A couple of years ago (hard to believe I’ve been doing this that long) I wrote about disturbing allegations of children being stolen from their families in Guatemala and then placed for adoption (as though they were orphans) with families in the United States. This post from RH Reality Check continues the story. While it suggests that progress has been made in controlling the profit-driven adoption market, it also notes the emergence of paid surrogacy as a substitute for intercountry adoption. It certainly gives one pause.

One one level, it’s obvious that surrogacy can be a substitute for adoption. If you want a child, those are two different ways you might obtain one. While there are substantial differences (for instance, in surrogacy the child is created for you while in adoption the child already exists), I would expect that many couples and individuals seeking children have considered both and then, for one reason or another, made their choice.

But this story suggests a different sort of substitution and thereby casts things in a different light. To begin with, it seems fairly clear that there is a demand for children within affluent sectors of the US (and for all I know other countries, too). One way to meet this demand is via international adoption.

I’m not by any means opposed to international adoptions in general, but it is clear that there is a potential for exploitation in practice. That’s part of the rational for the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. It’s possible that unwitting US parents may well have adopted children who had been taken from (or purchased from) their Guatemalan parents.

I’m glad to hear that this problem may have been addressed. But that doesn’t make the demand for children go away. And as I said above, surrogacy might be seen as a substitute for adoption.

But surrogacy can be quite expensive, particularly in the US. We’ve all seen the stories about globalized surrogacy and reproductive tourism. There are cheaper places to go than California, India being the one that has gotten quite a bit of publicity. This leads me to have serious concerns about a race-to-the-bottom: What country will provide the most poorly compensated, least protected surrogates?

Labels: adoption, Central America, economics, Guatemala, Julie Shapiro, poverty, surrogate motherhood

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The vast majority of people in Guatemala oppose the notion of allowing homosexuals to marry, according to a poll by Cid-Gallup. 85 per cent of respondents disagree with same-sex marriage. ...

Guatemalan voters elected a new president in November 2007. Final results gave Álvaro Colom of the left-leaning National Union of Hope (UNE) 52.82 per cent of the vote. His run-off contender, Otto Pérez Molina of the right-leaning Patriot Party (PP), finished second with 47.18 per cent of all cast ballots. Colom was sworn in as president in January 2008.

During his campaign, Colom rejected calls to review the issue of the legal status of same-sex couples, saying, "God said Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

Labels: Central America, gay marriage, Guatemala

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During the First Congress for Catholic Youth in Guatemala, more than 7,000 young people, together with Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui, promised “to work for the virtue of purity” and "lead a chaste life.”

Labels: Catholic Church, Central America, chastity, Guatemala, religion, sex

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