When Pollstar covered Madonna’s failed attempt to adopt 3-year-old Chifundo “Mercy” James earlier this week, the comments section heated up – mostly with negative opinions. Cohen agrees there’s something fundamentally icky about the whole thing.

There is a creepy evocation of colonialism when a rich American or European swoops into a poor African nation and grabs a child, as if the country were a baby plantation. Critics charge that the adoptive parents benefit from the persistence of poverty. They do, but in much the same way as Lenny Bruce described the modus operandi of Jonas Salk, J. Edgar Hoover and himself: “These men thrive upon the continuance of disease, segregation and violence.” That is, they respond to but do not promote human misery. (O.K., except for Hoover.)

“Baby plantation.” Wow, that conjures up some really freaky images. But isn’t it a good thing to raise kids up out of desperation and give them opportunities? Yes and no. As Cohen points out, there are many reasons besides poverty children find themselves deserted.

It was China’s one-child policy that made so many girls available for adoption. Genocide orphaned thousands of Rwandan children. AIDS still reduces children to wretchedness in many parts of Africa. Adoptive parents do not seek to protract anyone’s torment but to build a family and help a child, actions we esteem.

So how can wealthy people who want to make a difference do so without adopting? Lots of ways.

But as far as helping children, adoptive parents might do so more effectively simply by donating money (as Madonna has also done in Malawi). A fraction of the typical $20,000 spent on an adoption or the $250,000 it takes to raise a middle-class American child could assist a great many African kids. But the ethical obligation to help suffering children does not apply only to those who wish to adopt; it is a general duty we all share.

We are morally required to aid a child who lies bleeding on our doorstep. Or a child across the street. Or across the town. Or across the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than merely urge adopting families to redirect their expenditures, we should reallocate the money we ourselves spend on a ski weekend in Aspen, a flat-screen TV for the dog’s room, a $3 billion stealth destroyer for our Navy ($4 billion if equipped with optional – and fictional – leather upholstery.)

This is a great point. There are plenty of people, celebrities and regular Joes, who do lots of good without turning their homes into an international version of “The Brady Bunch.”

Take for example Annie Lennox, who’s used her celebrity over the past two decades to bring attention to suffering around the world and started the Sing Foundation last year to help alleviate some of the misery HIV/AIDS is bringing to Africa. I’m sure it breaks her heart every time she has to walk away from a child whose parents have succumbed to the disease, but you don’t see her starting her own Von Trapp family.

As a matter of fact, some people actually believe foreign adoptions make the problem worse.

Some groups, notably Save the Children, based in London, assert that the prospect of a foreign adoption encourages desperate parents to abandon their children in the hope of securing a better life for them. This claim is unconvincing. Families are demolished not by the possibility of adoption but the reality of poverty or disease or war, according to Dr. Jane Aronson, a pediatrician specializing in adoption medicine. It is vital to address these harrowing conditions, but that does not preclude adoption, she says; “To help one child is a worthy thing to do.”

Save the Children is more convincing when it argues that children should be raised by their families in their own cultures. This is a laudable goal, but to achieve it, Aronson says, much needs to be done to “help rebuild communities around the world so families can receive proper social services and needn’t give up their children.”

So what’s the bottom line here? It appears it’s pretty fuzzy, but one thing is clear.

As long as there are orphans, the ethical question is not whether it is O.K. to adopt but how to do it. Jacqueline Novogratz, the head of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit that promotes anti-poverty efforts throughout the world, says: “Reputable adoption agencies know where children come from. Some children are abandoned and some are placed in orphanages when their families can’t afford to raise them. Finding those children good, stable homes could change their lives immeasurably. Going through the right agencies is key.”

Perhaps in the end we should just give Madonna and other celebrities credit for trying to do something good and avoid second guessing their motives. As Cohen points out, there are plenty of other reasons to give them a hard time.

One other consideration: would endorsing foreign adoption compel us to stop teasing Madonna? Happily, no. While she seems to have acted creditably here, as long as she dons a T-shirt emblazoned with the unconvincing slogan, “Kabbalists Do it Better,” let her mockery be unconfined. She’s rich, she’s glamorous – a self-made success, still a pop star at 50. Of course we make fun of her; we need to.

Indeed.

Read Cohen’s entire essay in the New York Times here.

For more info on or to donate to Annie Lennox’s Sing Foundation visit AnnieLennoxSing.com.