The Baby Sellers portrays the dark side of international adoption

Kirstie Alley in The Baby Seller

Prospective adoptive parents who look to other countries to adopt because of a "shortage" of "adoptable infants" here in America, or who do so to avoid those pesky birth mothers who want "open adoptions," will find Lifetime's new movie, The Baby Sellers, unsettling. Premiered last night, the film is an absorbing depiction of the trafficking of infants from around the globe, specifically India and Brazil, to unknowing people who want nothing more than a baby to take home, no questions asked.

The story centers around a government agent (played by Jennifer Finnegan) who sinks her teeth into the trafficking of babies after a bust of one such ring ends with disappointment. She centers her attention on one agency called "Road to Love," run by Carla Huxley, played

The Child Catchers exposes the stench of international adoption--and domestic adoption too

Kathryn Joyce

Journalist Kathryn Joyce takes on domestic infant adoption and international adoption in her new book, The Child Catchers, forcefully demonstrating its unsavory realities, including how it exploits vulnerable mothers. While the general public may believe adoption is a win-win solution that saves children, builds families, and allows poor biological mothers to get on with their lives, Joyce portrays it as the billion dollar industry it is, fueled by money, religious fervor, the high demand for children, and misguided altruism. She backs up her claims with scrupulous research--visits to foreign orphanages and adoption facilities, interviews with adoption practitioners, narratives of adoptees and first parents, statistical data, marketing materials, and media reports.

Let's Hear it For the Haitian Government

Let’s hear it for the Haitian officials who stopped 10 Americans with a busload of Haitian children at the Dominican Republic border. Let’s hope that images of these Americans sitting in a Haitian jail discourage others planning to save children while supplying the rapacious American demand for foreign children.

We at FMF thought sanity had prevailed over the initial rush to bring Haitian children to the US for adoption and we could turn our attention to other events. After all, respected voices in international adoption, including Susan Soon-Keum Cox, Vice-President of Holt International Children’s Services, and Jane Aronson, director of Worldwide Orphans Foundation, have urged restraint. (Red Tapes Holds Haitian Families Together and Putting the Brakes on Haitian Adoptions

We were overly optimistic.

Haitian officials caught these Americans, eight whom were affiliated with two Baptist churches in Idaho, trying to cross into the Dominican Republic with 33 Haitian children. Led by Laura Silsby, CEO of PersonalShopper.com, an online shopping assistance company, they were on their way to Cabarete, DR where they had turned a hotel into a makeshift orphanage. Operating under the auspices of New Life Children’s Refuge which Silsby had incorporated on November 25, 2009, they planned to build new facilities in nearby Magante which would eventually hold 150 children and provide them “with a solid education and vocational skills as well as opportunities for adoption into a loving Christian family.” These facilities would also include “villas for adopting parents to stay while fulfilling requirements for 60-90 day visit” according to the New Life website.

At least some of the children were not orphans. Their parents told reporters for the NY Times that they agreed to allow their children to go with the missionaries because the missionaries had promised the children would receive an education in the DR. The missionaries told the parents that they would be able to visit their children and the children would be free to come home for visits.

We’ve seen this before. The mass removal of Native American children and Australian aborigine children. Operation Babylift and Pedro Pan. Orphan trains and Georgia Tann. A fanatical rush to save children resulting in needless suffering for them and their parents. Meanwhile, there are 123,000 American children are in foster care awaiting adoption.

In other news on the Haitian front, fifty children were brought to Utah under the auspices of the Wasatch International Adoption Agency Monday night. WIA is planning to bring 15 more who are “stranded” in Haiti, caught up in bureaucratic red tape” according to ABC news in Ogden.