Here is an interesting AlertNet blog entry on some of the ethical dilemmas surrounding international adoption. Joel and I have wanted to adopt needy children for several years now. A couple of years back we seriously looked into adopting a child from Liberia. We ended up giving up on the idea after we ran into quite a few moral considerations that we had not thought of before. Our main problem was that we realized that because of the way adoption is done there is always going to be uncertainty that you are actually doing the best thing for the child that you are adopting. Depending on the country that you adopt from there is either an expected donation for the orphanage our a fee that goes to the orphanage above and beyond the cost of the adoption. We realized that while the orphanage managers may really care about their children, when they receive money for the orphanage from the adoption they may over look local options for the care of the child that is placed for adoption. They may even have pure motives. They may just be realizing that if they don't encourage extended family to take in the child and they just give up the child for adoption then they will receive money that can be used for the care of other children in the orphanage. Unfortunately in international adoption you can't generally guarantee the situation is as they say it is. Even if you trust the foreign agency it's very difficult to trust that they will make wise decisions about which children should be given up for adoption. We just couldn't tolerate the thought of adopting a child and by doing so cut off all possibility for reconciliation with their biological family. I think that these issues should be given closer examination by Christians that want to help children.
Posted by rose at March 16, 2007 02:37 PM