From Intercountry Adoption to Global Surrogacy

A Human Rights History and New Fertility Frontiers

Karen Smith Rotabi, Nicole F. Bromfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317132189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Intercountry adoption has undergone a radical decline since 2004 when it reached a peak of approximately 45, 000 children adopted globally. Its practice had been linked to conflict, poverty, gender inequality, and claims of human trafficking, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (HCIA). This international private law along with the Convention on the Rights of the Child affirm the best interests of the child as paramount in making decisions on behalf of children and families with obligations specifically oriented to safeguards in adoption practices. In 2004, as intercountry adoption peaked and then began a dramatic decline, commercial global surrogacy contracts began to take off in India. Global surrogacy gained in popularity owing, in part, to improved assisted reproductive technology methods, the ease with which people can make global surrogacy arrangements, and same-sex couples seeking the option to have their own genetically-related children. Yet regulation remains an issue, so much so that the Hague Conference on Private International Law has undertaken research and assessed the many dilemmas as an expert group considers drafting a new law, with some similarities to the HCIA and a strong emphasis on parentage. This ground-breaking book presents a detailed history and applies policy and human rights issues with an emphasis on the best interests of the child within intercountry adoption and the new conceptions of protection necessary in global surrogacy. To meet this end, voices of surrogate mothers in the US and India ground discourse as authors consider the human rights concerns and policy implications. For both intercountry adoption and global surrogacy, the complexity of the social context anchors the discourse inclusive of the intersections of poverty and privilege. This examination of the inevitable problems is presented at a time in which the pathways to global surrogacy appear to be shifting as the Supreme Court of India weighs in on the future of the industry there while Thailand, Cambodia and other countries have banned the practice all together. There is speculation that countries in Africa and possibly Central America appear poised to pick up the multi-million dollar industry as the demand for healthy infants continues on.

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Rescue, refugees, orphans, and restitution

Figure 1.1Child in a residential care institution

Source: Photo courtesy of Tony Bradley

Just over 1 million children have been adopted internationally since the mid-1950s, at least half of them adopted by US citizens, while other countries such as Australia, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, and other Western European countries have also been integrally involved in adoptions (Selman, 2013, 2015). Today, the practice has declined by more than 65 percent since the peak of 2004 when 45,000 children were adopted globally (Selman, 2012a, 2012b, 2015). This decline has led some to ask if we are now seeing the beginning of the end of intercountry child adoption as we know it (Selman, 2010, 2012a, 2012b).

It is impossible to tell the history of intercountry adoption (ICA) or even predict the future of the practice of ICA without linking the phenomena to conflict, poverty, and global inequality (Ballard, Goodno, Cochran, & Milbrandt, 2015; Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012; Briggs & Marre, 2009). Included in the history is our notion of family building, and in the case of ICA, ideas about child rescue and the construction of an intentional family illustrate our most basic human instincts: the need to coexist in family life and our human impulse to protect the young—or even “save” or rescue an orphaned or vulnerable child.

Telling the story of the complex ICA phenomena has its challenges. Although there is no definitive research on the motivation to adopt internationally, most people who seek to adopt frequently have multiple reasons (Young, 2012a). Some say that they have always wanted to adopt—as a lifelong commitment. Others say that they both wanted and needed to adopt and intercountry adoption seemed to be the easiest solution to their need; the simplicity of such a position is often rooted in infertility and the term need should not be underestimated. This motivation is particularly true for women who delayed marriage in their childbearing years, often because of educational and career opportunities, and then, when they were childless in their late 30s and early 40s and found conception difficult, intercountry adoption was one viable option to build a family. An international adoption is most commonly completed by middle- and upper-class families, most often by prospective parents who are predominantly White and have completed a university education. This social dynamic is partly driven by the fact that the cost for intercountry adoption in recent years typically ranges from US$25,000 and upwards (US Government Accountability Office, 2005).

Many people will talk of doing something good in the process of building their family through ICA. Making a difference in a child’s life is a religious calling for some—caring for the orphan is a virtuous act (Joyce, 2013) or fulfills a spiritual mission (Moore, 2009). Regardless of the motivation and specific characteristics of each case, intercountry adoption is anything but simple. The practice has brought together wants and needs of individuals and couples building their family life for well over 50 years.

“Saving” a child is a common theme in the ICA discourse; the practice began quite legitimately as a humanitarian intervention (Cheney, 2014, in press; Herrmann, 2010; Lovelock, 2000; McGinnis, 2006;Young, 2012b). Marketing of the service by adoption agencies today often capitalizes on the child rescue or “giving a child a better life” message (Cheney, 2014). The messaging is oriented around children needing homes, sometimes including compelling photographs of children living in extreme poverty and suffering from the effects of neglect. Sometimes the agency’s marketing photos include children languishing in impersonal institutional care usually called “orphanages”¹ as well as stories of hope in a social entrepreneurial approach to communicating their mission (Cartwright, 2003; O’Connor & Rotabi, 2012).

As a result, the idea of a win-win scenario is frequently promoted by those who encourage intercountry adoption. In fact, a triple win-win-win scenario is often suggested. That is, an impoverished family of origin is relieved to have their child placed into the hands of an individual or a couple with a warm and nurturing home life, and the child “wins” as she grows up in a middle- to upper-class family with all of the benefits, like financial and sense of permanency, afforded such a child their family of origin otherwise could not provide. This notion includes the reality of that child’s new rights to citizenship in a high-resource country. This second country, and family, is often viewed as superior to the impoverished country of birth and family of origin. The three parties in this triple-win conception are frequently referred to as the “adoption triad” of the child, biological mother/family, and the adoptive family (Baden, Gibbons, Wilson, & McGinnis, 2013).

Without argument, bringing a child to the safety of family life is one of the most profound ways in which an individual or family can intervene in a child’s life when the child is legitimately without parental and family care and living in an institution or other dire circumstances (Ballard et al., 2015; Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012; Pertman, 2001). Children adopted from such environments in their early years often have positive health and child-development outcomes. In fact, many children make a remarkable emotional and cognitive recovery in the context of family life (Dalen, 2012; Juffer & Van IJzendoorn, 2012; Miller, 2012; Nelson et al., 2007). These facts demonstrate positive outcomes of ICA, and they give a compelling reason not only to adopt children, but also to adopt them young when there is the greatest potential for recovery from trauma and developmental delays (Bakermans-Kranenburg, Van IJzendoorn, & Juffer, 2008).

However, when one takes a closer look, that view of life after adoption is far too simplistic, and it is disingenuous to ignore the ethical dilemmas and history of illicit adoption practices (Ballard et al., 2015; Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012). Lack of support for adoptive families, challenges with identity, lack of records and knowledge of an adoptee’s origin, lack of connection to birth culture and family of origin, experiences of racism, guilt over relinquishing their child to be adopted, and lack of feeling connected to a cultural community are just a few of the challenges experienced by members of the adoption triad after placement (Ballard et al., 2015; Gibbons & Rotabi, 2012). This is coupled with that which is often overlooked—the child’s life before intercountry adoption. How did the child come to be deemed adoptable and what was their family life like prior to their adoption? The answer is often complex, and it challenges the notion of “orphan,” as the vast majority of children are not truly orphans.² Today, studies from different regions around the world have consistently demonstrated that 80–90 percent of children in residential care institutions have at least one living parent (Williamson & Greenberg, 2010). This fact raises some troubling questions about the origins of children and the real need for intercountry adoption rather than seeking interventions which support the biological family to care for their child. In this book, we take a closer look at these dynamics and the practice of intercountry adoption, including the ethical quandaries, while considering human rights within a historical context. We begin with the history, offering narrative of how we arrived at the complexities of intercountry adoption today while highlighting some of the important human rights dilemmas and changes in policy and practice.

Early beginnings of intercountry adoption: missionaries and war

Intercountry adoption, as it is known today, dates largely back to World War II,³ and while this conflict was a critically important turning point in adoption history (Herman, 2008), the practice actually began on a small scale much earlier. That history is typically overlooked. The lesser told part of the intercountry adoption story dates back to at least the 1920s when Christian missionaries began to bring children back home from their overseas missions, thereby creating a de facto adoption without the paperwork that characterizes the process today.⁴ One such early adoption of a Chinese girl by Pearl Buck became a source of inspiration for the writer who went on to win a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize for literature (Beimers, 2006). Then, as the World War II adoptions were beginning to truly emerge, Buck (1955) wrote passionately as an adoption advocate promoting the practice, saying “thousands of children waiting… These are the citizens of my new world, the children without parents and the parents without children, pressing eagerly toward each other” (p. 130).

Race and transracial adoptions: controversies and change

Buck went on to coin the term “Amerasian” as a racial descriptive for children born to an Asian mother and US serviceman who were brought together by the circumstances of war (Beimers, 2006). In addition to the child from China, Buck later also adopted a child born to a German mother and an African American serviceman as well as another child born to a Japanese mother and an American serviceman (Buck, 1972). Buck was not only known to be outspoken about transracial adoptions as viable, but she wrote in Today’s Health that “love is color blind” (Buck, 1972, p. 23), underscoring the simplicity of love rather than addressing the complexities of the social environment of the day characterized by deep racial inequalities and racism. Fundamentally, Buck advocated for adopting children of color when transracial adoptions were deeply criticized both by adoption professionals as well as members of the general public (Buck, 1972).

The most startling development for Buck was the position of the National Association of Black Social Workers that the adoption of Black children by White families was a form of genocide (Briggs, 2012; National Association of Black Social Workers, 1972). This statement, ultimately a political position confronting unfair adoption practices in the United States, specifically targeted impoverished families of color and the removal of children from their racial groups and placing them with White families. Not only was this a confrontation of differences in race and culture, but it was a direct statement on and resocialization of children as an attack on the ancestry and culture of Black children. It was also a confrontation of the failure to assist Black families, recognizing their strengths and capacity to care for their children rather than forcibly removing them. Removing children from Black families has too often been related to problems in which poverty and racial inequality are underlying causes of family distress.⁵ Thus, race entered concerns over ICA early on in its formalized history as well as the counter response of color blindness (Yngvesson, 2010).

Buck was so committed to her cause that she opened her own agency called Welcome House—the earliest adoption agency on record dating back to 1949 and focusing solely on transracial adoptions. In time, the agency placed over 7,000 children into adoptive families from 28 different countries (Welcome House, n.d.). Among her many accomplishments, Buck was quite proud of her work in adoption, and reflecting upon her work in 1964 she said, “Parenthood has nothing to do with color, race, or religion. It has to do with a far deeper likeness of mind, and heart, and soul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on the authors
• Preface
• 1 Rescue, refugees, orphans, and restitution
• 2 The politics of adoption from Romania to Russia and what we know about children languishing in residential care facilities
• 3 Poverty, birth families, legal, and social protection
• 4 Guatemala: Violence against women and force, fraud, and coercion, including child abduction into adoption and a new system emerging
• 5 Child-protection systems of care to ensure child rights in family support and adoption: India and the United States
• 6 “Sins of the saviors”: Africa as the final frontier
• 7 From intercountry adoption to commercial global surrogacy
• 8 Voices of US surrogates: A content analysis of blogs by US gestational surrogates
• 9 Perspectives of Indian women who have completed a global surrogacy contract
• 10 The future of intercountry adoption, global surrogacy, and new frontiers
• Index