I recently stumbled across an article I read several years ago about the so called adoption brokering industry.
It's entitled "Adoption And The Role Of The Religious Right" by Mirah Riben
Anybody who wants to understand the dynamic of the current debate might want to read it. Basically, adoption has become big business and churches are cut in on the profits because of laws that make it mandatory for them to be involved. Babies are in essence taken from women using medical costs as a tool. The adoption industry feels threatened by real health care affordability with good reason, because in other countries, its resulted in women keeping their children.
For example, Why Adoption is So Easy in America (Independent, UK)
As conditions for young women have improved in other countries, the supply of babies available for adoption has tightened up there, leaving the United States as a major destination for well to do couples seeking ethnically Caucasian children to adopt. Its an atmosphere reminiscent of the housing boom, complete with bidding wars and last minute changes. Adoption brokers are the middlepeople, and they can earn comfortable six figure incomes with no formal training or licenses required. They simply need to be affiliated with a church.
From "Adoption And The Role Of The Religious Right" by Mirah Riben
"Why are infants such as these are leaving the US while US couples are traveling half way around the word to meet their desire for a baby when both countries have children in foster care?
The answer is that adoption is far from an altruist social program to care for needy orphans. Instead, adoption is a business; babies are priced based on age, race, ethnicity, health, and physical ability. It all sounds vulgar because it is.
"It feels harsh to use concepts like supply and demand when talking about children and obviously it’s wrong to say that international adoption is just a trade in children," says Riitta Högbacka, University of Helsinki, Finland, reporting on the global market for adoption . "But if we look at the direction of this human flow—which countries are sending children, which countries are receiving and who is doing the adopting—then it is very clear. It goes from the South to the North and from the East to the West. The recipients are always the richer countries in North America, Europe, and Australia.
Evan B. Donaldson Institute for Adoption, Anaheim Conference "Money, Power and Accountability: The ‘Business’ of Adoption" summary: No., 1999, concludes:"Thinking of adoption in economic terms is an uncomfortable reality. There has been a deterioration of the constraints once put in place to protect members of the triad from exploitation, with market factors such as inflated inventories, scarce commodities, demographic trends in the marketplace, products in oversupply, and the principles of supply and demand affecting adoption services."
An "adoption broker" makes an average of $40-50,000 per child "brokered".
"Adoption brokers" are well connected members of churches, or they affiliate themselves with one. Thats it. No licenses, no training, no experience necessary, no degree, no years of working for minimum wage, no paying for internships, no cram schools, no tests. They just have to give the church their cut.