Adoption is defined as taking a child into one's family and raising him or her as one's own. Adoption is popular both nationally and internationally. Adoption dates back thousands of years. Adoption was first mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi said if a child was taken in at birth, the original parents would not be able to get the child back. Hammurabi also decided that if the adopted child was sent home, the adoptive family would give him money or something he could use to stay alive. Later in the 19th century, a minister named Charles Loring Brace revolutionized adoption. Brace and a few other reformers created the Children's Aid Society. The company took approximately 200,000 children between 1854 and 1930 and placed them on trains, nicknamed "orphan trains", from working-class, urban towns on the East Coast and sent them on trains to small, rural towns from the Midwest and Canada. Brace's main goal was to remove poor Catholic children and place them in Anglo-Protestant families, because society believed that if children left their Catholic homes early enough, they could become worthy citizens. This led Catholics to create orphanages to house Catholic children and to compete with society. In the 1940s, on November 19, 1997, President Bill Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which authorized additional funds to be spent on adoption programs and allowed children to be placed in a safe family. The Adoption Assistance and Child Protection Act required children to be placed with a biological family member instead of being placed in a safe environment. The Adoption and Safe Families Act was also signed to address issues related to the Adoption Assistance and Child Protection Act. The Adoption and Family Protection Act also allows paper distribution......the cost of adoption ranges from $25,000 to $50,000. In the United States, girls are preferred over boys, and potential parents are willing to pay $16,000 more for a girl than for a boy. Prospective parents also prefer non-Hispanic and non-African American children. Nationally, 50% of Caucasian babies will be adopted while less than 5% of Asian babies will be. These minority babies can cost up to $38,000 less than Caucasian babies. Foreign adoptive parents rarely have a preference regarding gender, race or country of origin. 13% of Americans prefer to adopt international children. In past years, adopting a child with special needs was a foreign concept due to medical costs. Today, many people adopt children with special needs thanks to government assistance that helps them with medical aid. The government grants a maximum of $12,900 per year to families who adopt children with special needs..