International Adoption

Position

Origins-USA, Inc opposes international adoption unless necessary to provide medical care that the child cannot obtain in his own country.

Supporting Evidence

As mothers who lost their first child to adoption, Origins members know that these children from Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and Africa had mothers who loved them. No matter their nationality, mothers are hard-wired to grieve when they lose their children.

The adoption industry has convinced Americans that millions of infants and toddlers have been abandoned at train stations, along roads, or church doorsteps and are living in crowded orphanages waiting for generous Americans to take them home. The realities behind this a myth is well-documented in an excellent article, “The Lie We Love” by E. J. Graff in the November/December issue of Foreign Policy[1]. Graff is a senior researcher directing the Gender & Justice Project at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Her work appears in such outlets as the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, The New Republic, and the Women's Review of Books.[2] Graff documents these facts:

• The roles of many international adoption agenciesis to find children for Western families, not to find families for needy children.
• Since the mid-1990s, the number of international adoptions each year has doubled, from 22,200 in 1995 to just under 40,000 in 2006.
• Babies in many countries are systematically bought, coerced, and stolen away from their birth families. Nearly half of the 40 countries that are the top sources for adoption have at least temporarily halted adoptions or have prevented agencies from sending children to the United States because of serious concerns about corruption and kidnapping.
• Prospective adoptive parents pay fees to adoption agencies from $15,000 to $35,000 (of which $11,650 comes from a federal tax credit). These fees are so disproportionately large that they encourage corruption.
• Demand, driven in part by women waiting too long to decide to have a family and the shortage of babies due to better birth control and legalized abortion, drives international adoption.
• In reality, there are very few young, healthy orphans available for adoption around the world. Orphans are rarely healthy babies; healthy babies are rarely orphaned. Ninety-five percent of orphans are older than five, living with extended families that need financial support. The supply of adoptable babies rises to meet demand and disappears when Western cash is no longer available.
• China’s one-child policy has created an unprecedented number of girls available for adoption; however there are more couples trying to adopt Chinese girls than are available. China has recently reduced the number of children sent abroad because of the growing sex imbalance, declining poverty, and scandals involving child trafficking.

Other researchers have come to the same conclusions. “Red Threat or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof. Bartholet’s Mythology of International Adoption” 14 (Buffalo Human Rights Law Review 71) by Johanna Oreskovic and Trish Maskew demonstrates that international adoption has become a mechanism of providing  healthy infants children to those who want them rather than providing help to children who need it, generally older children and children with disabilities. The authors are attorneys who adopted children from abroad.

On a personal level, the memoirs of persons adopted from abroad attest to their pain at being separated from their mothers and displaced from their countries. Jane Jeong Trenka, adopted from South Korea, wrote:

Would I rather have not been adopted? I don’t know. ... How can I weigh the loss of my language and culture against the freedom that America has to offer, the opportunity to have the same rights as a man? How can a person exiled as a child, without a choice, possibly fathom how he would have ‘turned out’ had he stayed in Korea? How many educational opportunities must I mark on my tally sheet before I can say it was worth losing my mother?"[3]

Katy Robinson also born in South Korea, coped by denying her identity.  “As a child, all I ever wanted was to not be adopted. I grew up convincing myself that I was just like the rest of my familyundefinedcopying their personality traits, mannerisms, and idiosyncrasies as my own.”  Although she believed that her adoption “was the kindest thing my family could have done for me,” she searched for her mother. “There is something about the bond with the woman who gave you birth that is like no other in the world."[4]

Joan Shumack, MI OK Song Bruining, and Peter Dodds, adopted from Greece, South Korea, and Germany respectively, spoke against international adoption at conferences of the American Adoption Congress, Shumack in 2008; Song Bruining in 1999; and Dodds in 1998. Dodds also wrote a memoir[5]. All three tell of their pain from being forced to live with a family and in a culture where they did not belong.

None of these five adoptees were abandoned. In fact, the availability of adoption seems to have contributed to Trenka and Robinson being surrendered.

Children adopted internationally often have behavioral problems stemming from the loss of their families. A Google search shows that evaluation and treatment for foreign adoptees is a thriving business.[6] Abuse is not uncommon. Russia has curtailed adoptions in part because 12 Russian children were murdered by their American parents.[7]

On a positive note, fewer Americans are adopted internationally.  State Department figures show 17,438 adoptions from abroad in 2008, down from 19,613 in 2007 and from 22,884 the all-time peak in 2004. Adoptions are down because China, Russia, Ukraine, India, and Guatemala are keeping their children.  Those seeking a child may take another look at some of the 125,000 US children awaiting homes.[8]

Conclusion

International adoption does nothing to end child poverty. The 18,000 children adopted into American homes from abroad each year are only a small fraction of the tens of millions of poor children in third world countries. ORIGINS-USA believes that the money spent bringing children to the United States would be better spent helping their families care for them in their own countries.

[1] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4508

[2] http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/e_j_graff

[3] The Language of Blood, Borealis Books, St. Paul, MN (2003)

[4] A Single Square Picture, Berkley Books, New York (2002)

[5] Outer Search/Inner Journey: An Orphan and Adoptee’s Quest, Aphrodite Publishing Company, Puyallup, WA (1997)

[6] http://www.google.com/search?q=foreign+adopted+children+problems&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[7] http://adoption.about.com/od/adoptionrights/p/russiancases.htm