stilldropin20 wrote:adoption reform would go a long way to fix these problems in our adoption system. I dont know this topic well at all and if you are informed then i would gladly listen....but your problems listed above have unknown origins. Here are some ideas:
1. No foreign adoptions until our own american babies are adopted first. How many foreign babies are adopted each year.
2. better foster care. better vetting. unfortunately...weirdos that want to hurt children often work with children...so children in the system are often traumatized and difficult which scares away potential adoptive parents. fix that. redirect abortion money to adoptive services instead. Money and good legislation with good oversight can fix almost anything.
3. charge money to adopt. If millionaires like Angelina jolie and laura ingraham want to adopt babies, charge them $500K each baby. Use that money to help other families that adopt older children that are older and less desired.
You know what, I'll respond to this bit (at least the first paragraph) and I'm using the bottom options you cited as counterpoint, but this will be a singular response.
I am not so informed as to completely explain everything and I will probably get some stuff incorrect here, but given some of the stuff mentioned, I suspect I'm more informed than most in this thread. If anyone with a better knowledge of the situation wants to correct me, or maybe add another layer or two to what I'm saying, awesome!
1. This isn't about foreign vs international adoptions. In fact, international adoptions have all sorts of problems, too. There are cultural and logistical reasons why they have issues and other countries generally do the only thing they can in situations like that: create a significant cost. The result is that it costs tens of thousands of dollars to go through with international adoption. It is essentially a wealthy American buying a baby from a poorer country. There are loads of reasons for why people might do such a thing, but the two key factors usually boil down to it's easier (no pregnancy and somebody who can afford to pay for an international adoption also usually are in a position where sacrificing ~20% of their future earnings would be a massive cost), it's cleaner (they have more choice and have a separation from the birth family usually by oceans and therefore don't have to deal with kids looking for their birth parents or vice versa, and they can avoid certain medical issues that are often cases with adoptions), and it's also a bit of a status symbol getting a baby from a "poor" country while also being able to badmouth those in lesser situations in America.
The catch here is that international adoptions also aren't necessarily directly linked to other adoptions. Someone who pays for an international adoption isn't necessarily going to look to other forms of adoption instead. They would look to surrogacies, even international surrogacies, or other avenues.
2. Better vetting is great in theory, but who really wants to be a foster parent? It isn't actually a lot of money to take on the responsibility. Many of the kids in foster care have some sort of drug addiction from birth, owing to their parents, fetal alcohol syndrome, or any other number of medical, psychological or social issues. Sexual abuse is far too common (there are great foster parents out there, too, so I don't want to raise big flag or anything like that, but it's an issue) and anyone taking in foster kids who also has their own kids has to weigh the risk of troubled children coming into their home and potentially abusing their own kids. It's not something people should take lightly.
And to be honest, expensive adoptions don't necessarily fix issues, either, as it makes a case where rich pedophiles can adopt, though at least it prevents the poor pedophiles from adopting and redirects them to finding poor/troubled mothers as girlfriends who's kids they can take advantage of or finding positions of authority they can somehow abuse without notice.
The reality is that raising a child is a massive benefit for society because the way the population is aging, children are basically a requirement, but a requirement that society isn't willing to pay for which is why nobody is having kids and immigration is necessary. Someone has to take on that massive cost to children and finding enough people to theoretically take on a significant portion of the children that are aborted is an impossibility. There just isn't a social network for it.
3. Charging wealthier people more to adopt is flat out ridiculous and not workable. For one, there aren't enough wealthy to fund anyone else who might adopt. For two, there aren't enough people who would adopt even then. And for three, those wealthy people would simply look to surrogacies or other options rather than adopting if faced with a $500,000 bill or whatever.
And the big catch to all of this is that because of logistical reasons, we would create even more problems because greater stress on the foster care system is going to cause greater problems, resulting in more unplanned pregnancies and even more babies that theoretically aren't aborted and go into foster care. It's a horrible unsustainable spiral.
Frankly, I think it's actually more workable to simply give every male in the country a vasectomy at age 15 or whatever. It's reversible if they ever decide they want to have children later on, and we can make them apply to reverse the procedure by proving they're in a stable relationship and are committed to their child and such. And just in case reversing it doesn't work for some reason, take some of their sperm and freeze it just in case. THAT would drop the number of unwanted pregnancies down dramatically. Heck, it might also reduce the amount of illegal immigration conservatives/reactionaries are always complaining about because men might think twice about sneaking into a country where they might be caught and given an vasectomy they didn't ask for. That option is ridiculous on a few levels and not something I support in any way, but is still more reasonable than banning abortion. We need to find a way to better redistribute wealth, increase access to health care, and create situations where babies aren't actually burdens that stick with you for years (anyone who actually has kids can attest that they are no matter how much they love their kids or how much you may or may not enjoy it).
edited to add:
And this is all ignoring the reality that adoptions are largely taking children from poor families and giving them to rich families. Rich families aren't necessarily going to want all the poor families' children. And even if they did, given where we know wealth disparities fall, taking a bunch of black and Native American children and giving them to white families... I shouldn't have to explain why that's a problem.
