We received our 3-month Post-Placement Report on Saturday and filed it with our Petition for Adoption today. Everything went well thanks to WashingtonReadoption.blogspot.com and those who have been through the process and commented before us. It only took about 15 minutes to file and get on the docket for this Thursday morning. By the end of the week, we will have our Decree of Adoption and Isabella's application for citizenship will be in the mail. We will be celebrating the newest U.S. citizen very soon!
I am still a little jealous of everyone whose children come home as citizens because both parents attended the court hearing, but I am also glad that Jon was able to go on the homecoming trip. If I had to choose between trips, the second trip is by far the most important to do together. Those first few days with Isabella were precious. The citizenship application is just more paperwork, and we are certainly used to that by now!
March 28, 2011
March 23, 2011
Adoption, Charity, and Orphan Care
Since bringing Isabella home, we have heard the inevitable comments about how good we are to have adopted. Rubbish! Adoption is many things to our family, including love and joy, but it is not charity, and it is not orphan care. Adoption itself is good -- good for parents, good for children, good for families -- but it is not doing good in the sense of charity, which (I think!) is an important distinction. Let me try to explain...
Adoption is not charity. If we were adopting in an effort to be charitable, we would not have been adopting in the true sense of the word. Adoption made Isabella our own, every bit as much as if she were born to us. We would go to the ends of the earth to bring Matthew home, just as we went to Ethiopia to bring Isabella home. We did not go out of charity, we went because we loved her and she is our daughter.
If we had thought that we were acting charitably by adopting, we would have set our family up for some tough struggles. First, as we considered the parameters to set on our adoption: if we were adopting out of charity, then of course adopting an older or special needs child is more charitable than adopting a healthy infant, and we might have felt pressured to do so to self-righteously increase the charitableness of our act, despite God's calling. Second, as we tried to reconcile conflicting concepts: having a child in our home as an act of charity, yet having that child be wholly our own, equal in every respect to our biological children. God may call us to adopt a waiting child, but it will be because that child is meant for our family, not because God wants us to be charitable.
Christ was both the begotten son of God, as well as the adopted son of Joseph. The ultimate example of adoption, of course, is God's adoption of us: I am His adopted daughter, and He loved me so much that he sent his begotten son to die for me! John 3:16. There is no greater love than this. John 15:13.
Another example that may make this point of view easier to understand: food. It is my responsibility to feed my family, and I take pleasure in doing so. If I love you, I feed you. If I love you a lot, I feed you pie, just ask any of my friends and family! Of all the time that I have spent in the grocery store, not once has someone patted me on the back and said "oh, you are so good to be buying food!"
Which leads me to my next point...
Supporting another family's adoption IS charitable. Let's go back to the food analogy, because it is easy to understand and, I'll admit it, I like food. If I help another family buy groceries, I am acting charitably. In Leviticus 19:10: growing crops for yourself is not charitable, but permitting the needy to glean is charitable.
If God calls you to adopt, He will provide the means to do so, which may include having you accept support from others. As Christians, we are to share our needs with one another, and support one another in times of need. Accepting help is often tougher than providing help; there is a time for both. In 2 Corinthians, the Macedonians begged for the privilege of helping. See also Galatians 6:2, Galatians 6:5, Luke 3:11.
Adoption is not orphan care. Isabella is our daughter, she is not an orphan, so caring for her cannot count as orphan care. Adoption is good and right, it is a way that God chose to grow our family, and it is a way that God reduces the number of orphans who need care. Adoption meets the needs of one family and one child, blessing both by bringing them together. Adoption does not solve the orphan crisis. Of the over 160 million children in the world who have lost at least one parent, only a fraction are eligible for adoption: most are living with their surviving parent or extended family, but all are vulnerable and need our prayer and support. See e.g. Statistics post and this post by Tom Davis.
The call to care for widows and orphans. We answer this call not by adopting, but through our prayers, personal acts of charity, and support of widow and orphan care ministries. Our favorites include All Gods Children International, which in 2010 served 60 children and families through their family sponsorship and outreach programs for every one adoption that they completed, and Wiphan Care Ministries, which sponsors schools for orphaned and vulnerable children as well as training programs for widows in Zambia. Give as God leads: whether He has given you a heart for orphans in Africa or the poor in your city, give accordingly, cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7) and sacrificially (2 Corinthians 8:2), for whosoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully (2 Corinthians 9:6).
Not everyone is called to adopt, but if you are... You are blessed among families!
Notes:
Guidestar is a free resource that is helpful in determining whether a charity is using resources wisely. Search for an organization by name and select its last IRS Form 990 filing to review its administration and other overhead expenses, including salaries. Are they reasonable or wasteful? Will they be a good steward with that which is entrusted to them?
As for food... did you know that "faith" is used less than three hundred times in the Bible, but the verb "to eat" apears more than 800 times? "In the Old and New Testaments, worship does not revolve around esoteric discussion of philosophy or ascetic ritual enactments, but around a family meal." Bless This Food, 1996. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8.
Adoption is not charity. If we were adopting in an effort to be charitable, we would not have been adopting in the true sense of the word. Adoption made Isabella our own, every bit as much as if she were born to us. We would go to the ends of the earth to bring Matthew home, just as we went to Ethiopia to bring Isabella home. We did not go out of charity, we went because we loved her and she is our daughter.
If we had thought that we were acting charitably by adopting, we would have set our family up for some tough struggles. First, as we considered the parameters to set on our adoption: if we were adopting out of charity, then of course adopting an older or special needs child is more charitable than adopting a healthy infant, and we might have felt pressured to do so to self-righteously increase the charitableness of our act, despite God's calling. Second, as we tried to reconcile conflicting concepts: having a child in our home as an act of charity, yet having that child be wholly our own, equal in every respect to our biological children. God may call us to adopt a waiting child, but it will be because that child is meant for our family, not because God wants us to be charitable.
Christ was both the begotten son of God, as well as the adopted son of Joseph. The ultimate example of adoption, of course, is God's adoption of us: I am His adopted daughter, and He loved me so much that he sent his begotten son to die for me! John 3:16. There is no greater love than this. John 15:13.
Another example that may make this point of view easier to understand: food. It is my responsibility to feed my family, and I take pleasure in doing so. If I love you, I feed you. If I love you a lot, I feed you pie, just ask any of my friends and family! Of all the time that I have spent in the grocery store, not once has someone patted me on the back and said "oh, you are so good to be buying food!"
Which leads me to my next point...
Supporting another family's adoption IS charitable. Let's go back to the food analogy, because it is easy to understand and, I'll admit it, I like food. If I help another family buy groceries, I am acting charitably. In Leviticus 19:10: growing crops for yourself is not charitable, but permitting the needy to glean is charitable.
If God calls you to adopt, He will provide the means to do so, which may include having you accept support from others. As Christians, we are to share our needs with one another, and support one another in times of need. Accepting help is often tougher than providing help; there is a time for both. In 2 Corinthians, the Macedonians begged for the privilege of helping. See also Galatians 6:2, Galatians 6:5, Luke 3:11.
Adoption is not orphan care. Isabella is our daughter, she is not an orphan, so caring for her cannot count as orphan care. Adoption is good and right, it is a way that God chose to grow our family, and it is a way that God reduces the number of orphans who need care. Adoption meets the needs of one family and one child, blessing both by bringing them together. Adoption does not solve the orphan crisis. Of the over 160 million children in the world who have lost at least one parent, only a fraction are eligible for adoption: most are living with their surviving parent or extended family, but all are vulnerable and need our prayer and support. See e.g. Statistics post and this post by Tom Davis.
The call to care for widows and orphans. We answer this call not by adopting, but through our prayers, personal acts of charity, and support of widow and orphan care ministries. Our favorites include All Gods Children International, which in 2010 served 60 children and families through their family sponsorship and outreach programs for every one adoption that they completed, and Wiphan Care Ministries, which sponsors schools for orphaned and vulnerable children as well as training programs for widows in Zambia. Give as God leads: whether He has given you a heart for orphans in Africa or the poor in your city, give accordingly, cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7) and sacrificially (2 Corinthians 8:2), for whosoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully (2 Corinthians 9:6).
Not everyone is called to adopt, but if you are... You are blessed among families!
Notes:
Guidestar is a free resource that is helpful in determining whether a charity is using resources wisely. Search for an organization by name and select its last IRS Form 990 filing to review its administration and other overhead expenses, including salaries. Are they reasonable or wasteful? Will they be a good steward with that which is entrusted to them?
As for food... did you know that "faith" is used less than three hundred times in the Bible, but the verb "to eat" apears more than 800 times? "In the Old and New Testaments, worship does not revolve around esoteric discussion of philosophy or ascetic ritual enactments, but around a family meal." Bless This Food, 1996. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8.
March 20, 2011
March 19, 2011
Numbers, Numbers Everywhere...
Incorrect numbers have a way of putting me over the edge, like chalk on a chalkboard. On other blogs, I keep seeing "60 - 150 million children live on the streets [in Ethiopia]." I take a deep breath and try to remain calm and gracious: the total population of Ethiopia is 90 million, including 42 million children (see World Factbook).
Please, I beg of you, think about the numbers that you are sharing. Do they make sense? Do you have some basis or reference for them? If not, say what you mean without giving a particular number, like "many" children live on the streets. This is true, and every single one of them is precious.
Numbers matter enough to get them right, and they are not that difficult to get. There are some great resources for current, accurate numbers (updated even since the statistics that I posted last year), including the CIA's 2011 World Factbook and UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 2010 Statistical Tables.
Happy number crunching!
Just another Soapbox Monologue brought to you by me, myself and I. Yes, I sometimes annoy myself too.
Please, I beg of you, think about the numbers that you are sharing. Do they make sense? Do you have some basis or reference for them? If not, say what you mean without giving a particular number, like "many" children live on the streets. This is true, and every single one of them is precious.
Numbers matter enough to get them right, and they are not that difficult to get. There are some great resources for current, accurate numbers (updated even since the statistics that I posted last year), including the CIA's 2011 World Factbook and UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 2010 Statistical Tables.
Happy number crunching!
Just another Soapbox Monologue brought to you by me, myself and I. Yes, I sometimes annoy myself too.
March 17, 2011
GREAT News!
THANK YOU to everyone who signed the petition, spread the word, and prayed. It helped!
Although officially unconfirmed, the Ethiopian Ministry of Women's, Children's and Youth Affairs is continuing to work at capacity to process adoption applications. The new policy will not be implemented in the dramatic way that was first proposed (if at all).
The Joint Council on International Children's Services, the U.S. Department of State, adoption and child welfare agencies, and other Non-Government Organizations are working with MOWA to strengthen the process of preserving families and caring for children while continuing to offer timely, ethical, and transparent adoptions in cases where that is the best available option.
Although officially unconfirmed, the Ethiopian Ministry of Women's, Children's and Youth Affairs is continuing to work at capacity to process adoption applications. The new policy will not be implemented in the dramatic way that was first proposed (if at all).
The Joint Council on International Children's Services, the U.S. Department of State, adoption and child welfare agencies, and other Non-Government Organizations are working with MOWA to strengthen the process of preserving families and caring for children while continuing to offer timely, ethical, and transparent adoptions in cases where that is the best available option.
Reconciling MOWA Numbers
I have been trying to understand and reconcile the numbers on adoption files that MOWA processes. In 2009 and again in 2010, MOWA approved fewer than 5,000 foreign adoptions total (with about 1/2 of those by Americans). JCICS and others kept saying that MOWA's proposed slowdown to 5 file reviews/day would be a decrease of 90%, with 50 adoption files/day reviewed by MOWA prior to the new policy (10,000 files reviewed each year if MOWA reviews files 200 days/year). The difference between 5,000 adoptions and 10,000 file reviews was bugging me until I stumbled on the explanation:
MOWA reviews each adoption case at two points in the process:
1. after the referral of the child to prospective adoptive parents. If MOWA confirms that the child is eligible for adoption and approves of the match, it issues the MOWA approval letter that is required for the adoption to be finalized by the court.
2. after the final court decree. MOWA reviews the file again, including the court decree, to approve issuance of the child's new birth certificate and passport.
5,000 foreign adoptions = 10,000 file reviews by MOWA = 50/day for 200 days/year.
Any slowdown in file review would affect the timing of an adoption at both of these points, delaying the processing time between a child's referral and final adoption decree as well as the time between the adoption decree and the issuance of a new birth certificate and passport, which are required to obtain a U.S. VISA to bring a child home. Such delays simply cannot be in the best interests of the children. We continue to pray that the leadership in Ethiopia will find better alternatives.
MOWA reviews each adoption case at two points in the process:
1. after the referral of the child to prospective adoptive parents. If MOWA confirms that the child is eligible for adoption and approves of the match, it issues the MOWA approval letter that is required for the adoption to be finalized by the court.
2. after the final court decree. MOWA reviews the file again, including the court decree, to approve issuance of the child's new birth certificate and passport.
5,000 foreign adoptions = 10,000 file reviews by MOWA = 50/day for 200 days/year.
Any slowdown in file review would affect the timing of an adoption at both of these points, delaying the processing time between a child's referral and final adoption decree as well as the time between the adoption decree and the issuance of a new birth certificate and passport, which are required to obtain a U.S. VISA to bring a child home. Such delays simply cannot be in the best interests of the children. We continue to pray that the leadership in Ethiopia will find better alternatives.
March 12, 2011
Please Help!
Please sign this petition to encourage the Ethiopian Ministry of Women's, Children's, and Youth Affairs to reconsider its new policy to review only five adoption applications each day. To make an impact, 250,000 signatures are needed this weekend.
MOWA: The Ministry of Women's, Children's, and Youth Affairs is the government body in Ethiopia that must review each adoption application file and issue a letter of approval before an adoption may be finalized. Until this month, MOWA had been reviewing as many as fifty files each day: in 2010, it approved over 4,000 foreign adoptions, including 2,513 adoptions by Americans (see article).
New Policy: This new policy is intended to ease MOWA's workload so that its staff may (a) spend more time reviewing each file, in an attempt to reduce instances of fraud, and (b) focus on the children who are not eligible for adoption (see e.g. Ethiopia Adoption Alert). Despite MOWA's good intentions, this new policy significantly harms the very children it seeks to protect and "is a tragic, unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses," according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services (see article).
Impact on Orphans: On a conference call this morning, the U.S. State Department said that MOWA now has 800 - 1,000 files pending. Based on limited information, the State Department has suggested that families with open court files may expect a 12-month delay, with file reviews cut back to 5 per day. With an average of 20 files approved each day prior to this policy, this slowdown will have a snowball effect. By April, the file backlog may be 1,300+. By the end of the year, the backlog may exceed 4,000, unless families begin to drop out of the Ethiopian adoption program (which seems likely to happen at alarming rates). At least one agency is projecting that children who are eligible for adoption will eventually have to wait in institutions for more than five years after a family has offered to provide a loving home.
In our daughter's case, this policy could have been the difference between bringing her home at six months old, as we did, and bringing her home at two-, three-, or even five-years old. Spending a few extra months or years in institutional care can have a profound negative impact on children (see e.g. Harvard research). Equally distressing, many children who are otherwise eligible for adoption will never have a forever family if these delays are realized. The new policy will also jeopardize the ability of adoption service providers to continue their donation of orphan care and family preservation assistance to the 1.2 million vulnerable individuals who were helped in 2010, and will overburden already struggling orphanages, who may begin to turn away children who need help because they have no beds available.
Note: as foreign adoptions in Ethiopia have increased (to the U.S., from virtually none in 1990 to 1,724 in 2008), infant mortality has decreased from 12% in 1990 to 7% in 2008 and under-5 (including infant) mortality has decreased from 21% in 1990 to 11% in 2008 (see U.S. Department of State statistics and UNICEF report). Intuitively, there is some causal correlation between these numbers, as orphanages have had more room and resources available to care for the most vulnerable children. Of course, even if adoption is a factor in these improvements, there are many other factors as well.
Better Alternatives: We absolutely support taking steps to ensure that each child is protected and every adoption is ethical and the best available option for the child, after all other options including family reunification and in-country adoption have been ruled out. There are better ways to improve the system, however. The most obvious alternative to the proposed slowdown is to increase MOWA's resources.
If MOWA needs to increase its personnel tenfold to continue to thoroughly and timely review files, it should do so. If funding is an issue, MOWA may charge an appropriate file processing fee. In comparison, significant processing fees are already paid by adoptive parents to the state and U.S. government for everything from background checks to immigration applications. This fee would not begin to cost adoptive parents as much as the cost of institutional care of their child for the months or years that they wait to bring them home, not to mention the months or years of resources that it may take to counter the physical and emotional damage to the child that may occur while they wait.
Any administrative fee could be used to help fund in-depth file investigation and review, as well as ongoing care for the children who are not eligible for adoption. This alternative would help ensure that children who are ethically and legitimately eligible for adoption are brought home sooner rather than later, that their situations are made better rather than worse by the system that is supposed to be helping them.
Best Interests of the Children: In the past, MOWA has demonstrated that its primary concern is, in fact, the best interests of the children. Last fall, Ethiopia's adoption program was praised by the U.S. State Department's special advisor on children's issues: "[T]hey want to do it right. Other countries should look at what Ethiopia is trying to do." (see article). Given its track record, we are hopeful that MOWA will reconsider this most recent policy decision and conclude that a catastrophic slowdown in file review is not the answer.
In the midst of all of this, we are again thankful that we chose an ethical adoption agency that we can trust. We are proud that our agency is first and foremost an orphan care ministry that "finds families for children, not children for families." In 2010, for every one child that our agency placed with an adoptive family, sixty other children and families were served through its outreach programs. We are confident that adoption was the best option available to our daughter, and we pray that Ethiopia's adoption program will continue to protect and serve the children who wait.
How You May Help:
1. Please sign the petition to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.
2. Please share this information with friends and family. Post, forward and broadcast this request via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Include in your email blasts, church bulletin, and church website, and announce it from the pulpit this weekend.
3. Please pray that God will help these leaders make the best decisions for the children who wait, give adoptive families peace about this issue, and guide each of us as we "defend the cause of the fatherless" (Isaiah 1:17).
We need at least 250,000 people to sign this petition by Monday. As our agency wrote, "If you have been adopted by God, and understand the unmerited favor and love that His adoption delivers, PLEASE TAKE ONE MINUTE to answer His call to be a voice for the voiceless, to defend the cause of these Ethiopian orphans."
MOWA: The Ministry of Women's, Children's, and Youth Affairs is the government body in Ethiopia that must review each adoption application file and issue a letter of approval before an adoption may be finalized. Until this month, MOWA had been reviewing as many as fifty files each day: in 2010, it approved over 4,000 foreign adoptions, including 2,513 adoptions by Americans (see article).
New Policy: This new policy is intended to ease MOWA's workload so that its staff may (a) spend more time reviewing each file, in an attempt to reduce instances of fraud, and (b) focus on the children who are not eligible for adoption (see e.g. Ethiopia Adoption Alert). Despite MOWA's good intentions, this new policy significantly harms the very children it seeks to protect and "is a tragic, unnecessary and disproportionate reaction to concerns of isolated abuses," according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services (see article).
Impact on Orphans: On a conference call this morning, the U.S. State Department said that MOWA now has 800 - 1,000 files pending. Based on limited information, the State Department has suggested that families with open court files may expect a 12-month delay, with file reviews cut back to 5 per day. With an average of 20 files approved each day prior to this policy, this slowdown will have a snowball effect. By April, the file backlog may be 1,300+. By the end of the year, the backlog may exceed 4,000, unless families begin to drop out of the Ethiopian adoption program (which seems likely to happen at alarming rates). At least one agency is projecting that children who are eligible for adoption will eventually have to wait in institutions for more than five years after a family has offered to provide a loving home.
In our daughter's case, this policy could have been the difference between bringing her home at six months old, as we did, and bringing her home at two-, three-, or even five-years old. Spending a few extra months or years in institutional care can have a profound negative impact on children (see e.g. Harvard research). Equally distressing, many children who are otherwise eligible for adoption will never have a forever family if these delays are realized. The new policy will also jeopardize the ability of adoption service providers to continue their donation of orphan care and family preservation assistance to the 1.2 million vulnerable individuals who were helped in 2010, and will overburden already struggling orphanages, who may begin to turn away children who need help because they have no beds available.
Note: as foreign adoptions in Ethiopia have increased (to the U.S., from virtually none in 1990 to 1,724 in 2008), infant mortality has decreased from 12% in 1990 to 7% in 2008 and under-5 (including infant) mortality has decreased from 21% in 1990 to 11% in 2008 (see U.S. Department of State statistics and UNICEF report). Intuitively, there is some causal correlation between these numbers, as orphanages have had more room and resources available to care for the most vulnerable children. Of course, even if adoption is a factor in these improvements, there are many other factors as well.
Better Alternatives: We absolutely support taking steps to ensure that each child is protected and every adoption is ethical and the best available option for the child, after all other options including family reunification and in-country adoption have been ruled out. There are better ways to improve the system, however. The most obvious alternative to the proposed slowdown is to increase MOWA's resources.
If MOWA needs to increase its personnel tenfold to continue to thoroughly and timely review files, it should do so. If funding is an issue, MOWA may charge an appropriate file processing fee. In comparison, significant processing fees are already paid by adoptive parents to the state and U.S. government for everything from background checks to immigration applications. This fee would not begin to cost adoptive parents as much as the cost of institutional care of their child for the months or years that they wait to bring them home, not to mention the months or years of resources that it may take to counter the physical and emotional damage to the child that may occur while they wait.
Any administrative fee could be used to help fund in-depth file investigation and review, as well as ongoing care for the children who are not eligible for adoption. This alternative would help ensure that children who are ethically and legitimately eligible for adoption are brought home sooner rather than later, that their situations are made better rather than worse by the system that is supposed to be helping them.
Best Interests of the Children: In the past, MOWA has demonstrated that its primary concern is, in fact, the best interests of the children. Last fall, Ethiopia's adoption program was praised by the U.S. State Department's special advisor on children's issues: "[T]hey want to do it right. Other countries should look at what Ethiopia is trying to do." (see article). Given its track record, we are hopeful that MOWA will reconsider this most recent policy decision and conclude that a catastrophic slowdown in file review is not the answer.
In the midst of all of this, we are again thankful that we chose an ethical adoption agency that we can trust. We are proud that our agency is first and foremost an orphan care ministry that "finds families for children, not children for families." In 2010, for every one child that our agency placed with an adoptive family, sixty other children and families were served through its outreach programs. We are confident that adoption was the best option available to our daughter, and we pray that Ethiopia's adoption program will continue to protect and serve the children who wait.
How You May Help:
1. Please sign the petition to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia.
2. Please share this information with friends and family. Post, forward and broadcast this request via Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Include in your email blasts, church bulletin, and church website, and announce it from the pulpit this weekend.
3. Please pray that God will help these leaders make the best decisions for the children who wait, give adoptive families peace about this issue, and guide each of us as we "defend the cause of the fatherless" (Isaiah 1:17).
We need at least 250,000 people to sign this petition by Monday. As our agency wrote, "If you have been adopted by God, and understand the unmerited favor and love that His adoption delivers, PLEASE TAKE ONE MINUTE to answer His call to be a voice for the voiceless, to defend the cause of these Ethiopian orphans."
March 7, 2011
The Time has Come, the Walrus Said...
...to Talk of Many Things.
Me: Isabella is my little Princess, and Matthew is my little Prince!
Matthew: I'm not a little prince, I'm a little KING.
My mistake.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs is the government body in Ethiopia that must review each file and issue a letter of approval to the Court before an adoption may be finalized. MOWA has been reviewing as many as fifty adoption application files each day, processing over 5,000 foreign adoptions (half to the U.S.) each year.
Citing concerns about corruption, MOWA has announced that it will only be reviewing five files each day, a decrease of 90%. MOWA has not indicated that the overall outcome of its review will be different, only that it will be taking more time on each file. This will certainly mean further delays in the adoption process, with children spending more time struggling in orphanages instead of thriving with their families. One family with our agency received a referral of a 13 month old in October. They are still waiting for the MOWA approval letter to pass court; the soonest they can hope to bring her home at this point is May.
I have also been struck by the extreme views of adoption that are out there. One family recently posted on their blog that they are not only ENcouraging adoption of waiting (older and/or special needs) children, but that they are DIScouraging the adoption of healthy infants, with the thought that decreasing the "demand" for healthy infants may decrease corruption. There is an implicit suggestion that adopting a healthy infant may be selfish under the best circumstances. Other families are quite adamant that adoption of even healthy infants is charitable, and that one should adopt to "do good."
I have many responses to these things percolating in my brain. Finding the time to organize my thoughts and purge-via-blogging is challenging. I am determined to get to this post in the next week, however, else my poor brain explode from the pressure!
In the meantime, I will leave you with this thought...
The Walrus and the Carpenter/Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see/Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"/They said, "it WOULD be grand!"
...and this photo:
Me: Isabella is my little Princess, and Matthew is my little Prince!
Matthew: I'm not a little prince, I'm a little KING.
My mistake.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs is the government body in Ethiopia that must review each file and issue a letter of approval to the Court before an adoption may be finalized. MOWA has been reviewing as many as fifty adoption application files each day, processing over 5,000 foreign adoptions (half to the U.S.) each year.
Citing concerns about corruption, MOWA has announced that it will only be reviewing five files each day, a decrease of 90%. MOWA has not indicated that the overall outcome of its review will be different, only that it will be taking more time on each file. This will certainly mean further delays in the adoption process, with children spending more time struggling in orphanages instead of thriving with their families. One family with our agency received a referral of a 13 month old in October. They are still waiting for the MOWA approval letter to pass court; the soonest they can hope to bring her home at this point is May.
I have also been struck by the extreme views of adoption that are out there. One family recently posted on their blog that they are not only ENcouraging adoption of waiting (older and/or special needs) children, but that they are DIScouraging the adoption of healthy infants, with the thought that decreasing the "demand" for healthy infants may decrease corruption. There is an implicit suggestion that adopting a healthy infant may be selfish under the best circumstances. Other families are quite adamant that adoption of even healthy infants is charitable, and that one should adopt to "do good."
I have many responses to these things percolating in my brain. Finding the time to organize my thoughts and purge-via-blogging is challenging. I am determined to get to this post in the next week, however, else my poor brain explode from the pressure!
In the meantime, I will leave you with this thought...
The Walrus and the Carpenter/Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see/Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"/They said, "it WOULD be grand!"
Lewis Carroll/Through the Looking Glass
...and this photo:
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