As adoption agencies scramble to keep up with the supply and demand of children internationally, they are turning to far more unconventional if not exploitative and corrupt methods. While the adoption scandal in Samoa rages on, Guatemala with the second highest number of intercountry adoptions are facing international outrage toward their noncompliance with international adoption policies. This past year Guatemalan adoptions accounted for the highest per capita rate in the world of 5,000 according to the following article.
“There are minors who have had three or four pregnancies. They get
paid between $500 and $1500, depending on how desperate the mother is
for money. Let’s be honest, this is a business,” Arellano says.
Birth parents in low-income or poverty stricken conditions are literally harvesting babies to survive to be sold to corrupt exploitative international adoption agencies. Young mothers who struggle to help support their parents and family are incubating babies for profit to be sold to Western countries. This particular relationship between birth parents the middleman adoption agencies and Western family-builders echoes the power structure once seen in slavery between White plantation owners and their stranglehold over the African slave reproduction where additional “units” or slave babies meant more production and profit. In this case, women are being exploited by agencies to reproduce produce for the international adoption market.
There is such a thing as fair adoption practices, but the fact is that this power structure is not humanitarian and is not helping these birth parents who are in severe poverty. While many adoption experts claim it is for the welfare of the children, in this situation children are literally being farmed or grown for the explicit utility of selling them as products to Western families.
http://english.aljazeera.net/News/aspx/FNF.aspx
