"These wealthy Americans, were they truly desiring to effect change in China, might decide to be more activist and pay the exorbitant fines such that these children might stay with their families."

Keeping more than one child is illegal. Having a girl is frowned upon. Infanticide isn't really legal but isn't stopped, either – as long as the mother can produce a boy. Same goes for abortion. But if she doesn't want to abort, if she doesn't want to kill her own infant, then abandonment is the only act. And of course, abandonment is illegal, so she has to do it anonymously or the penalty could be anything from family bankruptcy and jail to death. So now we have a catch-22.

If adoptive parents did not pay the thousands of dollars to adopt, the children would still be abandoned. Poverty would still exist. The One-Child Policy would still exist. You cannot change cultural mindsets unless THEY see a reason to.

Speaking as an adoptee who has moved back to his land of birth, and who would not wish what he has discovered in terms of the corruption of the Lebanese adoption industry on anyone, I would like simply to point out the following: Adoption is based in the leveraging of inequality by a dominant class in order to procure children for those who have none from those who ideally would keep their children except for circumstances that are a direct result of this class difference to begin with.

Adoption is a violence, based in inequality; it is candy-coated to make it seem about family and children, but it is an economic and political crime, a treating of symptoms and not of disease; it is a negation of families and an annihilation of communities that are not seen as having an intrinsic human value equal to that of those adopting, for reasons having to do with race, with class, and with a preconceived notion of what makes for a “valid” life in this world.

These wealthy Americans, were they truly desiring to effect change in China, might decide to be more activist and pay the exorbitant fines such that these children might stay with their families. That they don't points out the selfish nature of their act. Furthermore, it reveals the lopsided injustices within adoption itself. Thank you for your article which stands up to current mythologies concerning adoption within the dominant discourse.

Cases of fraudulent, coerced or corrupted adoptions–such as the horror stories you highlighted–are undeniably real, and agencies like AAI have to work hard to ensure that the process is transparent, and that only children who have truly been orphaned or abandoned are placed into homes.

I dare say, though, that cases of fraud and "child laundering" are the exception, not the rule, in international adoptions. You pointed out that stories of unwanted, abandoned Chinese girls are "not without basis in reality." Indeed. Also based in reality is the fact that over 12 million children across the African continent have been orphaned by AIDS, a pandemic that has destroyed the traditional family networks that would have cared for these children.

Westerners' wealth and power gives us the ability to care for children who would not otherwise be cared for. This is not to say that we may kidnap babies from the Third World who already have parents, or assume that they'd be better off with us. But nor does it mean we should let anti-Western hand-wringing prevent us from doing good, or even begin to equate international adoptions with slave-trafficking (as Rebecca Walker seems to).

The worst consequence of "child laundering" would be if a backlash against international adoptions prevented truly orphaned and abandoned children from ever finding a home.

Also, I like how you highlight how the fact that American culture has created a "demand" for female Chinese babies has changed the landscape of adoption.