September 20, 2009

Chinese babies stolen by officials for foreign adoption


Los Angeles Times
September 20, 2009

In some rural areas, instead of levying fines for violations of China's child policies, greedy officials took babies, which would each fetch $3,000 in adoption fees.

The man from family planning liked to prowl around the mountaintop village, looking for diapers on clotheslines and listening for the cry of a hungry newborn. One day in the spring of 2004, he presented himself at Yang Shuiying's doorstep and commanded: "Bring out the baby."

Yang wept and argued, but, alone with her 4-month-old daughter, she was in no position to resist the man every parent in Tianxi feared.

"I'm going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of money for her," he told the sobbing mother as he drove her with the baby to an orphanage in Zhenyuan, a nearby city in the southern province of Guizhou. In return, he promised that the family wouldn't have to pay fines for violating China's one-child policy.

Then he warned her: "Don't tell anyone about it."

For five years, she kept the terrible secret. "I didn't understand that they didn't have the right to take our babies," she said.

Since the early 1990s, more than 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad, the majority to the United States.

The conventional wisdom is that the babies, mostly girls, were abandoned by their parents because of the traditional preference for boys and China's restrictions on family size.

But some parents are beginning to come forward to tell harrowing stories of babies who were taken away by coercion, fraud or kidnapping -- sometimes by government officials who covered their tracks by pretending that the babies had been abandoned.

Parents who say their children were taken complain that officials were motivated by the $3,000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages.

"Our children were exported abroad like they were factory products," said Yang Libing, a migrant worker from Hunan province whose daughter was seized in 2005. He has since learned that she is in the United States.

Doubts about how babies are procured for adoption in China have begun to ripple through the international adoption community.

"In the beginning, I think, adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a lot of people at the local level were making too much money," said Ina Hut, who last month resigned as the head of the Netherlands' largest adoption agency out of concern about baby trafficking.

The Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs, the government agency that oversees foreign and domestic adoption, rejected repeated requests for comment. Officials of the agency have told foreign diplomats that they believe that the abuses are limited to a small number of babies and that those responsible have been removed and punished.

For adoptive parents, the possibility that their children were forcibly taken from their birth parents is terrifying.

"When we adopted in 2006, we were fed the same stories, that there were millions of unwanted girls in China, that they would be left on the street to die if we didn't help," said Cathy Wagner, an adoptive mother from Nova Scotia, Canada. "I love my daughter, but if I had any idea my money would cause her to be taken away from another mother who loved her, I never would have adopted."

Twisting the laws

The problem is rooted in China's population controls, which limit most families to one child, two if they live in the countryside and the first is a girl. Each town has a family planning office, usually staffed by loyal Communist Party cadres who have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations. People who have additional babies can be fined up to six times their annual income -- fines euphemistically called "social service expenditures," which are an important source of revenue for local government in rural areas.

"The family planning people are even more powerful than the Ministry of Public Security," said Yang Zhizhu, a legal scholar in Beijing.

Throughout the countryside, red banners exhort, "Give birth to fewer babies, plant more trees" and, more ominously, "If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined."

But the law does not give officials the power to take babies from their parents.

Some families say they were beaten and threatened into giving up their daughters, or tricked into signing away their parental rights.

"They grabbed the baby and dragged me out of the house. I was screaming -- I thought they were going to knock me over," said Liu Suzhen, a frail woman from Huangxin village near Shaoyang in Hunan province. She was baby-sitting her 4-month-old granddaughter one night in March 2003 when a dozen officials stormed her house.

She said they took her and the baby to a family planning office, where a man grabbed her arm and pressed her thumbprint onto a document she couldn't read.

Once a child is taken to an orphanage, parents can lose all rights.

"They wouldn't even let me in the door," said Zhou Changqi, a construction worker whose 6-month-old daughter was taken in 2002 by family planning officials in Guiyang, in Hunan province. Zhou tried repeatedly over three years to get into the Changsha Social Welfare Institute, one of the major orphanages sending babies abroad, until one day he was told:

"It's too late. Your daughter has already gone to America."

Perverse incentives

In much of China, villagers live in dread of surprise visits from family planning officials. It was certainly the case for the residents of Tianxi, a mist-shrouded village of 1,800 people tucked high in lush mountains near Zhenyuan.

No matter that the village is a two-hour drive down a rutted dirt road and then a 30-minute hike uphill, family planning officials make inspections as often as twice a week. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when families were too poor to pay, the officials would punish them by ransacking their homes or confiscating cows and pigs, residents say.

Then, in 2003, things changed. The year after the Social Welfare Institute in Zhenyuan was approved to participate in the burgeoning foreign adoption program, family planning officials stopped confiscating farm animals. They started taking babies instead.

"If people couldn't pay their fines, they'd take away their babies," said a retired municipal employee from Zhenyuan who used to work as a foster parent for the orphanage.

"We were always terrified of them,"said Yang Shuiying, the 34-year-old mother whose daughter was taken away.

In December 2003, Yang gave birth to her fourth daughter, delivering her at home with the help of a midwife. It was an unplanned birth. In fact, her husband had gotten a vasectomy just a few days before she realized she was pregnant again.

"I hadn't planned to have another baby, but once I did, I wanted to raise her," said Yang, a soft-spoken woman who told her story with downcast eyes.

Her husband, Lu Xiande, felt even more strongly that the girl belonged at home. Away at the market when the baby was seized, he erupted in fury when he discovered what had happened.

"I'll get her back," he promised his distraught wife. He headed off to China's east coast, hoping that as a migrant worker he could raise the money to pay the family planning fine. But Lu fell sick and had to return home. Shortly afterward, he tried to slit his throat with a butcher knife.

Almost everybody in the village knows somebody whose baby was taken away. An old man leaning on a hand-carved walking stick told of how his granddaughter was taken away. A younger man spoke of a niece.

The villagers resent the suggestion by some that they don't love their daughters and readily abandon them.

"People around here don't dump their kids. They don't sell their kids. Boy or girl, they're our flesh and blood," said Li Zeji, 32, a farmer who says his third daughter was taken in 2004.

Under Chinese law, officials are required to search for the birth parents of abandoned babies. Four months after Yang Shuiying's daughter was taken, her photograph ran in a notice in the province's Guizhou City Daily along with those of 14 other babies.

The ad claimed, falsely, that the baby was "found abandoned on the doorstep" of a home in Tianxi village.

"Whoever recognizes this child should contact the orphanage in 60 days; otherwise, the baby will be considered an orphan," read the Aug. 14, 2004, announcement.

The parents say they never saw the notices because they lived in remote villages where newspapers were not available. In addition, many of the parents are illiterate and they had been told by family planning officials that the law allowed them to confiscate the babies, so it did not occur to them to complain.

The truth emerged because a teacher with relatives in Tianxi village heard about the confiscations and reported them to police and a disciplinary agency. When there was no response, he posted complaints on the Internet, which made it into the Chinese press in July of this year after a few earlier stories were censored. The teacher is in hiding for fear of retaliation.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement released in July that it had been advised by China's Central Adoption Authority "that seven officials implicated in this case have been arrested." It added, "The United States takes seriously any allegation that children were offered for inter-country adoption without their parents' knowledge or consent."

But in Zhenyuan, officials denied that anybody had been arrested or fired from their jobs. They said the penalties ranged from demerits to warnings placed in their files. Shi Guangying, the official who took Yang's baby, was demoted.

Zhenyuan officials angrily defended their conduct.

"It's a lie that they took babies away without their parents' permission. That's impossible," said Peng Qiuping, a party official and propaganda chief for Zhenyuan. "These parents agreed that the children should be put up for adoption. They understood that they were greedy and had more children than they could afford."

"They're better off with their adoptive parents than their birth parents," argued Wu Benhua, director of Zhenyuan's civil affairs bureau.

From 2003 to 2007, the orphanage in Zhenyuan sent 60 babies to the United States and Europe. Given the suspicious clusters of the babies listed in the notices and the remoteness of the villages where it would be difficult to hike in and abandon a child, many, if not most, are believed to have been confiscated by family planning officials.

Wu said the money received from adoptive parents, $180,000 in all, went toward food, clothing, bedding and medical care for the babies and to improve conditions in the Social Welfare Institute.

But most of the babies had been housed with families who were paid only $30 a month for their services, according to one foster parent. And there were no obvious signs of renovations at the institute, a grim three-story building where a couple of senior citizens could be seen through barred windows lounging on cots. Reporters were not permitted to enter.

"We don't know what happened to the money, and we don't dare ask," said Yang Zhenping, a 50-year-old farmer from Tianxi.

Brian Stuy, an adoptive father in Salt Lake City who researches the origins of Chinese adoptees, has noticed an unusually large number of older babies reported as abandoned. He suspects these were babies who were confiscated, stolen or given up under duress.

"If you don't want a girl, you give her up as soon as she's born," Stuy said.

He believes that the $3,000 adoption fee -- about six times the annual income in rural China and usually handed over in new $100 bills -- has inspired abuses.

"It is international adoption that is creating the suction that causes family planning to take the kids to make money," Stuy said. "If there was no international adoption and the state had to raise the kids until they turned 18, you could be sure family planning wouldn't confiscate them."

Tricking parents

China's family planning laws don't just restrict the number of children in a family. Couples are supposed to get a birth permit before before conceiving. Women must be at least 20 years old and men 24. Couples must have a marriage certificate, which requires that each partner have proper hukou, the cumbersome residency permits that control where people live.

Residents in Gaoping, a small town in Hunan province, say family planning officials have used the fine print of the law to confiscate even first-born children.

Yang Libing and his wife, Cao Zhimei, both migrant workers, said their 9-month-old daughter, Ling, was taken away in 2005 because, as migrant workers, they weren't able to gather all the documents to register their marriage. The local family planning officials struck when Yang's elderly parents were baby-sitting.

They told Yang's father that the family would be fined the equivalent of more than $1,000, but that if he signed a document saying that the baby was not their birth child, but adopted, they would be spared the fine.

"They were people I knew. I trusted them. They tricked me," said the father, Yang Qinzheng, a Communist Party member who, though literate, didn't read the document carefully because of poor eyesight.

The officials then took the baby to the orphanage in nearby Shaoyang, promising to bring her back after her registration papers were filed. The family did not see her again.

The couple, who had another child later, a boy who is now 3, still grieve for their daughter.

"Everybody in the village adored her. She had big eyes like saucers and a smile for everybody she saw," said Cao, the mother. "I think of her all the time. I wonder if she looks like an American now."

In all, residents say, about 15 babies were confiscated in Gaoping. A schoolteacher helped families from villages around Gaoping write a petition in 2006, which they submitted to a deputy of the National People's Congress, China's legislative body.

When the news broke in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, some of the family planning officials were reassigned to other posts, but no one was arrested and none of the families recovered their children.

"They still have jobs. Nothing really happened to them, but they at least stopped stealing our children," said Yang Libing, who was a leader of the group.

But the practice continues elsewhere. In December in Dongkou county, 10 miles from Gaoping, family planning officials took a nearly 6-week-old boy out of his mother's arms, saying the family owed more than $2,000 in penalties because he was a second child.

"They didn't say what they were going to do with the baby, just that they would send him to the orphanage, but I realized that they were planning to sell him," said the baby's father, Hou Yongjun, a driving instructor. Unable to raise the money on short notice, he telephoned everybody he knew, including a journalist.

At 10:30 that night, Hou's wife heard a noise and looked out the window to see two people running away. Thirteen hours after he had been taken, she found the baby on the doorstep, hungry but unharmed.

Adoption experts say that China's system is badly in need of repair.

Deng Fei, an investigative journalist based in Beijing who has written frequently about the issue, believes there should be more scrutiny of the cash paid by foreign parents.

"That money is a windfall for the orphanages and local officials," Deng said. "It seduced them into going to look for babies to send abroad."

In Philadelphia, Wendy Mailman, who adopted in 2005 from the orphanage in Zhenyuan that took in confiscated babies, now questions everything she was told about the girl who orphanage officials said was born in September and abandoned in January.

"Why would a mother who didn't want a baby girl be so heartless as to wait until the dead of winter to abandon her?" she said.

She wonders what she would do if she discovered that her daughter was one of the stolen babies. She knows she could never return the Americanized 6-year-old, who is obsessed with "SpongeBob" and hates the Chinese culture classes her mother enrolled her in. But she said, "I would certainly want to tell the birth family that your daughter is alive and happy and maybe send a picture."

"It would be up to my daughter later if she wanted to build a relationship," she said.

For many birth families, that would be enough.

"But we'd like to know where she is. We'd like to see a picture. And we'd like her to know that we miss her and that we didn't throw her away."

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Nicole Liu and Angelina Qu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

September 15, 2009

A heartbreaking assignment


By Mary Ann Jolley

Sit for any time in the foyer of the Hilton Hotel in Ethiopia's
capital, Addis Ababa, and you'll see a procession of Americans and
Europeans wandering from their rooms across the marble floor to the
restaurant or swimming pool with their precious new possessions -
babies or infants they've just adopted.

I'd never really thought a great deal about international adoption
until I was confronted with the scene as I checked into the hotel in
September last year.

I'd arrived to film a story for ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent program
about the drought-induced famine.

The longer I stayed, the more I started to think about the adopted
children - where they were from and how they must feel to suddenly
find themselves alone with someone whose skin colour doesn't match
theirs and whose language they don't speak.

They're dressed in alien attire - a brand new Red Sox baseball cap and
T-shirt with some cute and cheery foreign slogan plastered across the
front - and in an environment like none they've ever seen, when just
out on the street is the one they know so well, where their extended
family and fellow countrymen reside.

There was something incredibly disturbing about seeing international
adoption en masse. All these children about to leave their country to
begin a new life in a faraway place, disconnected from their heritage
and culture.

Out on the street where poverty and hardship prevail, my attitude
softened. While I was filming at the produce market in Addis Ababa a
little urchin appeared beside me.

She had short hair and was wearing a torn, faded dress with sash tales
hanging loosely from the waist at both sides, and shoes with no laces.

Her toes exposed where the leather had worn through. She would have
been about nine or 10, but she was already working; her job was to
sweep up the rubbish in the markets.

"Miss," she said, "Americana?"

"No." I nodded with a smile as I rushed off to catch up with the crew.

"Where are you from?" She was at my side again.

"Australia," I replied, thinking in my ignorance that her next
question would be, "Where's Australia?" But, no, she knew it was the
land of the kangaroos and wanted to know if I could take her back so
she could go to school.

"I would love to," I said, impressed by her request. "But
unfortunately I can't." I was hoping, I must admit, that would be
enough to send her and her friends back to work, but she persisted.

"Do you have any pens for me?"

"Sorry, I don't," I replied, quite surprised she was asking for pens
and not, as is usually the case, money.

"What about paper? Do you have any paper for me for school?"

I didn't have anything on me because I'd been told to leave my bag in
the car to avoid pickpockets. I felt terrible that I couldn't help
her.

Here was this child desperate to write and learn, but instead of being
at school she was dragging rotten fruit and vegetables from the mud
and slush between the stalls.

What obvious potential she had. Imagine what she could achieve if I
could take her back to school in Australia. Perhaps adoption is the
answer, I thought to myself.

But that was an emotional reaction. It would be almost a year before I
would have the chance to dwell seriously on the subject. In July I was
on a plane heading back.

Ethiopia is not a signatory to the Hague Convention, which requires
international adoptions be used only as a last resort after all
domestic adoption options have been exhausted.

There is overwhelming evidence to prove it is far better for a child
to remain with its family or, if that's not possible, with another
family in his or her own country than to be shipped off overseas. But
in Ethiopia today it seems it's not about what's best for the child,
but rather meeting the demand of foreigners wanting a child.

There are more than 70 private international adoption agencies
operating in Ethiopia. None of them are Australian. In Australia,
international adoptions are a Government affair and strict regulations
help to keep the process transparent. Almost half the agencies in
Ethiopia are unregistered, some doing whatever they can to find
children to satisfy the foreign market.

While there are more than 5 million legitimate orphans in Ethiopia, a
large proportion of these will never be considered for international
adoptions.

Foreigners prefer younger children - babies to five-year-olds. Older
children or those with health problems are more difficult to pitch. So
while many children languish in underfunded and overcrowded
orphanages, some international adoption agencies are out spruiking in
villages asking families to relinquish their children for adoption.

It's a phenomenon known as "harvesting" and it's shocking to see.

A DVD sent to families wanting to adopt by an American adoption
agency, Christian World Adoption, shows one of the agency's workers in
full flight surrounded by families and children in a remote community
in the south of the country, where the vast majority are evangelical
Christians.

"If you want your child to go to a Christian American family, you may
stay. If you don't want your child to go to America, you should take
your child away," she says.

The DVD goes on for some hours with the woman introducing each child
offered for adoption one at a time. They sit on a bench in between her
and their parents or guardians.

"Here are two brothers, but only one is available at the moment," she
says for one family. For the next she tells how "it's very hard for a
widow to care for her children in this culture".

"Oh no, you mustn't pick your nose," she says to a child. She then
points out a rash on another's face and reassures the viewer it isn't
permanent and that it can be healed with treatment. All children are
asked to sing the alphabet song made famous on Sesame Street. It reeks
of a new colonialism. It's hard to believe it's happening in the 21st
century.

Parents are often unaware of what they're doing when they offer their
children for adoption. They're led to believe they'll hear from their
children regularly and their children will be well educated and
eventually bring the family wealth.

But in reality, the parents and families never hear from their
children and receive little information about where their children
have gone. We filmed a room full of grieving mothers who gave their
children for adoption after agencies promised they'd be given regular
updates.

Some were even told the agency would help support their remaining
children. Their stories are gut-wrenching.

No one disputes there is a real need for international adoptions, but
for the sake of the children and adoptive parents there needs to be
some protection from unscrupulous agencies who purport to be driven by
humanitarian interests, but in reality are stuffing their pockets with
dirty cash.

"My Scattered Grandchildren"


Alison Motluk
Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

When Kathie Harris spotted a newspaper ad a few years back recruiting egg donors, she passed it on to her daughter. “I was kind of joking,” she says.

But her daughter, Melissa Braden, ended up donating six times. Now Ms. Harris, 53, has mixed feelings about it all.

“It's kind of hard,” she says. There are grandchildren out there that the family will never meet, she says. “They're a part of you. Because they're Melissa's eggs, they're a part of everybody in Melissa's family.”

It's estimated that about one million donor offspring worldwide have been born, most of them through anonymous donations. But when people choose to donate their sperm or eggs, they think of it as a purely personal decision. They forget that their DNA is a family asset, not a private one, experts say.

“The practice has grown up in a consumer context,” says Juliet Guichon, a bioethicist at the University of Calgary. “You think you're purchasing a factor of reproduction, but you're not – you're receiving the genetic heritage of a family.”

And grandparents, often the oldest surviving progenitors, can feel quite differently about trading away the family code.

This feeling recently intensified for Ms. Harris when one of Ms. Braden's recipient couples sent her daughter a photo of the new baby. At first, Ms. Harris didn't want to see it. Her daughter has two boys of her own, but this couple had had a girl. When Ms. Harris did finally look, she was overwhelmed. “That little girl looks exactly – I mean exactly – like Melissa,” she says.

Ms. Braden, 30, insists that she has no maternal feelings for the little girl and that the recipient mom is the only mom. But her own mother feels differently. “In my heart,

I think of her as my granddaughter,” Ms. Harris says. “I carry her picture in my purse.”

Shana Harter, 31, had a similar difference of opinion with her mother. She donated eggs twice when she was in her

early 20s. But her mother was not happy with the choice. “I caught a lot of flack,” the Atlanta resident says.

Almost a decade later, her mother still thinks about them. “I wonder all the time what they look like, if they look like her, what they're doing, where they live,” says her mother, Lynn Corcoran, 52. “It's just that feeling of knowing that I have other grandchildren out there. I'll never see them. I'll never know them. I hope they went to good homes.”

For a long time the two women stopped talking about it altogether. But when Ms. Harter got married and had trouble conceiving herself, it was the elephant in the room. What if the only genetically related children she ever produced were born to other people?

In the end, after IVF, Ms. Harter gave birth to a little

boy in January. Her own struggle with infertility made her even more understanding of couples who long to have children. “I have a new appreciation myself,” she says. “I'm very happy to know I helped make that happen for one or two other couples out there.” Ms. Corcoran admits it gave her some insight into the plight of childless couples too.

Kirk Maxey, 53, who donated sperm for almost 10 years,

says he now sees that grandparents are an overlooked piece of the donor puzzle. “There's a set of fully legitimate grandparents out there, who've missed seeing grandchildren, usually all the way through teenage years,” he says. His own parents were delighted when two teenage donor daughters surfaced a few years ago. “It impacts grandparents in ways that people didn't really imagine it would,” he says.

For some, the relationships are surprisingly warm. Florida resident Christine Striegl has discovered that she's closer to her donor granddaughter than to any of the grandkids born through her son's marriage. She met her son's teenage donor daughter, Virginia, about 18 months ago and they immediately hit it off. “She calls me her grandmother,” Ms. Striegl says.

For others, it stirs feelings of regret. Diane Wilkins, 53, of Ottawa, will probably never have the chance to meet any children born through her daughter's egg donation, though she'd love to. “Even if I just got to see them, just to see what they look like,” she says. But shortly after the donation, the relationship with the recipient couple soured.

(Since 2004, it has been illegal to pay donors for eggs or sperm in Canada, and though women can still import commercial U.S. sperm, that's not true for eggs, so many women leave the country for such procedures.)

“Grandparents are vulnerable, on the sidelines, waiting to be invited in,” Dr. Guichon says. But she also turns the issue around: A recipient couple, she believes, has a moral obligation to consider whether a child would benefit from knowing their grandparents. It could be important to their identity, she says.

Perhaps no one feels the bond more intensely than grandparents whose own children have died unexpectedly.

Marjorie Smith's daughter died before she'd had kids of her own – but she had donated eggs three times, and Ms. Smith (not her real name) knew children had been born. She was ecstatic when a recipient family got in touch. “When I heard from that family, it was like a gift from heaven,” she says.

They are hoping to meet soon. “These kids are part of my daughter. They look like my daughter. I hope to become a real grandma to them.”

September 11, 2009

The Decision That Changed My Life


The Decision That Changed My Life:
Keeping My Baby
by Maya Angelou

Originally Published in Family Circle Magazine; October 8, 2001, Page 56

At age three, after the dissolution of her parents' marriage, the poet, playwright and director Maya Angelou was raised, until age 14, in Stamps, Arkansas, by her paternal grandmother. Angelou's eloquent series of five memoirs includes I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and, most recently, A Song Flung Up to Heaven (Random House). Here the 74-year-old recounts the most important event of her life, a daunting decision she faced after she returned to San Francisco as a teen to live with her mother:

"When I was 16, a boy in high school evinced interest in me, so I had sex with him -- just once. And after I came out of that room, I thought, Is that all there is to it? My goodness, I'll never do that again! Then, when I found out I was pregnant, I went to the boy and asked him for help, but he said it wasn't his baby and he didn't want any part of it.

I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who got abortions, but I couldn't deal with that idea. Oh, no. No. I knew there was somebody inside me. So I decided to keep the baby.

My older brother, Bailey, my confidant, told me not to tell my mother or she'd take me out of school. So I hid it the whole time with big blouses! Finally, three weeks before I was due, I left a note on my stepfather's pillow telling him I was pregnant. He told my mother, and when she came home, she calmly asked me to run her bath.

I'll never forget what she said: "Now tell me this -- do you love the boy?" I said no. "Does he love you?" I said no. "Then there's no point in ruining three lives. We are going to have our baby!"

What a knockout she was as a mother of teens. Very loving. Very accepting. Not one minute of recrimination. And I never felt any shame.

I'm telling you that the best decision I ever made was keeping that baby! Yes, absolutely. Guy was a delight from the start -- so good, so bright, and I can't imagine my life without him.

At 17 I got a job as a cook and later as a nightclub waitress. I found a room with cooking privileges, because I was a woman with a baby and needed my own place. My mother, who had a 14-room house, looked at me as if I was crazy! She said, "Remember this: You can always come home." She kept that door open. And every time life kicked me in the belly, I would go home for a few weeks.

I struggled, sure. We lived hand-to-mouth, but it was really heart-to-hand. Guy had love and laughter and a lot of good reading and poetry as a child. Having my son brought out the best in me and enlarged my life. Whatever he missed, he himself is a great father today. He was once asked what it was like growing u p in Maya Angelou's shadow, and he said, "I always thought I was in her light."

Years later, when I was married, I wanted to have more children, but I couldn't conceive. Isn't it wonderful that I had a child at 16? Praise God!"

Copyright © 2001 First Mothers Action
www.keepyourbaby.com
www.mayaangelou.com

September 6, 2009

Money plays too big a role in adoption


Money plays too big a role in adoption

She says she is battle-weary and very disillusioned by all the wrongs she has come across over the past years.

Ina Hut, director of Wereldkinderen (World Children) the largest adoption agency in the Netherlands, is calling it a day. She is handing in her notice in protest against the way things are run in the world of international child adoption.

In the Netherlands there are more than 30,000 children adopted from abroad. In the early years, international adoption was legalised in the mid 1970s, the children mainly came from South Korea, Indonesia and India. In a relatively high number of cases the adoption parents’ motives were idealistic. ‘Even if you can just save one of them,’ was a statement you heard a lot in those days, referring to children who led a miserable life, for example, in prostitution or in impoverished children’s homes.

Children from China
Today most children come from China. The attitude of many Dutch would-be parents has drastically changed over the past 30 years, says director Ina Hut from World Children:

“Would-be parents have strong desires, and I understand that. Everybody has the right to want children, but you don’t have the right to children. Children have the right to parents. The right to children doesn’t exist on this planet.

For me the last straw was an important political meeting in June. Once again it became clear that in the debate around international adoption it is not in the interests of children that come first, but in the interests of the would-be parents, or gay couples who want to adopt, and also in the commercial interests of the Netherlands and that of politicians who are afraid of losing votes. All other interests than that of the child.”

Stolen son
About seven years ago, Ina Hut left her job as university director and entered the adoption world, where she was amazed by the large role money played. According to her, especially Americans are prepared to pay a lot of money to cover the expenses of adopting a child. Therefore a relatively high number of children are allocated to the US.

Large sums of money are said to encourage the trade in children, China is notorious for this. A Chinese mother whose son was stolen explains what it is like to have to work everyday in the shop where her child disappeared:

“We have no choice. We cannot leave here, because just imagine that he tries to return and we have already gone. No way…"

Lack of communication
But there is more, says Ina Hut. A children’s home offering children up for adoption can often give more information about the identity of a child than they are doing now. This applies to China, but also to many other countries. And the Dutch government has acted spinelessly against this lack of communication. The Ministry of Justice recognises that China in particular has a fragile adoption system, but overall they consider it satisfactory, with good intentions.

According to the ministry an in-depth investigation could actually damage commercial and diplomatic interests. This infuriates Ina Hut. It is criminal to change or hold back the identity of a child, she says. Even though an adopted child has probably been stolen from the parents, it has the right to know that. She suggests the following solution for a system that is more fair:

“If you take a look at the amount of money involved in international adoption … invest that in the countries themselves and see whether the children can be taken care of there, in a good home or with family or friends. The big money should be taken out of the system. If, after a long search, there is no other solution for a child who has no parents to raise them, then adoption is an excellent answer. But only as a very last resort.”

September 5, 2009

Just in Time for Christmas!

Sale for children
© Photographer: Prometeus | Agency: Dreamstime.com
* Attention, Attention: important commercial break. Anyone in the market to purchase a human before Christmas? Note the price-list closely, please. White infants are premium product, and will cost you quite a bit more cash.

Hopefully you realize this post - except for the REAL "situations" found online - is a piece of sarcasm against a "system" that completely disgusts me and should anger every moral citizen. It should be illegal to sell humans, and seal their own birth certificates from them indefinately. But it isn't.

Notice that many of these "BM's" (yep - birthmothers ie. wombs for rent, heroic, selfless, gifters - until the papers are signed at least) are repeat suppliers and their "expenses" are considerably HIGH (paid by YOU, desperate,"Dear Birthmother" letter-writing, completely clueless women) - even to the tune of 40,000 bucks (not including legal, travel, and finalization "fees").

Yes, these "expenses" essentially BUY her child for your "own". The CHOSEN child. Not to mention profits made by supposedly "non-profit" agencies, facilitators (brokers) and attorneys, who perpetuate legal contracts transferring humans as if property.

We, the "chosen" get a life-time of sealed records and identity confusion, wondering WHY the selling of humans can still take place in our great nation, the supposed "Land of the free".

"Home of the brave"? Where's home?

...So hurry! Don't miss these Blue-Light Specials!

http://www.abcadoptions.com/prosituations.htm

African American baby girl Due December 10th. Just in time for Christmas!!! Birthmother would love to find a two parent home, christian based Couple to place her child with. Birthmother is 29 and parents an 11 year old boy 8 year old girl 4 year old Girl and 2 year old Boy. Baby will be born in Alabama. She is requesting picutres and updates after placement. Birthmother has full prenatal care, All medicals as well as background and photos have been obtained. Birthfather is diffrent from other children and will sign, Birthmother has sickel cell traitm Birthfather does not. No substnace abuse or smoking. Fees are about $16,000.00not including travel. To be considered please email or send your profile to Unique Adoptions Inc. 951-600-2575
-----------------------
la@adoptioninsight.com
Adoption Facilitator
99.164.29.91
August 31, 2009
Birth Mother due December 14, 2009 with a Full Hispanic Baby gender unknown. Birth Mother would prefer a semi-open adoption with letters and pictures after the birth of the baby. Fees will be approximately $34,000.00 which includes everything except travel and finalization. Birth Mother will only place with a Alternative Female Couple. If interested and for more information please call our office at (760)356-5565.
---------------------------
I am an adoptive mom of 3 and our BM is pg. She has asked me to help her find and screen families - I am NOT a facilitator nor am I being paid for helping. She is Russian - due March 2010 - Gender unknown - full caucasian baby. Prenatal care from the beginning. No Drugs, alcohol, smoking. BM expenses are $35,000 excluding legal exp and travel. Our attorney is available if you want a referral. He has finalized 2 of our adopted children from this BM. Your choice. Birthfather rights will be terminated in the courts and is in full agreement with adoption plan. If you are interested, please call me ASAP at xxx-xxx-1960. Please leave a message if I don't answer - I will get back to you ASAP. Thank you
----------------------
la@adoptioninsight.com
Adoption Facilitator
74.87.212.148
August 15, 2009
Code Name:SDBC Birth Mother due March 2010 with a 3/4 Native American 1/4 Caucasian baby gender unknown. Birth Mother denies all drug, alcohol and tobacco usage. Birth Mother has placed four times previously and is very committed to the adoption plan. Fees will be approximately $35,000.00 which includes everything except travel and finalization. For more information contact our office at (760)356-5565. Thank You
----------------------------
patricesic@yahoo.com
Adoption Facilitator
173.58.90.66
July 28, 2009
African American baby girl Due Sept 25th. Full prenatal care and all medical records. Sonogram on DVD with 3-D photos. No substance abuse or smoking. FEes are $15,300.00 total. If homestudy ready and want to be considered please email patricesic@yahoo.com for consideration. Birthmother is letting agency select AP's with approved homestudy . Unique Adoptions Inc 888-637-8200-Office 951-712-7205-Cell

adopt@adoptionwise.com
Adoption Facilitator
74.87.212.229
July 02, 2009
Birth Mother due January 2010 with a Full Caucasian Baby gender unknown. Birth Parents are married and the Birth Father is in agreement with the adoption plan. Birth Mother denies all drug and alcohol usage but does admit to smoking 1/2 a pack of cigarettes per day. This will be the Birth Parents third Adoption and they are very committed to the adoption plan. Fees will be approximately $40,000.00. For more information contact Adoption Insight at (760)356-5565.