suffered by the child.”

The Hague Conference on International Law likewise states:

evacuation should not be confused with intercountry adoption which is a more radical measure changing the parenthood of a child. Haiti covered by the UNCRC but is not a signatory of the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention. However, any and all countries attempting to adopt from Haiti are under the limitations of that treaty which recommend that in a disaster, like the Haitian earthquake, efforts to reunite a displaced child with their parents or relatives must take priority. Premature and unregulated attempts at the international adoption of these children should be avoided. “Any decision to evacuate a child should be based on considerations of the child’s safety and should not be confused with the adoption process. A humanitarian disaster such as the earthquake should not be the reason for by-passing essential safeguards for safe adoption…. In a situation where child care and protection services have broken down such as in Haiti, the risks are even greater that the adoption may be ‘unsafe’. This is why in these tragic situations the emphasis should first be on child protection, rather than adoption.

The Quebec government has followed the advise of these experts, putting a hold on new adoption applications for Haitian children while the U.S. and the Dutch have sent planes to bring children out of Haiti in the midst of the recovery efforts despite Professor Rene Hoksbergen of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, warning that authorities should take great care in dealing with orphans from such a disaster, fearing the hurried evacuation could send a wrong signal.

“You have to be very careful in adopting these children from a country in chaos,” he said. “It might look like when a country is a disaster it is easy to adopt children there.” Worse still is the fear of all NGOs of corrupt baby brokers and opportunistic child traffickers using such disasters to their advantage.

When confused by pro and con statements about adoption, with both sides claiming to have the best interest of children at heart…follow the money.

Adoption agencies, even religious and non-profit rely on the redistribution of children to pay their bills, including salaries. This motivates their “concerns.” They have lobbyists that pressure government into quick “feel good” bills and “rescue” actions that don’t always look so quite so good in hindsight, and by those “rescued” and their families – or snatched – depending on your point of view.

Truly non-profit child advocating organizations all side with caution before the wholesale removal of children from their families and culture while lobbyists and marketers for those who profit from the redistribution just want to rush in and grab up the commodities.

SOS Children’s Village, The UN, ISS and IRC, The Hague have no financial gain in the best and safest outcomes for these children. They simply advocate what is best for the children and have the expertise and workers on the ground to back it up.

Unicef and other NGOs involved in child welfare know full well that nearly 90% of children worldwide in orphanages are not orphans but have one living parent, or extended family who visit and hope to regain custody. People in impoverished nations like Haiti reply in institutional care for temporary assistance and to access medical care they cannot otherwise afford.

Children are a highly sought commodity in a multibillion dollar industry in which demand creates supply. Poverty is always exploited, let’s not add this exploitation to people who have already suffered so very much.

There are many organizations accepting donation aid the children of Haiti for all who feel compelled to help without risking being exploitative.

It is thus that international adoption was initiated as a rescue mission n the 1950s with strong Christian fundamentalist and particularly Lutheran undertones. In the 1960s and 70s it came to be seen as a progressive act of liberal solidarity while domestically, unwed mothers were convinced to hide the proof of their “sinful” sexuality by allowing their bastard children to be adopted. It is estimated that more than six million American mothers – mostly white and middle class – have been convinced to lose their children to adoption. Four million of those occurred between 1940 and 1970; two million during the 1960s alone.

Now there is a new push. In June 2009, the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest Protestant denomination in the United States and the second largest religious body, with 42,000 churches and 16 million adherents – adopted a resolution encouraging adoption. As noted on O Solo Mama, a blog by single adoptive parent, Jessica Pegis, “On Adoption and Orphan Care” urges churches and families to get involved with adoption in whatever way they can. An excerpt of the resolution states:

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists have articulated an unequivocal commitment to the sanctity of all human life, born and unborn; and

WHEREAS, Churches defined by the Great Commission must be concerned for the evangelism of children—including those who have no parents; and

WHEREAS, Upward of 150 million orphans now languish without families in orphanages, group homes, and placement systems in North America and around the world; and

WHEREAS, Our Father loves all of these children, and a great multitude of them will never otherwise hear the gospel of Jesus Christ; now, therefore, be it…

RESOLVED, That we call on each Southern Baptist family to pray for guidance as to whether God is calling them to adopt or foster a child or children; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage our pastors and church leaders to preach and teach on God’s concern for orphans; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we commend churches and ministries that are equipping families to provide financial and other resources to those called to adopt, through grants, matching funds, or loans…

This new push for adoption satisfies several right wing fundamental Christian agendas. First, it provides more members of the flock. Secondly, it appeals to the rabid anti-abortionists with the false notion that somehow promoting and encouraging adoption reduces abortion. Both of these are very appealing to well-meaning parishioners. Additionally, it provides for a softer political appeal than being anti-gay. As The Dallas Morning News pointed out (July 24, 2007) “some conservative Christians say an intense focus on hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage has come at the expense of caring for needy children. And they’re doing something about it…. The push, still in its infancy, could help recast the image of conservative Christians, broaden the appeal of the church and, consequently, find homes for children.”

The blog of the Abba Fund states:

The greatest thing you can do to establish a culture of adoption/orphan care in your church is to be gripped by the reality that God has adopted us as His children. The church is God’s great trans-racial adoptive family. As the gospel takes root in our hearts and we recognize that adoption is central to the heart and mission of God it also becomes something we care about. We will naturally begin to reflect our vertical adoption in our horizontal efforts. This is the foundation for creating a culture that believes that every Christian is called to care for the fatherless in some way. Not everyone is called to adopt but everyone is called to do something. The question for each Christian and each church is not “Should I care for orphans?” The question is “How can I care for orphans?

The June 2009 Southern Baptist resolution on adoption was a direct follow up of the May 2007 three-day summit in Colorado Springs (as reported by Riben “Adoption And The Role Of The Religious Right” Nov, 2007).

According to the just-released Together for Adoption e-book (produced by Together for Adoption, an organization founded to ”equip churches and educate Christians theologically about orphan care and … adoption”): “Man did not invent adoption, God did! Adoption was in the mind of God before man even had a mind! Adoption was a vertical reality (i.e., God’s decision to adopt us) long before it ever had a horizontal expression (i.e., couples adopting children). Therefore, the reality of vertical adoption, should influence how we think about orphan care and horizontal adoption.” Note the same geometric language used by the Abba Fund.

Yet, these noble sounding goals may not be all they appear to be.

Fallacy Number One: Millions of Institutionalized Orphans

The resolution claims 150 million children in orphanages which is higher than the 143 million often quoted, a figure which is well documented to be grossly overestimated. According to UNICEF, UNAIDS and USAIDS nearly 90% of the children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans, but have at least one living parent, as was the case with both children adopted by Madonna. Families in impoverished nations often use institutionalized to obtain medical care for their children and to fill other temporary needs.

“It’s not really true,” says Alexandra Yuster, a senior advisor on child protection with UNICEF, “that there are large numbers of infants with no homes who either will be in institutions or who need intercountry adoption.”

Fallacy Two: Rescuing Orphans

Numbers aside, it would be noble and God’s work to adopt if in fact adoption truly rescued “unwanted” children. The problem is that instead of finding homes for children who might benefit from a loving, caring family, adoption has become a mega-billion industry meeting a demand for babies. Older children, and 129,00 children in U.S. foster care, who are considered unadoptable—typically over the age of 8, racial minorities and some with disabilities—are left behind in the quest for healthy young babies. Alexandra Yuster, notes that increasing international adoptions has not reduced the numbers of children in institutions.

Riitta Högbacka, University of Helsinki, Finland, reporting on the global market for adoption finds that internationally, as well as domestically: “Demand is focused on quite a small group of under three-year-olds, where the number of potential parents far exceeds the supply of children.”

UNICEF estimates that 95% of the world’s orphans are over 5 years of age while nearly 90% percent of all adoptions in the U.S. are of children under the age of 5. The breakdown is 46% are under a year; 43% 1-4 years 8% 5-9 years; 3% over 9. In Guatemala 80% of children adopted from Guatemala in 2006 were under 1 year of age.¹ ,² In 2007, 98 percent of U.S. adoptions from Guatemala were babies who had never seen the inside of an institution were signed over directly to a private attorney who approved the international adoption—for a very considerable fee—without any review by a judge or social service agency.²

Increasing international adoptions has done nothing to reduce the number of children in institutions, according to UNICEF³ ,⁴ and according to many child rights experts, international adoption decreases domestic placement opportunities that would allow children to remain within their culture, as locals cannot compete financially with the fees paid by Westerners. In Mozambique, for instance, when funding ran out for institutions, 80% of children were able to be reunified with their families. UNICEF favors international adoption as a last resort to be used only after all measures of family preservation are exhausted first, and then domestic adoption is fully explored.

Program director of International Social Service, Chantal Saclier is responsible for the United Kingdom’s ISS Resource Centre on the Protection of Children in Adoption. Saclier finds that although inter-country adoption is intended to find stable homes for children who do not have the opportunity for a loving family environment, many of the children being adopted have a family that could have been preserved. Factors such as pressure from wealthy adoptive families, and the selfishness and greed of officials, have created a situation in which economically disadvantaged children are exploited and sold.⁵

Peter Dodds, author of Outer Search\Inner Journey: An Orphan and Adoptee’s Quest, asserts: “International adoption isn’t the answer to improving the overall plight of children in developing countries. Even the strongest supporters admit the movement of adoptees across international borders represents only a tiny fraction of the neglected, abused and abandoned children in these countries. And supporters of international adoption are quiet about the children who are not adopted and left behind.”

Jane Joeng Trenka author and co-founder of TRACK, Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea, says, “South Korea’s dependence on the international adoption program has stunted the growth of more appropriate government-funded social welfare programs, as well as delayed the social acceptance of single-parent families….International adoption is NOT the solution. Instead, the South Korean government must find its own solution by investing in sex education, supporting single parents and creating incentives for domestic adoption.”⁶

Jae Ran Kim, a South Korea-born and American-raised adoptee and social worker in the field of adoption and child welfare laments: “It is ethnocentric and arrogant to think that the United States has any business telling another country how they should manage the problem of orphaned, abandoned or relinquished children. We can’t even solve this problem within our own shores.”

Even the most well-meaning adopters are left with no way to distinguish reputable agencies from unethical baby brokers. David Smolin, who with his wife altruistically chose to add their family by adopting two girls from India and discovered to his horror that they had been stolen from their mother. Smolin has become the leading authority on child trafficking fro adoption, coining the phrase “child laundering” to explain the hands these children are passed through so that the end agency in the West may be totally unaware that papers have been forged and DNA tests results phonied. Others, such as Julia Rollings and the Hemsleys have also become outspoken after unwittingly becoming the recipients of adopted children who were kidnapped from Guatemala or stolen from China.

Cultural Genocide?

Despite the material advantages children redistributed by adoption, some remain critical, including the National Association of Black Social Workers, which has called taking children from their ethic heritage, cultural genocide. Tobias Hübinette was born Lee Sam-dol in Korea. Adopted by Swedes, Hubinette, earned a PhD in Korean Studies in the Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, Sweden in 2005.

Along the way, he earned a BS in Irish Studies at the Division of Celtic Studies, Uppsala University. Hübinette notes that “[b]oth the slaves and the adoptees are separated from their parents, siblings, relatives and significant others at an early age, stripped of their original cultures and languages, reborn at harbours and airports, Christianized, re-baptized; both assume the name of their master/parent and, in the end, only retain a racialised, non-white body that has been branded or given a case number. … These children were objects of rescue fantasies and relief projects for the European homeland populations and especially feminist and Christian philanthropist and humanist groups.”⁷

If this sounds extreme, consider this excerpt from Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches by Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky who believes “God is calling the people of Christ to see the face of Jesus in the faces of orphans in North America and around the world.” Moore, who likewise believes that “every one of us who follows Christ was adopted into an already existing family,” writes about his own adoption:

It didn’t matter to us that the nurses in the orphanage across the seas still called these boys “Maxim” and “Sergei”; we had on their walls nameplates reading “Benjamin” and “Timothy.” It didn’t matter what their current birth certificates read; they would soon be Moores.

This newness of identity also informed the way we responded to questions, whether from social workers or friends, about whether we planned to “teach the children about their cultural heritage.” We assured everyone we would, and we have.

Now, what most people meant by this question is whether we would teach our boys Russian folk-tales and Russian songs, observing Russian holidays, and so forth. But as we see it, that’s not their heritage anymore [O: Yes, this guy believes adoption changes heritage], and we hardly want to signal to them that they are strangers and aliens, even welcome ones, in our home.

“We teach them about their heritage, but their heritage as Mississippians. They learn about their great-grandfather, the faithful Baptist pastor, about their countrymen before them in the Confederate army and the civil rights movement. They wouldn’t know “Peter and the Wolf” if they heard it, but they do know Charley Pride and Hank Williams and “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” They are Moores now, with all that entails.

Another Christian family blogs that they “have the advantage of understanding our host culture’s worldview and their very deep superstitious beliefs. Thus, we were not surprised that Sterling [their adopted son] was given to us with a jade luck charm—a Buddhist charm meant to bring good luck, fortune and protection. We, however, know that this charm is associated with spiritual forces meant to keep people in bondage. Thus, we smiled and accepted it as we should, and then later went to the park, broke it, and threw it into the pond, and prayed for our sterling that all spiritual bondage over him would be broken. These spiritual forces are alive and real, and manifest themselves in more obvious ways (but with the same degree of power) than in the west, but we know that the power and grace of the God who created the heavens and the earth is infinitely greater than the forces of evil.”

Who Proliferates These Myths?

Within the evangelical movement, some of the many organizations promoting this agenda, as researched by Jessica Pegis and revealed on her O Solo Mama blog, are:

Abba Fund, which provides financial assistance in the form of interest-free loans for good Christian moms and dads to adopt.

Christian Alliance for Orphans, an umbrella group of organizations that fundraise and “equip churches as they grow effective orphan care, foster youth and adoption ministries” via annual summits that instruct how to start church-based orphan ministries, create adoption support funds, network with other churches, and so forth.

Cry of the Orphan Campaign, sponsored by Hope for Orphans and Focus on the Family. Together with the Christian Alliance, they promote many events, including those associated with Orphan Sunday.

Orphan Care, an initiative was launched in 2006 by Focus on the Family, the campaign name is trademarked and the emphasis is kids in foster care. From the website: “The Orphan Care Initiative is designed to inspire, equip, and engage the body of Christ along with and through the Church to bring orphans into a Christ-centered family structure.”

Orphan Sunday, started by an American doing mission work in Zambia witnessed an event aimed at helping AIDS orphans and went on to launch Orphan Sunday, first in Zambia and then in North America.

Pegis further notes that the very first Orphan Sunday in North America emphasized prayer, donations, and youth projects, i.e., keeping kids in their communities. Today, however, permanent separation of children from their communities seems to take precedence over other forms of help. Church members who don’t find themselves “called to adopt” are directed to support those who are.

Together for Adoption holds conferences that explore the theological links to adoption.

Following his Aug 2008 appeal to both presidential candidates, Rick Warren, Focus on the Family, and Campus Crusade for Christ talked about Christians devoting more resources to adoption, fostering, and care of children in need around the world. The theme was “You Are God’s Plan for the Orphan.”

In an oped for the Wall Street Journal (Aug 29, 2008), Kelly Rosati, who oversees Focus on the Family’s adoption and orphan-care division and is the mother of four adopted children said the 2008 theme represented a shift from the traditional way of viewing adoption as “something you considered if you were facing infertility” to a “commitment to adoption is part of a holistic sanctity-of-human-life ethic.”

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Over the next six months, Christian media will be saturated with stories and ads touting adoption and foster care as a scriptural imperative, an order direct from God. Tens of thousands of pastors will be urged to preach about the issue, set up support groups for couples considering taking in troubled kids, and even invite state child-welfare officials to talk to their congregations….

Several speakers [at the Colorado Springs Summit] talked of an urgent need to settle children in Christian homes that have “both a mommy and a daddy” — an implicit rebuke of same-sex parenting. Others suggested Christians could bolster their case for protecting the “pre-born” by proving that their concern for the child extends beyond the womb.

Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, a major player in this new path of evangelism, expressed at the 2007 summit a concern that foster parents typically are permitted to take children to church but cannot force religion on them. They must adhere to other state guidelines as well, some of which may contradict their faith such as parents “disciplining” their children physically with switches as taught by Dobson, a child psychologist.

While some of the flock may in fact adopt children from foster care, concern for orphaned and abandoned children is used as a smoke screen to use adoption as a tool against abortion, against single parenthood, and for evangelism. That is why, among those present at the 2007 event (and likely the follow-ups as well) was Tom Atwood, president of the National Committee for Adoption, the largest lobbying organization and marketing arm of adoption agencies, primarily those of the Later Day Saints.

The NCFA web page purports to be about finding homes for children in foster care, yet their mission page shows in black and white their first and foremost agenda item: “Train pregnancy counselors and health care workers in infant adoption awareness, so women and teens with unplanned pregnancies can freely consider the loving option of adoption.” Contrary to promoting the adoption of U.S. orphans, on the NCFA agenda is “Work[ing] with the U.S. and foreign governments to establish sound policies for inter-country adoption, so foreign orphans can be placed with loving, permanent families.”

The NCFA and the religious right are partners in a full-fledged propaganda war being waged to recruit Christian soldiers through adoption. With all the ingenuity and marketing skills available to them, the NCFA and the religious right couch their pro-adoption stance as a noble plan to help orphans and children in foster care, using these kids as the foot in the door by both to get tax incentives and other benefits for their clients who seek to adopt primarily infants. All good social engineers know the advantages of starting with a “blank slate.”⁸

Conflicts and Controversy

Conservative Christians do not accept medical infertility intervention, they also do not accept being childless as God’s will.

Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull, notes:

Spiritual warfare in the most basic sense is how a Christian engages with the culture by bringing this Christian influence, and knowing that they are there to convert the world and not become more of the world. Spiritual warfare can mean a lot of things, but in terms of using children, and viewing your fertility as a weapon of spiritual warfare — that is particular to Quiverfull, I think, or people who follow Quiverfull convictions without using their name, which a lot of people do. Spiritual warfare is about using all of your gifts in a Christian mission against the world.⁹

The basis of the Quiverfull belief is found in Psalms 127 A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon, the second half of the first states:

      Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
      The fruit of the womb is a reward.
      Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
      So are the children of one’s youth.
      Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;
      They shall not be ashamed,
      But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

Despite the belief that “children are a heritage from the Lord,” and a “reward” which should not cause shame, justifications are found to shame some mothers – such as those who are not legally married – and to disregard the heritage of those who are adopted.

Additionally Joyce believes that “there’s a very strong racial undercurrent, when they talk about demography as a crisis, or under population, or declining fertility rates as a crisis, because they’re talking about declining white fertility rates, not declining worldwide fertility rates. I think there are a lot of ties and connections between the extremist members of this movement and traditionally conservative and racist groups in the South. I don’t think that’s necessarily part of the theological basis for it, though.” Adoption of course allows them to reach this goal despite their fertility or inability to become parents naturally.

Not all Christians interpret the bible similarly in regard to adoption. W. E. Vine, English Biblical scholar and theologian wrote The Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1985). In it, he finds: “‘Adoption of children’ is a mistranslation and misleading. God does not ‘adopt’ believers as children; they are begotten as such by His Holy Spirit through faith.”

The United Church of God agrees that adoption is “a wonderful and noble act to provide a home and family to one who needs it—and it is typically a great blessing to both the adoptive parents and the child.” “Adoption or Sonship?” from the UCG booklet What is Your Destiny? found problems however “in applying the terminology of adoption to our relationship with God.” It goes onto state:

In human adoption, the adopted children are human just as much as the new parents—yet only because the children were adopted from other human parents who physically begot them. But if God merely adopted us and did not truly beget us in His image, we would be different kinds of beings from Him altogether—as He would not be adopting us from others like Himself. It could be likened in some sense to adopting a pet as a family member (albeit one that could talk).

Sadly, this is close to what many envision—that we are and forever will be totally different, lesser kinds of beings than God. And so they have no problem with taking the Greek word in question in the verses we’ve seen to mean adoption. But this notion of God’s purpose for us is not the truth, as Scripture makes clear that God actually begets us spiritually in His own image—with the intention that we ultimately become the same kind of beings He and Jesus Christ now are.

Conclusion

The Christian push for adoption as a calling from God falls short in same way that U.S. tax benefits for those adopting does. Both fail the very children they purport to help by not limiting their assistance to the adoption of the 129,000 children in foster care who could be adopted but instead use them as pawns to support all adoption as if they were all equal.

In the privatized multi-billion dollar unregulated adoption industry, it is impossible to distinguish ethical reputable agencies from those who may take babies from orphanages overseas who have – knowingly or not –who were stolen, kidnapped or coerced from parents who wanted them. We cannot as responsible citizens or Christians simply support adoption across the board when many are corrupt. We cannot as responsible citizens or Christians ignore the calling to help families in crisis find the resources they need to remain together before assisting in their destruction. And when adoption is the final recourse, we need not destroy the lines of heritage and eradicate part of a human beings identity. The more loving, caring thing is to honor and love all of the child, including his roots. Isn’t that what Jesus would have us do?

There is no doubt that adoption is beneficial for many children who have no families able to care for them. However, there are many other ways to help children in need and allow them to remain within their families, communities maintaining their ethnicity, names and heritage. Organizations such as SOS Village and Save the Children do just that. Conversely, taking children one at a time does nothing to ameliorate the poverty of their family, their village or their nation.

Adoption is intended to put the needs of children in need first. Adoption is not intended to objectify children to meet a demand for the childless or to increase any population or obtain followers to any religion or belief system.

1. Adoptive families magazine Guatemala adoption statistics
2. Jennifer Banks, Note, The U.S. Market for Guatemalan Children: Suggestions for Slowing Down the Rapid Growth of Illegal Practices Plaguing International Child Adoption, 28 Suffolk Transnat’l L. Rev. 31, 40 (2004) (stating that, “[i]nternational adoptions comprise ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of all adoptions of Guatemalan children and virtually all of these adoptions take place through an extrajudicial notary system”).
3. Johanna Oreskovic and Trish Maskew “Red Thread or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Barthelot’s Mythology of International Adoption” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review Vol. 14
4. Ethics and Accountability in Adoption, Ethica/Evan B, Donaldson conference, October, 2007, Panel I.
5. Chantal Scalier, “In the Best Interests of the Child? IN: International Resource Centre for the Protection of Children in Adoption.” Selman, P., Ed.
6. “Adoption from South Korea: Isn’t 50 Years Enough?” Jane’s Blog, June 27, 2007.
7. Tobias Hübinette, “Between European Colonial Trafficking, American Empire-. Building and Nordic Social Engineering: Rethinking International Adoption From a Postcolonial and Feminist Perspective.”
8. For more on American adoption as social engineering see Barbara Melosh, Ellen Herman, and E. Wayne Carp.
9. Buzzflash interview, March 10, 2009.

The Littlest Casualties

Worldwide, there are approximately 143 million “orphans” based on figures that include children with only one living parent, approximately 90% of them (Oreskovi and Maskew, 2009). Approximately 2.6% of these children are housed in orphanages (Ibid).

Within the United States half a million children are wards of the state in foster care system, despite the well documented risks, impermanence and cost. Of these, an estimated 129,000 no longer have any chance of reunification with their families and could be adopted.

What is in their best interest? Is redistributing them to far—off cultures and expecting these children—many who may have learning disabilities and other emotional, attachment and physical challenges—to learn new languages in addition to being separated from family and community they likely remember?

Do domestic and international adoption policies put the best interests of these most vulnerable children first and foremost, or are they being used as pawns in a multibillion dollar industry designed to meet the demand for younger and healthier infants?

The number of American children in foster care who are eligible to be adopted is startling in view of the fact that an estimated 10 million American couples who “would likely attempt to adopt an infant domestically if they felt they had a realistic opportunity to do so,” according to a poll by the National Council for Adoption (Wirthin, 2007).

An August, 2008 survey of the National Center for Health Statistics estimated that nearly 600,000 women are seeking to adopt. Even using this more conservative figure it is incomprehensible that the children in temporary care are being by-and-large left behind.

Children adopted from foster care used to be called “hard-to-place” which evolved to the more sensitive and politically correct “Special Needs” children. American adopters, however, still prefer international adoption (or domestic infant adoption, albeit in short supply since birth control became widely available, abortion rights were upheld, and increased acceptance of single mothers, even providing for expectant mothers to continue high school.

International adoption is preferred over adoption from foster care for three main reasons:

• The desire for younger children from outside the country.
• The belief that internationally adopted children and t are less “damaged” despite reports of attachment difficulties of children coming form orphanages, fetal alcohol syndrome and other health issues, many of which are not revealed accurately and thoroughly by international adoption agencies here and abroad.
• Alleviation of the fear of an original parent (by birth) wanting contact, returning at any point, or worst of all attempting to overturn the adoption because of coercion—subtle or overt—including the lack of the birthfather signing a release of parental rights. However, these concerns would only apply to the small number of infant adoptions. The parents of children coming from state social services have had their parental rights terminated.

These fears, myths and misconceptions, coupled with the glamorization of rescuing orphans, are perpetrated by an adoption industry that generates an estimated 6.3 billion annually worldwide and 23 billion domestically.

Adoption Entrepreneurs

The reversal of supply and demand created a need for adoption profiteers to put a new positive spin on marketing. As opposed to the focus being on helping “wayward” girls of the 50’s 60’s and 70s ridding themselves of the shame of their indiscretions, today, adoption is encouraged as a way to rescue children from orphanages in impoverished parts of the world. This has resulted in international adoption by Americans nearly doubling during the 1990s, reaching twenty thousand annually and approximately 250,000 children in the last thirty years making the U.S. the number one receiving country. Globally, over a quarter million children have been redistributed by adoption in the past three decades.

Yet, one by one countries, which had been prime suppliers, have begun to investigate and validate the claims of corruption and child trafficking that is rampant in nations in political turmoil and developing countries with low per capita annual incomes. These investigations resulted in Vietnam, Romania, Guatemala disallowing the international adoption of their children at least until more restrictions can be enacted to prevent widespread corruption, Russia increased restrictions in an attempt to reduce the alarming number of Russian children murdered by their American adopters, and others sent back, abused or institutionalized.

The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, an international agreement between participating countries requires their member nations adhere to two primary goals: to protect the best interest of children, as laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, are considered with each intercountry adoption, and to prevent abduction, exploitation, sale, or trafficking of children.

These restrictions have limited the supply of babies and in turn the incomes of adoption profiteers who now rely on international adoption to make up for the loss of domestic adoptions. Many American adoption agencies have closed as a result of the reduction in numbers of adoptions and the cost and difficulty complying with Hague requirements and becoming accredited.

The concerns of these entrepreneurs are represented by The National Council for Adoption (NCFA), lobbyists paid to represent the interests of adoption agency owners and employees in affecting U.S. adoption polices favorable to the encouragement of adoption and to assist in creating marketing programs aimed at mothers in crisis to increase adoptions.

The international equivalent of the NCFA is the Joint Council on International Children Services. In addition, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI), lobbies congress to effect incentives such as tax benefits and payments states to increase family separations. The CCA also sponsors National Adoption Day and Angels in Adoption program to honor those who adopt and help facilitate adoptions.

Adoption attorneys, are represented by The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys (AAAA) and Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program (CAP) and the Center for Adoption Policy. ACT for Adoption, based in Rye, NY, is a coalition of adoption profiteers mobilized in late 2008 “to communicate with the White House, Members of Congress, government agencies and the press to educate and advocate for legislation, policies and administrative procedures supportive of adoption.”

ACT for Adoption is sponsored by the Center for Adoption Policy, and the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School intentionally both of whom intentionally grossly overestimate numbers of orphans, repeatedly quoting the figure of 143,000, well known to be extremely overinflated as 88.7% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans and not eligible for adoption (UNAIDS.2004). Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet of ACT and CAP, applauded Madonna’s second adoption and, speaking at the 2009 Adoption Policy Conference, “International Adoption, the United States, and the Reality of the Hague System” stated that heritage is over-rated.

To counter these facts, ACT creates newspeak such as their newly coined term “unparented children” and applaud the adoption of children of living parents while recognizing that International adoption “has come under fire recently from UNICEF” because corruption and baby selling. They also use language such as a need to eliminate “barriers that hinder children from realizing their basic right of a family and ways they might act to eliminate them” without any consideration of a child’s foremost basic right to have his family receive the resources they need to remain intact or reunify.

Pawns of Pretense

Pro-adoption lobbying is not difficult in a nation that does not prioritize family preservation and instead vilifies mothers because of age, marital or financial status, would cast a legislator as a villainous scrooge. Legislators are particularly eager to support adoption promotions and incentive programs which are proposed as helping children languishing in foster care to find “forever families”

Susan Jackson, a family advocate and member of CPS Watch observed: “No one dares risk being politically incorrect, even to save hundreds of thousands of children who are sentenced to a life of disassociation and despair in multiple foster homes, and then, if they are ‘lucky,’ into an adoptive home, never to see their parents or siblings again (TCB 2007).”

And so the U.S. enacted state incentives to move children quickly into “permanence.” in 1997, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) and states quickly enacted legislation modifying child welfare procedures to conform to ASFA’s guidelines and qualify for federal funding. The new procedures place a premium on removing children from their homes—often because of poverty and lack of resources such as adequate child-care. Well-documented maltreatment of children in foster homes is then used to utilize AFSA bonuses to states to accelerate substantially the time frame for severing their original parents’ constitutional right to parent without due process.

“The federal government offers a perverse incentive to states when they think that a family is having problems: Take children away and we’ll pick up a large share of the tab” observes Richard Wexler (2006) commenting on the rush for removals. “[The money is unlimited; the federal government helps pay for every eligible child thrown into foster care, no matter how many are taken. But if a state wants to use safe, proven alternatives to foster care, the state often must pay almost all of the bill itself.”

Through waivers, states may spend Federal funds in alternative manners, since 1996, just 17 States have implemented 25 child welfare waiver programs including: assisted guardianship/kinship care; services for caregivers with substance use disorders; and adoption. A barrier to implementation of these programs is that while Federal title IV-E payments help States pay foster parents and adopters of special needs children, these funds cannot normally be used to pay subsidies to extended family members who provide legal guardians. According to the National Family Preservation Network, “[E]very dollar invested in keeping families together saves $2-$3 on placement services.”

In addition to state incentives to increase family separations and adoptions, the U.S. Federal government, prompted by pro-adoption profiteers and their lobbyists, enacted Adoption Tax Benefit legislation in starting in 1996 “to encourage further the adoption of special needs children.”

The “special needs” wording in the original legislation was the foot in the door need. A summary of the data from the U.S. Treasury Department to determine who most benefits from the credit, however, reveals:

• The vast majority of adoption tax credit recipients completed private or foreign adoptions rather than adoptions from foster care. The tax credit disproportionately supports higher-income families.
• The tax credit primarily supports the adoption of younger children.

Nearly 90% of those receiving the credit have incomes above $100,000 benefitting only one in four adopting from U.S. foster care, but nearly all who adopted children from other countries were supported by the tax credit. . From 1999 to 2005, the vast majority of adoption tax credit recipients adopted infants or younger children via private domestic or international adoptions, doing nothing to reduce the number of children in foster care, despite that being the alleged intent of the tax incentive.

In 2004 just 18 percent of children supported by the tax credit and 17 percent of the funds so allocated, assisted children from foster care. In 2005, nearly 90 percent of filers with, and 71 percent of all families adopted children under age five. Only about 10 percent of higher-income families adopted from foster care, and very few adopted older children.

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, whose goal is to promote ethical adoption polices and legal reforms, reported (1999), “The federal government, for example, offers financial incentives in the form of tax credits to families who privately adopt infants (and who are often affluent), yet does not offer the same support to those families who adopt children in foster care (and who usually have the greatest need for such support). Is it ethical that intermediaries and those least in need benefit the most from these tax credits?”

“Today’s reality,” comments Joe Kroll, executive director of the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC) “is that the original intent of the adoption tax credit legislation has been turned upside down. Those who most need support to adopt (lower-income families who are adopting children from foster care) are receiving the least benefit, and those for whom the financial outlay is not a barrier to adoption benefit the most.” Elizabeth Samuels (2005) likewise found that “federal tax benefits for adopters generally provide greater benefits to families involved in more expensive healthy newborn and international adoptions, although the benefits are promoted as a means to increase adoptions of children out of foster care.”

And, as with state incentives, these funds are allocated to adopters but are not available to assist families in crisis who are instead stigmatized if they need and or accept government financial assistance. Nor are tax credits available for extended family who care for a related child.

Exportation of American Children

While Americans are adopting allegedly unwanted orphans from impoverished orphanages, in larger number than those of any other country, plans are underway to increase the adoption of our own children who are fostered and institutionalized in small orphanages called group homes… by exporting them.

Placing American born children out of the country is nothing new. Quietly, approximately19 states including Oregon, Washington, California, Texas, Florida, New Hampshire, and Arkansas allow “home state finalization” for the outgoing international adoption of U.S. children. The U.S. State Department indicates that seventeen American adoption agencies have been accredited or temporarily accredited under the new Hague rules for outgoing adoptions. Some, American based adoption agencies such as VidaAdoptions.org and IllienAdoptions.org, have included exportation of children as rates of international adoptions into the U.S. have dropped post Hague.

The process has been called “reverse commute adoptions” by attorney Michael Goldstein and his social worker wife, Joy, founders of Forever Families Through Adoption (FFTA), who claim to have placed some 65 American born babies for adoptions out of the U.S. between 1997 to 2007. Some of Goldstein’s adoptions have been high profile cases such as two American babies adopted by British Foreign Secretary David Milliband and his wife.

Additional international demand for U.S. born children is currently being created by same sex couples in Europe who see America as the perfect source inasmuch as it is currently the only country which allows––in at least some states––for adoption by same sex couples. But these type of adoptions and those conducted by FFTAs are just the tip of the iceberg.

The Donaldson Adoption Institute estimates the current number of children exported from the U.S. for adoption at 500 a year (Smolowe, 1994) while Thomas DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services in Virginia puts the number of American children exported for adoption at “[a]pproximately 800” a year going to “Canada, Mexico and France,” adding that Irish families who wish to adopt privately from the U.S. are also free to do so (Palmer 2008). In 2008 189 American children were adopted by Canadians, second only to China.

Intercountry adoption has traditionally been divided into sending and receiving countries with the senders being nations under political and social unrest or entrenched in widespread poverty making incomprehensible the out of country placement of children born in America—an industrialized stable nation with millions vying to adopt and taking children from all over the world.

The redistribution of children is frowned upon by NGOs such as Save the Children. Sarah Jacobs, Save the Children’s Africa specialist, working on issues of child protection, hunger, health and education asserts that “children are much better looked after, even if they’ve lost their parents, within their home communities.” Dominic Nutt, spokesperson for Save the Children UK concurs (CNN, 2009) on opposing Madonna’s Malawian adoption: “children in poverty should be best looked after by their own people in their own environment.”

Likewise, Roelie Post (2008), of the European Commission, who has an intimate knowledge of the exportation of Romanian children and defines herself as neither pro- not anti-adoption, asks: “is intercountry adoption a child protection measure, or do children have rights in their own country and is intercountry adoption the ultimate breach of such rights?”

Proponents of the redistribution of children in and out of the U.S. have a clear financial stake in adoptions and have persuaded well-meaning organizations and politicians that the need to perpetuate all of these adoptions is noble. They claim that nations such the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Great Britain—all of which have adopted American children—have less issue with adopting non-white children than do Americans, pointing to reports that indicate African American children are over represented in national foster care, have to wait a long time for permanent placements, and leave institutional care at an older age. During the time adoption and reunification are being weighed and options sought, non-white infants remain foster care, often in several families or homes, notes those in the Netherlands and elsewhere eager to obtain such children.

The Dutch Minister of Justice, Hirsch Ballin, is quite mindful of American adoption trends and polices and has argued that Americans are less inclined to adopt children over the age of five—as are the majority of adoptable children in U.S. foster care. And thus would be suitable for Dutch adoption. Additionally, a recent Dutch petition pointed out that foster families in the U.S. often have as many as six l children at a time, breaching the principles of the Hague Adoption Treaty. Conversely, the pursuit of younger babies than are available to be adopted domestically is what drives U.S. citizens to prefer to adopt internationally.

Once again children in foster care—America’s most vulnerable—are being used to support the adopting infants who have never been in state care. Goldstein, in fact, claims that most of the children he places out of the country, like those adopted by the Milibands are “healthy white Caucasians” (The Rye Chronicle, 2007). Additionally, the The Texas Cradle places 10 to 20 percent of American children with wealthy Mexicans who seek white children.

Conclusion

Babies are being kidnapped, stolen or coerced from their mothers and trafficked to meet the demand (Smolin, 2007) while older children, and children with disabilities are left behind and are like a lost leader in advertising­ to push the sale of the higher priced goods––younger and presumably healthier babies.

How large a community should it take to share the responsibility of children in need? With adoption in the hands of entrepreneurs in a “free market,” which is more often than not a fair market, who is advocating for the interests of these voiceless victims? Is passing them around ever in their best interest? Is it as some opponents say, cultural genocide to sever children form family, extended kinship or is it preferable to remaining in institutions or foster care within their own culture?

Hw do we justify using our most needy children as “fronts” to promote adoptions that do nothing to help the children in the most need here and abroad? “The most vulnerable children are not the group most in demand for international adoption. Demand is focused on quite a small group of under three-year olds, where the number of potential parents far exceeds the supply of children,” according to Riitta Högbacka, University of Helsinki, Finland (2006).

When reviewing the pros and cons, it is imperative to consider the financial motivation of those weighing in as “experts” on what is best for children. Adoption practitioners including, but not limited to, attorneys? Lobbyists? Professional marketers? None of these actors have any specific education or training in child care of social services and their income is derived directly or indirectly from non-relatives placement of children. Save the Children, on the other hand, spends 92% on services and just 4% on fundraising and another 4% on management and all other expenditures.

ACT for Adoption is right on target when they state that children being dislocated from their families “have no seat at the policy table, and no voice.” Their claim, however, that their pro-adoption position speaks for or represents the children whose custody is being transferred assumes that children want advocates who support adoption over helping their families overcome non-endangering problems and remain intact.

Many pro-adoption organizations as Donaldson (which recently partnered with LifeCare to encourage employer benefits in support of adoption) and Ehica want to see adoptions, including international continue, as long as they are ethical. However other than agreeing that child trafficking needs to be curbed, there are few guidelines for what is ethical and what is not, rendering the word as meaningless and subjective as the word nice. Ignoring and exploiting our treatment of our tiniest and most at-risk victims—our foster children—is neither nice nor ethical.

References:

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. 1999. Money, Power and Accountability: The “Business” of Adoption. Conference summary Anaheim, November.

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. International Fact Sheet International Adoption in the U.S. Prompted by War, Poverty and Social Upheaval.

Hilborn, Robin, “2008 jump in international adoptions to Canada: latest statistics” Adoption Helper.

Högbacka, Riitta. 2006. “The Global Market for Adoption.” SixDegrees. Feb 22.

Kroll, Joe. 2007. “The Adoption Tax Credit: An Ethical Dilemma” Fall Adoptalk North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC).

National Council for Adoption. 2007. Adoption Facebook IV.

Oreskovi, Johanna and Maskew, Trish. 2009. Red Thread1 Or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Bartholet’s Mythology of International Adoption. Buffalo Human Rights Law Review. Vol. 14.

Plmer, Caitriona 2008. “So you want to adopt a baby … then head to the United States where it’s an easier, but more expensive, process than in Ireland.” January 2.

Post, Roelie 2008. “The Perverse Effects Of The Hague Adoption Convention” Research Center of Ministry of Justice.

Samuels, Elizabeth. 2005. Time To Decide? The Laws Governing Mothers’ Consents To The Adoption Of Their Newborn Infants. 72 Tenn. Law Rev.

Smolin, David 2007. Child Laundering as Exploitation: Applying Anti—Trafficking Norms to Intercountry Adoption Under the Coming Hague Regime, Vermont Law Review.

Smolowe, Jill, 1994. “Babies for Export,” Time, Aug. 22,

TCB Chronicles Staff. 2007. “Dorothy’s Never Coming Home: New Law Puts Families in Crisis: States Report They are Increasing Efforts to Take Children From Their Homes to Collect Federal Bounty” From CPS Watch, ©2000. Oct.

Wexler, Richard. 2006. “‘Family Last’ Policy May Have Killed Ricky.” Detroit News, March 8.

UNAIDS, 2004. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). “Children on the brink 2004: a joint report of new orphan Estimates and a Framework for Action.”