I’ve struggled with the ethics behind international adoptions for quite sometime. While I understand there are many children internationally who need homes and parents, I wonder what influence our country has in the adoption process. I’m not very familiar with the adoption process at all, whether it be in the US or internationally. However, I have witnessed our country’s love of bullying others into doing what we want them to do. I fear that the US may play unfair games in order to obtain babies. See, that’s another problem too. We have tons of older children in this country who need good homes, but everyone seems to want babies, so rather than provide good homes to older US children, these parents go international to get a baby. Then there is the whole idea of how babies are becoming a commodity. In the US, usually only middle or upper class people adopt because the fees are so high. Those who have lower incomes cannot afford to become adoptive parents. This worries me. It’s as if the adoption process favors those with money rather than those who can be the best parents and provide a good home to the children. These two lines in a recent Star Tribune article articulate this concept of babies as goods rather than humans. I feel the children are getting lost in all of this.

“These notaries charge an average of $30,000 for children delivered in about nine months–record time for international adoptions.”

“The small Central American country sent 4,135 children to the United States last year, making it the largest source of babies for U.S. families after much-bigger China. Americans adopted 6,493 children from China in 2006.”