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12 J. Gender Race & Just. 185 (2008-2009)
Small Commodities: How Child Traffickers Exploit Children and Families in Intercountry Adoption and What the United States Must Do to Stop Them

handle is hein.journals/jgrj12 and id is 187 raw text is: Small Commodities: How Child Traffickers Exploit Children and Families in Intercountry Adoption and What the United States Must Do to Stop Them Patricia J. Meier* I. INTRODUCTION In February 1928, William and Lila Young, a chiropractor-minister and his midwife-spouse, opened a health sanitarium in a four-bedroom cottage in East Chester, Nova Scotia, Canada.' Before long, the center found a niche providing maternity services for unwed mothers.2 Unofficially, the Ideal Maternity Home and Sanitarium specialized in selling babies to adoptive parents in the United States.3 The Young's thereby earned two distinctions. They were quite probably the first international adoption facilitators to provide children to Americans as well as the first child traffickers to profit from such adoptions. The Youngs' story illustrates the extent to which intercountry adoption and child trafficking are intertwined. For as long as parents have adopted across national borders, child traffickers have profited from those adoptions. Because Americans drive the worldwide demand for adoptable children and because the U.S. State Department has established itself as the world's * Patty Meier is a former journalist who expects to graduate from the University of Iowa College of Law in December 2008. She thanks Professor Mark Sidel and Professor David M. Smolin for their encouragement, and her family for their support and patience. This article is dedicated to Shu Shu, whose story inspired the work. 1. BETrE L. CAHILL, BUT-rERBOX BABIES: BABY SALES, BABY DEATHS NEW REVELATIONS 15 YEARS LATER 19-20 (2006) (describing the beginning of the Youngs' maternity home). 2. Id. 3. Id. at 96 (detailing the home's baby-selling business).

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