Though baby selling is illegal, it would not necessarily constitute human trafficking where it occurs for adoption, based on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the UN Protocols on Trafficking in Persons and the Sale of Children, the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption, and definitions of adoption established by U.S. jurisdictions.
The purposes of baby selling and human trafficking are not necessarily the same. Some individuals assume that baby selling for adoption is a form of human trafficking because trafficking and baby selling both involve making a profit by selling another person.
However, illegally selling a child for adoption would not constitute trafficking where the child itself is not to be exploited. Baby selling generally results in a situation that is nonexploitative with respect to the child. Trafficking, on the other hand, implies exploitation of the victims. If an adopted child is subjected to coerced labor or sexual exploitation, then it constitutes a case of human trafficking.
In some respects, the victims are indeed exploited. Recently, some have spoken about love, so you'd think that the purchasing of a child for emotional satisfaction of the adoptive parent would constitute exploitation, especially if the child grows up to be emotionally detached from the adoptive parents.
The problem is that such a definition of exploitation resists prevention because it's predicated on how the child's mentality evolves over time. The only partially viable prevention method would be to do rigorous background checks on adoptive parents to make sure that children aren't adopted for the sole purpose of pleasing the parents. But didn't we come to that conclusion already? Semantics...
Oh, the Hague Convention. It is a problematic one.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't emotional satisfaction evolve over time as well? In both parent and child?
Because lots of parents would not have an emotionally satisfying child at first (this applies to birth and adoptive kids both).
I can see a Big Brotherly mechanism where parents are tested for 'love chemicals' like oxytocin.
What are reasons for adoption that are NOT pleasing the parents?
I tend to identify trafficing with things like kidnapping and taking and stealing. 'But if you pay for it you don't steal' ...