Yesterday I talked about adoption being a "social intervention." Kinda begs the question: If adoption can be thought of as an intervention, what is it an intervention for?
In some sense, adoption might be thought of as a "cure" for infertility. (Of course, not all people seek to adopt due to infertility, but many do.) Adoption is also one "solution" to unplanned pregnancy. (Again, this is not the case in all cases--not all placements are voluntary by the birthparents, or the result of "unplanned" pregnancy.) For children, adoption may "intervene" in lives of poor nutrition, abuse and neglect, unsafe neighborhoods, and underperforming schools. (Again, not all kids adopted have come from such environments...)
But if these situations are the "pre-existing conditions"--infertility, unplanned pregnancy, child poverty--adoption, no matter how effective it may be, is at best what computer programers call "a workaround." It is not surgery to unblock fallopian tubes, for instance; Nor is it a pharmaceutical pregnancy prevention treatment, or some sort of genetic therapy to boost IQ and health in children.
I consider myself an adoption advocate. As a researcher, however, I consider this issue of "adoption--what is it good for" to be another complex ethical issue. Is it possible to design multifaceted, but linked and integrated policy to address reproductive health, unplanned pregnancy, and educational disparities? Is it possible to design research studies that would pose and answer hypotheses related to these and other multiply-linked social and medical conditions? Could the latter (research) be conducted first in order to articulate and design the former (policy)? What would that look like?
Posted by perry032 at November 10, 2004 08:38 AM | TrackBack