How come adoption agencies and attorneys are allowed to profit from adoption?

tish_part deux

great question...i'd love to have been in the living room with you and your mom..

i think the only similarity between the two is that those with the affluence benefit from the "suffering" and "social pathology" of those less affluent.

quite honestly, i have a problem with organ donation programs. i completed graduate school in an urban university and was sickened by how the transplants were handled. first, most "transplant centers" tend to be in inner-city hospitals with large minority populations who are "healthy, young...and plagued by gun violence." yet, the donors are usually older affluent and non-minority. furthermore, it is absolutely heartless the way organ donation coordinators troll around trauma bays and waiting rooms trying to tell a grieving mother what a "gift of life" her son--who is most likely poor and minority --can give to some rich exec. with great insurance (or will pay outright) who burned out his lungs smoking 3 packs a day for 30 years!

what's even sadder is that the kid in the same housing projects as the murdered youth, on the waiting list, can't afford the lung transplant because he has the "wrong insurance."

now adoption: most "crisis pregnancy" agencies and programs are targeting towards poor urban and rural women. yet, the babies usually go to those older, allfuent and non-minority.

regarding adoption: i think no money should change hands other than court filing fees.

regarding organ donation: i think there should be more parity among donors vs. recipients; and there should be no procurement fees for transplant coordinators and other trauma room trolls.

gypsywinter

The Adoption Industry is largely unregulated and therefore can do as they wish. Much like Wall Street was 'deregulated' some years ago..we have all now bore witness to what happens when 'banks/businesses/industries' have little to no regulations. So it is with the Adoption Industry..unregulated..a virtual Adoption Paradise with lots of green-backs lining many a pocket. A virtual 'shell-game'.

Angela R

I agree with the analogy between organ donation and adoption, however if you didn't pay the doctors, you couldn't expect them to work for free, so there would be no one to preform the surgeries. The same thing goes for adoption. While being a social woker, lawyer, or doctor is preforming a service, it is also a profession, being an organ donor or expectant/ first-mother is not.

Also, others have mentioned that adoption should be a social service, but we have to remember that social workers and directors in the fostercare system get paid too. Are these social workers "profiting" off of abused and neglected children?
On a side note, a friend of mine is a social worker. She use to work for a small non-profit adoption agency, and now works in the fostercare system, and actually makes more money now then she did at the private agency.

Randy B

Its a free market economy. They can make it so that you can't make money selling an organ or that you can't pay someone for theirs but they cannot force a physician (or in the case of adoption, a lawyer) to work for free. Places were they cap wages like that are called Communist Countries. Actually, thats a good point. Once the Chinese finish buying the US economy you may get your wish.

SJM

I thought the Chinese already bought the US economy. I disagree with the free market thing, though. We do not have a free market in the US. Even in a free market, however, buying and selling humans should be illegal. It is the state who issues licenses to corporations allowing them to engage in this activity. State licenses are not a component of a free market.

crzymmof8

I do think it is wrong that an adoption can cost upwards of 35,000 dollars. Very little of that can actually go to the birth mother. I don't know why this is allowed to go on. Perhaps someday there will be some sort of law that they cannot profit from this.

MamaKate

Dear 23,

Mostly because the adoption industry spends much of it's $1.4 billion a year profits on three things:

1.) Lobbying to protect their interests (IE: legislation that allows them to operate as they do)

2.) Advertising (serves three purposes - procuring more "product", "sales" and keeping the general public believing in the "pool, pony, rainbow" ideas about adoption)

3.) Lawyers and accountants (to cover up their messes and hide the "non"-profits in their bank accounts)

Adoption SHOULD be a social service - NOT a business. The money is what has corrupted what should be an altruistic and compassionate humanitarian deed.

I know you are not trying to offend but you have. I am a social work not in adoption but i have friends who do. We have to live to. We certify the home try our best to make sure the adoptive parents will be good and we can't do it for free. We need to feed our families and need a salary.
Lawyers are the same they go to court fill out papers etc and make sure that it is legal again not donating their services. Lawyers make a lot of money no matter what they are doing and i think it is disgusting but that is their fees and they should not be made to reduce or eliminate them for adoption. Especially when many of them only do adoption so they would have no income.

As for the organ donor thing. Doctors are making money for a skill neither you or I posses. They are making money on the surgery and again I think doctors make way to much money but that is not for me to decided. If i were a doctor i would be expected to be paid the same for an organ transplant as for any other surgery

BOTZ

Doesn't anyone else realize that a KIDNEY or LIVER will never grow up, become sentient, or move out and live independently of their "home" (the recipient's body)???

Seriously people, am I nothing more than a "cornea" to be transplanted in order that my adoptive parents might "see" parenthood like the fertile do/did?

WTF?

Should a transplant doctor be paid? Absolutely. But (and it's a BIG but...) the amount a doctor can charge for ANY procedure is regulated. Should a "legal and ethical" adoption attorney be paid for his/her services? Well... in legal and ethical adoption (i.e. regulated and supervised and, most importantly, from FOSTER CARE...) an attorney is not necessary.

I put very little stock in the notion that any private adoption is legal OR ethical.

Social Service adoptions (from Foster Care in the USA and how all adoption are done in UK and Australia) are overseen by the government -- and yes, I am aware that no government is perfect -- and if they involve attorneys, those attorneys are employed or contracted by the government at a set rate.

As private adoption is concerned in the USA currently, attorneys can charge whatever they wish and will charge whatever they can get a desperate person/couple to pay. Separating the legality for the moment, there is NOTHING whatsoever ethical about that.

I AM A HUMAN BEING -- Not a LUNG!!!

Jennifer L

I'm not sure your comparison is correct. An organ donor cannot make a profit from donating, yes. You can't sell a kidney, for example.

But I'm pretty sure that the expenses incurred during the process of organ harvesting and transplanting aren't absorbed, however. It costs money to do those procedures. Doctors don't work for free. The electric company doesn't supply the power needed for the machines for nothing. The airlines don't transport the organs and the courier pro bono.

I don't think that adoption agency execs should make half a million dollars a year. I don't think that adoption should be a means of getting rich. Neither do I think that not-for-profit agencies that operate on donations should be making high end six figure salaries either.

But I also don't expect that agencies and attorneys should do their work for free. I think they deserve a reasonable compensation for the homestudy, the legal process and such things. Same way that a doctor receives compensation for delivering a baby.

Heather B

Free enterprise

It's sick though, when children are involved

Harriet

I get why attorneys do, they are doing their job and they are providing a necessary service. Adoption agencies set up specifically for profit I find a bit weird though. What they make their money off, and a profit, is separating mothers and their babies, it just seems weird. I can understand not for profit or state run services but running an actual profitable business in baby transfer seems odd to me. Covering costs is one thing but profit just doesn't seem right.

Harriet

Cam

It's the recipient who pays the doctor to perform the transplant. Although the organ is donated a doctor is still paid to provide his service of performing the surgery.

Same analogy for adoption. The baby/or child is not sold. They are given, a gift, donated...whatever you want to call it. And the ethical attorneys and other professionals are there to provide a service to make sure it's done legally and ethically. Same as the doctor.

C Wood

If a birth parent is given money to adopt out their baby, that's SELLING the child. That's illegal.

What the attorney and agencies do is NOT illegal. They are rendering a SERVICE and must be paid for the WORK that they do. They have to research the family; that's work. They have to make sure the adoption rules are followed and all is done legally; that's work. They're not being paid for the baby; they are being paid for their WORK!

If the birth mom was paid, her pay would be for the BABY, not for work done.

Same thing holds true for organ donation.
cw

Independ"ant"

Bottom line......a corrupt govt. that is bought off by immoral lobbyists protecting the unethical rights of profit making child trafficking agencies.

The only time you will see agency reps being prosecuted is when they con Paps out of "money".......very rarely are they prosecuted when they caught conning natural parents out of their "children".

mom lost 66

my feeling on this subject is

THEY ARE SELLING & BUYING HUMAN FLESH
FOR PROFIT IT IS WRONG

a child belongs with it natural mother

littlebit0863

I guess because they're working.Not that the biological mother ISN'T working, it's just that it's her choice to make the selfless act to give up her child. Chances are it's a one-time thing. The attorneys and adoption agencies do this day in and day out, so this is their job.

Same thing with the doctors. I doubt they get paid hundreds of thousands per surgery, but surgery is their job. They paid hundreds of thousands to go to med school to learn how to be so successful that they can perform these surgeries.

I guess it's job vs. volunteer? That's the easiest way I can think of to look at it.

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