Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
– James 1:27, NIV
American evangelical Christians have used the bible as a rallying cry for boosting international adoptions. They trace back the long history of adoptions to Moses, adopted after his mother spared his life by setting him to float down the Nile River. It continues to Jesus the adopted son of Joseph all the way to the adoption by God when Christians are ‘born again.’ Adopting a child continues the virtuous cycle of scriptural adoptions, say advocates.
The argument has gained traction over the past few years in churches across America. 163 million children are orphans right now is the message millions of church-goers are told. If people open their hearts and their homes the orphan problem can be solved. Religious leaders like Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church have issued a plea to church members and all Christians at conferences and rallies to join the adoption movement.
People listened and adoptions increased in the mid-2000s. All the good intentions behind the swell of adoptions led to thousands of children finding new homes in the United States. It also created a lot of problems including child abuse and in some cases human trafficking. Misinformation allowed for grand claims about an orphan problem that does not near the inflated 163 million figure.
The Child Catchers, a new book by Kathryn Joyce, delves into the international adoption movement. The story begins after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The international adoption movement was in full swing and the catastrophe created thousands of new orphans and managed to gum up the system of adoptions already in progress. Families scrambled to first learn if their soon-to-be adopted child was still alive and then act to get him or her out of Haiti immediately.
With the Haitian government focused on the earthquake’s destruction, it took unusual efforts from families, religious leaders and politicians to get children into their new American homes. One group from Idaho, led by Laura Silsby, frustrated by the slow trickle of orphans leaving Haiti traveled down to round up orphans, drive to the Dominican Republic and fly the children back into the United States.
Silsby and her group ignored warnings that what they were doing was ethically wrong and illegal. She ignored such concerns knowing that her mission to help Haitian orphans was a just act. The group managed to round-up a few dozen orphans and make it to the border with the Dominican Republic. Without the appropriate documents and passports the group were arrested at the border crossing and sent back with the children to Port au Prince.
It was soon discovered that the majority of the children believed to be orphans still had living parents. In fact, some of the parents said they did not know that their kids were going to the United States to be adopted and never return. Silsby and company remained defiant claiming that groups like UNICEF were standing in the way of God’s work.
US journalist Anne-Chrstine d’Adesky spoke with Silsby after her arrest writing, “Throughout our conversation she repeatedly referred to God having called her to rescue the Haitian children. God had spoken to her. If God wanted them to succeed, they would.”
Joyce holds this up as an extreme example of the way US evangelical Christians have come to understand adoptions. Guided by a greater call, people are willing to go to various extremes and circumvent laws in order to facilitate adoptions. She includes examples such as a group in Alabama that hosts Ukrainian orphans for a camp and an opportunity for perspective adoptive parents to meet the children they may adopt. They tip-toe around what can and cannot be said since the group signed a contract of understanding with the Ukrainian government that the trip was not about adoption.
- Some of the 250+ Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Kalimbira
- khym54
Adoptive parents scramble from perspective country to country in what can be described as a boom/bust cycle. Joyce shows how countries like Liberia and Ethiopia were overwhelmed by adoptions. Joyce travels to the countries to investigate individual adoption cases. She finds that the American definition of adoption and orphan does not mean the same thing in Ethiopia and Liberia.
In one instance, Joyce shows how a US family was deceived by an adoption agency. They were told that the children up for adoption lost their mother to HIV and their father was dying from HIV. The truth was their mother died in child birth and the father worked in the government. He thought he was sending some of his children, he had older kids that stayed, to the US for an education. The children would return home when they were done. Or so he thought.
Joyce does an excellent job navigating the personal stories of adoption advocates, adoptive parents and adopted children. She traces the history of adoptions to the United States in the mid-20th century at a time when millions of children were taken from their mothers due to social attitudes about unwed mothers. Her previously religious reporting makes for an insightful guide to understanding the current motivations for increased activism surrounding international adoptions.
The work makes a good case for having appropriate structures and regulations on adoptions. Rwanda is used as an example where international adoptions number in the dozens each year. The country has an exhaustive process to determine whether a child is eligible for adoption. Instead, Rwanda emphasizes the need for in-country adoptions and reducing the problems that cause orphans in the first place (such as maternal mortality).
The story touches on the growth of orphanages in developing countries. Time and again, people have proven that orphanages are one of the worst development investments. Joyce’s work shows how the proliferation of orphanages is connected to a supply and demand curve that bends as adoption advocates swoop down onto a new country. The book is an important read. So much of the energy behind the adoption movement could be better spent on sustainable development programs.
Disclosure: I was provided a free review copy from the book publisher. The opinions reflect my personal views.
