The Adoption and Donor Conception Factbook, The Only Comprehensive Source of U.S. & Global Data on the Invisible Families of Adoption, Foster Care & Donor Conception; by Lori Carangelo, 210 pp; Soft Cover; 2014; 8.5x11; ISBN: 9780806357553;Item # CF8812

Adoption expert Lori Carangelo, the founder of Americans for Open Records (AmFOR), has compiled an up-to-date collection of findings pertaining to all aspects of adoption and donor conception. Her book The Adoption and Donor Conception Factbook is an "at a glance" resource for researchers, helping professionals, activists, lawmakers, journalists, genealogists, and other researchers seeking the facts about America's multi-billion dollar Adoption, Assisted Reproduction, and Foster Care industries.

The only comprehensive book of its kind, The Adoption and Donor Conception Factbook defines and explains the differences between Adoptees, "Birth" Parents, Parents by Estoppel, Defacto Parents, Adoptive Parents or Adopters, Donors, Donor Offspring, Intended Parents, Foster Parents, Psychological Parents, Carriers, Gestational Surrogates, Altruistic Surrogates, Custody Evaluators, and so on. Readers will find chapters devoted to each of these constituencies in the adoption and donor conception industries. Ms. Carangelo explains each stakeholder’s legal or political status and then accounts for their numbers, origins or whereabouts, and the pros and cons of their points of view.

Here is a mere handful of what readers can take away from this unique book:

• While the 2010 Census estimated 1.6-milion "adopted children" in the U.S. (1 out of every 6 households has an adopted child), university researchers estimate "5 to 7 million adopted children" and professional pollsters say 48% of all Americans are "touched by adoption."
• 50% of children processed through Holt International were sent abroad for adoption.
• Half the U.S. population will have bogus ancestry within 4 generations due to falsified adoption birth records.
• 100,000 to 300,000 children in the U.S., and 1 million globally--many initially alleged taken for adoption--are estimated trafficked by the commercial sex trade each year.
• Between 1999 and 2013, more than 46,000 Russian children were adopted by Americans while the 10,000 American-born children taken out of the U.S. for adoption abroad is known to be an under-reported estimate.
• 80% of children raised by gay couples were not adopted.
• 82% of 641,016 adult adoptees polled "actively" searched for their "birth" families.
• 98% of "birth" mothers who were located wanted to be found.
• The government estimate of "30,000 to 60,000" donor offspring births in the U.S. annually is a grossly under-reported number due to voluntary reporting and anonymity of donors, and increasing numbers of
• uncounted donor offspring in the U.S. were born to lower-paid surrogates outside the U.S.
• Only 54% of family court judges polled had law degrees.
• Among the 450,000 children in foster care at any given time, the number who died while in care is shown to be under-reported.
• Mass graves of neglected and murdered infants and children have been discovered at unwed mothers’ homes in Ireland, at a Florida reform school for boys, and elsewhere.
• Adoptees and donor offspring are over-represented in categories including violent crimes, psychiatric problems, and suicide.

Lori Carangelo, the author of The Ultimate Search Book, lets the numbers speak for themselves but also pulls no punches. For instance, "Chapter 3: Adoptees--Outcomes" discusses adoptees’ denied access to medical information and criminal activity among adopted children. In the second part of the book, "Statistics of Assisted Reproduction," the author cites the available statistics on the number of sperm and egg donors, evaluates the privacy issues surrounding assisted reproduction, surveys the legislative history of assisted reproduction throughout the U.S., and identifies key lobbying organizations in the battle over assisted reproduction, including the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. In “Part 3: Foster Care, CPS, Family Courts,” Lori puts her microscope over foster care outcomes, examines the impact of the Child Protective Services Act, and asks the reader to consider the alternatives to adoption, foster care, and fertility treatments--as borne out by the statistics. In all cases, readers and researchers will be amazed by the plethora of facts amassed by Ms. Carangelo and will want to browse the back stories, consider the sources, follow the dollars, and judge for themselves.

The Adoption and Donor Conception Factbook concludes with an up-to-date list of websites pertaining to this topic and a comprehensive bibliography of books and articles. The book contains a detailed subject index for ease of browsing.