Release date: Dec. 14, 2005
Contact: Elaine Justice at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Children Have Right to Be Adopted, Says Emory's Jackson

Some of the most troubling questions surrounding adoption in this country—same-sex couple adoption, or adoption across racial and ethnic lines—should be addressed "by looking carefully at the sanctity rights of needy children," says Emory University ethicist Timothy Jackson in "The Morality of Adoption," a new volume published through Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR).

Jackson, who serves as editor and contributor to the book, argues that vulnerable children have a fundamental right to be adopted, which he calls "analogous to the right to basic health care or to social security."

When viewed from this perspective, he says, "adoption isn't so much a matter of legal policy as of lived charity."

More than five million children in the United States are adopted, a statistic that points to "an ongoing revolution in how families are formed today," says Jackson, who is professor of Christian ethics at Emory's Candler School of Theology.

Jackson explores that revolution in a way he hopes will help both adoptive parents and lawmakers. In addition to his own research, the book includes Jewish, Catholic and Protestant contributors and examines issues such as the changing societal attitudes toward adoption, the ethics of cross-cultural and cross-racial adoption, the psychology of family ties, and the morality of single parent and gay and lesbian adoption.

"My goal for the book was not only to help clarify thinking on these very complex issues, but to move people to act," says Jackson. For that reason, he included two "very personal kinds of writings," the first a short, loving reflection by his niece, Marcie Jackson, about a foster child who lived with her family for several months.

"My brother and his wife have three biological children of their own and have cared for 28 foster children over the years; it clearly had an impact on their own children; Marcie grew up in the midst of foster siblings," says Jackson.

Also included is a series of letters by Gilbert Meilaender to his adoptive son that is both touching and instructive. "I want to engage people on these issues emotionally as well as intellectually," says Jackson, who recounts in the book recent newspaper stories of "serendipitous, successful" adoptions as well as tragic failures.

Among the book's contributors are family law attorney John Mayoue on embryonic adoption, American studies scholar Sandra Patton-Imani on adoption and race, psychologists Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen and Gretchen Miller Wrobel on the moral psychology of adoption, and legal historian Stephen Presser on adoption and the law.

The book is an outgrowth of Jackson's work as a senior fellow at CSLR and a product of the center's latest research projects on sex, marriage and the family, as well as on the child in law, religion and society. For more information, click here.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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