Internet, Money, & Adoption
Comments from our CommunityAll comments are © Copyright their authors, and reprinted with permission.
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I have never been so outraged and horrified about an adoption-related matter as I am with the Kilshaw/Wecker Internet adoption fiasco now before the world media. (If you have not yet seen the news stories on this scenario, here are two links:
BBC (1),
BBC (2).)
That this sort of Internet adoption may actually be legal in the US is unacceptable. That this could happen through efforts of conspirators from my home-town, San Diego is, for me, simply unbearable.
The matter is front page news on this side of the pond, and the Kilshaws are not being treated gently by the print and TV media. UK Home Secretary Jack Straw just announced that he will, as a matter of urgency, initiate a comprehensive policy review of adoptions from the US. He was just quoted on BBC saying, "I find the idea of children being bought and sold throughadoption quite revolting. It's illegal in this country." Politicians, officials and national NGOs are publicly calling for the UK to review,suspend or even tear up the adoption compact with the US. As described in the media, the compact currently allows adoptions by British citizens in the US to have the force of law here, when those adoptions are deemed legal under US law. Thus, if the Kilshaw adoption is found to be legal in the US, there may be little the British authorities can do to stop them from becoming parents.
Revealingly, Eugene Kelley, the Arkansas adoption attorney, who was just in US national press last week denouncing open records and extolling the desire of birthmothers for anonymity, was interviewed by on the BBC today, arguing for Arkansas' state rights to facilitate interstate and intercountry baby selling of exactly this nature, and implicitly denouncing the English for criticising American institutions that facilitate "positive" adoptions (by which he apparently means secret, commercial adoptions).
I am very concerned that the public may draw the wrong lessons from this whole episode, allowing the media to portray either the Allens or the Kilshaws as innocent victims of fraud, perpetrated by the adoption facilitator against one couple or the other, with the commodity, two human infants, in dispute like any other type of commercial merchandise. This is emphaticallynot the issue here. The real issue is the ethics of legalised baby selling and the commercialisation of adoption. In the court of conscience, neither the Allens of California nor the Kilshaws of North Wales are in the leastadmirable. Tina Johnson, the San Diego-based adoption "facilitator" who sold the children to the highest bidder, and the Arkansas judge whosanctioned the adoption despite the fact that neither the birthmother nor the agency nor the adoptive parents have anything to do with Arkansas, really do have a lot to answer for to the American and British people.
US adoption practice must be brought into line with internationally accepted standards of practice. If you are in the US, please ask your legislators to move to stop people like Tina Johnson from profiting from commercial adoptions and to raise the bar on the ethical standards of practitioners to being with. If you are in the UK, please contact your MPs and ask them touse this opportunity to take a strong stance against intercountry commercial adoption and to reassess the UK's adoption compact with the US. On both sides of the Atlantic, we should call on our legislators to take urgent measures to stop all intercountry adoptions that do not cohere with the letter or spirit of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, and possibly to enact emergency measures to regulate or outlaw privateintercountry adoption facilitation services until the US can implement the Convention, a process that may take years. If you are in Arkansas, please ask your legislators to change the law to impose residency requirements on either birthparents or adoptive parents or, at a minimum, adoption practitioners seeking to finalise adoptions in your state. If you are inCalifornia, please use this opportunity to focus the media's attention on commercial adoption facilitators, like the San Diego-based TinaJohnson's "Caring Heart Adoptions". I also believe that hearings should be sought at both the state and Congressional levels about the issues raised by this unwinding scenario.
The proliferation of inter-state and intercountry commercial adoptions, driven by for-profit US practitioners, is a global disgrace and an affront to any conceivable standard of human decency. And it has to stop.
Thank you taking the time to read this.
Kind regards,
Albert S. Wei
London, England
Submit Your CommentsNext page >
More Comments > Page
1,
2,
3
Home
Add Your Comments!
We want to know what you think. Your comments are important to us and the other readers. You are what makes this site special.