The news of the multiple legal challenges to
the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) are beginning to percolate through to the consciousness
of news reporting outlets. The reasons behind these attacks on the law are also
starting to be queried. This report from Fusion.net explains that these law suits are a backlash against the proposed binding ICWA
regulations, noting that “These
proposed regulations have angered opponents of the bill, including the
lucrative adoption industry.” In other words, the news story points to
those involved in adoption as being opposed to not only the idea of binding
ICWA regulations but to the Act itself. The news story goes on to comment that “Since the regulations were proposed,
multiple lawsuits have been filed around the country challenging ICWA…”
Just how “lucrative”
is the adoption industry in the United States? And why would it care about the
adoption of American Indian children? The demise of children available to adopt
to the United States through intercountry adoption is well-known. These statisticsfrom the United States Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State, demonstrate the dramatic fall that continues in the number of children received
by the United States. And yet, at the
same time, there are children sent from the United States for intercountry
adoption—with an estimate, given in this article that “as many as 500
infants, most of whom are black, leave
this country through outgoing adoption every year.”
At the same time
the US adoption industry is apparently concerned about restrictions on the
adoptions of American Indian children to non-Indians, there is relative silence
about the numbers of black children leaving the US in intercountry
adoption. Why a strong reaction to the proposed regulations to ICWA and yet seemingly very little about sending black American children in intercountry adoption?
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