International Adoption Outline

Intro:

Summarize main points:

-Self-Sanctification drives international adoption

-Child Rights are non-existent in the third world

-Orphanages play a huge role in child trafficking

-It can help both Countries if child is adopted domestically

-System can be reformed by better informing American people of the role they play in trafficking, and through intervention of National Governments to restrict intercountry adoption to an extent.

Body Paragraph 1 :

-U.S. citizens adopt children from other countries for several reasons: to help kids, to

feel better about themselves, and to superficially appear as a kind person.

-U.S. parents create a demand for international children to be their adopted children.

Body Paragraph 2:

-Child rights in the third-world are non-existent

-Governments in developing countries are either corrupt or lacking in the power necessary to make a difference.

-International law is not enforced anywhere and means nothing in these countries.

Body Paragraph 3:

- Orphanages play a huge role in child trafficking

-children are kidnapped by orphanages and sold for money

-American’s parent’s demands for children offer an incentive for more trafficking to occur.

Body Paragraph 4:

- It can help both the country of the parents as well as the foreign country if a child is adopted domestically instead of internationally.

-There are plenty of children in similar situations in the United States who can be adopted

- Address counter argument that international adoption is necessary to build stronger and more peaceful relationships with other countries

-adopting children from other countries may improve relationships slightly, but helping countries develop in general with international aid will strengthen bond more, and

Body Paragraph 5:

-Inform potential adopters that they run the risk of increasing kidnapped/trafficked children by adopting internationally

-Change mindset that its more noble to adopt internationally than domestically

-Use increased government intervention to reduce the number of internationally adopted children, and help strengthen international law and develop the third world through more effective aid to end the problem long-term.

Conclusion:

-Summary of points

-Closing statement

Initial Sources for International Adoption Paper

5 Sources

http://congressional.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/congressional/result/pqpresultpage.gispdfhitspanel.pdflink/http%3A$2f$2fprod.cosmos.dc4.bowker-dmz.com$2fapp-bin$2fgis-hearing$2f4$2f8$2f0$2fb$2fhrg-2002-hir-0025_from_1_to_87.pdf/entitlementkeys=1234%7Capp-gis%7Chearing%7Chrg-2002-hir-0025

The above source is a congressional hearing before the Committee of International Relations on the solutions to problems related to international adoption. It's dense; about 100 pages long, but formal and factual as well. Written in 2002.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/world/international-adoption-saving-orphans-child-trafficking/

This the article that drove my interest in the subject area. It gives a broad idea of what’s going on and a few specific examples of children who have been trafficked because of international adoption.

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=SNY4426-0-7796&artno=0000296685&type=ART

This article gives information on chinese children being sold for the purpose of adoption fees.

http://search.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/204006434?pq-origsite=summon

this article gives some incorrect forms of government intervention in terms of adoption. I will mostly use this for my counter argument.

http://search.proquest.com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/305082389/1C36D2A920DD45B8PQ/14?accountid=11243

another article for general information on transracial adoption.

Initial Research

By Dan Coen

The driving force behind international adoption in First-World countries is the belief that our lives are better than those in developing regions. At a first glance, one’s reaction to this is concept is often: “Well, of course they are. ” To an extent it’s true; we have access to many basic needs and amenities that others don’t, such as clean water, proper shelter, and advanced medical technology. However, keep in mind that in the instances where these needs are met, the rest of the attributes that contribute to one’s well-being, such as wealth, skills, and attractiveness are all relative.

There are many issues of international adoption to be discussed, but perhaps the most pressing is the blurred lines of child rights across the world. The UN’s Declaration of the Right’s of a Child are non-existent in most developing countries. Generally speaking, a country determines its own legal code for acceptable living standards for children. In the third-world, these standards either don’t exist or are irrelevant because of little government enforce. Because Of the neglect of children in the third world, international adoption is popular. Unfortunately, current levels of corruption and greed have not yet made this a more viable option than adopting a domestic neglected child.

In Africa, one of the most frequent occurring hidden forms of child trafficking is the sale of children in foster homes. The adopting parents, looking to aid a child in need, unknowingly pay for a child in foster care that had been kidnapped from his family and sold away for cash. The willingness of people to adopt child from impoverished nations unfortunately leads to the continuation of this practice. What’s worse is that the government’s of these countries can be corrupt, and will turn a blind eye to the sources of the children in these foster homes because s some instances they can receive up to ten thousand dollars in a “development aid cost” for giving a child to parents outside of the country. In fact, Guatemala was closed to US adoption specifically for the reason that children were being coerced and kidnapped to meet the US demand for adopted children from third world countries. Before they closed to US adoptions, 1 in every 100 childbirths in Guatemala were adopted. After they closed, the adoption rate dropped ninety percent. As a result of no longer having Guatemalan children to import, the number of Ethiopian children adopted by American parents increased by 500%.

Generally speaking, for first-world parents who want to help children in need, it’s a better idea to adopt a child from a home country and give any remaining money to a proper international  development program than encourage the trafficking of children to meet the needs of the international adoption market.

Position Paper Topic Ideas

I' currently looking into the impact of international adoption on the United States. Specifically, I'm researching whether or not the practice is doing more harm than good. It seems as though the impulse to adopt children from other countries is driven by primarily self-sanctification; people feel good about themselves thinking that they are saving the lives and sanity of children by bringing them out of homes that that they presume couldn't compare to the United States. However, child rights laws and other ethics related problems, such as families having a fallback for having a child they decide they don't want to raise and the current abuse of compensation to parents who give away their children in developing countries make this a large problem worldwide.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/world/international-adoption-saving-orphans-child-trafficking/

http://www.examiner.com/article/adopting-a-child-international-adoption-good-or-bad

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/no-logic-to-foreign-adoption-development-aid-285161.html

Response to Sample Position Paper

While reading this position paper which focuses on the strategies and effectiveness of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), I payed close attention to the style of how the position paper was written. Having mainly read formal essays and articles this far into the class, it was interesting to read a paper that was in a much different format.

The most obvious difference of the position paper in contrast to essays is that there is less of a focus on the use of language to appeal to the reader’s senses; the argument of the position paper is supported purely by facts. These facts are cited frequently and properly, and there is no time wasted on useless metaphors because the paper tries to establish the point early and stay on topic with plenty of information.   Additionally, the preci of the paper is stated repeatedly.The goal of a position paper appears to be to confidently convey an idea using concrete sources of evidence. In general, I prefer the format of the position paper more than most formal essays and articles because most of the reading I do myself is strictly for factual information. As a reader, I want the facts given to me, and I like to make my own opinions about them.

It is an audience with a similar mindset that this paper is targeted to. The author assumes that the reader is somewhat knowledgeable of the subject matter already and wants a great deal of information organized efficiently. This can be more effective to defend a position on in certain situations because if one has enough concrete factual evidence to prove their argument, there is no need to persuade the reader using complex analogies and syntax because there are numbers, graphs, and first-hand accounts that will do the persuading for them.

Response to Lysaught

The article "Medicine as Friendship with god: Anointing the sick as a Theological Hermeneutic" makes an interesting claim concerning bioethics and theological politics. Lysaught's main argument is that the practice of theological sacraments, specifically the anointing of the sick in catholicism, is an effective way of supplementing modern medicine to create a changed world which is built heavily on theological politics.

Lysuaght elaborates on how there is a general negative opinion (specifically in the United States) on the role of theological related practices in medicine. Lysaught, after stating this, loses some credibility because he includes a great deal of biblical information and interpretation which comes across as circumlocution more than it does supportive of his argument. As an agnostic who was raised catholic initially, his argument is fairly ignorant in my opinion. Not only does he fail to mention any other religions (aside from a weak reference to Judaism, a fellow Abrahamic religion) in the article, but hailing Catholicism in the traditional way that Lysaught does makes for an unreasonable foundation for changing the political environment we have now.

The article comes across as a selfish way to spread catholicism rather than an honest effort of someone trying to benefit the world. This is unfortunate, because there are undoubtedly benefits of spirituality. A more reasonable goal would be to spread the ability to use theology in general (not just through the catholic deity) to create an optimal combination of physical and mental treatment for the unwell. Regardless, Lysaught's article lacked organization proper motives to be effective.

Summary of Ly

Response to Ly

By Dan Coen

The article "Individual Preferences Over Development Projects: Evidence from Microlending on Kiva" is analyzes what effects a donor or philanthropists' decision to give money to specific charity organizations. This research includes viewing the effectiveness of publicly visible projects, the time time it takes to fulfill different types of loans, and the reasons for lenders fulfilling these loans more quickly and frequently than other projects.

Generally speaking, donors like to donate to publicly viewable charity projects and organizations. This is common sense because philanthropists want to make sure that the money they're giving is being used effectively, or to a specific cause that they can see the results of their donations from.  Probably the most interesting result of the research is the time it takes to meet the donations of loans based on the poverty impacted problem they are related to. The loans that were fulfilled the fastest were ones that were related to education and health. These loans were given 76% faster than donation requests to agricultural purposes. Extremely interesting to me was entertainment loans being met the third fastest out of any category, which is likely due to donors being interested in international culture.
Kiva returns loans with 0% interest, which gives reason to believe that people really are donating solely for the desire to help people. However, it's important to note that often philanthropists will donate to projects in which they are more surely going to be repaid (areas like personal consumption are minimally funded).  This article gives a good foundation of the reasons for which P2P users donate to specific projects, but as stated many times throughout the article, there is still much research to be done to on how philanthropists view projects as effective, and why their opinions differ so greatly from that of development organizations.