I spend a lot of time behind the wheel these days, what with one appointment and another, and so yesterday afternoon found me in my car listening to Fresh Air. To be honest, talk radio is usually semi-background noise for me (I work with the radio on all day and often have to listen to things two or three times to make sure I didn’t miss something), but the interview Dave Davies was conducting with Kathryn Joyce was so riveting—and horrifying—that at one point I almost ran off the road. Joyce, a journalist whose last book (Quiverfull) explored the world of the movement whose anti-contraception philosophy is followed by the Duggars of 19 Kids and Counting, has exposed the fraudulent practices brought about by the recent entanglement of adoption with Christianity in The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. If you’re like me, you probably thought until this moment that the push to adopt kids, especially kids from foreign countries, was probably the least malevolent part of the conservative Christian agenda. True, there are plenty of needy kids right here at home, and then there’s the religion thing, but hey, nothing’s perfect, and to me, it’s more important to save a child first and ask questions about that child’s religious education later. I mean, what could be bad about bringing children who aren’t wanted and who have nowhere to go into a loving home? Plenty, according to Joyce—and, if the stories she told on Fresh Air are anything to go by, I agree. Imagine the following scenario, for example: A loving and childless couple in New Mexico, he an Army career officer, she a homemaker, want to adopt an orphan, or a family of orphans. Via a Christian adoption agency, they see a video of three sisters, aged 5, 7, and 9 years, and fall in love (long distance; the girls are in Ethiopia). They are told that the girls’ mother died of HIV/AIDS, and that the father is dying, too, and that there is no money to take care of the girls, who are about to become destitute and may in fact have to turn to prostitution to survive. Their hearts open to these poor kids (no wonder; I was almost crying at this point in the story myself), and Mrs. Homemaker flies to Ethopia to meet the sisters. The only problem? The girls are actually 7, 11, and 13 years old; they’re not even remotely orphans (their father is alive and well); and they’re pretty far from the destitute status they were advertised as having (their father has a good government job and, by Ethopian standards, they’re actually middle class). The girls, however, are excited to be traveling to the US...because they’ve been told, essentially, that they’re being enrolled in an extended home stay program to get a good education, and that they'll be going home to Ethiopia at some point when they're older and their schooling is complete. So, all is vanity, nothing…