Adoption Business to End?
It appears that the US is finally doing something about Guatemalan adoptions. More than 4,100 babies were adopted internationally from Guatemala last year. Several countries have banned adoptions from there for years, saying the process is questionable. There's been pressure on the US to do the same; but instead, while countries such as Canada, Holland and Germany stopped Guatemalan adoptions, the US just increased the number of babies it took in from that country.
Now the US, on the verge of signing on to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, is issuing an advisory against adopting from Guatemala. The system is riddled with corruption. There are stories of women from poor, rural areas having six babies over six years and giving them all up for adoption; of adoption lawyers hiring women to go to rural communities and "recruit" pregnant women to adopt out their babies; illiterate women, not fully understanding what's happening, signing away their baby. 
On adoption sites, Americans in the process of adopting express outrage that anyone could suggest there are problems with the Guatemalan adoption system. Sure, it may seem that the adoption is all above board, as they sit in their room in The Marriot-- sometimes called The Baby Hotel-- or inside the fancy office of their incredibly wealthy Guatemalan lawyer. The issue of Guatemalan adoptions, and the problems with them, heated up with this article last fall in The New York Times.
Part of the appeal to adopt from Guatemala is that it's amazingly fast, compared to other international adoptions. In and out, maybe around 6 months from start to finish, with just one or two quick two or three day trips to the country. I met a Canadian living in Guatemala, though, and married to a Guatemalan man. They were trying to do an in-country adoption of one of his relatives, whose mother was killed. That, on the other hand, sounded like an incredibly time-consuming and almost impossible process. Maybe it was so long because they weren't paying $30,000 to do it?
Hopefully this business-- and it is a business-- will finally be cleaned up and turned be into the service it should be.
posted by It's me LD @ 10:23 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
As a chapin I appreciate the willingness of people from North America and Europe to adopt orphan children from Guatemala. Unfortunately this, as you point out, is a business, and as such is subject to the inherit problems of the market economy: supply-demand effects, black market, even counterfeiting, if you consider the children "produced" for the sole purpose of being "exported". It is a sad sad world when we come to this.
My other point that always makes me wonder is, what about the children in need of parents within Canada. Again, I do appreciate and see the need for international adoptions when there are countries where there is an "overflow" of children in need of care, but there is no "lack" of orphan or abandonned children in Canada. I am really in a conflict within me about this issue. What do you make of this?
Hmm... interesting question. I don't quite know what to make of it. And it's also strange that international adoptions are so fashionable right now. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 100 thousand kids awaiting adoption in the US.
Under the Hague Convention, the point is to first exhaust any adoption options within the country before looking to other countries. An international adoption isn't supposed to be favoured because the foreigners have more money or a bigger house.
But then there are those I've seen interviewed, educated young people who've been adopted out and they go back to visit the village they came from, where kids are half their size due to malnutrition and they feel adoption was their lucky ticket out.
I wonder what it'll mean for the Guate hotel business if adoptions are seriously slowed down?
LD, I too posted about Guatemalan Adoptions as a business, a very profitable business that is, and I did not know what I was getting myself into. I received some pretty good feedback from people in the comments, but the feedback I received by the contact form and email was nasty and offensive. It is a touchy subject for many people involved in the process of adopting babies from Guatemala.
Nowadays, I even see more adopting parents with their babies in La Antigua, which is becoming the adopting capital of Latinamerica.
I leave you with the link to the entry and some photos:
http://antiguadailyphoto.com/2006/12/31/guatemalan-adoptions/
Thanks, Rudy. Yes, I know, I was a bit nervous about posting on adoptions. The American adopting parents can't fathom that there could possibly be anything wrong with the system. And they're a powerful group. One of the strongest advocates is Susana Luarca-- an adoption lawyer and former wife of a man who used to be President of Guatemala's Supreme Court.
There are problems with the system in Guatemala. But I think it starts with people from Guatemala not adopting there own kids. If it was socially acceptable for the people who can afford to adopt to do it, maybe there wouldn't be so many kids in hogars that need families. I also think that if you adopt a kid from an orphanage and do your research with the people who are helping you-it can be very ethical.
I just want to note that not ALL adoptive parents think there are no problems with the Guatemalan system. We have two children from Guatemala and are in favor of appropriate reform. I have a great love for my children's homeland and feel very strongly about improving the ethics of Guatemalan adoption, along with finding ways to support social services within Guatemala that would allow some mothers to avoid relinquishment. Peace...
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