The Orphan Market

International adoption's rise, corruption, and 95% collapse. In a single generation, U.S. intercountry adoption fell from nearly 23,000 children a year to barely a thousand — dismantled country by country by bans, trafficking scandals, and a generation of grown adoptees asking who had actually been saved. This ReThink History series follows the whole arc, from the Korean War pipeline that invented the system to China, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Russia, through the evangelical orphan-theology boom and the Hague Convention, asking one organizing question: when does saving a child become buying one? Told evenhandedly and grounded in the record. Narrated by AI voices from sourced, human-reviewed research.