[lemonchutney]

I agree that ethics in American adoption need to be standardized and prioritized, but it is a gross overstatement to label all adoption immoral. And it is ridiculously idealistic to suggest that a child must be parented by a genetically related person regardless of whether that person wants to raise the child. People choose to relinquish thier babies for lots of reasons--maybe they want to go to college, to travel, to be accepted by their community, to marry first, or to keep their family size small. You may agree or disagree with the reasons, but regardless of the reason, isn't it best that a child be raised by a person who wants to do nothing more than raise the child? Sure, it's not ideal to be raised by someone who doesn't have much in common with you genetically, but isn't it far better than being raised by someone who looks, acts, and thinks just like you, but resents your existence and wishes fervently that you had never been conceived? So you are genetically different from your parents...Is that the worst thing that can happen to you? What's so horribly bad about being different anyway?! Except for identical twins, we're all genetically unique.

Adoptive parents are often skewered for being middle and upper-middle class. But class weighs in to a lot of b-parents' decisions too. Many don't want to single parent (or, if they are married to parent another child) because doing so would plummet them into a lower financial and social class. Yes, it's easy to sit back and wag your finger and say class shouldn't matter, but guess what it matters greatly to a lot of people. In an ideal world, class wouldn't be an issue. But idealism, not the adoption industry, may be the obstacle to your ability to accept what happened in your life.