Gay arrived home today after a couple of weeks away, most of it spent in Cambodia. The point of the trip was her second house building adventure with Tabitha USA, and was again successful with her group completing seventeen houses in two villages outside of Sihanoukville.

I've not seen the photos yet, but she did spend a day at AOA, the orphanage Sam and Cj were living in before we brought them home. She recognized quite a few of the older kids from last year, and noted that there were a lot of babies, as well, which rather well addresses claims by some that infants would vanish from Cambodian orphanages when Americans stopped adopting them.

Hooey!

How ethnocentric does one have to be to assume that Cambodian children are only abandoned or orphaned because Americans want to adopt them? Like the anti-adoption rallying cry that goes up far too often, "There would be no adoption if there were no adopters!", the stance fails to take into account that children in countries where grinding poverty is the grim fact of life for the huge majority of the people are often more a curse than a blessing, and a birth can mean a death is not far behind.

Mothers unable to properly feed themselves have no need or desire to watch a child die from malnutrition or outright starvation, and those with other children can't be blamed for understanding each new mouth makes it even more likely that none will survive, and perhaps even resenting that new mouth.

Fewer adopters only means more dead children and more victims of the various forms of slavery that eat them up and spit them out.

Gay brought with her an article Shelley cut from the March 6, 2007 Cambodian Daily newspaper for me: "Int'l Adoptions of Local Children Double in 2006".

"Ah ha!" I can hear people say. "See? That's why there are babies in orphanages! International adoptions have DOUBLED, so orphanages are stealing babies to supply the adoption market!"

For my response to this ridiculous tripe, see the next post ...