"It was amazing to have
her in my arms ... I still cry when I see the tape of her being given to
me," recalled Blitzer. "I couldn't believe she was mine."
In 2007, Blitzer applied
to adopt another child from China. Six years later, she is still
waiting. "The estimate right now for me to receive a healthy infant is
2017," she said.
After decades of steady
growth, the number of international adoptions has dropped nearly 50%
since 2004, despite the well-publicized explosion of adoptions from
China in the 1990s, and high-profile adoptions by celebrities such as
Angelina Jolie from Cambodia and Madonna from Malawi.
The decline isn't due to
fewer orphans worldwide nor waning demand from prospective parents,
experts say. It is due to rising regulations and growing sentiment in
countries such as Russia and China against sending orphans abroad.
The number of children
finding new homes in the United States -- the number one location for
adopting children -- fell to 8,668 in 2012 after peaking at 22,884 in
2004, according to U.S. State Department statistics. A survey by
Britain's Newcastle University of the top 23 nations that adopt children
from abroad recorded 23,626 international adoptions in 2011 -- down
from 45,299 in 2004.
"I think it's both a
surprise that it's been dropping, and it's a surprise that significant
forces are opposed to international adoption," said Elizabeth Bartholet,
professor of law and director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard
Law School. With the growing forces of globalization, "why wouldn't this
be expanding?" added Bartholet, a proponent of international adoption
who adopted two boy from Peru in the 1980s.
As international adoption rates fall, there is one country that is sending more children abroad: The United States.
International adoptions rising -- for American black children
Although the number of
American kids adopted internationally is far fewer than overseas orphans
that join U.S. families, with 315 children in 2009 that's three times
as many as 2004, according to Newcastle University.
"No country likes that
it's not tending to all of its own children. And I think a lot of
Americans are surprised that we are one of those sending countries,"
said Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Donaldson Adoption
Institute and author of "Adoption Nation."
Feeding the 'adoption nation'
The story of international adoption is an American story.
"The United States
adopts more children internationally, but also domestically, than the
rest of the world combined," Pertman said. "The good, the bad and the
ugly all play out here in bigger ways than they do elsewhere simply
because the process is older and more developed here, for better or for
worse."
Laura Blitzer with her daughter, Cydney, adopted from China in 2000. Blitzer has waited six years to adopt a second child.
Transnational adoptions grew in popularity following the World War II -- at least 50,000 took place from 1948 to 1969.
With the opening of
China and Russia in the 1990s, international adoption exploded --
410,000 children were adopted by citizens of 27 countries between 2000
and 2010, according to Peter Selman, an international adoption expert
from Newcastle University and statistical adviser to the U.N. Hague
Convention on international adoption.
"In Russia it was the
breakup of the Soviet Union. In China it was the discovery of the impact
of the one-child policy," said Susan Caughman, publisher of Adoptive
Families Magazine, who adopted a daughter from China in 1992.
"Chinese orphanages then
were stuffed with abandoned infants," largely girls, Caughman said, as
boys were preferred by families after the implementation of the
one-child policy. "Russia was on its knees in a catastrophic situation
as the social fabric unraveled."
Feeding the trend were single, career-minded U.S. women like Blitzer.
"I'd never been married
and went up and down the East Coast to get various degrees ... I like to
work. Working is a big part of who I am," said Blitzer, a professor of
health and physical education.
But she also wanted a
family. A few months after Blitzer filed paperwork to adopt, a
13-day-old girl was left in a market in Shaoyang, China, with the name
Shao Zhi Ying written on a piece of paper.
"That means 'wisdom' and
'courage' -- they must have known something, because that's exactly who
she is," Blitzer said. As per regulation, the police placed a "finding
ad" in a local newspaper detailing the abandoned child and placed her in
the Shaoyang Welfare Institute orphanage. Nine months later, she was in
the arms of Blitzer, who named her new daughter Cydney.
Now 13, Cydney Blitzer
is starting her freshman year at the LaGuardia High School for Music and
Art and the Performing Arts -- the inspiration for the movie "Fame."
"She's fiercely
independent, very quick and talented, and she's got a fantastic voice,"
said her mother, who now works in the Department of Kinesiology at
Brooklyn College in New York.
From abandoned infant in
a Chinese market to acceptance into a world-renowned school in New
York, the Blitzers could be a poster family for the rags-to-riches aura
that cloaks the spirit of international adoption: Individuals and
families opening their lives to the world's most underprivileged
orphans.
Abandoned at a Chinese market just a few days old, 13-year-old Cydney has entered the prestigious LaGuardia High School.
"(Adoption) captures
people's imagination ... it's right out of Charles Dickens; it's a
dramatic story, an archetype of literature," Caughman said.
But as Blitzer found
when she filed to adopt another child from China six years ago, these
fairy tale endings are now less common.
Door to China narrows
If Blitzer, now 55,
filed for adoption in China today, she would have no hope of being
matched with a healthy baby. In May 2007 -- a month after she filed for
her second adoption -- China instituted new, stringent rules for foreign
adoptions. The new rules at first prohibited single people and those
over the age of 50 from adopting a child. In 2011, single women were
again allowed to adopt but only children with special needs, such as
those with a physical disability. Single women must sign an affidavit
that they are not homosexual.
China also now prohibits
adoptions to foreigners who are morbidly obese or have facial
deformities. People who have taken antidepressants for serious mental
disorders in the past two years are also not eligible, as are applicants
who are blind, have schizophrenia or a terminal disease. Couples must
be married at least two years, unless either person has been previously
divorced -- in which case they aren't eligible to adopt until five years
after their wedding. China also now requires prospective families to
have an annual income equal to $10,000 per family member and at least
$80,000 in assets.
The new rules were
necessary to protect "the best interests of children" as foreign demand
for children outstripped the supply of orphans, Lu Ying, director of the
China Center for Adoption Affairs, told the state-run Xinhua news
agency in early 2007. The rules ensure adopters "are able to offer the
Chinese children adopted the best possible environment to grow in."
Adoption agencies at the
time predicted stiffer requirements would reduce the number of
applications rather than slow the rate of adoptions. "The new rules will
help shorten waiting time for qualified foreigners and speed up the
process for children, especially the disabled, so that they can go to
their new families, where they can get better education and medical
treatment, more quickly," Lu told Xinhua.
That hasn't been the
case. China remains the number one source of adoptive children, but by
2011 the number of Chinese children adopted by foreign families had
dropped by half compared to 2007, according to the Newcastle University
survey.
Blitzer now waits behind
a backlog of prospective parents. "I'm grandfathered in, so I'm still
eligible for a healthy infant and frankly I don't want to lose my place
in line," she said. "But I'm 55 now. My kid is going to high school.
What is reasonable for both of us? What is affordable?"
As China slows
international adoptions, the number of children filling its orphanages
is climbing -- rising to 92,000 in 2011, almost a 50% rise from 2004,
according to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs.
A January protest in Russia over the government's decision to end adoptions to the United States.
China isn't the only
nation slowing the outflow of adoptions. Russia has long been the
second-largest provider of orphans for international adoption. But last
December, Russia passed a bill banning adoptions
to the United States by 2014. The move is widely seen as retaliation
for a law the United States passed in December on human rights abusers
in Russia. Emotions have run high on the issue following the death of a three-year-old Russian boy adopted in Texas earlier this year, and the 2010 incident of a seven-year-old boy being sent back to Russia.
Other nations open, close
During her long wait for a second child from China, Blitzer has considered searching in other countries.
"Does it pay to move out
of China to somewhere else? In the meantime, various countries have
opened and shut down [their international adoptions]. Vietnam closed; I
think Korea is iffy right now," Blitzer said. "Haiti has opened and
closed since the earthquake and opened again; Russia has opened and
closed. So it's a real conundrum about the right thing to do."
In May, Ghana became the
latest country to suspend international adoptions, according to the
U.S. State Department. It joins Bhutan, Guatemala, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Rwanda as states that have closed their doors.
South Korea plans to
phase out international adoption, and adoptions to the United States
from Nepal have effectively stopped. Authorized U.S. adoption agencies
left the country after the State Department warned against adopting from
the Himalayan nation. The United States doesn't currently accept
adoptions from Cambodia, Montenegro, and Vietnam.
Raised in America, activists lead fight to end S. Korean adoptions
Starting in July,
Colombia notified it would no longer accept applications of
non-Colombian parents seeking to adopt a child under six years and 11
months old, unless it's a child with special needs.
The closures are a
result of concerns the children are not, in fact, orphans. Many of the
top sending countries to the United States in the last 15 years, like
Guatemala, Nepal and Vietnam have halted or suspended adoptions because
of serious concerns about kidnapping and corruption.
"There is an inherent
naivety about international adoption that it does an absolute good, but
it is inherently a high-risk venture," said David Smolin, a law
professor at Samford University in Alabama, who adopted a pair of
children from India in 1998 only to discover that they were stolen from
their mother. "To not recognize that in the face of the evidence is
almost criminal."
International adoption: Saving orphans or child trafficking?
Before it closed in
2008, Guatemala sent one in every 100 children born for adoption abroad.
The highest adoption rate ever recorded was South Korea in 1985, when
1.3 of every 100 children born were sent abroad for adoption, according
to Selman, statistical adviser to the Hague Convention on international
adoption.
Madonna with her Malawian son David Banda in 2007.
In an attempt to
regulate adoptions, many countries ratified the Hague Adoption
Convention, which aims to avoid trafficking and make it easier for
children to have their citizenship finalized in their new countries. A
fundamental principle of the convention is that attempts should be made
to place children in their own country before international adoption is
considered.
Critics say the treaty, which the U.S. joined in 2008, has restricted adoptions.
Costs -- which can be as
high as $50,000 -- continue to climb. The wait can stretch for years
even after an adoptive parent and child are matched as the adoption
paperwork wades through the bureaucracies of both sending and receiving
nations.
"I was the lead sponsor
of the Hague treaty and it was my expectation that after just a few
years of implementation, we would be tripling and quadrupling the number
of children adopted and the opposite has happened," said Senator Mary
Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, in a recent documentary on
international adoption. "Sometimes I've said to myself, 'why did I even
help pass that treaty?'" The senator plans to introduce the "Children in
Families First" legislation this week that aims to address these
problems, a Landrieu staff member, who asked not be identified, told
CNN.
End of the road?
UNICEF estimates that
there are 151 million children who have lost at least one parent
worldwide and 18 million who have lost both parents. Globally, there are
more children living in foster care or institutions than there are
being adopted, according to the United Nations. But most of these
children are older and have special needs, and are not the healthy
infants many adoptive parents typically desire.
Children with cerebral palsy at a Chinese orphanage in 2009. Beijing
now gives priority to adoption of disabled children by foreign families.
Most nations will
fast-track adoptions of older children with special needs. "Now that
they're being a bit more flexible with the one-child policy, healthy
Chinese babies are at a premium within China, they're not going to send
those away. So what they're doing now is sending older, handicapped
children who are mainly boys," Selman said.
Blitzer, the New York
professor waiting to adopt a second child from China, has considered
adopting a special needs child. She saw a video of a seven-year-old girl
with severe leg deformities "I just fell in love with her, she had such
fight," said Blitzer, who consulted an orthopedic surgeon to get advice
on possible treatment before the girl was adopted by another family.
Still, as Blitzer waits
for word of adopting an infant, she looks through Web pages of children
awaiting adoption and wonders of the fate of kids spending their
childhood in orphanages. "These kids are relegated to no option but
institutionalization? That's a hard card to be dealt," Blitzer said.
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