LOL – how droll. You have been suggesting that international adoption is evil and racist, and when I ask you over and over again about the children you come back with,

“What do you suggest?”

That is it? Are you freaking kidding me?

ROTFL – thank you for answering all my questions in that one sentence.

You have no idea, but you KNOW international adoptions are an unnecessary evil? I am moving on – good Lord almighty!

Ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha……..and so on!

Romee

Thank you, Margaret for plugging my article at Associated Content on Human Trafficking. And thank you, Mirah, for posting all of those facts and figures on the comments section of that article as well as the comments section here.

Epic proportions indeed!

Mirah, you give so much lip service to how things need to change but I never see a suggestion for how to change them. Do you understand that this is what people here are asking you for? How do we get the US to sign the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child? Who do we pressure to do that? Congress? The UN representative? Who? Stop giving us the warm wind of regurgitated statistics and tell us something we can use.

BTW for anyone who is interested (or still reading) Heather Lowe, who writes for our Crisis Pregnancy Blog did a great review of one of Mirah’s books and even did a 4-part interview with her. You can find them here:

http://unplanned-pregnancy.adoptionblogs.com/index.php

Mothering no matter what it takes? Are you kidding me? What do you think my son’s bmom should have done? Kill someone for thier food? Steal it from anohter child or family? Take it from other members of her family? Pressure to force women to parent is JUST as disastrous as pressuring them to relinquish. If you don’t believe me, get up and go ask the children in our foster care system, ask the thousands of abused and neglected kids still with their families all across this country. Birth control in countries where the predominant religion has been Roman Catholicism for over 500 years? Telling men in countries DEDICATED to machisimo they start placing more valuing their women and children more? Telling women in the Western world when they can and can’t have babies or start/halt/end their careers? Are you nuts? What makes you think these would have the slightest hope of being effective, not to mention the extraordinary amount of time it would take to convince the world to implement these highly unlikely solutions.

Human relief efforts aren’t working NOW; there is WAY WAY more need than relief even now, exactly where do you think the money is coming from to support all those children abandoned after adoptions cease?

Mirah: you continue to point out over and over and over and over WHY you think adoptions should cease. You refuse to answer the hard questions about the children who fall through the gaping abysses in your agenda; refuse to look at the raw truth of the devastation the agenda you keep pushing will cause vulnerable women and children. You have been decietful and underhanded in representing yourself and your information. You have made groundless accusations. You look away and equivocate when asked to provide proven, responsible, POSSIBLE long-term solutions.

I guess the only question I HAVEN’T asked you is:

Given even just the above, why on earth would I support you in any way?

What do you suggest?

Do you know what happens when money is donated to many of these highly corrupt countries? Do you really think that UNICEF and the UN are free of the taint of corruption? Yep, lived in countries where they operate.

Changing a cultural mindset whereby children and women are seen as valuable assets, not property, takes YEARS. Look how long it took the US and we are supposedly progressive.

You can quote statistics and facts until you are blue in the face (education is rife with people who love to do that), but until you share with me the visits you’ve taken to third world countries where you held the orphans in your arms, the times you spent in the slums of Peru or elsewhere(they are not pretty – I’ve seen them), until you have a filthy, ragged mother who is 26 but looks 50 begging you for food with her emaciated infant dangling from her hips, until you have told me what the MILLIONS (not 15, not 100, not 1000 but MILLIONS)of abandoned and orphaned children are TO DO NOW (not down the road in UTOPIA where no one is corrupt), you have given me nothing and you have done nothing to ameliorate the exorable conditions that the majority of the children live in.

Finally, birth control? Have at it! Take on the Catholic Church in Guatemala. Explain to the machismo culture of South and Central America how important and valuable their woman and children are – in fact, while your at it, take on the Islamic world where the rape and honor killings of women is cultural.

Reform needs to happen in the context of humane, child centered actions that look to the future, but address the needs of NOW.

So far, your arguments have reminded me of the talking pundits I see so often now on MSNBC and CNN whereby ratings, money and selling a story are far more important than addressing what really matters.

Which to me, as always, comes back to the children. Thank you, btw, because just reading and thinking about your “stuff” has firmly solidified my position – I will never stop speaking for the children and working to be sure that all children have a chance at health and happiness, be that in their birth family or through adoption.

Romee

In part. Baby trafficking exists to fill a demand for infants. No demand, no business selling them.

The first part of the solution is admitting there is a problem. Facing it no matter how painful. Talking about it without shutting people down as being anti-adoption or whatever.

The next major part of the solution is getting the US to agree to the provisions Hague and help stop the corruption, it is far more complicated because it is hard to separate the honest, ethical, necessary adoptions from those which are not.

Sandra Soria, executive director of Peru’s nonprofit Institute for Infancy and the Family, for instance, said “it is impossible to know how many children are sold each year, for adoption, forced labor, or the sex trade.” Rick Vecchio, “Pregnant Teen’s Murder Shocks Peru.” Associated Press, March 13, 2006.

(No, it’s not so because I report it as an author, or because it was reported in the press. It is so because those who are charged with overseeing and attempting to regulate these situations say so – from non-profit watchdog agencies to the United Nations.)

Long term solutions are multi-faceted, and include reducing the pressure on women to delay child bearing and also to become mothers no matter what it takes.

Increasing efforts to treat and prevent infertility, in part through education and environmental clean-ups.

Fighting global poverty, and domestically eliminating pressures on younger, poorer women to relinquish. Perhaps encourage younger women to become mothers when their bodies are fertile and persue education and careers later!

I agree with you that these comments have degenerated. I agree that there is name-calling, bashing and inane arguements. I know there have been times I probably should have re-read or re-worded before hitting the send button (or re-re-read or re-re-worded…..) For my part in this, I apologize.

However, I agree with Sandra. While there is breath in my body, I am going to fight against the all or nothing mentality of ending adoption, either internationally or domestically. This idea that if adoption didn’t exist that the things that lead to so many adoptions wouldn’t exist. It is, IMO, completely erroneous.

Mirah,

Your post explains WHY you think adoptions should be halted in many foreign countries. Not WHAT happens when they are halted or how to safely and effectively avoid those consequences if adoption was banned.

You mention the ends not justifying the means. I agree. The elimination of baby trafficking (the end) DOES NOT justify the halt of adoptions (the means). Baby trafficking happens because people (both those abroad and those in the US) are corrupt. It doesn’t happen because people in the US provide homes for children who were abandoned long before they were ever even available for adoption due to a lack of support on the part of the government for its people. Your apparent reasoning is that adoption = baby trafficking. I think that correlation is false.

However, you have still ignored several of my questions…..namely WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ABANDONED CHILDREN OF THESE COUNTRIES WHEN ADOPTION CEASES TO BE AN OPTION. WHO FEEDS THEM? WHO CLOTHES THEM? WHO KEEPS THEM ALIVE?

You use a Machiavellian reference. I think it is the height of Machiavellian thinking to condemn hundreds of thousands of children to die from starvation, beatings, rape trauma and gang-related violence because you feel, erroneously IMO, that it will save OTHER children from being stolen and sold.

“I feel obligated, however, to set the record straight with the facts so that readers of this blog might be educated with the real facts, not name-calling and inane, baseless bashing:

Would name-calling and inane, baseless bashing include making the suggestion that Sandra is defensive about international adoption because her own adoptions were less than ethical? Come on, Mirah. We’ve all gotten angry, we’ve all said things that, on reflection, probably did not contribute greatly to the discussion. Put it aside, as I should, and answer the questions. I refer you to my post of 06/13/07 @ 00:34 for a full list of the questions I would like to no. A point-counter point format would be fine.

I think I’ve finally made it through all the comments, and hopefully contacted you all via email. Posting responses to each here would have taken far too much space!

This discussion will continue for a very long time, and I will be an active participant while there’s breath in my body.

It is my understanding that the US stop Cambodian adoptions several years ago.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. I just had to get away from the constant barrage of idiocy.

Apparently, only an “author” has true knowledge of the situation in international adoptions. Those of us who have lived and worked overseas haven’t a clue about what is “really” going on (we are just really that stupid).

BTW – one of my students spent last summer working in a Cambodian orphanage of which there are many (beautiful, country, btw – heartbreaking poverty, children with distended bellies or no limbs begging on the streets, but, they are so much better off, right?) Oh, wait, shouldn’t there now be no need of orphanages in Cambodia because the US no longer adopts from Cambodia? Isn’t that the premise – we stop the adoptions, children are no longer “sold”, orphanages stop being necessary…yadda, yadda, yadda…

I am happy to debate issues in adoption, but I won’t continue to listen to someone who refuses (under the guise of knowing more) to listen to me.

Gracias,

Romee