The comment that always pops up in discussions about ethics and adoption

By TAO

I am still working on reading all the discussions that have been started since “The Child Catchers” by Kathryn Joyce was published.  Really enjoying seeing both the responses and the pennies dropping.  It’s good – but I knew this comment was coming because it comes up on every discussion on ethics and adoption.  Paraphrased to spare the person who left the comment about why discussing it was bad, and you should only speak to a specific case or agency on a post talking about ethics and corruption in international adoption.

We don’t want people to think we bought our children, or for our children to think they were bought.

You can’t un-ring the bell on the world knowing that there have been, and are wrongful adoptions happening right along side adoptions that are done correctly.  There is proof of more than the rare case when entire countries have closed due to widespread problems that don’t magically disappear from international adoption, simply, because one country closes.  The choice is whether you are willing to do something about it to show both the world, and your child, that an adoption has to be done right, or not at all.  This discussion needed to happen and trying to shut it down only means that wrongful adoptions will continue to happen when accountability isn’t a requirement by those paying the adoption fees.

 

Good response…

By TAO

Sigh, I’m still waiting for my copy of The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce because I support an independent bookseller.  Hopefully, I get the call that it is in today…

Anyway – I have been very pleased to see some very nuanced responses on personal adoptive parent blogs, that are questioning the responses and rebuttals to the article in Mother Jones.  There does seem to be a more concerted shift to not just blindly following the leaders…it’s a good thing.  It gives me hope.

Following is a post by one of the adoptive parents who is in the book.  I hope it is read in full.  The discussion has started – don’t let it stop.

Evangelical trafficking? A guest post by Caleb David at Kingdom in the Mist…