Community: "Rescuing" those in need...

Community and Crisis
Crisis, such as the recent earthquake in Haiti, can bring out the best in people. People rush in to help and rescue others, often at great risk to themselves. The world watches and an instinctive outpouring of compassion and aid rushes forth.
Crisis also invites trouble, such as looting. Akin to looting, there is the danger of an opportunism you may not have thought of- the alleged “rescue” of orphans via international adoption.


Last week, 53 Haitian orphans arrived in the United States, their pending adoptions to American families having been fast-tracked as a rescue and relief effort. In all, 900 children awaiting adoption could be affected by this fast-tracking process. While these children had already been identified as orphans and potential adoptees prior to the earthquake, there are loose estimates of thousands of children being orphaned by the earthquake. Amongst the crisis and chaos, Haitian children are vulnerable to uncertain family-reunification efforts. They are also vulnerable to predatory systems such as organized child slavery and prostitution… and to kidnapping into the international adoption industry.


International adoptions, as with most domestic adoptions, involve the facet of commerce. When a child is adopted, someone has profited; an agency, a lawyer, a doctor, or perhaps an underground “broker.” An organization with even the best of intentions profits, if not monetarily, in furthering its particular moral agenda.
America and other developed nations are fertile ground (pun intended) for the commerce of adoption. Americans have ready access to birth control, and American society widely accepts single parenting. Statistically, there are more couples wanting to adopt than there are American-born babies available for adoption. (Note the newspaper classified sections where prospective adoptive parents resort to advertising themselves, promising an ideal life for the child and “all-expenses-paid” support to the expectant mother.)


An adoption advocacy organization recently posted this position regarding adoption and the crisis in Haiti:
We understand why people want to open their arms and hearts to the children of the Haitian earthquake, but adoption is not emergency or humanitarian aid or a solution to Haiti’s ongoing problems. The immediate rescue effort in Haiti should focus on emergency services, individual and family care and family reunification, not family, community, and cultural destruction and the strip-mining of children. –bastardette.blogspot.com


Have you ever given thought to the “commoditization” of adoptable babies? Is it hard for you to believe that adoption can be an "industry of profit"?