Senator hears Guatemalan adoption worries
Waiting families may have to wait longer as Guatemala plans changes because of a treaty.
Jessie
King of Maple Grove carried a photo of Willow, the girl she is working
to adopt, as she had her picture taken with Sen. Amy Klobuchar after a
meeting on the future of Guatemalan adoptions.
read the story here.
Harlow's Monkey 
I just don’t get it. I’ve been reading U.S. Dept. of State warnings about adoption from Guatemala, the concerns about illegalities, and the upcoming Hague impact for the last 8 months or so. Did the prospective adoptive parents and the agencies just close their eyes and wish it would all go away?
What also struck me about this article is how it plays the pity card re: this single U.S. mother whose options for acquiring a child are limited. Nothing about the Guatemalan mothers who are being impacted by the current “irregularities” that the Hague attempts to prevent…
um… okay, perhaps it’s a badly written article (trying to be objective here) but why are the prospective adoptive parents being portrayed as helpless victims? Isn’t it important that adoption truly benefits the child? Aren’t the allegations valid reasons to be concerned for the children? What are they being urged to write to the congress? To ensure that the adoption does occur ethically or to ensure that these ‘waiting’ parents get their hands on what they paid for? What about the possibility that Ruby’s birth parent (uh… duh) also ‘already love’ “Ruby”?
I have to agree that adoptive or potential adoptive parents should not be seen as the victims here. Their (our) responsibility is to the child(ren) fist and last.
I say if one cannot accept that, perhaps one should reconsider adoption.
It’s a big responsibility and can be very hard, I know, but that is simply how it has to be.
Speaking as an adoptive parent, perhaps the reason that the first family mentioned chose to try to adopt from Guatemala again is that their son is from there. The recommendation given to most adoptive parents is to adopt children from the same country so that they will have each other while growing up to help deal with some of the issues related to adoption and also to make it easier to bring cultural aspects from that country into the family. If both kids are from the same country, that is easier…it also makes heritage tours easier and more meaningful. I guess they could have gone the Angelina Jolie route and adopted multiple kids from multiple countries, but that is not what is currently recommended to adoptive parents. So, that is why they probably went back to Guatemala despite the concerns.
It sounds like the single mom would have liked to have gone back to China for her second child for the same reason, but the hoopla about the Olympics is causing the Chinese government to be less open to single parents since they think allowing that will look bad to the foreign journalists when they converge in Beijing next year. Once the Olympics are over, hopefully, they will allow singles to adopt again. I have a friend who has a daughter from China and luckily made it into the que to adopt again before the new rules took effect. She is actually 1/2 Korean (her mom is from Korea), but can’t adopt from Korea because they do not allow singles to adopt.
What is it with adoptive parents naming their internationally adopted children WILLOW?
Ugh.