Most of us have seen or read stories of adoptions of Haitian children following the earthquake last month. Some of the stories have had a positive slant (the charity has saved children...) other's have had a negative slant (the "missionaries" who kidnapped and tried to smuggle 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic).
At a family gathering yesterday, my wife heard a story about a couple that was "finally" able to adopt a child they've been trying to adopt for about 4 years. As the story was related to me, this couple had originally been matched with this child about 4 years ago, but the adoption was cancelled when the parents of the child took her back and parented her themselves. After about three years of caring for the child, the natural parents returned her to the orphanage because both of them had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; a death sentence in Haiti. (Mortality for untreated TB is about 67%.) The adoption was finalized just before the earth quake, and the child was brought "home" the the US in the last week.
On the surface, this seems like a wonderful story. This couple has taken this child, not quite but soon to be an orphan, in to their home and made her a part of their family.
But if we look a little beneath the surface, it is troubling. The adopters in this case had contact with the family in Haiti for at least three years, and sought merely to adopt this child. I don't know how much money they spent in the process, but the numbers typically run to five figures, sometimes high five figures. I have to wonder if some of this money could have been used to provide medical care for the child's parents.
According to this study, the typical cost of tuberculosis treatment is about $3892 if uncomplicated, and about $17,952 when there are complications. Wouldn't it have been better for the child to remain with healthy and living parents? With proper treatment, the mortality rate for TB drops to about 5%.
This adoption served the interests of the adopters, it most certainly did not serve the interests of the child. But even more troubling is the fact that these adopters had the ability to prevent the trauma to the child of losing her parents, and yet, in order to further their agenda of adopting a child -- which probably makes them feel they've done some charitable act, they let two human beings die -- the child's parents -- that they might have been able to save if the resources the used to purchase their Haitian child were used to care for the child's parents.
This is but one more piece of evidence that supports my conclusion that adoption is often not an act of charity, but a process of profiting from the misfortunes of others.
At a family gathering yesterday, my wife heard a story about a couple that was "finally" able to adopt a child they've been trying to adopt for about 4 years. As the story was related to me, this couple had originally been matched with this child about 4 years ago, but the adoption was cancelled when the parents of the child took her back and parented her themselves. After about three years of caring for the child, the natural parents returned her to the orphanage because both of them had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; a death sentence in Haiti. (Mortality for untreated TB is about 67%.) The adoption was finalized just before the earth quake, and the child was brought "home" the the US in the last week.
On the surface, this seems like a wonderful story. This couple has taken this child, not quite but soon to be an orphan, in to their home and made her a part of their family.
But if we look a little beneath the surface, it is troubling. The adopters in this case had contact with the family in Haiti for at least three years, and sought merely to adopt this child. I don't know how much money they spent in the process, but the numbers typically run to five figures, sometimes high five figures. I have to wonder if some of this money could have been used to provide medical care for the child's parents.
According to this study, the typical cost of tuberculosis treatment is about $3892 if uncomplicated, and about $17,952 when there are complications. Wouldn't it have been better for the child to remain with healthy and living parents? With proper treatment, the mortality rate for TB drops to about 5%.
This adoption served the interests of the adopters, it most certainly did not serve the interests of the child. But even more troubling is the fact that these adopters had the ability to prevent the trauma to the child of losing her parents, and yet, in order to further their agenda of adopting a child -- which probably makes them feel they've done some charitable act, they let two human beings die -- the child's parents -- that they might have been able to save if the resources the used to purchase their Haitian child were used to care for the child's parents.
This is but one more piece of evidence that supports my conclusion that adoption is often not an act of charity, but a process of profiting from the misfortunes of others.
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