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:
No comments:
Post a Comment