Linking adoption to abortion so casually, with no further elaboration, reveals a particular view of the world. The logic seems so clear: Lots of parents want to adopt babies, the babies who will no longer be aborted could be those babies. Two incredibly complex social issues, one easy almost-beautifully reductive solution. But of course, the reality isn’t so simple.

On 25 September 2022, a referendum was held in Cuba to approve the Family Code 2022. The historic new legislation, which is widely celebrated as one of the “most progressive codes of families”, provides important, strengthened measures for the protection of children and adolescents across the country.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, also known as ICWA, enacted in 1978 to put in place adoption protections for Native American and Alaska Native children. If those protections are overturned, it would make it easier for non-native families to adopt a native child.

This is the story of three people deeply touched by American safe haven laws.

Twenty-five years ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Passed in 1997, with broad bipartisan support, ASFA reflected a genuine commitment to the well-being of children and concern over them spending long months and even years in different foster care homes. Adoption was positioned as a positive and permanent solution for children in temporary care placements. Today, adoption is in the news again, especially with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which ended the legal right to an abortion.

The US child welfare system punishes people for living in poverty and disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous families, according to a new report produced by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. The failures of the system can haunt families for decades by limiting their employment opportunities and exacerbating a cycle of poverty that can trap successive generations in the child welfare net.

Native Americans are speaking out decades later about the abuses and indignities they endured at a school designed to “kill the Indian” in them.

PASCUA YAQUI INDIAN RESERVATION, Ariz. — Victor Cortez was just 5 months old when he was brought here from California by a tribal social worker, who placed the baby in the care of a relative after his mother was jailed for drug trafficking. Today, 16 and soft-spoken, Victor is a rising star among the Pascua Yaquis’ traditional dancers and is still living with that guardian, the only mother he’s ever known.

In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.

Rachel and her husband adopted Marcus out of Guatemalan foster care as a 7-month-old infant and brought him home to Lansing, Mich. With a round face framed by a full head of dark hair, Marcus was giggly and verbal — learning names of sea animals off flashcards, impressing other adults.