That’s the headline in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, discussing a lawsuit by the Illinois attorney general against a California for-profit adoption agency, Adoption Network Law Center, which has been marketing to prospective adoptive parents and expectant mothers considering adoption, in Illinois, via ads that pop up in Google searches, specifically targeting Illinois (e.g., “click here if you’re interested in adoption in Illinois”). Prospective adopters are enticed with the promise of a faster process; the mothers are promised financial benefits.
According to the article,
The Illinois Adoption Reform Act, which took effect in 2005, was designed to drive out unscrupulous operators and take the profit motive and aggressive marketing out of adoption. One birth mother was offered kitchen appliances to place her child for adoption, said a Glen Ellyn couple trying to adopt.
. . .
The number of healthy infants available for adoption has dwindled during the past two decades, ushering in an era of fraud and “growing commodification of adoption on the Web,” according to a report last year by the Donaldson Adoption Institute, a national not-for-profit devoted to improving adoption policy and practice.
And a simple google adoption+Illinois search, immediately brought them up as the third ad (after The Cradle, a local non-profit agency, and www.americanadoptions.com, which seems to be a similar agency. Their name is innocuous: www.adoptionnetwork.com, and exploring the site, their main claim is that they market extensively (though I didn’t see any references to Illinois specifically). On their own site one can view finely crafted prospective parent profiles and youtube videos. Expectant parents are also promised that their medical costs and living expenses (including housing, with a pool and fitness center) will be covered.
(How much does an adoption cost, anyway? According to The Cradle, a local non-profit: $33,900 for a domestic adoption (or $16,900 if you’re black). The for-profit agencies’ websites didn’t disclose their costs, of course.)
But the funny thing is: the State of Illinois is so careful to ensure that the adoption process is not-for-profit, but doesn’t really have any trouble with buying a child via surrogacy: here’s a summary of Illinois surrogacy law that I found online, which reports that Illinois is the second-most-liberal state in its laws. As long as one parent is a contributor of genetic material (i.e., sperm or egg donor), then the contract itself determines that the baby is, by law, the child of the “intended parents.” (No indicator of what happens if the child is genetically the product of both an unrelated sperm and egg donor.)
(No profound point here — but it just doesn’t sit right with me.)
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