Race Separatism in the Family: More on the Transracial Adoption Debate

Some twenty-five years ago a trial court in Virginia upheld the state ban on interracial marriage, reasoning that God created different races and, accordingly, that it was natural to maintain racial purity, and unnatural to engage in racial mixing. 1 At that time, many other state laws banned both interracial marriage and transracial adoption. In Loving v. Virginia, 2 the United States Supreme Court struck down the Virginia antimiscegenation law, reversing the trial court\u27s decision and holding that it was unconstitutional for states to mandate racial separatism in the family. Later, in Palmore v. Sidoti, 3 the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to transfer custody of a white child from mother to father solely because the mother was living with a black man. While the Court acknowledged that it might not be in the child\u27s best interests to live in a transracial family, it held that the equal protection doctrine prevented consideration of the race of a potential parent in making custody decisions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the courts in this country outlawed formal state bans on transracial adoption, finding them similarly inconsistent with the equal protection doctrine. There has been a similar development in South Africa today, where the ban on transracial adoption has just recently been lifted as part of the move to abolish apartheid. But in the United States a strange thing happened in 1972. The National Black Social Workers Association (NABSW) issued a statement calling for a new ban on transracial adoption. Actually, ..

Beyond Biology: The Politics of Adoption & Reproduction

It is exciting simply to be having this conference focused on adoption law and policy. I remember some nine years ago starting to plan a course dealing with adoption issues and wondering whether I would be able to justify its place in the Harvard Law School curriculum. It is also exciting to look around the room at the wonderfully diverse and knowledgeable group of people the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy gathered here to participate in these discussions of important issues involving adoption and the meaning of family. My topic today has to do with adoption and, more particularly, adoption in relation to reproduction. By reproduction I mean three different things: (1) traditional reproduction, or the production of a child through normal intercourse between one man and one woman; (2) infertility treatment, or the use of medical technology to assist a man and a woman to produce a child using his sperm and her egg and womb; and (3) a variety of child producing and parenting arrangements that I have collectively termed technologic adoption. By the latter, I mean arrangements that result in the social equivalent of either step-parent adoptions or full adoptions, where the child is produced in order to be raised by one or more parents who will not be genetically or biologically related. I am referring to such practices as donor insemination, surrogacy, both in its traditional and gestational form, egg donation or sale, and embryo donation or sale. One thing I ..

Intergenerational Justice for Children: Restructuring Adoption, Reproduction & Child Welfare Policy

This article takes seriously the idea of intergenerational justice for children, and takes as starting premises that child interests count as equivalent to adult, and that we owe justice not just to existing children but also to the next generation. It argues that intergenerational justice demands a major restructuring of policies throughout the world governing adoption, reproduction, and child welfare. We now encourage the reproduction of more children than we can care for, provide limited child welfare enabling poor parents to care for their children, and discourage adoption of existing children who need homes. These policies are perverse, unfair not just to children but adults as well. Societies that damage their children will have to live with those children when they grow up, children at high risk for crime, substance abuse, unemployment, poverty and for mistreating the next generation. We need to reverse the perverse. We need to change the pronatalist and anti-contraception policies that encourage the reproduction of children who won’t be born healthy or receive nurturing care, and we need to encourage adoption both domestic and international

International Adoption: The Human Rights Position

International adoption is under siege, with the number of children placed dropping each of the last several years, and many countries imposing severe new restrictions. Key forces mounting the attack claim the child human rights mantle, arguing that such adoption denies heritage rights, and often involves abusive practices. Many nations assert rights to hold onto the children born within their borders, and others support these demands citing subsidiarity principles. But children’s most basic human rights, at the heart of the true meaning of subsidiarity, are to grow up in the families that will often be found only in international adoption. These rights should trump any conflicting state sovereignty claims

Race Separatism in the Family: More on the Transracial Adoption Debate

Some twenty-five years ago a trial court in Virginia upheld the state ban on interracial marriage, reasoning that God created different races and, accordingly, that it was natural to maintain racial purity, and unnatural to engage in racial mixing. 1 At that time, many other state laws banned both interracial marriage and transracial adoption. In Loving v. Virginia, 2 the United States Supreme Court struck down the Virginia antimiscegenation law, reversing the trial court's decision and holding that it was unconstitutional for states to mandate racial separatism in the family. Later, in Palmore v. Sidoti, 3 the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to transfer custody of a white child from mother to father solely because the mother was living with a black man. While the Court acknowledged that it might not be in the child's best interests to live in a transracial family, it held that the equal protection doctrine prevented consideration of the race of a potential parent in making custody decisions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the courts in this country outlawed formal state bans on transracial adoption, finding them similarly inconsistent with the equal protection doctrine. There has been a similar development in South Africa today, where the ban on transracial adoption has just recently been lifted as part of the move to abolish apartheid. But in the United States a strange thing happened in 1972. The National Black Social Workers Association (NABSW) issued a statement calling for a new ban on transracial adoption. Actually, ..

Permanency Is Not Enough: Children Need the Nurturing Parents Found in International Adoption

Permanency in the form that truly serves children’s best interests will often be found only in international adoption. Permanency in dysfunctional birth families, or in institutions or typical foster care, does not provide the nurturing parenting children require. This article focuses on the strategic thinking needed to advance international adoption as a solution for more of the world’s unparented children. It urges that we who believe in such adoption recognize the crisis today, but at the same time maintain belief in the future. International adoption is consistent with many important globalization trends – international trade and commerce, emigration and immigration, intermarriage between people from different racial, ethnic, and national groups. The article urges further that the relatively small and fragile group of adoption advocates work together, and reach out to new groups, including church organizations committed to the importance of providing true families for children. But at the same time it urges that they not compromise on principles key to child well-being, but fight for children’s right to international adoptive homes and their related right to early, permanent, and nurturing parenting, and reject the false romanticism surrounding birth and national heritage

The International Adoption Cliff: Do Child Human Rights Matter?

This revised speech characterizes the dramatic decline in international adoption since 2004 as a major child human rights tragedy, deliberately created by governmental and NGO policy-makers. It contrasts U.S. human rights policy imposing sanctions for the violation of adult human rights, to U.S. failure to act in the face of child human rights violations. It calls for a change in U.S. policy that would: (1)Hold countries accountable for the human rights violations inherent in their shutdowns of international adoption and their institutionalization of children; and (2)Stop enabling UNICEF, through our funding, to eliminate international adoption as an option for children

Differential Response: A Dangerous Experiment in Child Welfare

Differential Response (DR) represents the most important child welfare initiative of the day, with DR programs rapidly expanding throughout the country. It would radically change our child welfare system, diverting the great majority of Child Protective Services (CPS) cases to an entirely voluntary system. This article describes the serious risks DR poses for children, and the flawed research being used to promote DR as “evidence-based.” It puts the DR movement in historical context, as one of a series of extreme family preservation movements supported by a corrupt merger of advocacy with research. It argues for reform that would honor children’s rights, confront the problems of poverty underlying child maltreatment in a serious way, and expand rather than reduce the capacity of CPS to address child maltreatment. It calls for a change in the dynamics of child welfare research and policy so that we can avoid history endlessly repeating itself