I decided early this morning that today's post would be a catch-up on bits of adoption news floating around my desk. When I learned that another power cut was in the cards for a better part of the day, that settled it. Writing anything deeper without the ability to bounce around the Net researching isn't how I like to work, so a good little tidy sounded even better ... my blogging equivalent to some light dusting.

Little did I know I'd end up in tears.

As is far too often really obvious, adoptive parents get a lot of grief. There are those in the adoption community that view us as neighbors they would rather keep well out of the vicinity, accusing us of all sorts of things that are this village's version of lowering property values. We're racists, or tools of the devil, or out to commit cultural genocide, too stupid to grasp just what bad people we are, and any of a variety of other evils. We must be knocked down, hounded and driven out of town on a rail.

If we adopt domestically, we're taking advantage. If we adopt internationally, we're stealing a child's culture and neglecting American kids that need us. No few birth parents and some adult adoptees figure we're good for only one thing ... as punching bags for every frustration, regret and resentment they've spent a lifetime grooming.

This is, of course, something I take issue with ... boy, howdy! do I take issue ... and if ever I was to start questioning or doubting why I react so negatively to slams against adoptive parents, I would only need to again come across a story like this one by a woman from San Diego.

There are thousands like it, but Elizabeth Fitzsimmons's adoption tale is the reason I'm wracked with sobs today.

Beautifully written in all its horror, this is a guts-on-the-table account of the adoption of a little girl from China through the eyes of her new mother. The baby, named Natalie sometime during the fourteen-month-wait her parents endured by staring at referral photos and falling in love, came ... if she was to come at all ... with problems.

Despite the heat and humidity, her caretakers had dressed her in two layers. When I peeled back her sweaty clothes, I found the worst diaper rash I'd ever seen, and a 2-inch scar at the base of her spine cutting through the red bumps and peeling skin.

Something had been surgically removed from this child, and the procedure had been badly done. In addition, spina bifida and other complications, complications that would cause a lifetime of handicaps and the need for very specialized care, were diagnosed.

Ms. Fitzsimmons was new to the mother thing and not at all prepared to deal with paralysis, wheelchairs, colostomy bags, a huge range of health issues that this child would never escape, and a commitment to a life "utterly devoted to her care".

She was offered another child ... a healthy replacement child. After all, if she'd fallen in love with a photo, certainly she could easily transfer all that emotion to a real, live child, a child also in need of love and a mother. The "deal had been a healthy baby, and she wasn't", so why not?

Why not?

Because she and her husband had committed to Natalie and would not leave their child behind to whatever fate awaits such profoundly handicapped little girls in China. Because they loved their daughter ... and she was their daughter, not a pair of shoes or a sofa or used car.

Anyone out there want to argue today that adoptive parents are evil, selfish idiots only out to nab other peoples' babies from loving arms and caring families?

Read the article, then get back to me.

All adoptive families that include children with physical afflictions, emotional and mental difficulties ... heck! even those with healthy kids who are very likely healthier because of their adoptions ... take a bow.

We're in the neighborhood, and we aren't leaving.

If you'd like to look around the blogs for more on adoptive parents doing a great job, just enter 'special needs' in the search feature on the right side of the What's New page. There are hundreds of inspiring posts here.

Also, a 'Children with Physical Disabilites Forum' has recently started up for sharing information and resources. Check it out.