In the United States of America, there is no one set of laws regarding domestic adoption at the federal level. Instead, adoption regulation is primarily the responsibility of individual states. Regulation of adoption through state law creates inconsistency nationally, enabling the rise of many unlicensed and unethical agencies who exploit this for their own personal gain. The lack of federal regulations on domestic adoption is the remnant of an unethical history that allows for coercion of families and for the commodification of children for agencies’ profit, making it vital for a federal standard on domestic adoption to be developed.

The history of domestic adoption in the United States is one of exploitation, crime, and classism. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, adoption existed in a sort of legal gray area. With little to no oversight, adoption became a rather lucrative business opportunity with few regulations. Prior to the mid-to-late 20th century, adoption was done privately, with little to no government oversight. These conditions made it the perfect breeding ground for criminal activity as the idea of adoption began to grow less distasteful to the American middle and upper classes. Utilizing the lack of regulations and laws on adoption, these individuals began to create a profitable business selling babies to families across the country and even internationally. Often, they would target vulnerable lower-class women, exploiting their impoverished and disadvantaged conditions, and were known to kidnap healthy-looking children off the street. There was practically no oversight as to who precisely would adopt the children they gained through these exploits, which often led to these children being sold to suspected pedophiles or other unsavory characters. One of the most prominent and infamous individuals to come out of this era was a woman named Georgia Tann. Tann, a well-known advocate for adoption in the 1920s who ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, is believed to have sold around 5,000 children over the course of 30 years and to have made over a million dollars doing so. Many of the 5,000 children sold by Tann weren’t able to access their birth certificates and social security numbers until 1995, over half a century later, and most were unable to see their birth families again.

Domestic adoption began to see a major rise in popularity between the late 1940s and early 1970s, an era known as the “Baby Scoop Era.” As adoption grew increasingly more popular, an influx of adoption agencies began to establish themselves across the nation, continuing the exploitative practices from the early 20th century. One common practice during this time were maternity homes. More than 1.5 million unwed pregnant women were sent by their families to these facilities, where they would stay for their pregnancy and give birth in secret without “shaming” their families for having a baby out of wedlock. Once born, the child would be taken and adopted out. Mothers would rarely have their rights explained to them before their child was taken to a “legitimate” family, and often would have been still under the effects of anesthesia when pressured to give up their parental rights. Those who tried to keep their child were often threatened by the agency with financial repercussions that the mother would be unable to pay.

A century of legislation passed by lobbyists and those profiting off of the adoption industry in the 20th century has led to the current-day inconsistent set of laws regarding adoption in the United States. With the rise of the internet, the lack of federal laws and near-nonexistent federal oversight on domestic adoption has caused a new type of exploitative tactic to grow: adoption advertising and unlicensed agencies. While a majority of places in the United States have laws making unlicensed agencies illegal, there are still sixteen states with no regulations on these agencies. These for-profit groups then use the internet to advertise to people across the country, providing deceptive and misleading information to new mothers considering adoption in an attempt to convince the mother to sign their baby over to their agency, engaging in the same predatory tactics as their predecessors. Even in the states where these predatory agencies are outlawed, the deceptive advertisements done by these organizations are next to impossible to control. These advertisements rarely stay in the state where the unlicensed agency is run, and due to the lack of federal laws, it is near impossible for there to be a successful crackdown on the exploitative actions of these for-profit groups.

It is true that adoption is necessary. Not every family is capable or able to raise a child, and adoption provides an opportunity for a child in an abusive home to receive a loving one when such conditions are present. However, to overlook the exploitative practices and history of adoption is to overlook the very real reality affecting thousands each year. It is possible to begin to correct the harm caused by these agencies, but it cannot be done through state law. Federal laws and regulations on adoption are necessary to stop coercive and exploitative actions by agencies on a national level. We as a country need to push for protections, both for the birth family and for the child. If change is not fought for, the practices that have been in place for over a century will continue, and the harm it causes will further exploit and harm our most vulnerable across the nation.