The market-based adoption system in the United States is unfair to parents and children because it places monetary value on a child's race and class, according to Michele Goodwin, a professor at the University of Minnesota who spoke to a room of over 50 people in the Rockefeller Center Thursday. Goodwin, a professor at the university's law, public health and medical schools, is an expert on ethical and legal issues involving the human body.
"The notion that children may be placed with adoptive families in a process that resembles the auction paradigm too closely resembles slavery for many people," Goodwin said. "The [free market] process is not slavery, but it does perpetuate slavery's legacy."
The average cost to adopt a healthy, white infant is $50,000 in the United States, while the average cost to adopt a black infant is $4,000, according to Goodwin. She said that though these costs are influenced by a variety of factors, they indicate that the adoption market is strongly influenced by social views on race, genetic traits and class.
Goodwin added that such high costs can prohibit a middle- or working-class family from taking in a child of any race, even though the family could provide a stable home for a child.
"Traditionally in America, we've had a long history of working-class and immigrant families providing a great home, where there's not that much money but a lot of love," Goodwin said.
Adoption issues are relevant to the overall public good and could benefit from increased scrutiny and government involvement at the state level, Goodwin said. She discussed a number of potential policy solutions that could make the system more equitable.
"There are several options society might weigh, but each presents a burden to the system as it stands," she said. "We could make market transactions much more transparent, monitor or control social impact or embark on a public information campaign."
The U.S. government can provide information about the racial and socioeconomic impacts of choosing an adopted child based on aesthetics, Goodwin said when asked by an audience member to describe one potential policy that she thinks could be particularly beneficial.
She added that while the federal government could be very helpful in educating prospective adoptive parents and gathering information, the state governments are more likely to set policy because the foster system is under state jurisdiction.
Regarding adoption agencies, Goodwin said that despite the negative financial practices of many agencies, some do very good work. She offered the example of churches in Chicago that provide homes and resources for families that are willing to take children in but who are not able to afford the cost of adoption.
Goodwin added that while she does not think incentives, even economic ones, are necessarily bad, she believes the adoption market needs to be adjusted. Her ideal model for a market-based adoption system would take the shape of a "pool for the welfare of children," -- families would pay on a sliding scale relative to their income and the cost of adoption would not depend on the child's characteristics.
Goodwin also discussed ethical issues in assisted reproduction and in vitro fertilization.
International surrogacy, in which U.S. parents pay foreign mothers -- usually in developing countries -- to carry their children, is a particularly complicated issue, Goodwin said, because the argument can be made that the financial, educational and health-care benefits poor women receive in effect coerce them into becoming surrogates.
"If women are well informed, they often end up better off after the transaction," Goodwin said. "We need to guard against too much paternalism, or the attitude that poor people and people of color will be incapacitated by their dire economic state and unable to make sound decision for themselves, while the only people who can use their bodies commercially are well-educated, rich people."
Goodwin also discussed egg donations in which parents pay upwards of $20,000 for young women with the physical characteristics they desire to donate eggs. She said that this represents another ethically complex issue, because while all participants may benefit from the transaction, the selection of an egg donor resembles eugenics to some.
