Excellent analogies, but I fear the uninformed might get the wrong impression.
First: Adoption’s deceitful, secretive practices, exploitation of mothers and families without agency, and corruption have existed long before trump came into power, and it exists not just in Russia and Ukraine, but all over the world wherever war or natural disasters opens the door to chaos that can be exploited. And, these atrocities happen within the borders of the USA with a patchwork of 50 different state laws and no uniform oversight agency for either domestic or transnational adoptions. Children are imported and exported like any other goods in a demand driven marketplace. I have been investigating and reporting these abuses in two books and more than 250 articles since the 1980s, but the deceitful practices date back to the 1940s when Hollywood elites were among those who bought babies stolen right here in America by the notorious “Baby Thief”.
Additionally: While it is very true and very concerning that adoption negatively impacts babies children by separating them from their kin, their cultures and their identity causing lifelong trauma . . . you neglect to address the gut wrenching loss experienced by the families of these children who are up against a brick wall to find and reunify with their stolen children and who suffer the lifelong agony of not even knowing if their offspring are dead or alive, all while all media narrative is myopically focused on the joy adoption brings to those who are willing to pay approx. $50k per child, depending on age, health and race. Yes, there is joy in obtaining your goal of parenthood, but at what moral, ethical cost?
Adoption is not – and has never been - a fairytale win-win as we are expected to believe. It is very much a sum zero game of gains and irrevocable losses. It is a game that I have labeled Reverse Robinhoodism where the rich take from the poor, the marginalized, and the powerless in temporary crisis.
If your neighbor’s house burnt to ground, would you “help” by permanently taking their children? Adoption, at best, is a permanent remedy for a temporary crisis. Recipients of the spoils of adoption piracy, the “winners,” choose to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the inhumane methods, the pain, and in many cases criminality that afforded them their “gift.” And, in a bizarre irony, those who create the demand, those who pay the corrupt baby brokers, those who profit from it all are hailed as humanitarian saviors while there is nothing noble, admirable or philanthropical about adoption.
