Road to foreign adoption grows longer

Road to foreign adoption grows longer

Hundreds of other families in North Carolina and around the country are discovering that it's no longer so easy to take in the world's neediest children.

Just as international adoption has become a mainstream way to build a family -- helped by celebrity adoptions such as those of Angelina Jolie, who has children from Cambodia and Ethiopia -- the practice is in crisis. Allegations of baby-selling haunt some countries, and some say international adoption's popularity may be creating a worldwide backlash.

Adoptions have recently become difficult or impossible in China, Guatemala, Kazakhstan and Vietnam -- four of the main countries that send orphans to the United States. Hundreds of adoptions are in limbo.

"Everything is so volatile right now," said Gail Stern, founder of Chapel Hill-based Mandala Adoption Services, which arranges inter-country adoptions. "If you called me today and wanted to adopt a child, I would tell you to sit on it. We cannot in good conscience tell people that if they start today, things will be smooth."

Concerns about corruption have previously halted adoptions from Romania and Cambodia. But Stern and other experts say they've rarely seen so many countries having problems at once. On Monday, Kazakhstan unexpectedly shut down adoptions with little explanation.

China, the largest sender of orphans, has recently scaled back its program so severely that couples might wait more than five years, said Diane Kunz, a Durham lawyer who founded the non-profit Center for Adoption Policy, which promotes adoption. The country now excludes prospective parents who are single, recently divorced, over 50, on antidepressants or overweight -- restrictions that Kunz says ruled out about 60 percent of Americans looking for Chinese children.

Guatemala, another top sender, recently closed adoptions after allegations that babies were sold or stolen. Similar concerns have also arisen in Vietnam.

Those awaiting Vietnamese children are facing months-long delays as the U.S. government investigates each case. The government is threatening to deny some adoptions because investigators can't get the children's hospital records.

In the meantime, families who have invested as much as $20,000 or $30,000 are wondering whether they will ever see the children they hope to adopt.

Delays, no explanation

William Zuercher of Durham said he and his wife began trying to adopt a Vietnamese child in May 2006. They had seen friends adopt a Vietnamese infant, and they were drawn to the idea of helping a child who would otherwise languish in an orphanage or be doomed to street life.

"It seemed like a good thing to do in the world," said Zuercher, 36. "There are these kids out there that need love, that need families. We thought, if we could give that, what a great thing that would be for them and for us."

With that sentiment came an added benefit: International adoption was generally easier than domestic, which often requires foster parenting or years on a waiting list. Until recently, applicants to foreign countries frequently had their children before their first birthdays.

But nearly two years after applying, Zuercher and his wife don't know when they will get the baby girl whose pictures arrive in the mail.

They have no explanation for why the Vietnamese government hasn't approved them. Once they get that approval, they will be subject to a U.S. government review that could take months.

Jill Cunnup of Siler City is in the same situation. In 2004, after years of infertility, she adopted a son from Kazakhstan, who came home at 10 months old. Last fall, she decided to adopt a child from Vietnam, thinking the process would take about nine months.

"I thought the second time would be easy," said Cunnup, 29. "Now, I still have hope that I will finish the adoption, but I have no idea when."

The U.S. government has recently become concerned about the selling and stealing of babies in Vietnam, and investigators are poring over each case to ensure each child is actually an orphan.

"These protective measures have been put in place to ensure the integrity of the adoption process in Vietnam," said Peter Vietti, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Stern, who runs the Mandala agency, said she believes corruption exists only in a tiny portion of cases. While investigations drag on, she said, children suffer. In the past month, Stern said, six babies set to be adopted by Americans died when a virus swept a Vietnamese orphanage.

International adoption, all but unheard of at the end of World War II, has become a mainstream phenomenon in the past two decades. Each year since 2002, Americans have adopted more than 20,000 foreign orphans, according to the State Department.

As its popularity soars, so does pressure from international groups such as UNICEF, which believe that children should be removed from their home countries only as a last resort.

Fears of baby-selling

"Lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes center stage," UNICEF states in a position paper on its Web site. "Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents and bribery."

However, among U.S. adopters, those allegations have gained little traction. They focus on the benefits.

Foreign orphans come with scant chance that a birth parent will attempt to reclaim the child or seek a reunion. And some say that foreign-born children, relinquished most often because of poverty, are less likely than U.S. orphans to come from mothers with substance abuse problems. Without adoption, many foreign orphans face a future without governments that will save them from starvation or ensure medical care.

Lackey, 36, a photographer, said she and her husband decided to adopt after an around-the-world trip through more than a dozen impoverished countries. In the orphanage where their son lived, children didn't have basic supplies such as toothpaste or Tylenol. They used rags for diapers and slept several to a crib.

She says the boy they named Caleb has so enriched their lives that she decided to adopt another child. This time, she is waiting for a toddler from Ecuador -- an option open only to couples willing to accept older children and to spend up to two months living in the country.

She said she hopes the delays and uncertainty won't discourage people from opening their homes to the world's children.

"It's opened up a whole door that we didn't even realize we were missing," said Lackey, who also has a 6-year-old biological daughter. "These issues that we're talking about are government issues. The children are still there."