Stealing Chinese Babies for Adoption

[MountainLaurel]

So, is this just the usual sort of anti-Chinese disinformation -- heaven knows the headline is salacious enough -- or is this indeed a major concern? I can't say that I'm surprised. I've read scholarly studies about the commodification of Korean infants for adoption to Western nations. Guess this is just another step in the joys of capitalism being injected into social services.


On a muggy evening in July 2004, on a concrete lane reeking of raw sewage and chemicals from surrounding factories, a stranger leapt from a white van. He yanked 16-month-old Fei Mei from the arms of her 8-year-old cousin and sped away.

All night, her parents searched this industrial city in southern China for their round-faced baby girl.

snip

That was once a reasonable assumption. For generations, girls in rural China have been left to die in the cold or abandoned on doorsteps while families devote their scant resources to nourishing boys. But over the past decade, a wave of foreigners, mostly Americans, has poured into China with dollars in hand to adopt Chinese babies, 95 percent of them girls.

Last year, the United States issued nearly 8,000 visas to Chinese-born children adopted by American parents. More than 50,000 children have left China for the United States since 1992. And more than 10,000 children have landed in other countries, according to Chinese reports.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031100942.html

[NJCher]

1. and I thought we had corruption problems

This is a horribly sad story. While it is long, it is definitely worth the read. So if I understand this correctly, even legitimate adoptions through recognized agencies are suspect because of the theft of children. And some of these agencies knowingly adopted children that had been stolen.

My neighbors adopted a little Chinese girl a few years ago. I see this little girl every day and now I'll always wonder.

How could anyone do this? Take a child away from a parent for money?




Cher

[physioex]

2. I know lots of american families here....

That have adopted chinese babies. You wonder how many of them were abducted....

[MountainLaurel]

3. It's actually fairly common

Look at the history of baby brokers in the U.S.: Women who were coerced into giving their child up for adoption or told the infant was stillborn, only to have it sold to a "deserving couple".

[wickerwoman]

7. The ones who get sold to foreigners are the lucky ones.

My Chinese students have told me you never, never let your child walk around alone. There's a huge market for stolen children. The ones who don't sell to foreigners are often deliberately maimed and forced to beg.

Riding the subway every day I have noticed the same woman (in a country with a one-child policy) parading four different children (on different days) each one with severe facial burns, missing limbs, etc. It's horrible. I would tell the police, but my Chinese isn't good enough and they probably wouldn't be able to catch her. The point, though, is that it's open and very, very prevalent. Women in the housing project behind my apartment push their kids around in modified prams with cage like bars taped over them so people can't grab the kid if they turn their backs for a minute. It's really sad.

[shrike]

20. There's also the "slavery" market

Adoption trafficking is sad and deplorable, but I suspect there's a bigger demand for unpaid labor, "companions" for pedophiles, prostitution (for older girls) and "servants to the wealthy" who'll work for room and board and little else.

[cantstandbush]

4. A million poor white and black babies in America and folks need to go to

China to adopt? Give me a break!

[artfan]

5. Fear is a major factor in foreign adoptions

a good friend and her husband adopted from China one reason was fear a birth parent would try to reclaim the child. They also felt the process to adopt an American child was slow and inefficent. My husband and I would love to adopt but because he has battled cancer for several years we are not considered to be a 'stable' family.

[JI7]

10. with so many kids who need a home

i don't see why this should be a problem. unless there are issues of not having the financial means because of medical bills. but wouldn't it be better for a child to grow up in a loving home even with these life challenges things than to not have a family at all ?

as if the child is stable without a family waiting to be adopted by the "perfect" parents.

and i do think we need to change the law so Americans aren't reluctant to adopt american kids because they are afraid birth parents might want them back.

i'm not sure what. but something that encourages more adoptions at home.

[REP]

11. Healthy White Babies Are Rare

Most people in the market to adopt don't want a child; they want a baby, preferably a healthy baby of their own race. Since adoption is expensive, that means healthy white babies, and the supply does not keep up the demand.

Rahter than making it harder for women (and men) to reclaim their children from shady adoption deals, we should be taking the profit out of adoption and making it easier for poor and working class women (and men and families) to keep their children. Very very few people really want to hand their helpless newborn over to strangers.

We seem to have forgotten thar adoption is about helping children who have no family - not about producing consumer goods for people who want something; in this case, a human being. Adoption is to help CHILDREN, not to help the infertile. No child should be born just so another couple can adopt it.

[LisaL]

12. Chinese babies aren't exactly white.

So, that ain't it.

[bleedingheart]

17. that is where the Russian and Eastern European kids come in

for those willing to pay a bit extra....I know a guy with three Russian children he adopted.
My husband's cousin adopted two kids from Russia but another adopted 5 from Korea.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

21. I know more than one couple that went overseas to adopt

Two of the couples adopted Chinese girls because in both cases the husbands were considered too old by American agencies. (One was in his 60s, the other in his 50s.) One of the couples adopted a girl who has developmental problems. They were so happy to have another child to love that they did not hesitate to accept her.

A third couple was young, healthy and well-off enough to adopt an American child but they wouldn't because they believed any woman "irresponsible" enough to conceive a child she can't raise is a drug or alcohol user of impaired intelligence and questionable morals. I found their attitude repugnant and was happy when they moved away. They were already raising their little girl to be as unpleasant as they were.

I have done pro-bono work for a long-established adoption agency so I'm familiar with issues surrounding open adoptions, the lack of parents willing to accept special needs children, and the reprehensible attitudes about birth mothers.

Some people go overseas because American agencies consider them unsuitable parents. Some want a child that the birth mother can't reclaim, though that is such a rare occurence that I believe their real reason is they feel inconvenienced and threatened by the presence of the birth parents in their lives.

And some go overseas because they are arrogant yuppies who regard birth mothers as if they were kennel bitches from a dog breeder, and they don't want any offspring that doesn't have the right pedigree. And that's the truth.

[Raine]

6. I have a friend

who is a single woman and she has adopted two little girls from China. I have to admit she is a flake and though she loves the girls I don't think she is a great mother and doubt she would have been approved here to adopt an American child. I think the girls spend more time with her mother while she is off traveling then they do with her which is probably just as well. :-(

[LisaL]

14. Millions of babies available for adoption in US? I don't think so.

[IdaBriggs]

16. For every infant available for adoption in the United States --

and I am talking infant as in "under four" -- there are THIRTY COUPLES who want them.

Infertility currently affects ONE IN FIVE couples, and adoption laws vary from state to state with varying levels of onerous to annoying levels of paperwork and financial burdens. In Michigan, for example, the cost for a non-contested everyone is happy adoption is around FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS (and the biological parents can change their minds for no reason whatsoever for up to one year -- it happened to one couple we know).

It is not uncommon for the process to take multiple years, and heartbreaking stories of bio-moms who change their minds are rampant -- and of course they are not required to give back any money provided for their upkeep during their pregnancy, because that looks like "buying a baby" so adoptive parents of limited financial means are victimized financially and emotionally on a regular enough basis as to be cliche.

Children who enter the foster care system have an 80% chance of EVENTUALLY becoming available for adoption. Unfortunately, they typically leave and re-enter the program FIVE TIMES before they are "adoption eligible" because the goal is to reunite families whenever possible. So, here is how it goes:

Crackhead or Meth head or otherwise unsuitable person has one or two children. They abuse or neglect them, and they are taken away. The foster family (assuming they are good, kind decent people, which I hope the majority are) spend a great deal of time and energy dealing with basic hygiene and emotional issues, as well as doing whatever it takes to help the child feel emotionally secure and begin to learn basic educational skills (because these children are usually badly behind in this area).

Its been six months to a year, and the druggie folks are clean now, so the kids go back. Six months later, the parents have fallen off the wagon, and the abused/neglected child is back in the system only the original foster parents have already taken in other children, so the kids go to a "new" family. Rinse and repeat four times. The children are now adolescents with severe emotional and/or physical problems from the mental, physical, emotional and possible sexual abuse they have endured dung their formative years, and now they are old enough where the acting out becomes dangerous to both themselves and any adoptive people who would want them. They also require a great deal of financial resources (counseling, etc.) to even get to a "ground zero" position, and folks who are willing to donate that level of time and energy (and money) are few and far between.

The advantages of an international adoption also include no bio-parents showing up later to blackmail and/or make trouble for you and your family (especially in China, where abandoning an infant carries a prison term of seven years), and (again in China) actually making a positive difference in the life of a LEGALLY AVAILABLE baby girl who would otherwise end up as a farm worker with no opportunity for a good education or marriage. The cost is also substantially less than a US adoption, with the total fees including travel running about $13,000 the last time I checked.

[SoCalDem]

8. Don;t they have to produce documents at the airport and again

at customs in the US?? I have known many people who have adopted Chinese children, and it took MONTHS and often more than a few trips there..

This sounds like a Fox-Snooze type story

[LisaL]

13. The couples themselves don't steal the children.

The children are stolen, then sold to orphanages. Then adopted by unsuspecting couples.

[MountainLaurel]

15. It's not at that end of the process where there's a problem

It's at the other, where the infants are "given" to the for-profit orphanages for a finder's fee.

[0007]

9. I think Barbara stole junior

[Atman]

18. The trouble is, you steal one Chinese baby...

...and half an hour later you feel like you have to steal another.

:hide:

[shrike]

19. LOL

Terrible, but funny.

[MountainLaurel]

22. Oh, Atman

:spank: