Would-Be Adopters Are Praying for the Destruction of Families
On Thursday, in a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court voted to keep the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) intact, in response to an evangelical Christian family fighting for the right to adopt children from Indigenous families. ICWA was passed in 1978 to protect Indigenous families that were being forcibly removed from their communities and deprived of ties to their native culture.
In 2018, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen argued that, because of the ICWA, they were experiencing reverse racism, because they were told they could not adopt the Indigenous child they were fostering. Although every person attempting to foster Native children is educated on ICWA—and are specifically warned that they will not have first rights to adopt Indigenous children—this Christian family believed they should be the exception.
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As an adoption educator, I have worked with thousands of adoptive parents adopting cross-culturally, and seen many white adoptive families unintentionally harming BIPOC children that were adopted into their care.
And although Christianity inspires many people to altruistic acts, there is a dark history in America of Christians destroying Native families. The boarding schools founded by Christian missionaries forcibly assimilated the children into American Christian beliefs and customs—including by cutting off their hair and using physical punishment. (Sometimes, children would even die in their care.)
Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, Tribal Council Vice Chairperson, Nita Battise, wipes away tears outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 15, 2023. The US Supreme Court upheld a law that gives Native American families priority in adoptions and foster care placements of tribal children.
In the name of spreading Christianity, many would-be adopters have inflicted great harm, while using religion as their shield. For example, Daniel Stephen Johnson—a Christian missionary—was charged in December 2014 with sexually abusing children in Cambodian orphanages (he was sentenced to life in prison in 2019).
Since my book, What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption, came out, I have received messages nearly every day from parents who were coerced into placing their children for adoption, in large part due to the influence of evangelical Christians in crisis pregnancy centers—including Christian doctors insisting that patients pray with them.
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One person sent me a Facebook post showing a hopeful adoptive couple praying for the biological birth mother to give up the child she bore. Still another message I got came from Christian Aragon, who went viral on TikTok after sharing his experience of learning that his mom had illegally adopted him and his sister. By using baptismal records from The Church of Saint Agnes in San Diego, in lieu of proper adoption paperwork, Aragon’s adoptive mother was able to obtain social security cards for both. While her eldest son’s adoption was legal through a church organization, his mother’s actions now have the two younger children struggling to obtain citizenship after religious documentation was issued without legal adoption proceedings.
Yaqui Native American Natalia Miranda kisses her daughter Ilanni Miranda Nov. 2, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona. Ilanni Miranda is a foster child who was protected under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Bethany Christian Services, one of the most prominent adoption agencies in the U.S., has been complicit in efforts by Christian families adopting migrant children at the U.S.-Mexican border. The United Nations stressed that children had rights to stay with their families, and yet, U.S.-based adoption organizations continued to ignore the ethical issues of taking children from primarily BIPOC parents who were fleeing their homelands to escape physical and psychological harm. Bethany has also been an integral part of the anti-choice movement, has had a significant history of involvement with many coercive adoptions, and reports by the Associated Press found that several migrant children were in turn adopted by primarily white Christian American families that had fostered through Bethany.
As humans, most of us are programmed to want to reproduce, and the inability can cause stress and often grief in women and men. And this grief can lead mostly white Christians to believe they have the right to other parents’ children.
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While many foster parents understand that reunification with the biological family is in the best interests of the child, Christian beliefs have influenced some doctors and adoption professionals to push adoption as a solution to the dwindling domestic supply of infants. Fueled by this worry, and the ways in which certain Christian sects push their members to adopt, some prospective adoptive parents will put their ethics aside, if it means answering their prayers to become parents.
Adoption should not be a family planning service for couples struggling with infertility, or even LGBTQ+ couples looking to adopt instead of choosing other options available to them. Adoptions need to be child-centered, and parents need to do their due diligence and become trauma-informed, which means properly grieving their infertility and going to therapy for that loss.
But this week, we can be grateful that the Supreme Court of the United States—including four of its conservatives—upheld the gold standard of adoption practices. That might be the kick in the pants that the multibillion-dollar adoption industry needs to support family preservation and ethical and trauma-informed adoption practices.
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