Adoptions from China: What do we do now? UPDATED
Many adoptive families in the China adopt community are reeling with news coming out that for many years children have been taken by force for purposes of international adoption.
This is contrary to what many adoptive families were told and believed about the “ethics” of the Chinese adoption system.
Other adoption communities have had to deal with this issue in recent years, such as Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, the Marshall Islands, and on and on. However, China has been promoted for years as being “clean” with children truly abandoned due to China’s one child policy. Although many of us suspected all was not right in adoptions from China, now the truth is finally coming out.
What is a family to do when they realize they may have unwittingly participated in unethical adoptions and/or trafficking? We have been reading article comments and blogs posts about the situation and some adoptive parents are (as despicable as this seems) denying the reports or even justifying them with typical “ends justify the means” adoption thinking. Other, more sensitive parents are asking, what can be done now?
With regard to adoption corruption and lies: It is never too late to do the right thing.
Once the initial shock is over, adoptive parents with children from China have got to face facts and stop denying these reports. Then they must muster the courage to demand answers, demand justice, and work to determine the truth of how their child came to be available for adoption. For years many have been fed the absolute false notion that birth families in China can never be located due to “abandonments.” As more and more families have found their children’s birth families we know this isn’t true.
REFORM Talk strongly encourages prospective adoptive parents in the process of adopting from China not to take their agency at its word and to seek truth about possible referrals, even if they are waiting children with severe special needs. These prospective parents are paying large sums of money to China and they are owed transparency, honesty, ethical adoptions, and an end to the lying.
We also urge adoptive parents to start the process of discovering the truth of their child’s history and make the effort to right a wrong as best as that can be done even in the face of possible tragedy.
If your agency suggests you do not seek out birth family information ask yourself why the agency does not want you or your child to have this information. Your agency may have something to hide. Or they may just be hoping that the denial is stronger than the wish to give an innocent child a chance at finding out who they really are.
A few resources are available to help get started:
Yahoo groups: ChinaBirthFamilySearch and Internationaladoptionsearch (website associated with latter group is www.internationaladoptionsearch.com )
Brian Stuy’s Research-China.org
International Soundex Reunion Registry http://www.isrr.net/
If readers have additional resources available please send them to us and we will update our information.
Update: Thoughtful questioning from a China AP.Read Jane Samuel’s article from June 8, 2011 from Lexington Herald-Leader at Trafficked? – Another Layer in the Chinese Adoption Journey
Some of the questions she has include the following:
“Had she perhaps been sold by one municipal orphanage not approved for overseas adoption to another approved orphanage? Or confiscated by population control officials and turned over to an orphanage in return for monetary or other recognition? Or stolen directly out of her village by child traffickers? Or relinquished as part of a population control incentive program, which program paid parents while conveniently feeding the increasing demand for overseas adoption?
“How in the world will I share this information with her? ”
“And what of the children still available for adoption in China? Are they really all orphans “abandoned at the gate” or are some part of a black-market system that favors the population-bottom-line, leaving birth parents who knows where and adoptive parents apprehensive about their child’s true origin?”
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