I had read a tweet yesterday by someone writing that no matter what Christians do, they get bashed for it. If they campaign to stop abortion, someone says: Well, are YOU going to adopt all the babies then??? And when they adopt babies, someone says: OMG, adoption is human trafficking!!!
Well, that made me think about adoption and human trafficking. I can see the point in some degree, but it doesn’t feel right either.
So I decided to look up some opinions on it.
One article on the Adoption-is-Human Trafficking (AHT) side is here:
Adoption not a “gift”; It’s human trafficking
Her points are: Mothers don’t want to give up their babies, and even adopters rarely choose adoption as a first choice. But adoption is a sale, not a gift. The writer also mentions that the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade clearly reveals adoption is about the “domestic supply of infants”. So perhaps much of this analysis is motivated by a political argument for keeping abortion. If adoption can be reconstructed to be seen as a crime, then adoption can be removed as an option for these “unwanted babies”. And if the only option for unwanted babies is to keep them in miserable life conditions, then abortion looks like a better option.
But setting aside the political angle, I can see a point, even if it doesn’t feel right. And I’ll say this as an adopted child. The three points the author makes are 1) mothers don’t want to give up their kids, 2) adopters themselves would prefer their own children, and 3) adoption is a business.
As to 1), I agree that most mothers probably don’t want to give up their children. There is undoubtedly a bond there and giving a child up after birth is going to be traumatic. That acknowledged, it doesn’t mean the mother’s circumstances are any better, or that she can provide any better for the child. In such a case, giving the baby up to a family that wants a baby, but can’t have one, is a good option.
This is essentially what happened to me. I was given up for adoption and taken in by a great family that loved me and raised me as their own. Ultimately, the concern should be what is best for the child. Of course, what will happen in the future is always an unknown, but if a family that can’t have children wants a child, and has the means to take care of one, and the mother has a child that she can’t take care of, then adoption is a perfectly valid means of providing for the child.
2) I would also agree that most couples would prefer to have their own children. That said, I am very familiar with adoption in my family, since I was adopted myself, and in my immediate family, there are 5 adopted kids out of 6 nieces and nephews. What “most couples prefer” just isn’t an option sometimes. That’s why they adopt. But so what? Having lived with adoption my entire life, and seen it successfully a bunch more, you can’t convince me that it is a second-rate standing. So the point is…..?
3) Yes, adoption is a business. People are employed in the area and make money from it. But that’s probably because it needs to be this way. The concern is too big to leave it in the hands of private parties, so the state has to be involved in some way for the protection of the children.
But adoption IS the ‘purchase’ of a human life so is it human trafficking? In a broad sense, the adoption agencies are collecting babies to be bought by other families, so there is something there. But human trafficking is generally sex trafficking, forced labor, and debt bondage. Human trafficking also involves the use of force, coercion or fraud to obtain labor or commercial sex acts.
Adoption isn’t part of that, so it doesn’t fall under the legal definition of human trafficking.
Adoption is a consensual agreement by the biological parents to relinquish rights to the adoptive parents. It simply doesn’t fall under the same category as human trafficking, at least in the criminal sense we typically understand it.