A black market adoption is the sale of a baby for profit. Some may have the image of a dark alley and money being exchanged. However, it isn’t nor was it like this at all.

In the early 1900’s, private secular and religious groups began the permanent residential care of orphaned children, but were ill equipped to handle the multitude of America’s orphans. By the 1920’s, social changes and the absence of state run orphanages provided fertile ground for the emergence of black market adoption as a means to place babies with adoptive parents.

From elite maternity homes to the back doors of private doctors’ offices, babies began to be sold by unscrupulous doctors, attorneys, and other individuals. Word quickly spread in cities all over the country: if you wanted to adopt a baby in a short amount of time, one could be obtained for you, for a fee of anywhere from $100 to $10,000, no questions asked. Faced with long waiting lists and sometimes outright rejection from established agencies, many chose to buy a baby on the black market.

Many doctors still delivered babies in their offices and records were easily falsified. Most states even allowed certain information to be changed. Society knew of the existence of the black market baby trade, but little was done to stop it. Many of the baby sellers are now deceased, but they have left behind thousands of adoptees with little or no information to aid them in their searches for their natural families.

Black market adoptions have left little or nothing in the way of a paper trail for those who are now searching. Adoptive parents are frequently the best source of information, sometimes having met the natural mother beforehand, and certainly knowing where and when they went to pick up their baby. Adoptees should attempt to gather as much information as possible before beginning their search.