Amy Medina

Start here:  

Part 1:  The Evidence

Part 2:  Where Did We Go Wrong?

Part 3:  The Horror That is Called Child Harvesting

Part 4:  Pure Religion is to Look After Orphans (and Widows?)

Part 5:  God Told Me To…Or Maybe He Didn’t

The orphanage director in Tanzania was initially thrilled to receive the email:  “We want to adopt Freddy!”  Freddy is five years old, was abandoned, and has HIV.  He is handsome, friendly, and desperate for a family.  In just a few short weeks, the plan was to transfer him to a long-term orphanage.  This family would most likely be Freddy’s last chance for a real home.

Then the director realized that the adoptive family are not residents of Tanzania; they live in America.  They were working with a U.S. adoption agency who is ignoring Tanzanian residency requirements.  She was devastated.  She had to tell the family, “I’m sorry, you cannot adopt Freddy.  My orphanage, and our local social workers, will not allow American families to break Tanzanian law.”

Do you see the dilemma?  On one hand, there are unscrupulous agencies, who are working with unscrupulous lawyers, who could very well make Freddy’s adoption possible.  He would no longer be an orphan; he would be a son and a brother and have every opportunity at his fingertips.  Or, he could live the rest of his life in an institution where his needs will be met, but not much more.

It’s the kind of ethics that college students debate about but never really have to face.  Do the ends justify the means?  Sure, we want to clean up international adoption.  Sure, we want to end corruption and bribery.  But what about the children?  What about the ones who really do need adoption?  What happens to them?

This is the question you must ask yourself:  Is it worth it for Freddy to be adopted, if it means that hundreds of other children will be subsequently, unnecessarily, separated from their families?  There’s a strong correlation.  Opening the way for Freddy to be adopted by breaking Tanzanian law would pave the road of corruption that leads to the exploitation of hundreds of other families.  And I am confident of this because it has been documented in country…after country…after country.

This is why we simply cannot see international adoption as the answer to the orphan crisis.  It is one of the answers, but only in countries where the process is heavily regulated by a strong central authority.  That means that for kids like Freddy, it’s much better to support, encourage, or even start(!) programs and plans within the country to help orphans, instead of adopting them out.

However, please know that there are plenty of countries which do have regulated adoption programs and enough government infrastructure in place to ensure they will be ethical.  Though this series may come off as anti-international adoption, I assure you I am not.  Please, please…if you have a strong desire to adopt internationally, go for it.  Adoption is good and beautiful–and desperately needed for many children.  Don’t let the pitfalls scare you off.  You just need to arm yourself with plenty of information and keep your eyes wide open.  There are many ways to ensure you have an ethical adoption.  So here’s my advice:

1.   Read this book.  

In Defense of the Fatherless:  Redeeming International Adoption and Orphan Care (by Amanda Bennett and Sara Brinton).  In some ways, this entire series is a summary of this book.  I have read over a dozen books on adoption, covering adoption theology, adoption processes, adoption options.  Not one Christian book has dealt with the hard topic of adoption ethics until this book came out less than a year ago.  This book is excellently researched, tough and truthful, yet compassionate.  It is absolutely a must-read for any Christian considering international adoption, anyone involved in the industry, or anyone advocating for international adoption.

2.  Choose a country before you choose an agency, and choose a country that is implementing the Hague Adoption Convention.  Though this alone will not guarantee an ethical adoption, it will help significantly.  Countries which have signed to the Hague Convention are required to have a program which prioritizes domestic adoption.  They also must have a central authority capable of regulating international adoption, which helps to ensure that a particular child is truly needing adoption.  Keep in mind that if you choose a non-Hague country, you must do far more research on both the country and your agency if you want to ensure the adoption will be ethical.

3.  Do not choose a country based on whichever seems to be the fastest, easiest, and cheapest.  Choose a country based on how well their adoption program is organized, and whether they have a long-standing, effective program.  Do your own research as to the adoption laws of that country.  Find out how the country decides whether a child should be adopted, and how they determine who can adopt that child.  Find out for yourself whether or not you qualify.  Unfortunately, you may not even be able to trust all of the information on the Department of State website, since it is currently not accurate for Tanzania.

4.  This one is my own personal soapbox:  If a country has a residency requirement to adopt a child….then either move to that country or choose a different country!  You follow your own country’s adoption laws….what gives you permission to break another country’s laws?

5.  After you have chosen a country, then look for a trustworthy agency that works in that country.  During the course of this series, some people have asked me for a list of “good” and/or “bad” agencies.  I can’t do that.  It is a spectrum.  In all honesty, at this point I would have a hard time trusting most agencies that work in non-Hague countries–and there are probably hundreds of those agencies.  Most agencies are not evil.  However, many demonstrate ethnocentric principles that I cannot endorse.

Remember, the U.S. government has very few regulations in place to keep adoption agencies accountable.  Therefore, you must be in complete control of your adoption process.  That’s why I encourage you to research and choose a country before you choose an agency.  That will help you to know what is supposed to happen and what questions you need to ask.  You must do your homework before you find an agency you can trust.  Here are some sample questions:

• How long have you worked in this country? 
• What is the process to match a child with a family?  Who makes the decisions?  (Should be the decision of a central government authority, not the orphanage or the agency)
• Who do you work with on the ground?  (Again, should be a central authority, not a local social welfare officer, a lawyer, facilitator, or orphanage director.)
• Where does the money go, especially in-country?  (You should expect nothing less than a very specific, itemized list of how money is spent.)
• Does the orphanage require a donation?  (If so, then it’s not a donation, it’s a fee.)  What kind of confidence do you have that the orphanage will use that money in an ethical way?
• What is your philosophy on family preservation?  (You should receive a confident, well-thought out answer on how the agency works to preserve birth families.)
• How do you ensure that the child I am placed with is a true orphan with no family prospects?  (Agencies should be wanting to guarantee that you will be given the true background of the child, and they should have safeguards in place to ensure the information is correct.)

More suggested questions for agencies here, from Jen Hatmaker.  

Google the agency’s name along with “corruption” and see if anything comes up.  Pay attention to Facebook groups, blogs, and message boards by other families who have adopted from that country or with that agency.  Do not discount what they have to say.  

5.  Choose a “waiting child.”***

A “waiting child” is one who already has been deemed adoptable, and he is waiting for a family to select him.  When you choose a waiting child, you are helping a child find a family.  In contrast, when you send in a descriptive list of the child you are looking for, then the agency is helping you find a child–instead of helping a child find a family.  See the difference?  Read these quotes:

“While many assume the orphan crisis means there are orphanages full of babies who need to be adopted, this is simply not true.  There is a significant need for international adoption, but there are very few healthy babies and young children waiting in orphanages.” (Defense of the Fatherless) 

“Most adoption demand in the United States continues to be for healthy infants or young children, whereas most of the children who are legitimately parentless or in need of an adoptive home are older, sicker, or more damaged from trauma than most families are willing to take.”  (Kathryn Joyce)

“UNICEF estimates that 88 percent of the world’s orphans are over the age of five…However, 89 percent of children adopted by American families were under the age of five.” (DF)

What this means:  Do not go into international adoption if what you only want is a healthy baby–unless you are willing to wait for years to be matched.  However, if you are willing to bring home an older child or a special needs child–a “waiting child”–then international adoption could be what you are looking for.  Most of the corruption in international adoption has been fueled by the demand for healthy babies.  Yes, there are some legitimately abandoned or orphaned babies available–but not often.  Make sure you fully understand this reality before you decide to adopt.

***Special note on “waiting children.”  Unfortunately, I’ve heard situations where even this concept is abused by adoption agencies.  Sometimes children are posted on websites as “waiting” when they are still living with family and haven’t even been approved for adoption.  Before you choose a waiting child, you must have already gone through all the other precautionary steps.

Continue reading: 

Part 7:  Is There Hope In This Mess That We’ve Made?

Start here:  

Part 1:  The Evidence

Part 2:  Where Did We Go Wrong?

Part 3:  The Horror That is Called Child Harvesting

“Without understanding the connection between poverty, injustice, and the orphan crisis, many Christians are responding with actions that have unintended consequences.  Christians are responding to the global orphan crisis primarily by supporting orphanages, going on mission trips to visit orphans, and encouraging adoption.  While all of these approaches may be necessary and at times helpful, they do nothing to address the poverty and injustice at the heart of the crisis.  We are treating the symptoms rather than the cause of the orphan crisis.”  (In Defense of the Fatherless, abbreviated later as DF)

source

Ask any adoption advocate for their key verse, and they’ll immediately quote you James 1:27.  Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.

Funny thing is that we constantly quote this verse, but we all know that it’s really the orphans that are most important.  The widows?  Well, they are just old ladies living in trailer parks.  Sure, it’s nice to visit them, but they’re okay out there.  There’s really no widow crisis–just an orphan crisis.

source

But think about it.  In Scripture, what is the synonym for orphan?  Fatherless.  In fact, the King James version uses the word fatherless instead of orphan in this verse.  What does fatherless assume?  The kid has a mother.  A widow.

I would bet, given the historical context, that James 1:27 wasn’t referring to two separate groups of people.  James could have put orphan and widow in the same verse because often orphans and widows went together.  Back then, widows were not always old ladies living alone.  Often they were young, and they were mothers.  What we know today as single moms.

The problem is that we often have an infatuation with children.

Children are easy, we often think.  We see them as helpless and vulnerable and needing our rescue.  We see their small sad faces and our parental instincts kick in.  It’s easy to have compassion for a child.

source

Why, then, do we ignore the question of where all these children came from?  Behind every poor little child’s face is a suffering mother and father.  There’s a reason why children end up in orphanages, and most of the time, it’s not because their parents are evil.  It’s because their parents are broken.  Yet somehow, we would rather just help the child.  Orphans are so much easier to care about than widows.

We find ourselves unconsciously communicating that children are more important to us than their mothers.  Do we not realize that the “widows”–the mothers of these children–need our help just as much?  “According to the Half the Sky Movement, ‘women aged 15-45 are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.”  Yet as the American church, we turn our backs on these women and say, “You’re on your own; but don’t worry, we’ll take care of your children.”**

“Birth families are not prioritized, adopters are.  The system is geared to make us happy; to keep us coming.  There is this silent belief that kids are better off with us, period.  We say, ‘God chose this child for me.  She is mine.  She was always meant to be mine.’  No.  Our children were meant for their birth families, the way every child ever born is.  God did not intend these children for my wealthy home and accidentally put them in Ethiopian wombs.  Does God not weep for birth mothers who were tricked?  Who were coerced?  Who were so vulnerable?  Were their children gifts for us and not them?  This perspective insidiously tricks us into overvaluing our ‘rights’ and devaluing first families or reunification efforts.” (Jen Hatmaker)

“When…World Vision tried to shift its child sponsorship program to a family sponsorship model…their donations dropped by half.” (Kathryn Joyce)  Friends, this should not be!  Yes, God loves the orphan.  But wouldn’t His ultimate goal for orphans be to stay in their families?  Shouldn’t that be our goal as well?  Shouldn’t adoption be the very last of all last resorts?***

We can start by shifting our mindset:  We are not called to be the rescuers of the world’s children.  Adoption is not the only answer, or even the primary answer, to the orphan crisis.  Ultimately, the Church needs to re-shift its focus to The Family.

How can we do that?

If you want adopt internationally, do it only from countries which have a strong, established, regulated adoption program.  In most cases, this will only be countries who have signed to the Hague Convention, and I will write more about this in Part 6.  For those countries who do not yet have the infrastructure for international adoption, then be a cheerleader and supporter for other ministries and programs that keep kids in families or promote domestic adoption.   

Unfortunately, adoption advocates in the U.S. have a reputation of condemning countries who try to tighten up on their adoption regulations.  That should not be us.  For example, just last week, I received news that Uganda has just passed a new adoption law.  It will close the “guardianship” loophole (see Part 2 of this series), promote domestic adoption, and significantly decrease the number of international adoptions.  As an American adoption community, how should we respond?  With anger at the Ugandan government, accusing them of a lack of compassion for their children?  Or with gratefulness that the government is working hard to prevent corruption and child-trafficking?   Of course, my heart hurts for those adoptive families who are now stuck in the middle of the adoption process in Uganda.  But ultimately, we should be celebrating, not mourning, Uganda’s efforts–and any other country who does the same!  This is great news!  

In addition, there are lots of ways you can participate in, support, or even start ministries that are working at orphan prevention and family reunification.

• Support poor families as you shop!  There are so many great causes you can support this way.  Each time you buy from one of these sites, you help vulnerable women and families stay together and raise their standard of living.   Here are a few great ones:
• Karama Collection supports women all over Africa and raises money for Young Life camps in the process.  Started by a friend of mine.
• Noonday Collection features free-trade items from all over the world.
• FashionABLE
• Sifa Threads is located right here in Dar es Salaam and is also run by a friend of mine.
• People Tree

• Financially support or volunteer for organizations which focus on not just vulnerable children but also their families.  Here are just a few, but there are many more.  When considering your support for an organization, look for examples of family preservation and orphan prevention.
• Reeds of Hope in Congo
• Forever Angels in Tanzania
• Heartline Ministries in Haiti
• Embracing Hope in Ethiopia
• International Justice Mission
• Ekisa Ministries in Uganda (empowers families struggling to care for their special needs children)

“If poverty is the primary reason why a child is relinquished for adoption, then the child does not need a new family.  Instead, the child’s family needs to be empowered to have a path out of poverty.”  (DF)”

In our fervor to fight for the orphan, let us not forget the widow.  Let’s look to fulfill all of James 1:27.

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**I am not insinuating that an adoptive family should be responsible for the well-being of the birth mother of a genuinely relinquished child, as that is usually not a healthy situation for the family or the child. I’m just asking for a change in mindset in the American church to broaden our focus beyond just children.

***I need to add an important note here.  There are times, in any country–just as in the U.S.–when a man, woman, or family chooses to relinquish a child for adoption for reasons other than poverty.  Though most of the children in Tanzania who are adopted domestically were abandoned, I have friends here who have adopted relinquished children with known mothers.  I know their back stories, and I completely support the decision for these children to be adopted, just as I support the decision for birth mothers in America to voluntarily relinquish a child for adoption.  However, in each case I know about, the adoptive family was a resident of Tanzania.  They knew the culture, and in most cases, had a relationship with the family who was giving up their child.  In short, it worked because these were domestic adoptions.  Unless a country has strong adoption infrastructure,  a U.S. adoption agency is usually not able to make the distinction between a “poverty orphan” and a genuinely relinquished child, especially because money will always be involved.  This is why I am advocating for family-based ministry and domestic adoption in developing countries as an alternative to international adoption.

Continue reading:

Part 5:  God Told Me To…Or Maybe He Didn’t

Part 6:  What About the Children Who Really Do Need Adoption?

Part 7:  Is There Hope In This Mess We’ve Made?

Start here:  

Part 1:  The Evidence

Part 2:  Where Did We Go Wrong?

“[Child harvesting] is an unsettling term for adoption agencies’ common practice of recruiting children for intercountry adoption from intact families, often in rural areas and sometimes by exploiting parents’ lack of familiarity with adoption.” (The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce, abbreviated later as CC)

The more I read, the more I could see how it happens:

It starts with a genuine need:  A war, an earthquake, or an AIDS epidemic decimates a country.  Thousands, millions of children are left vulnerable.  It’s highly publicized, and images of sad, pathetic children are blasted through the media.

An adoption agency representative from America approaches an orphanage, a lawyer, or a government official from this country and asks about starting an adoption program.  Their eyes light up–this will be a great way for the country to deal with its orphan crisis, and a way for themselves to earn a little money on the side.  It’s a win-win.

Yet the country has very little infrastructure.  It is trying to recover from a catastrophe and everything is in chaos.  Many government institutions no longer exist.  The court system is barely hanging on.  Internet, electricity, and water supply are sparse.  Everyone is just trying to scratch out a living.

But the adoption program starts, and children start being matched with families.  At the beginning, everything is great.  There are plenty of truly orphaned children available.  The lack of infrastructure assures that the process is quick and relatively easy.

“When a country emerges that can supply numerous healthy, young children through a relatively quick and uncomplicated process, an influx of adoption agencies is usually close behind.” (CC)

Word spreads among families in America wanting to adopt, and within a matter of months, hundreds of families have applied.  Dozens of agencies jump on the bandwagon.  After all, adoption agencies are businesses–sometimes even for profit–and in order to keep their business going, they need a ready supply of children.  Usually, they don’t actually set up shop in the country–they just find a “facilitator” on the ground who helps them process the children.

Local lawyers, orphanage workers, and government officials suddenly find themselves with a regular, dependable, lucrative income in a country that is falling apart at the seams.  The problem is that after just the first few months, the supply of genuinely orphaned children has mostly dried up, especially for healthy babies and toddlers, which is what Americans usually request.

And here we see the problem:  The government is barely hanging on.  The country has never established international adoption laws, let alone a centralized system for adoption.  The process is haphazard.  Agencies are not licensed to work in the country–they just are working privately with their facilitator or orphanage director.  There is no centralized authority to control the process.

But now everyone is making money.  So what happens?  The agencies hire people to “find” children.  Or rather harvest them.  Sometimes they find true orphans.  But the evidence shows that many times, that means coercing pregnant mothers, lying to families about an “education sponsorship program in America” or even kidnapping–but they are determined to find children to meet the demand.  The agency doesn’t ask questions.  The lawyer or facilitator forges the paperwork.  The children’s identities are erased.  And there’s no government infrastructure to stop it.  Eventually–usually after just a few years–the whole system collapses under corruption and the entire program is shut down, usually leaving hundreds of waiting adoptive families devastated.

Meanwhile, the agencies–needing their “supply”–move on to the next country.

It’s a worst-case scenario, but unfortunately it has played out over and over and over again in countries all over the world.  And the worst part?  The children suffer, the birth families suffer, and the adoptive families suffer.  Who gets off scot-free?  The adoption agencies.

Here’s a perfect example:

Less than twenty years ago, a massive baby-buying operation went on in Cambodia.  Hundreds of babies were purchased from their parents for as little as $20, and the adoptions were facilitated by an American woman named Lauryn Galindo.  The children’s identities and names were reinvented on all legal documents.

“From January 1997 to December 2001, Galindo and her conspirators helped American families adopt more than 800 children from Cambodia.  Galindo [and her partner] received 9.2 million dollars from adoptive parents and used the profits to fund lavish lifestyles.”  (In Defense of the Fatherless)

Yet when the U.S. authorities finally caught up with her, “Galindo wasn’t charged with child-trafficking because the United States doesn’t have a child-trafficking law.  While there are laws against trafficking for the purpose of sexual or labor exploitation, they don’t apply to adoption.”  (Source here.)  Galindo was sentenced to 18 months in prison for visa fraud.

For the crime of trafficking over 800 children, she got 18 months in prison.  Total.

How is that possible?  Because U.S. laws do not include any provisions for children trafficked through adoption.  Talk about a loophole.  Usually, the worst that can happen is that an agency will get shut down.  The hard truth is that U.S. adoption agencies have very little accountability for their actions.

“As a State Department staffer speaking off the record to an adoption reform group remarked, the government’s hands are largely tied when it comes to preventing corrupt adoptions.”  (CC)

“Adoption agencies have no legal obligation to document how so-called ‘in country expenses’ or ‘humanitarian fees’ are spent…..Immigration law does not include any legal requirements or responsibilities for adoption agencies…..If there is corruption in countries that have not enacted the Hague Convention, local US Embassies have very little power to respond.” (In Defense of the Fatherless)

Let me be clear:  This does not happen in every country.  This scenario generally does not happen in countries with a strong infrastructure and strong central adoption authority.  However, adoption agencies should have no business setting up adoption programs by skirting around a country’s laws, or trying to get children adopted from a country which has no laws and no infrastructure.  The level of irresponsibility of many adoption agencies is positively breathtaking.   Yet unfortunately, as far as I can tell, these practices are the norm.   Every year, American families fork over tens of thousands of dollars to these (often “Christian”) agencies and trust them wholeheartedly to do the right thing.  Something needs to change.

Continue reading:

Part 4:  Pure Religion is to Look After Orphans (and Widows?)

Part 5:  God Told Me To….Or Maybe He Didn’t

Part 6:  What About the Children Who Really Do Need Adoption?

Part 7:  Is There Hope in This Mess We’ve Made?