Books full of pencil marks, board-games with missing pieces and neglected exercise equipment are all just a click away with Craigslist. Users can also adopt dogs, cats, fish, birds and guinea pigs, or put their own animals up for adoption. You can even find your next romantic relationship on the website.
But the new user may soon be finding a startling, new item available for trade or purchase on the popular online market. Babies. That’s right, human infants.
Would-be parents and would-be non-parents are beginning to look towards Craigslist as a resource for adoption, according to a recent article by ABC news.
There are a few reasons an aspiring parent might use Craigslist to adopt a child. Adoption services are often expensive and users may end up wasting their energy and money through processes that often take years.
“Craigslist and other online resources put the power back in parents and birth moms’ hands to some degree,” Piper Weiss, a yahoo reporter who has spent the last few years investigating online adoption said, in an ABC interview. “It allows them to connect with each other, potentially, but also it forces them to be their own filter and kind of be their own experts in the matter. There are a lot of risks and a lot of reward to that.”
Parents who use Craigslist still have to go through the same legal processes to adopt the child, and the practice is only legal in a handful of states, such as Connecticut, Illinois and Kansas. It is entirely illegal in Alabama and Kentucky, both of which have outlawed any kind of adoption advertising, according to an article in Yahoo! news.
As crazy as it sounds, if I were ever to adopt a child online, I would use Craigslist as a constant reference, along with whatever adoption agencies are available and affordable.
It may be ideal to adopt only through the proper channels: to find an agency and shell out money to find the perfect match for my family. But what is a prospective parent to do if they have no luck with formal adoption agencies?
Craigslist allows users to consult with other users and to exchange phone numbers and personal information at their own discretion. In turn, it allows would-be parents to actively search for a candidate for adoption, and to do their own research and interviews on parents that would like to put their child up for adoption.
The fact that Craigslist is a website known for internet scams and fraud might make it seem like a bad resource for adoption, but the fact that Facebook is a website known for online bullying and stalking doesn’t make it a bad resource for social networking or stop users from giving out highly personal information every single day. Just because there is a potential for Craigslist to be abused does not mean it is a bad adoption resource.
So to the careful, responsible adult who is considering adoption, I say, try Craigslist.