International Adoption Advocates Fight Back against decline in adoptions

Pacific Harbor Seals

Mother Pacific harbor seals leave newborn pups on the beach when they go into the sea to fish. Believing the pups have been abandoned, humans take them to aquariums or try to raise them themselves, often unsuccessfully. Mother seals returning to the beach to nurse search futilely for their babies.

I think of these seals when I read about international adoption. Thankfully, it has declined from a high of 22,884 in 2004 to 11,059 in 2010. Wide-scale corruption or other abuses has caused Ethiopia to join Cambodia, Guatemala, Nepal and Russia, in closing their borders while adoptions from China, the biggest supplier of babies, have been reduced.

Madonna's Malawi charity fails and Ethiopian adoptions shut down to a trickle: Could there be abuse in the system?

Lorraine

Madonna's plans for a swell school for girls in Malawi (from where she has adopted two children) are going up in smoke, but in the meantime $3.8 million was spent on architectural drawings, nice cars and golf-club memberships, according to news reports today. Oy vey, was all I could think--think what could have been done with that money for boys and girls in Malawi--and their families--instead of turning them into families who are so poor they feel they must relinquish their children to people in more affluent nations to be adopted. By Madonna, perhaps, herself! How lucky is that?*