This all started when I was reading an article this morning from the NY Times about evangelicals adopting, running into problems, and finding out about corruption in the system in countries abroad. I then started to read people's comments. You can read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/us/moved-to-adopt-evangelicals-find-children-and-pitfalls-abroad.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&smid=fb-share&
Lately there have been many arguments about all the unethical adoptions taking place internationally. There are three sides to international adoption that I see.
The first side may sound as if they are for adoption, just not internationally. Since there has been an increase in international adoptions, people attributed a lot of it to evangelicals and labeled it that: an evangelical movement to rescue the orphans. This first group brings up the corruption of a lot of countries adoptions and call evangelicals naive, saying that they don't know what is really going on, that the end justifies the means, in terms of bribery. They just do it because of some religious mandate from God. It makes me wonder that if the majority of international adoptions were not from evangelicals, would these stories and articles be the same in their content and point?
The second side is the people that are for international adoption. If they are like me, they give their point of view from a perspective of someone who follows the great and mighty Savior, who prays for His guidance. Where some will be led to go internationally, some will stay within the U.S., and others will help financially and by prayer. We take His words from James to take care of orphans and widows intentionally.
The third side is the families who make this decision to give up their children. Sure, there are the stories such as the one in the comments where a guy was asking the native Rwandans if there were any babies to adopt, and they were scared. If that's the case, I would be scared also. That type of corruption needs to stop. I have only heard stories, not experienced it first hand. But, then the other stories of families that recognize that their children might not survive if they stay there because of their situation, and they love them so much that they want them to grow up and have a "chance", not thinking of themselves but their children. There are situations where children may lose both parents, and the extended family is not capable of taking care of their child.
Sarah and I believe that family preservation should come first. We support two children through Compassion International to help those children's families stay together. We know those programs work. We also know that not every adoption is corrupt. We have worked with an agency that did all they could to ensure that the adoption was legal and ethical. We have seen the good, but we know there can be bad.
As long as we still live in a sinful broken world, I do think there will always be orphans and widows. There will always be corruption, and evil, selfish people. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we will get programs in every corner of the earth that will support the people and they won't have to give up their child. Then again, what about the people in countries that can afford to raise a child, but decide for some reason that they are not ready to raise one in their stage of life? This is why I believe we need to adopt or help families adopt, because there will always be orphans that will need the love of a family, both here in the U.S.A. and countries abroad.
I leave you with a good song from Joe Walsh.
Rock on
J
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