Adoption freeze exposes dilemma of civil society in a welfare state

What do you do when an NGO has a monopoly on a central service and does not deliver?

When Minister of Social Affairs and Housing Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) announced on Tuesday an indefinite halt to international adoption to Denmark, it gave rise to a number of questions.

Many of them cannot be answered here and now, but one of the most interesting starts from the fact that adoption is a rare, if not unique, phenomenon: a central service that has until now been 100 percent NGO-driven.

It is an area that civil society has had a monopoly on. And the interesting question is about much more than adoption.

You can put any service into the equation and ask: What do you do when the only provider of a service is a civil society organization that is no longer able or deprived of the right to provide it?

Virtually all possible answers are fraught with dilemmas, because the consequences are far-reaching – both for the individual person and for the way we run (welfare) societies.

The Minister of Social Affairs has stated to DR that she cannot give a time horizon for a possible resumption of international adoption. It is not good to know what options are on the table in the ministry, but immediately there are the following ways to go:

1. Publicly operated adoption

You can leave the mediation of adoption to an authority, so that the service is subject to the same legal regulation and supervision as other public bodies. In the hope of being able to create a set-up that, to a greater extent than the current one, is able to eradicate the risk of filth cases - in this specific case, suspicion of trafficked or stolen children.

I have been asked about my own position. Referring to the fact that if I myself had been born today, my life would have turned out not just slightly but radically differently

This would probably be done if it was a question of a supplier of something where there is no doubt about the duty and responsibility to deliver the service – care for the elderly or home help, for example.

That solution requires the state to decide that international adoption is such an important service that taxpayers' money must be used for it. Such a decision is probably fraught with a heated political debate.

2. A new, civil actor

Adoption mediation can be transferred to another civil society actor – existing or newly formed – with an improved structure for ongoing control, supervision and securing of documentation and conditions in the partner countries.

That option will be a difficult maneuver, but will have the advantage that it does not require direct prioritization of resources. In this way, it can keep a politically hot topic at arm's length.

Conversely, it will be the continuation of a system that has just proven dysfunctional. A fragile system that does not guarantee continuity and existence tomorrow or next year. And which at the same time 'stands out' among other methods to remedy involuntary childlessness, which are carried out both privately and publicly in Denmark and abroad, where Danes with different degrees of regulation have access to them.

The difference presumably stems from the fact that the medical-technological methods have been developed over the past four or so decades. Denmark's first test-tube baby was born in 1983 – the first adoption law dates from 1923.

At the same time, such a solution would be another weight in the balance, where civil society is increasingly being made the 'executor' of tasks commissioned by the state; perhaps even sent in some form of tender. A civil society role that has advantages but also has its critics.

3. Permanent stop to international adoption

It can be decided that in future it will not be possible to adopt children from other countries to Denmark.

That decision can be interpreted as an expression that, as a society, the rights of any child as an independent individual weigh more heavily than the opportunity of adults to have a child.

It is far from the first time that something that made sense in the past seems less obvious with today's glasses

But it will at the same time be experienced as a de facto deterioration of the rights and opportunities of the involuntarily childless by those who have not paid much attention to whether adoption mediation is handled by a public or civil society-based actor.

On the consequence side, one must not least ask oneself if the expectation is that the demand for international adoption will completely disappear? And what if it doesn't?

Consequences of different models for adoption mediation were already mapped out in 2019 in a report from the Danish Appeals Board. 

More involuntarily childless, but fewer adoptions

The number of adoptions has certainly been plummeting since the 1970s, when Danish parents adopted between 400-700 children, and until 2022, when the number was 43.

You could read that in an article in Information from 2023.

In the same period, the number of involuntarily childless people has exploded, while the possibilities for help have developed accordingly. It has turned into an increasingly complex, transnational system of services such as inseminations, donor eggs, donor sperm and surrogate births. Private and public, legal and illegal.

Who should administer euthanasia?

If we turn our gaze away from adoption and back to the principled discussion, we can imagine a near-random scenario 180 degrees in the other direction, where the benefit is not life, but on the contrary death: namely active euthanasia.

Regardless of the differences, both are in demand by a small number of citizens who participate actively in the public debate. And both parts score high on the scale for seriousness and importance for the individual citizen.

Euthanasia is admittedly not allowed in Denmark, but as you know, that can be changed. In the debate about whether this should happen, one element has so far been understated, if not absent: If so, who should perform euthanasia?

If you make money from selling live children, it is an obvious approach to human trafficking. The same cannot be said about active euthanasia.

Should it only be the public sector that may provide active euthanasia, or should it be left to an NGO that is driven by the desire to free suffering people from their suffering? Or should one be able to make money from killing people as a commercial actor?

Adoption is a closed country for commercial players. If you make money from selling live children, it is an obvious approach to human trafficking. The same cannot be said about active euthanasia.

It can be argued that both active euthanasia and adoption belong in a kind of fringe of welfare society. Where it is not a matter of course that the state must provide the service, but where there is always demand. And where civil society can step in, but the benefit can 'migrate' to a more permanent place in core welfare – and perhaps even migrate back again into civilian hands. 

But where do such services best belong today? And is it justifiable that they are only run by one type of actor, if this is not the public sector? 

The limitations of civil society

I have been asked about my own position. Referring to the fact that if I myself had been born today, my life would have turned out not just slightly but radically differently. And it's not just because the whole world has changed since I was adopted to Denmark in the late 70s. Because then I would never have ended up here. 

My mission is not to have an opinion. But even if it was, I would have a hard time defining it clearly.

We are indisputably in a time where civil society is gaining justifiable recognition and great interest as a potential supplier of even more welfare

Because there is something remarkable in the fact that a service that in Denmark for more than six decades has been carried out solely by NGOs is now a task that requires both bilateral political negotiations and agreements at state level and is influenced by diplomacy and grand politics . Along the lines of panda exchange and royal visit.

Of course, it hasn't always been that way. And it is far from the first time that something that made sense in the past seems less obvious with today's glasses.

In other words: If we were to establish a system for the adoption task today, without taking into account the great expertise and specialist knowledge that exists now, would we then unequivocally place the task and responsibility in civil society?

I really do not know. Because we are indisputably in a time where civil society is gaining justified recognition, unprecedented attention and great interest as a potential supplier of even more welfare. 

It is a time when everyone's eyes are firmly and hopefully directed towards the third sector as a solution to all kinds of social problems. Still, there are tasks that are not necessarily best handled in civil society.

Maybe we just came across one of them here?