According to this article in The Telegraph, a UK newspaper, many charitable and non-profit organizations are warning against the rush to adopt children from Haiti.
Read the rest of this entry »
This report: Fly Away Children, broadcast on Australia’s ABC News Foreign Correspondent program (click “play video”), shows some of the problems involved with adoptions coming out of Ethiopia.
For the past four years, the number of children adopted internationally has declined, with the notable exception of adoptions from Africa. Adoptions of children from Africa have increased steadily in the last few years with the majority of children being adopted from Ethiopia. Read the rest of this entry »
This article “Chinese Babies Stolen by Officials for Foreign Adoption” recently printed in the Los Angeles Times has created a stir within the adoption community. It has been re-printed in several different newspapers, among them the front page of last Sunday’s Oregonian. It is a harrowing topic, one that hits home for every member of our adoption constellation.
The article talks about widespread corruption within the Chinese adoption system where children have been stolen by government officials and sold to orphanages presumably motivated by the $3000.00 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages. This has been documented to have taken place in villiages all over the country.
When news like this comes to our attention the instinctive reaction is to think “not me” or “no, not my child” but it’s so difficult to know for sure. What can we do to ensure that we are not feeding a system that could potentially be stealing babies from their mothers?