Angela Tucker is a young black woman, domestically adopted in a white family and the subject of the acclaimed documentary Closure (http://closuredocumentary.com) (2013). The film is a riveting, moving and joyous account of her reunion with her birthfather first, her mother later and then her extended family. In the process Angela became the writer of an interesting blog on adoption: The Adopted Life. One of Tucker’s last pieces poses an essential question about international adoption: ‘Is Adopting From Third World Countries Necessary?’ (http://theadoptedlife.com/...). She describes an organization in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which changed its focus from adoption to welfare, to family planning and prenatal care, to support for women in labor, to post-partem needs and infant development care. Heartline Ministries, as the organization is called, shows that poor mothers in difficult situations are able, with some help, to safely give birth and to raise their children. Of the 350 women they helped only one gave her child up for adoption. Tucker ends her piece with the question: ‘What if we worked towards establishing more services like Heartline instead of more adoption agencies in […] areas [like Haiti]?’ Angela Tucker suggests that child welfare should be the core mission of international humanitarian social work, welfare seen as support for mothers in developing countries, as support to keep children in their families, extended families or at least in their communities. International adoption should be second choice, ‘a beautiful second choice solution to meet an unfortunate yet very necessary need.’
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