The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

The issues of abortion and adoption have long been intertwined, with "pro-life" advocates encouraging adoption as an alternative to abortion and "pro-choice" advocates asking who will adopt the children who are carried to term if abortion is no longer an option. In The Child Catchers, Kathryn Joyce reveals how deeply adoption--which has become a multimillion-dollar industry--is intertwined with the religious and political projects of many evangelical Christians.

Joyce begins in Haiti with the push to "get the children out" after the 2010 earthquake and the misplaced convictions of many evangelicals that they did the best possible thing by circumventing the rule of American and Haitian law. She then circles back through the recent history of adoption in the United States, tracing a path through the "Baby Scoop Era" that predated Roe v. Wade to today's "crisis pregnancy centers," which many women blame for pressuring them into adoption while refusing them help in raising their own children.

The connection between the decrease in domestic adoption options and the evangelical adoption movement becomes clear. As demand rose to "save orphans," so did the pressure on the international community to supply the "orphans" in demand--with often deceptive and heartbreaking results. While The Child Catchers clearly has a point to make, it also strives to base every point in fact, painting a picture of an industry desperately in need of oversight and a reevaluation of what is in fact in the "best interests" of a child. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket

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