Filipino adoption laws may keep orphanages booked
Teresa Albor
Daily Breeze
MANILA, Philippines -- Changes in adoption laws designed to curb illegal "baby trade" have restricted the ability of foreigners to adopt Filipino youngsters and may mean that many will spend their entire childhood in orphanages.
New regulations, which took effect Aug. 3, ban adoptions of Filipino children by foreigners residing in the country unless at least one prospective parent is related to the child.
Foreigners living abroad can still adopt Filipino children through international agencies. But prospective parents living here will have to return to their own country and file papers there through an international agency.
The procedure can take years, depending on the adoption laws in the country where the papers are filed.
Government figures indicate that in recent years about 17 percent of the 2,500 children adopted here annually have been taken by foreigners residing in the Philippines and who were not related to the child.
More than a third of all adoptions of Filipino children are by foreigners, including those who file papers abroad and would not be affected by the changes.
"The new code is not anti-foreigner," said Lourdes Balanon, assistant director of the government's Bureau of Child and Youth Welfare. "It is an effort by the government to protect our children."
Balanon said in the past foreigners could adopt Filipino children in a few weeks. Previous regulations allowed single foreigners to adopt with much less red tape than in the United States or other countries.
Balanon said although many of the adoptive foreign parents were of good character, others may have been fronts for "baby trading" -- selling youngsters to couples abroad who were unable to have children.
"Mothers were convinced to give up their children, and even kidnapping may have been encouraged," she said.
Because local adoptions usually were arranged without the services of an international agency, the government here had no way of ensuring the child's welfare once the parents left the country.
But some welfare workers fear the new regulations will discourage legitimate adoptions by qualified foreign families, living in a country without a tradition of taking in children who are not related to those who adopt them.
In Filipino society, adoption of children with no blood ties is rare. Government figures show that in the past two years, only 5 percent of the children adopted here were taken by Filipino couples who were not related by blood.
Traditionally, orphans and children of impoverished parents unable to care for them become the responsibility of the "extended family" -- uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents.
But children born out of wedlock are often kept secret from their families.
Abortion is technically illegal, and birth control is frequently shunned in this predominantly Roman Catholic country. Unwed mothers find themselves under tremendous social pressure to turn their infants over to religious or government orphanages.
In other cases, extended families sometimes are too poor to take in another child.
"Older children will be especially affected," said Lisa Hechenova of the Asilio de San Vincente de Paul Orphanage in Manila.
"Because if Filipinos adopt at all, they want infants. Foreigners are more inclined to accept toddlers and even 6- to 10-year-olds," she said.
Maria, 7, was among the last children adopted in July by a resident European couple.
She said she never knew her natural parents, but "used to dream about them every night."