Moral failures and market failures: why we should abandon intercountry adoption and support local foster care

If adoption regulations are 'preventing' a market in acquiring children, the regulations are in effect market regulations.

Supporters of adoption outside one's own community sometimes say that the end justifies the means – after all who could argue with a good outcome? But consider the now famous case of Michael Hess, the US lawyer, adopted by wealthy Americans from an Irish orphanage, who then vainly looked for his mother Philomena Lee. He died without ever meeting her.

We now know in hindsight that this was immoral. Even if Michael Hess had been an orphan it should never have happened. In a more civilized world Michael would never have left his own country. The state should have given Michael's mother and/or extended the family the means to care for him properly. If this was not possible he should have been fostered in his own community.

Despite the propaganda of pro intercountry adoption groups, intercountry adoption is on its last legs. Figures from International Social Services show a global decline of nearly fifty per cent, from 43,142 adoptions in 2004 to 21,991 adoptions in 2011. The decline is not because of market regulation failure, but because of the increasing realisation that it should never have been a 'market' in the first place.

Countries are taking more seriously their obligations to look after their own children. It is unlikely that more countries will sign up to the Hague Convention.

Convention participant countries are taking longer and longer to offer children for adoption and increasingly offering only older children with illnesses and disabilities. In a world committed to social justice and the reduction of inequality, adoption will become a rarity, just as it has in Iceland. Countries are increasingly taking the view that the 'best interests of the child' include keeping the child in its own community and providing that community with the resources to care for its own children.

There are many things that we can do if we want to contribute to the welfare of children both at home and overseas. We can contribute to child welfare charities both at home and overseas. We can lobby our governments to increase welfare payments so that no child lives in poverty. We can insist that the Abbott Government increase overseas aid, and stop counting money used to imprison asylum seekers as foreign aid. We can volunteer to be foster carers and open our hearts to both the children and the communities they come from.