Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) Volume 20 Number 6 2006 pp 319–325 © 2006 The Author. Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKBIOTBioethics0269-9702© 2006 The Author. Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.2006206319325ARTICLES Claim from Adoption Revisited Eduardo Rivera-López Address for correspondence: Eduardo Rivera-López, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Miñones 2159, C1428ATG Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. E-mail: erivera@utdt.edu THE CLAIM FROM ADOPTION REVISITED EDUARDO RIVERA-LÓPEZ ABSTRACT In a recent paper published in this journal, Thomas S. Petersen makes a qualified defense of what he calls ‘the Claim from Adoption’, according to which, ‘instead of expending resources on bringing new children [in developed countries] into the world using reproductive technology and caring for these children, we ought to devote these resources to the adoption and care of existing destitute children’. My purpose in this paper is not to discuss Petersen’s argument in favor of that claim. Rather, I want to show that, even if the Claim from Adoption might be, other things being equal, true, it is not true all things considered. What is, all things considered, true is a much more complex set of statements, including a general prima facie obligation to adopt, as well as an obligation by the state of developed countries to discourage procreation and promote adoption of desti- tute children. Keywords adoption , reproduction , partial compliance , assisted reproductive technologies , distributive justice I According to available data, 6 million children under the age of five die each year from hunger- related causes in developing countries. 1 In contrast, in developed countries, thousand of couples experi- encing infertility problems recur to assisted repro- ductive technologies (ART) in order to have a biological child. 2 The cost of this technology is high: 1 FAO. 2005. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2005. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, p. 18. Avail- able at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/008/a0200e/a0200e.pdf [Accessed 8 August 2006]. 2 In Europe, about 250,000 ART procedures were carried out in 1999 (see P. Katz et al. The Economic Impact of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Nature Cell Biology & Nature Medicine. Supplement. 2004: p. 29). In 2001 in the US, there was a total of 30,000 live-birth deliveries and 40,000 infants resulting from about 100,000 procedures (see V. Clay Wright et al. Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveil- lance – United States, 2001. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. April 30, 2004. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/ mmwrhtml/ss5301a1.htm [Accessed 8 August 2006]. Between 1 and 4 billion dollars per year is spent on ART in the US, and between 875 million 1.3 billion dollars and in Europe. 3 In light of this appalling contrast, it is reasonable to think that something is wrong. Thousands of children could be rescued from hunger and destitu- tion each year if those couples were to adopt those children instead of spending (or making their health care system spend) thousands of dollars on ART. Is it not reasonable to claim that there is a strong moral case to stop reproduction, at least when it is so expensive, and to adopt destitute children instead? 3 These figures are probably inaccurate, but they do give an idea of the overall magnitude. The median cost of an ART procedure (one cycle) in the US was about $10,000 in 2000 (see J. Gerris and E. Van Royen. Avoiding Multiple Pregnancies in ART. A Plea for Single Embryo Transfer. Human Reprod 2000; 15, 9: 1884–1888, p. 1887), and the cost per live birth was about $56,000 in 2001 (see Katz et al. op. cit. note 2, p. 30). In Europe, the costs are much lower: about $3,500 per cycle and $20,000 per live birth (Ibid, p. 30).