Human rights issues are at the core of the current debate over international adoption. Many of us who support international adoption see it as serving the most fundamental human rights of the most helpless of humans – the rights of children to the kind of family love and care that will enable them to grow up with a decent chance of living a healthy and fulfilling life. Many who oppose international adoption, however, argue that it violates the human rights of the children placed and of any birth parents that may exist, and serves only the interests of those who should be seen as having no rights – the adults who want to become parents.

Human rights activists in the international adoption arena have spoken with a relatively singular voice – a voice that is generally critical of international adoption, calling either for its abolition, or for restrictions that curtail its incidence in ways that I see as harmful to children, limiting their chances of being placed in nurturing homes with true families, and condemning even those who are placed eventually for unnecessary months and years in damaging institutions. This voice has had a powerful impact, in part because the international children's rights organizations taking the negative view include such powerful ones as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).