International Adoption Advocates Fight Back against decline in adoptions

Pacific Harbor Seals

Mother Pacific harbor seals leave newborn pups on the beach when they go into the sea to fish. Believing the pups have been abandoned, humans take them to aquariums or try to raise them themselves, often unsuccessfully. Mother seals returning to the beach to nurse search futilely for their babies.

I think of these seals when I read about international adoption. Thankfully, it has declined from a high of 22,884 in 2004 to 11,059 in 2010. Wide-scale corruption or other abuses has caused Ethiopia to join Cambodia, Guatemala, Nepal and Russia, in closing their borders while adoptions from China, the biggest supplier of babies, have been reduced.

Jane

Adoption advocates are coming out in full force to counter the decline, whether through evangelical crusades or progressive parades. They conduct emotionally charged campaigns, employing images of wailing Haitian children or emaciated Ethiopian babies to urge American public officials to use their power to increase the number of children available for adoption.

Writing for The Nation, (The Evangelical Adoption Crusade, 4/21/11) Kathryn Joyce* notes: “As a way for conservative evangelicals to reclaim the social gospel message from liberal churches, adoption is a perfect storm…seemingly defining antiabortion activism as more truly ‘prolife’—or ‘whole life,’ as one Bethany [Christian Services] staffer coined it--while providing new opportunity…to spread the gospel.”

Joyce tells us: “One result has been the creation of ‘rainbow congregations’ across the country, like the congregation [Russell] Moore helps pastor in Louisville, Highview Baptist. An active adoption ministry has brought 140 adopted children into the congregation in the past five years. These children don’t recognize the flags of their home countries, Moore proudly noted at a 2010 conference, but they can all sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”

Liberals are just as committed to international adoption. I've attended services at Unitarian Universalist Churches in several cities and it's clear that Evangelicals do not have a lock on "rainbow congregations."

Prominent non-evangelical adoption advocates include Jane Aronson, an adoptive mother and pediatrician specializing in the treatment of internationally adopted children. She founded Worldwide Orphans Foundation and serves on the board of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services; adoptive mother and law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, director of Harvard University’s Child Advocacy Program, of which she is the only professor; National Public Radio weekend announcer and adoptive father Scott Simon, and US Senator and adoptive mother Mary Landrieu (D. LA), founder of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Sen. Landrieu, along with liberal Senator Amy Klobuchar (D. MN), has teamed up with conservative senators Sam Brownback (R KS) and James Inhofe (R OK) to support conservative Christian adoption agencies. According to Joyce, Landrieu will reintroduce the Families for Orphans Act which would “create a special State Department office to oversee adoptions and offer—critics say condition—developmental aid to countries that help obtain permanent parental care for orphans, including through international adoption.”

Even Prince William and his betrothed, Kate Middleton, are allegedly getting into the act. According to the National Enquirer: “The bride-to-be admires actress ANGELINA JOLIE’S multinational adoptions … and both she and William are determined to create a loving home for a child from another culture.” A "palace insider" goes on to speculate that "Adopting a child from another country would demonstrate that 21st century royals are willing to connect with the ordinary world to become more relevant. And Kate is determined to do her best to help."

It’s tempting to assume that what these advocates are really after are children to meet the needs of the infertile. Indeed Sen. Klobuchar brags on her website that “she has helped hundreds of Minnesota families navigate the difficult and complicated international adoption process.” It’s no coincidence that many advocates are adoptive parents who struggled with infertility.

It is also true that misguided altruism plays a part. Many advocates truly believe that adoption is the best, if not the only way, to help poor children. Attorneys and adoptive parents Johanna Oreskovic and Trish Maskew describe Bartholet’s views: “she leave[s] no doubt where she stands: International Adoption should be if not the preferred alternative, then at least a preferred alternative for the ‘millions on millions’ of children in the developing world who would otherwise be doomed to living out their childhoods in damaging institutions or on the streets.’” (“Red Thread or Slender Reed: Deconstructing Prof Bartholet’s Mythology of International Adoption,” Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, 2009)

Advocates have seen rooms full of cribs pushed close together, babies anxious for any sign of affection. It’s easy to ignore doubts about corruption or sweep aside thoughts that the children (like the seal pups on the beach) may be waiting for their mothers to come for them. Yet in some countries, such as Nepal, as we recently wrote, children are kept in deplorable conditions and put on view to westerners to get them to open their wallets. It's outright thievery, and trafficked children are the pawns.

Fortunately, others are speaking up including the supposed beneficiaries of international adoption, adoptees themselves. Peter Dodds, adopted from Germany at the age of three in 1957 and author of Outer Search/Inner Journey (see book above) recently appeared on “Test of Faith.” He likened international adoption as “bringing a palm tree from the Bahamas to Canada and expecting it to flourish.”

Dodds points out that international adoption helps only a tiny fraction of abused, neglected, and abandoned children and does nothing to solve high birth rates or poverty. International adoption has been corrupted by big money and exploits poor women. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of American children languish in the foster care system. Rather than adoption, the answer to the plight of poor children is organizations like World Vision and UNICEF which support children in their own countries.

Other adoptees are speaking out as well. Jane Jeong Trenka, author of The Language of Blood about being raised by white parents in a small Minnesota town, is working with other Korean adoptees to reform Korean adoption laws. Their proposals would give mothers more time to make adoption decisions, allow adoptees access to information about their original identities, and help single mothers keep their babies. MI OK Song Bruining, also adopted from Korea, and Joan Shumack, adopted from Greece, have spoken against international adoption at American Adoption Congress Conferences. 

Those who adopted internationally are making their voices heard. In addition to Johanna Oreskovic and Trish Maskew, these include David Kruchkow of Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR), Professor David Smolin of the Cumberland University School of Law, and Usha Rengachary Smerdon and Tracy Desserich, board members of Ethica. Although not an adoptive parent, Brandeis professor and investigative reporter, E. J. Graff has written extensively about international adoption, exposing the myths that continue to support it, “The Lie We Love” (Foreign Policy, Nov/Dec 2008) and "The Baby Business" (Democracy Journal, Summer 2010)

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*Joyce is also the author about the deceptive tactics of Crisis Pregnancy Centers used to convince American women to surrender their babies, “Shotgun Adoption,” 8/26/09