When my parents adopted me through the Utah Children's Aid Society back in September 1957, I cost them a grand total of less than $90. I was a K-Mart blue-light special compared with the costs my friends anticipate paying to adopt a child — $30,000, not including medical and attorney fees.
Fees of that scale turn adoption into an upper-class option, since few middle-class or lower-middle-class couples can afford bills of that size. Good, poor people should have the right to adopt as much as rich couples. Both Congress and the Utah Legislature must do a better job in overseeing adoption laws, particularly the fees, and in overseeing adoption agents. Currently, many engage in nothing less than profiteering off human traffic — which is a nice way of saying modern slave trading.
Rick Soulier
Provo