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See the New Adoption App That Lets You Swipe to Find Your Baby

It’s already being dubbed the Tinder of the adoption world.

Like a scenario out of Netflix’s Black Mirror, a new proposed app called Adoptly is a service that will allow you to swipe right for a baby or left if it’s on to the next. However, baby browsing via an app doesn’t seem to sit well with some folks. Is looking for kids Tinder-style really kosher?

“When parents adopt, they first find an agency to develop trust,” says Dr. Harvey Karp, a pediatrician and book author. “This is like picking a doctor before having a baby. Looking at photos and videos is commonplace, but picking children by swiping photos is an emotionally difficult experience for someone wanting to adopt. It means actively rejecting child after child.” 

On top of questioning whether or not this type of “impulse gesture” is good for the adoption process, marketing info for Adoptly seems a bit sketchy. Nicole Witt, the executive director of The Adoption Consultancy, told Fox News she’s suspicious of the company and their marketing tactics which use images of infants, a rarity in a real adoption. And just last week, Adoptly’s Kickstarter campaign was suspended for unknown reasons. The campaign sprung up again on Indiegogo, but a note posted to the page indicates that it’s under review by Indiegogo's Trust & Safety team.

Co-founder of the app Alex Nawrocki insists Adoptly is legit and they are simply misunderstood.

“We are not dictating which options are made available,” he said. “Adoptly acts like an aggregator of agency and network databases already in existence, pulling in legally pre-approved profiles, making the adoption process much simpler.”

He explains that the app's purpose is to introduce potential parents to the adoption process. Hoax or not, Adoptly has certainly opened the conversation to think outside of the box in regards to how adoption normally works.

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