'anabaptist' Attitude Toward Adoption

[JayP]

Josh, I wonder if we even mean the same thing when we say Anabaptists.

No church that I call Anabaptist has members laying out the sums you quote on fertility treatments or adoptions.

I never disputed adoption has risks and as I said I th8nk the risks ARE higher in Plain settings……but as I said, that is the fault of the people in those churches. LOL

[Josh]

Josh, I wonder if we even mean the same thing when we say Anabaptists.

No church that I call Anabaptist has members laying out the sums you quote on fertility treatments or adoptions.

I never disputed adoption has risks and as I said I th8nk the risks ARE higher in Plain settings……but as I said, that is the fault of the people in those churches. LOL

I use Cory Anderson’s definition of “plain Anabaptist”. This ranges from Swartzentrubers to Nationwide to Hutterites to BMA to Apostolic Christian.

Adoptions are expensive. We have a church fund to aid with adoptions. A typical infant adopted through an agency costs north of $40k. (Our church discourages spending that much, but we also don’t exercise strict control over people’s lives,
So some people send that much.)

Fertility treatments are also expensive. Our church mutual aid fund has limits on what it will spend. Many people choose to go spend more on their own.

You would find the same in many other plain churches: BMA, Mid-West, Pilgrim, Hope, Beachys, Old Order Amish, and so on.

[Neto]

Josh, I wonder if we even mean the same thing when we say Anabaptists.

No church that I call Anabaptist has members laying out the sums you quote on fertility treatments or adoptions.

I never disputed adoption has risks and as I said I th8nk the risks ARE higher in Plain settings……but as I said, that is the fault of the people in those churches. LOL

I use Cory Anderson’s definition of “plain Anabaptist”. This ranges from Swartzentrubers to Nationwide to Hutterites to BMA to Apostolic Christian.

Adoptions are expensive. We have a church fund to aid with adoptions. A typical infant adopted through an agency costs north of $40k. (Our church discourages spending that much, but we also don’t exercise strict control over people’s lives,
So some people send that much.)

Fertility treatments are also expensive. Our church mutual aid fund has limits on what it will spend. Many people choose to go spend more on their own.

You would find the same in many other plain churches: BMA, Mid-West, Pilgrim, Hope, Beachys, Old Order Amish, and so on.

Our congregation supports (financially) "adoption ministries", but the health cost sharing plan our congregation participates in does not cover any fertility related expenses.
Regarding adoption costs, I do wonder why it is so terribly expensive, when there are seemingly so many children who could benefit from it.

[Ken]

Josh, I wonder if we even mean the same thing when we say Anabaptists.

No church that I call Anabaptist has members laying out the sums you quote on fertility treatments or adoptions.

I never disputed adoption has risks and as I said I th8nk the risks ARE higher in Plain settings……but as I said, that is the fault of the people in those churches. LOL

I use Cory Anderson’s definition of “plain Anabaptist”. This ranges from Swartzentrubers to Nationwide to Hutterites to BMA to Apostolic Christian.

Adoptions are expensive. We have a church fund to aid with adoptions. A typical infant adopted through an agency costs north of $40k. (Our church discourages spending that much, but we also don’t exercise strict control over people’s lives,
So some people send that much.)

Fertility treatments are also expensive. Our church mutual aid fund has limits on what it will spend. Many people choose to go spend more on their own.

You would find the same in many other plain churches: BMA, Mid-West, Pilgrim, Hope, Beachys, Old Order Amish, and so on.

Our congregation supports (financially) "adoption ministries", but the health cost sharing plan our congregation participates in does not cover any fertility related expenses.
Regarding adoption costs, I do wonder why it is so terribly expensive, when there are seemingly so many children who could benefit from it.

At least for overseas adoptions, there is an element of orphanages recovering some of their costs by charging wealthy foreigners for adoptions. And also the cost of paying intermediaries to navigate obtuse and often corrupt foreign bureaucracies.

[Neto]

I use Cory Anderson’s definition of “plain Anabaptist”. This ranges from Swartzentrubers to Nationwide to Hutterites to BMA to Apostolic Christian.

Adoptions are expensive. We have a church fund to aid with adoptions. A typical infant adopted through an agency costs north of $40k. (Our church discourages spending that much, but we also don’t exercise strict control over people’s lives,
So some people send that much.)

Fertility treatments are also expensive. Our church mutual aid fund has limits on what it will spend. Many people choose to go spend more on their own.

You would find the same in many other plain churches: BMA, Mid-West, Pilgrim, Hope, Beachys, Old Order Amish, and so on.

Our congregation supports (financially) "adoption ministries", but the health cost sharing plan our congregation participates in does not cover any fertility related expenses.
Regarding adoption costs, I do wonder why it is so terribly expensive, when there are seemingly so many children who could benefit from it.

At least for overseas adoptions, there is an element of orphanages recovering some of their costs by charging wealthy foreigners for adoptions. And also the cost of paying intermediaries to navigate obtuse and often corrupt foreign bureaucracies.

In other words, what Westerners call 'bribes"?

[Ken]

Our congregation supports (financially) "adoption ministries", but the health cost sharing plan our congregation participates in does not cover any fertility related expenses.
Regarding adoption costs, I do wonder why it is so terribly expensive, when there are seemingly so many children who could benefit from it.

At least for overseas adoptions, there is an element of orphanages recovering some of their costs by charging wealthy foreigners for adoptions. And also the cost of paying intermediaries to navigate obtuse and often corrupt foreign bureaucracies.

In other words, what Westerners call 'bribes"?

Some it might be bribes. Some of it might be actual fees and costs. The US immigration system certainly has fees that can run into the thousands.

A bribe is when you either pay someone to do what they are already supposed to do as part of their job. Or, alternatively pay them NOT do do the job they are supposed to do (look the other way). If say the Guatemalan bureaucracy has fees totaling several thousands dollars to process foreign adoptions that is just bureaucracy and not bribes.

But I would suggest that anyone who is actually paying bribes as part of an adoption should really think hard about what they are doing. While it may be expedient, the end result is to make things worse for those who follow.

[Josh]

At least for overseas adoptions, there is an element of orphanages recovering some of their costs by charging wealthy foreigners for adoptions. And also the cost of paying intermediaries to navigate obtuse and often corrupt foreign bureaucracies.

And sometimes, it turns out the money paid is literally paying a corrupt government agent, etc. to steal someone's baby from them.

[JayP]

Pointless.

The more time I read these threads, the more I am convinced there is little point in participating.
A small very varied group living in an echo chamber.

[Josh]

Pointless.

The more time I read these threads, the more I am convinced there is little point in participating.
A small very varied group living in an echo chamber.

How is it “pointless”? I feel educating folks on the great evil done in international adoptions is important, especially since then they can take steps to avoid that evil.

[Ken]

Pointless.

The more time I read these threads, the more I am convinced there is little point in participating.
A small very varied group living in an echo chamber.

How is it “pointless”? I feel educating folks on the great evil done in international adoptions is important, especially since then they can take steps to avoid that evil.

Josh is right about international adoptions. At least how they have historically been conducted in Central America or Guatemala where I have some first-hand knowledge. And the more civil strife that exists in a country, the more opportunity there is for abuse. Here is an article from just last month: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/j ... r-adoption

Guatemala’s baby brokers: how thousands of children were stolen for adoption: From the 1960s, baby brokers persuaded often Indigenous Mayan women to give up newborns while kidnappers ‘disappeared’ babies. Now, international adoption is being called out as a way of covering up war crimes

. . .

Preat is one of an estimated 40,000 Guatemalan international adoptees who now live in the United States, Canada and Europe. The first wave of adoptions took place from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Sweden and Canada were popular early destinations. These were soon joined by other European countries including France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy.

The second wave, which began in the 1980s, sent adoptees to the US. Some Guatemalan adoptees came from orphanages, but many were placed through private adoptions. Agencies in Europe and the US contracted directly with lawyers in Guatemala to find children, match them to families and do all the paperwork without judicial oversight.

This system was expensive: total adoption costs began at the equivalent of $3,500 per child when adoption was first privatised in 1977 and shot up to $45,000 in later years. Despite the cost, private adoptions were more popular than those from orphanages because they were faster and adoptive parents could select the kinds of children they wanted rather than rely on the “supply” of usually older children in orphanages. Jaladoras often had a mandate to find the youngest children possible, or ideally contact pregnant women to sign up babies before birth.

By the mid-2000s, Guatemala had overtaken other “sender” countries, including South Korea and Russia, until it was second only to China for the number of children adopted abroad – in absolute numbers, not adjusted for population. It was also the only country in the world to allow fully privatised adoptions from 1977 to 2008. At the height of the adoption boom, one in 100 children born in Guatemala was placed for adoption with a family abroad. “Some countries export bananas,” one lawyer who arranged private adoptions told the Economist in 2016. “We exported babies.”

Guatemala is often cited as the worst-case scenario for what can go wrong when adoptions are commercialised and children are sent from poorer countries to wealthier ones. Outright kidnappings like Preat’s were rare, but other abuses were common. Some were technically legal: women pressured to give up babies or to sign documents they could not understand, or they were approached when pregnant about whether they wished to relinquish a child. There are also many documented cases of women being paid a small sum for their children – which was illegal. Despite plentiful evidence as early as the 1980s of corruption and abuses within the industry, international adoption did not become illegal in Guatemala until 2008.

Read the whole thing.

Guatemala finally gave up and banned international adoptions in 2008 when they concluded that in a country with social, economic, and legal conditions as they existed there, it was impossible to operate international adoptions without the entire system being rife with corruption and abuse.