Well now that I've shared our adoption story with the world the book takes a decidedly different tone in the form of open letters to all the various consitituent groups involved in the ICA debate. The first is to the NGOs and humanitarian groups.
I warn you in advance that I held nothing back and this does contain some explicit language. Sorry, but that's me...
An open letter to the Non-Governmental Organizations and Governments involved with issues impacting intercountry adoption
By Kevin Kreutner
Get off your fucking white horses and out of your god damned ivory towers!
Children’s lives are at stake!
A year or two ago, I watched a very funny segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was a spoof on President GW Bush’s “healthy forest initiative” that would allow trees to be cut down in our national forests in order to save them. The commentator explained that this is like much of Bush’s policies -- we have kill trees to save trees just as we had to kill Iraqis to save Iraqis.
The rationale being used in developing highly restrictive intercountry adoption systems is nothing more than this same faulty logic promulgated by Pres. Bush. When you create a system that claims to “clean up” intercountry adoption but ultimately results in making it next to impossible to complete an adoption, you are sacrificing some children to save others. No matter what else you may claim, you are turning some children into involuntary martyrs in order to serve the supposed common good.
But what common good is served?
We all know that there is only way to make sure that there is no corruption in intercountry adoption – end the practice altogether.
Yet despite this fact, every convention, treaty, or resolution reached by the international community has come to the conclusion that intercountry adoption is a viable option for some children and is preferable to things like institutionalization or living on the streets. Why is that? Quite simply because CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY!
The extreme poverty being faced by a huge percentage of the world’s population is a matter that should bring shame on every living adult who doesn’t know what it is like to go hungry at night, not be able to afford shoes for your children, or sleep without a roof over your head. Yet instead of feeling this shame and working to resolve the fundamental cause of why children enter the intercountry adoption system, you instead try to pretend that you understand the plight of the poor. You create the appearance that you are trying to defend their rights and protect them from exploitation. There is the old saying about how until you walk a mile in someone’s moccasins that you can’t judge them. Well in this case I’d go so far as to say that you, and I for that matter, don’t know what their moccasins look like, much less what they feel like! Extreme poverty is a valid reason for a woman to decide that her child is best off being relinquished for adoption. Extreme poverty could place her in a position where she knows that trying to keep a newborn child with her could likely result in her other children suffering or dieing. So please, DON’T TRY TO CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR PEOPLE IN SITUATIONS YOU CAN’T COMPREHEND! REALIZE THAT THERE ARE GOOD, VALID REASONS WHY WOMEN DECIDE TO RELINQUISH!
As an adoptive parent, it is very hard for me to even support the idea that a child is “best off” with his biological family. I state that not as some sort of call that biological parents should have their children stripped away. I state it because it is hard for me to imagine that there could be any difference between the love and environment my adopted daughter will grow up with and what she would have experienced had she joined my wife and I biologically. This is not to say that as she grows up she will not face any emotional issues resulting from the stigma of adoption or from her own questions about her heritage and genealogy. But very few of us grow up with no such issues and it is dealing with them that makes us stronger. So please STOP TRYING TO DISCOUNT THE VALIDITY OF THE ADOPTIVE FAMILY UNIT – IT IS NOT SECOND-CLASS!
It is amazing to me how far the world has come in regard to racial equality. While huge disparities still exist, most of the westernized world (that being the receiving countries) realizes that race is insignificant. Whenever asked for my race on a form or questionnaire, I simply answer “human”. This is a key understanding in how you should view intercountry adoption. It is okay for a child to be a part of an interracial family. Overwhelmingly so, the children will not be penalized for having darker skin or different shaped eyes than their parents. Once again, this is not to say that the child will never experience any pain because of this. Once again, it is to say that it is something to make them stronger as adults. So please REALIZE THAT CHILDREN CAN THRIVE IN AN INTERRACIAL FAMILY!
Much of the “developing world” has different cultural norms regarding race and adoption. It is time for you to realize this!!! We can debate forever on whether it is “preferable” that a child remains in his/her country of birth. But that debate becomes irrelevant when there are no viable options for the child in his/her country of birth. Latin-American culture, for example, is not accustomed to formal adoption and as a result, very few of the families who might be in a position to do so would consider it. In addition, taking Guatemala as an example, most of the children’s biological mothers live in extreme poverty. Anyone who knows about the socio-economics of the country knows that this means the children are likely from an indigenous bloodline. That means darker skin, possibly a shorter stature, and more almond shaped eyes. The wealthy in the country still harbor much prejudice against the indigenous people and as a result, they would not consider bringing such a child into their family. Maybe this explains why the current President of Guatemala’s daughter has gone to the Ukraine to adopt – so that she can bring home a nice light skinned child! With this in mind, why do you try to push for outrageous legislation that delays a child’s right to join a forever family? Do you have any proof that children who could find homes domestically are instead being “exported” to foreign families? You seem to have plenty of money to research allegations of improprieties, yet I see none that looks at the fundamentals of why intercountry adoption is necessary. My point is that if we create cookie cutter schematics for how every sending country should shape their system we are likely to ignore the unique qualities of each individual culture. So please DON’T USE YOUR SOCIAL NORMS AS A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION SYSTEMS. ALWAYS BE SURE TO BASE THEM ON THE REALITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL CULTURE.
One of the things annoying me most about your agenda is the apparent criterion being used to define “success” when adoption reform has been achieved. I have read far too many reports that point to a huge decrease in the number of intercountry adoptions as evidence that “the rights of the child” have been achieved. These reports do so without researching child mortality, malnutrition, the number of children being abandoned, the number of children institutionalized, the impact on the quality of institutional care, rates of domestic adoption and a sundry of other things that would logically be used to define success. Instead you take what to me appears to be a negative statistic – that fewer children are joining loving permanent families – and paint it to be a sign of astounding success. This is appalling, deceptive, and quite simply ignorant. So please JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF REFORMS BY THE CONDITIONS CHILDREN LIVE IN, NOT BY THE NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS COMPLETED.
Human beings are imperfect beasts and there will always be some degree of corruption in anything that involves money and humans. Nothing will ever change this fact. So one of two things needs to happen. The first is that we can try to remove the financial incentives from the system. This makes great sense in theory but is next to impossible to implement because there is no pot of gold available in countries already dealing with a complete lack of social systems and an extremely impoverished citizenry. So unless the NGOs and governments of the world are ready to shell out the dough to provide foster care, medical care, food, etc to children before their adoptions are complete, there will need to be a cost to adoptive parents. And until the governments and NGOs are able to devote enough human capital to run efficient systems, there will be a need for private adoption practitioners who have the right to earn a living. Given that the governments of most third world countries have proven their affinity for incompetence and corruption, it is unlikely that this is soon to change. The other option is to realize that it is an imperfect world, accept that fact, and work hard to minimize the amount of improprieties that exist. Try everything possible to enforce laws that create a viable option for children while also ensuring ethical processes. So please, DON’T EXPECT COUNTRIES TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE, WORK TO HELP THEM DO WHAT’S POSSIBLE.
All improprieties are not the same in intercountry adoption. There are such things as victimless crimes and it is wrong to create victims in the pursuit of ending victimless crimes. We need to focus on ending the crimes and improprieties that really harm people. We need to stop grouping those in the same line as crimes that only create an imperfect system. Let’s take some key examples. There are those that claim birthmothers are being coerced or paid to give up their children.
Are these equal sins?
Anyone with a sane mind would come to the conclusion that it is an absolute tragedy for any woman to ever have a child taken from her for adoption involuntarily or under duress.
Now consider an extremely poor woman who works as a migrant laborer harvesting crops. She has four children that she on her own needs to feed and care for. She finds herself pregnant and, realizing that she can’t earn an income with a newborn in tote, she decides to relinquish the child, who is subsequently adopted by a loving, stable family. There are a few different “facilitators” that she can relinquish the child through and one of them offers her some money to do so. Or maybe one offers her more money than the others. This is money she can use to take her daughter to the doctor for her ongoing cough as well as to buy her sons some shoes. Who is the victim?
Let’s change the above scenario only slightly. Let’s suppose that she has not decided to relinquish and that the offer of money makes her decide to relinquish voluntarily because she feels it would be the best thing for her family. Any victims yet?
One more modification to see at what point there becomes a true victim. Now let’s say this woman is not pregnant. But she hears from a friend of hers that if she gets pregnant and agrees early on to relinquish the child, the facilitator will give her some money and provide her children with food and shelter during her pregnancy. This would get them out of the rain and squalid conditions of the fincas and give them some much-needed stability their lives have been yearning. Any victims yet? Is the adopted child a victim? Is some other child who would have otherwise been adopted by the adoptive family a victim? Or does the fact that there are far more families looking to adopt newborns than there are adoptable children negate this?
I do not claim to have all the answers. But it certainly seems as though you have not been giving these issues the type of philosophical thought that you need to. Would it not be an improvement if all cases of coercion were prevented even if some other less-than-perfect conditions, even crimes, remained? Is it not better to have some payments to birthmothers occurring than it is to end the chance for thousands of children annually to join permanent families? So please, FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON ENDING ADOPTION RELATED CRIMES THAT INVOLVE TRUE VICTIMS. DON’T CONFUSE THOSE WITH DEBATABLY VICTIMLESS CRIMES.
Despite the profanity that started this letter, I do not believe that you have anything but the purest of intentions in your quest to curtail intercountry adoption. I believe that you, too, want to see a world where children can thrive free from exploitation. I believe that you at this moment truly feel that curtailing intercountry adoption is the best global solution. I believe that it pains you to know that this will be detrimental to some children but that you feel there is no choice.
I do not believe, however, that you have taken the time to play devil’s advocate against your position. I do not believe that you have been introspective and open to other points of view. I do not believe that you have really tried to grok the entire intercountry adoption environment, instead choosing to hold fast to first-world liberal ideals as your base for judgment. So I have taken the liberty in this letter to offer some points and advice to aid you in developing your positions and goals. At no cost to you at all I reiterate an eight-point plan to get you off your fucking white horse and out of your god damn ivory towers and I am always willing to discuss it with you.
1. CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY!
2. DON’T TRY TO CLAIM TO KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR PEOPLE IN SITUATIONS YOU CAN’T COMPREHEND! REALIZE THAT THERE ARE GOOD, VALID REASONS WHY WOMEN DECIDE TO RELINQUISH!
3. STOP TRYING TO DISCOUNT THE VALIDITY OF THE ADOPTIVE FAMILY UNIT – IT IS NOT SECOND-CLASS!
4. REALIZE THAT CHILDREN CAN THRIVE IN AN INTERRACIAL FAMILY!
5. DON’T USE YOUR SOCIAL NORMS AS A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION SYSTEMS. ALWAYS BE SURE TO BASE THEM ON THE REALITIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL CULTURE.
6. JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF REFORMS BY THE CONDITIONS CHILDREN LIVE IN, NOT BY THE NUMBER OF ADOPTIONS COMPLETED.
7. DON’T EXPECT COUNTRIES TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE, WORK TO HELP THEM DO WHAT IS POSSIBLE.
8. FOCUS YOUR EFFORTS ON ENDING ADOPTION RELATED CRIMES THAT INVOLVE TRUE VICTIMS. DON’T CONFUSE THOSE WITH DEBATABLY VICTIMLESS CRIMES.
Posted in friendly debate & hoping for a response as I continue to struggle with this internally:
Given: There are thousands upon thousands of children around the world that currently need a forever family.
I do not criticize the woman in your example who chooses to get pregnant for the purpose of relinquishing the child to a facilitator willing to pay her money and thereby offer her family the stability of food and shelter. However--
Does this not exploit women in poverty & their families? Does this very young child take the place in an adoptive family that would have otherwise been the place of an older child (possibly the result of an unplanned pregnancy)? What happens when the child (conceived for the purpose of adoption) is born with severe disabilities making him/her more difficult to place for adoption?
At the very least, adoption agencies need to be honest and upfront about the truth! If we're talking surrogacy, call it that. My family decided to adopt rather than choosing the surrogacy route in part because we see that there are children already in this world who need families. If we had chosen to look for a surrogate mother (not devaluing the option it just wasn't our choice), we would have chosen a situation in which the woman would have access to medical care in an industrialized country rather than putting a poor woman at increased medical risk in a region with (more) limited medical care.
I asked an agency rep. (nameless) about this and was told that birthmothers are not compensated; that medical providers are paid directly. During our pick-up trip, I was told by a different rep of the same agency that birthmothers are compensated and many women she works with conceive for the purpose of adoption. I felt scammed!
I share many if not all of the political views you outlined in chapter one. I was hoping you would address this. I recognized that our desire for children is mirrored by children longing for parents. I recognized that many women in developing countries have unsatisfactory access to birth control. My hope was simply that through adoption, 2 adults and a child all needing a family would find one.
Posted by: J at March 16, 2006 03:36 PMDebate and thought are always good and appreciated!!!
First of all, I could have gone much deeper into all the possible scenarios but only wanted to use this one example to show a different way of looking at it. "Compensation" can take many forms. In an area like Guatemala with extreme poverty, merely putting a roof over one's head and supplying nutrition while pregnant would improve many women's standard of living, thus equating to compensation. UNICEF for example has said as much, criticizing the fact that if a women relinquishes for ICA she will get medical care and food that would not be provided if she chose to relinquish to the government. And of course they don't even mention the fact that the child would never find a family if relinquished to the government.
I disagree with you that they are stealing another child's chance. As things stand today, there are more families wanting to adopt then there are children being adopted internationally. IF the government started making adoption possible for the tens of thousands of children under their wings, this would be a different case.
The other thing I really want to stress as strongly as possible is that what I wrote was not a condonation of payments to birthmothers, nor do I know to what extent it does or does not occur in a true monetary format. My point was that the NGOs should stop grouping all forms of undesirable practices together. If the worst thing happening is that some birthmothers are compensated, then I think it is time to focus enegeries on ending the extreme poverty that make this her best means of survival. Ultimately, that is the solution. Where are her alternatives?
Being male, I'm probably not entitled to pass opinion on what it must be like to carry a child for nine months and relinquish him/he, just as I don't think men deserve a say in the abortion debate. But I am enlightened enough to realize that these women are human beings with natural human emotions. Given that, it seems to me that if a women could go to those lengths, she deserves whatever help comes her way from a humantarian perspective.
I think the above answers the exploitation question.
I know a person who works in Guatemala in a church-based humanitarian health clinic. If you ask him, the best thing in the world is for as much of the dollars we spend to go to the suffering impoverished people rather then middle to upper middle class attorneys and facilitators. I don't agree with him but it is an interesting perspective from the boots on the ground.
ICA is an incredibly complex issue and some of your concerns will be taken on in the forthcoming open letters to adoption professionals, parents, and the community-at-large. Needless to say, I stand to upset every constituency involved in ICA. But this letter was directed at the NGOs and their misguided agenda. Better that they spend their resources ending the extreme poverty (the cause). If someone is sick with an illness, we treat the disease if possible to cure them. We don't just medicate the person to remove the discomfort. Hopefully that analogy makes sense.
I sincerely thank you for the post J! We need more people like you!!!!
Kevin
Guatadoopt.com
Kevin,
I disagree with much of your letter, particularly the part about victimless crimes. Your arguments have and could be used to support the buying, selling and trafficking of humans for any purpose that doesn't harm them, such as slavery. In adoption, the end doesn't justify the means. It is the use of that philosophy, of the end justifying the means, that the Bush administration uses to further its agenda.
Remember that adoption is a solution only for a miniscule number of the children in real need in the world. It is a solution that sees far too many suffer (yes, there are victims) while others profit from their misery and desperation. If you think the revelations about India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Romania, Ukraine, the RMI, Bulgaria and now China will not be revealed about Guatemala, you are being naive. We both know of at least one corrupt facilitator from one of those countries who showed up in Guatemala.
One of the reasons that adoptions diminish when more restrictive controls are put into place in a country is because the profiteering traffickers are driven to go elsewhere. This has been shown to be the case in Cambodia and Vietnam. Reports that I have received from people on the ground in both countries during the shutdown do not indicate that orphanages overflowed with babies and children and that the sick were left untreated to die any moreso than before the shutdowns. Removing the demand for adoptable kids from a country seems to result in a diminished supply of adoptable kids. Could it be that the adoption business does things to manufacture a supply of adoptable kids to meet the demand for them? In fact, I have reports that Vietnamese orphanages began to "stock up" on babies when the re-opening of adoptions to the US became eminent.
According to your argument, it would be okay for facilitators to camp outside of a DNA clinic and bid on the babies of the women who go there because, after all, no referrals, no pay days. But the kids end up in loving families, which implies that their biological families may not love them. And what would thosee kids think of their bio moms, knowing that she placed them with the highest bidding facilitator? Yeah, "bio mom placed you because she loved you and wanted th be$t for you." These kids will be rebellious and very screwed up when they learn that truth. But there are no victims? How about the over a dozen dead and abused adoptees from Russia, Guatemala and China? I suppose they don't count as victims, after all, only one of them, Masha, has a voice. The others are either dead or too young. What about the ones we don't know about yet?
Lest not forget the Smolin girls from India, Sunny Jo from Korea and Arun Dunhole from India, the 21 kids from Mexico in our case and the hundreds of kids placed by Galindo from Cambodia. They don't count as victims just because their adoptions involved fraud, forgery and/or kidnapping? How about the spate of fraudulent DNA cases from Guatemala recently? What about the baby kidnapping and buying for adoption in China that's been recently exposed? Any victims there? You don't have to be dead, dying, physically injured, sick or starving to be a victim, do you? You can bet your behind that there are plenty of victims of the greedy and corrupt in the adoption business, and that they include all members of the triad.
This is the adoption myth promulgated by the $elf-$erving adoption industry at its finest and apparently you've been sold on it. When it comes to adoption, we all must hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil because the ends justifies the means, right? Who sounds more like the Bush administration now? The adoption industry acts more like the Bush administration and fights against more oversight and control just like the Bush administration does.
You also mentioned something about the culture of Latin American countries not favoring in-country adoptions. The same was once true of India, but thanks to the efforts of some of the NGO's that you decry and people like Arun Dunhole and Gita Ramswany (sp?), this is changing. I also believe that within Latin America, Mexico has a favorable attitude towards domestic adoptions.
Here's where we agree. Unless the spreading corruption in adoption is controlled and reversed, we are rapidly heading towards a day when adoptions will be ended and that will truly hurt the real, not adoption industry created, orphans.
My opinion only.
Posted by: David K at March 19, 2006 12:10 PMI stumbled onto this page and comentaries not actually looking for this. I want though post my comentaries. You are saying that Guatemalans do not favor adopting children from Guatemala. You coment on the expresident´s daughter. She must have had her reasons and i am not going into details. Want just to share with you I do have not one but three (3!) children adopted in Guatemala, they go from very dark to very light, I do belong to the middle upper class segment in this country and although money was not an impediment would haver never considered adopting internationally, could mention many cases even from people not in the upper class segment but from elite families in the country who have adopted localy, so let me tell you wrong. It may be that a few see skin and facial features as an issue but let me asure you it is not, NOT the case for the majority. Furthermore let me tell you that if you wanted children not from an indigenous background, you could opt for a white, blue or green eyed child, also available. So please do not tell that Guatemalans do not adopt beacuse they do not want native children, it is or was mainly because adoption in this country had become such an enterprise for some that the attorneys and institutions (many of them sponsored by american dollars) prefered to "ship" the children off to the usa, germany, france and so on since it was a "better business". They made it almost imposible for guatemalans to adopt in country. For example an adoption from the ukraine could cost the prospective family when done from Guatemala about 18,000 - 20,000 usd, and adopting in this country costs as you know around 40,000 ( if the baby stayed in the country it dropped to maybe 35,000 which still is much higher than ukraine for instance). you see there are a lot of things to take into acount, for me it´s only in the childrens best interest to not let lawyer corrupt the adoption system like they had been doing and as a bonus give local couples a chance.
they may be a lot of bumps in the road to clearing this theme up i can tell you thing are running smooth at this for locals who can now adopt without having to resort to international adoptions (which was so wrong for people living in the third largestprovider of international adoptions.......)
Just the thoughts of a mom that works very close and hands on in this field in Guatemala