What can happen when adoption is not an option

A couple of stories out of Iraq today bring into focus what the results may be when there is no option of adoption for children in a county. Of course, war increases the toll on everyone and everything, but where adoption could offer one small ray of hope that light is extinguished.

First, a tragic … and criminal … discovery by British troops in Iraq brought to tears by what they’d found; more than 20 orphans tied up and left to starve to death in an orphanage.

Apparently, the children had been held like this for at least a month, while the caretaker of the orphanage had been selling supplies provided for the kids.

Soldiers initially thought the children were all dead, until one lifted his head.

Sgt Michael Beale said: “You could see literally every bone in their bodies. They had no energy to move, no expression on their faces.”

Also,this report on information from Red Cresent on the worsening desperation that is apparently resulting in substantially increasing numbers of illegal abortions performed on women who are seeing few other options.

“Pregnant women, infants and children are unable to get…required medical care,” states the report, which was translated from Arabic, “and criminal abortion became [sic] the norms.”

Some would disagree with my postulation that stories like these have anything to do with international adoption, but I would have to take issue with the argument.

In addition to being a business and providing families with children … both aspects frequently indicated as the only reason international adoption exists by those with a limited perspective on the world or an agenda that has little to do with children .. it is at its root one of the very few ways whereby children who through no fault of their own find themselves without the most basic of essentials for a healthy, hopeful life — a family — can see their fate altered.

This is not to say that every one of the millions of orphaned or abandoned children in the world will be brought into a family, but it is vital that the option stays open so it remains possible that each one possibly could.

Suffering children are not marketing tools created by the adoption industry to drum up business, although some would have people think this is exactly the case. It may be a difficult and uncomfortable reality for those sitting in the lap of luxury … and compaired to the lives millions of the world’s children endure, even the poorest Americans are doing exactly that … to absorb, but real children are starving, are dying, are being forced into the most vile forms of slavery, by the millions every single day.

This, at its core, is what international adoption is about … these children in this world … and this is why I fight to keep the option open.

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