Our "Trolley Problem"

Disclaimer: 

When I first read about "supply and demand" in reference to Chinese adoption, I was appalled at what I deemed to be the dehumanization of human lives. However, the commercial commodification of us has already taken place and to ignore human trafficking would be irresponsible.

The black market for babies is not unlike the black market for drugs, ivory, or other goods. To fully understand how human trafficking could have taken place in China, one must accept that a black market was created which functioned as any other market, legal or otherwise, functioned. The simplest predictor and descriptor of such a market is "supply and demand."

I've been reading true stories of Chinese birthfamily reunions...each time, I am confronted again and again with the truth: that we've been lied to. That birthparents have been lied to, that we cannot blindly believe what we have been told or what we've told each other.

I've thought about the ethics of Chinese adoption before--I wrote a rather long piece about it just a few months ago that I know no one will actually read--and I tried to craft a metaphor for the situation, like the classic trolley problem.

You see, because by the time I arrived at the orphanage in 1997, that was it. If we should think about entering the orphanage like a one-way valve in a pipeline, then of course, I want to be adopted! You can't go back to the birthfamily because the orphanage will prevent it. From that point on, it's either a) being adopted or b) growing up in the orphanage.

The idea sold to the international community was like this one-way valve situation. If the One Child Policy was in effect since 1979, there were babies stuck in orphanages by the time international adoption opened in 1992. Thus, adopting babies would be a "good" thing, because the alternative for me was growing up an orphan.

However, this one-way valve situation was very much an illusion. Like stepping on a see-saw or setting a heavy object onto a balance, adoptive families drastically changed the supply-demand equilibrium. By 1992, the very same year that international adoption opened in China, human trafficking routes which fed babies into internationally adopting orphanages were already established and became more established nation wide. (Watch One Child Nation, free on Amazon Prime to learn more. It was NOT just Hunan, everyone!)

This scenario is then like an open-valve situation. As babies flowed out of the orphanages, more babies were being pulled into the orphanage. The demand for Chinese babies supposedly "abandoned" by their birthfamilies due to the One Child Policy was overwhelming due to the artfully crafted story of "abandonment." This story was echoed by news stations, news papers, documentaries (see National Geographic's/Lisa Ling's "China's Lost Girls" documentary) and adoption agencies. Orphanages increasingly sought ways to increase their orphan population as international adoption was lucrative due to the mandatory "orphanage donation" that adoptive parents needed to make. While these funds were said to go towards the care of the orphans, there were instances of misusing said funds to buy luxury vehicles, for instance, for the orphanage director.

This is the reason why you should not buy ivory. One could argue that the elephant is already dead and thus buying or not buying the ivory should not matter. However, by participating in the ivory trade, you are part of the "demand" and this will cause more elephants in the future to be hunted and killed for their tusks.

By the time I was in the orphanage, it was too late for me. But by my adoption, multiplied by the hundreds of adoptions that year from China, was there a baby that arrived at the orphanage through trafficking sometime later as a direct result of increased demand? By having such a visceral international response to give orphans a home, were foreign families unintentionally making the problem worse? Like a hamster running on a hamster wheel, not understanding that by running faster, the wheel just turns faster? And was my arrival at the orphanage (likely from a midwife sourcing babies for the orphanage and lying to my birthmother that I would go to a "friend" when the plan was just to sell me to the orphanage), inadvertently caused by the collective international adoptions occurring in the years before mine? 1992, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97?

Should you ever adopt "orphans" when doing so increases the artificial creation of even more orphans via human trafficking, trickery, and bribery?

I don't know if there is ever a good answer. There will always be legitimate orphans in the world for many legitimate reasons...but the business of adoption, and of international adoption in particular, seems to have the ability to get infinitely worse. And the stories we are fed and stuffed with by a news cycle which craves our attention, and which craves ad revenue, are always so perfectly crafted, perfectly vague, and perfectly always never the full story--if it's even true at all.