Today in the United States there is a lack of consensus about what constitutes ethical practice in adoption. Although ethics in adoption is a hot topic, adoption specialists and professionals are unsure about how to serve the best interests of children who need to be adopted and how birth parents, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees ought to be served. This failure to identify and prioritize ethical standards in adoption has resulted in a lack of ethical decision-making and inadequate-and sometimes fraudulent-treatment of those seeking adoption-related services.

Destined to be seminal in the fields of ethics and adoption, this books offers numerous case studies describing what is wrong with America's adoption system, illustrating what the lack of applied ethical standards in adoption does to adoptees and those who love them, and raising many questions about what adoption facilitators are doing, who is accountable for what they are doing, and whose interests they are serving.