Is it immoral for a person in a rich country to adopt a child from a very poor country, while the parents are still alive. Often, the parents in poor countries will beg rich people to take their children, so consent is not an issue.

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Since your question is so timely, given the arrest of the missionaries in Haiti who were illegally taking 33 children out of the country, the first thing to point out is that it might be immoral to adopt such children, even with parental consent, if the adoption was made possible by actions that were illegal. That is, it might be immoral because, in general, it is immoral to break the law. Nonetheless, we might ask whether it would be immoral even if it were not illegal or whether this is one of those cases where breaking the law is not immoral (e.g., though some may take it as controversial, I take it that Rosa Parks was not doing something immoral in breaking the (immoral) segregation laws and that homosexuals were not doing something immoral when they had sex in their own homes in states that had (immoral) laws against such acts).

Other philosophers will know this literature better than I, but I take this case of adoption to be one where questions of consent become very difficult, perhaps like the case of someone consenting to sell her kidney or one of her eyes or other organs, or the case of prisoners consenting to be used in medical experiments, or perhaps the somewhat different case of people consenting to prostitution. The worry is that there may be a difference between saying you consent and giving your consent were you not in a compromised situation or were you fully informed, etc. A few parents in Haiti may be agreeing to give away their children only because they are in such desperate circumstances which they believe will never improve or only because they are too tired to think through all the consequences, etc. If so, it seems it would be immoral to take advantage of that situation, especially if there are other options available, such as providing temporary shelter for the children until the country is in better circumstances.

Of course, it also seems plausible that circumstances will never get that much better--that most poor children raised in Haiti will never have the opportunities for education, healthcare, and wealth that they would have if they were adopted by a family in a richer country. (And the parents know this.) And we do allow parents to put their children up for adoption, at least at birth. So, the question bleeds into other issues, such as our obligations to improve the situation in countries like Haiti, the importance of biological parenthood, and whether the children would consent were they fully informed of their situation, etc.

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