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The Romainians say no more.; A good thing?
Topic Started: Jul 25 2005, 11:53 AM (278 Views)
Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
The adoption pipeline dries up:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news...optromania.html
The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Didn't want to register to read it, but I guess I see where the article was headed.

That's a shame; a good home is a good home. Still, there are many American kids that need a good home, too.

Of course, I also know of a few Honduran kids who had people wanting to adopt them here in the States, too - but the US has its head up its hindquarters, and won't even allow HIV+ foreigners to enter to the US, let alone be adopted by a family from here. :angry:
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Jolly
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Geaux Tigers!
The article as linked:



Romania's promise lost
Americans anguished as EU candidate bans foreign adoptions.


By Shelley Emling


BOTOSANI, Romania — Margaret Mascorro of Carrollton was on top of the world just four years ago, when she brought her adopted daughter, Lauren, home from Romania.

She said the adoption cost nearly $25,000 and was worth every penny.

"Lauren had just had her first birthday when we brought her to our house, and we absolutely fell in love with her right from the very beginning," said Mascorro, 49, an only child who wants her daughter to have a sibling. "I didn't get married until I was 37, and since both my husband and myself were older when we got Lauren, we hoped to quickly adopt another child."

It seemed reasonable to return to Romania, but the couple were headed for a shock.

Romania announced that it was banning all international adoptions, news that sent the Mascorros scouring the world for another option.

The couple decided to try Moldova, which borders Romania. But the adoption process there has moved at a snail's pace.

"We've spent $9,000 on the process to adopt from Moldova, but nothing seems to be happening, and so we've put in the paperwork to try to adopt from Hungary," Mascorro said. "We don't have the money to keep starting over. We're just lucky we got Lauren out of Romania."

Hundreds of other U.S. couples haven't been so fortunate.

In a bid to join the European Union by 2007, the Romanian government implemented a ban on international adoptions in January as part of new child welfare legislation. The government, with the EU's prodding, hopes to encourage Romanians to adopt their nation's children or at least be foster parents.

Rarely has the prospect of EU integration packed such an emotional wallop for a population's youngest members — or for American families.

The ban has left at least 200 U.S. couples, as well as about 1,500 European and Israeli couples, mourning the families they might have had. All were in the process of adopting when the ban took effect.

EU officials allege that Romanian orphans were winding up in the human organ trade or in the hands of pedophiles because of profound corruption in Romania's adoption system.

In the early 1990s, foreigners were hailed in Romania for "rescuing" orphans.

The praise soon turned to criticism as EU officials worried that children were being sold to foreigners. Many were paying as much as twice the yearly Romanian salary for a child. Stories started circulating that poor women were being encouraged to sell their babies.

Mariela Neagu, who is task manager for the delegation of the European Commission in Romania, said in an e-mail: "Romania has adopted legislation which is considered by a number of European legal experts as essentially in line with the provisions of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and with the European Human Rights Convention. According to our information, there are sufficient Romanian families that are willing to foster or adopt Romanian children. In fact, domestic adoptions have in the past been hindered in order to allow intercountry adoptions."

Romania's notorious orphanage system was revealed 15 years ago with the collapse of the communist government of Nicolae Ceausescu. Televised pictures of orphans in horrible living conditions prompted thousands of American couples to adopt Romanian children.

Now, Baroness Emma Nicholson, a member of the European Parliament who until recently acted as the EU observer on Romania, argues that Americans should adopt the 750,000 or so unwanted children in their own country.

"We are no longer going to give up our children, because we are developed economies in Europe, and we can find our own solutions for children who are in trouble," Nicholson said.

But because of their economic situation, the vast majority of Romanian families aren't in any condition to oblige. The abandonment rate in Romania remains about the same as it was under the Ceausescu reign, and most orphans continue to live with little hope of finding new parents.

UNICEF estimates that there are about 80,000 children in the state's care. A recent UNICEF survey of more than 150 medical institutions found that 4,000 babies were abandoned in Romanian maternity hospitals immediately after delivery in 2004, 1.8 percent of all newborns.

"The abandonment situation has not improved in the last 10 or 20 or 30 years," said Pierre Poupard, head of the UNICEF office in Bucharest.

The Gypsy, or Roma, people, who traditionally face discrimination, make up 10 percent of the country's population but account for 60 percent to 70 percent of abandoned children.

"Romanians only want to adopt young, healthy babies, and they certainly don't want to adopt Gypsy children," said Ani Manea, who until recently ran a home for abandoned babies in Galati, Romania.

Another problem, Manea said, is that Romanian foster families often keep children until they are 18 but won't consider adoption because the families don't want to lose out on a government subsidy that often generates twice as much income as the average wage of about $220 per month.


Those in the middle

At a small home for abandoned children in Botosani, an eight-hour drive north of Bucharest, at least five of the 15 orphans had received all the necessary approvals to be adopted by American couples when the ban took effect Jan. 1.

The orphans, between the ages of 2 and 7, greet the arrival of strangers as a rare treat.

They scream. They jump up and down. They tug at ears and peer under skirts. The older ones are so fascinated by watches, they take turns grabbing a visitor's arm to press it against their cheeks.

Acute Constantinescu was eager to show off where she sleeps. The knobby-kneed 6-year-old bounded up the stairs to the barren bedroom she's shared for four years with a pile of other kids.

She hoisted herself over a railing and into a crib, her bed. A beach towel serves as her blanket, and there is no pillow. The room is enlivened only by a few worn stuffed animals and a broken See 'n' Say toy on an otherwise empty shelf.

When a visitor tries to leave, she yells, "no, no, no" — the only English word she knows.

Even as American couples continue to hope that their adoptions of the orphans living at this home will one day be allowed, plans are already in place for two girls to be adopted by Romanian farmers.

"There is a concern that these people are only adopting the children so that they can work on their farms," said Freddy Filip, the executive director in Romania of Special Additions, a nonprofit aid agency based in Stilwell, Kan., that finances the home.

The home's budget of about $6,000 a month is a major concern now that the money generated through international adoptions has vaporized as a result of the ban.

"Domestic adoptions don't bring in any money," Filip said.


Law's problems

Proponents of the new child welfare legislation argue that it keeps families together by forcing the government to seek biological family members who would be willing to care for the child. If that doesn't work, foster families are found.

"We don't have abandoned children anymore here in Romania," said Cristiana Ionescu, an attorney and a children's advocate in Bucharest. "The new law is good because we had much corruption before."

But even some government officials admit that there are weaknesses in the law.

"Many women aged 40 to 50 want to be foster parents simply because they can't find other jobs," said Hagiu Danut-Mirel, vice director of the government office that facilitates adoptions and foster care in Galati, east of Bucharest.

"Another problem is that most Romanian families only want newborns that are girls with blonde hair and blue eyes," he said.

Doina Ivas, a talkative, energetic woman in Botosani, has cared for 12 foster children in the past several years, 10 of whom have been adopted by American couples and two by French couples.

For the past three years, she's cared for Sabina, a 7-year-old Gypsy girl with a learning disability.

She's not likely to be adopted domestically.

"If there hadn't been this ban on adoptions, Sabina would be in the United States right now," Ivas said. "But no one here is going to adopt a girl like her. And we're not going to adopt her, because if we did, we'd lose the money we're getting now."

In the end, many children's advocates say, Romania simply doesn't have the resources to make even the best parts of the child welfare legislation work.

The passage of the law was part of a continuing battle against the legacy of Ceausescu, who was ousted from power and killed Dec. 25, 1989. His government had tried to swell the population by banning contraception and abortions until women had borne five children.

It's been 15 years since news reports of 130,000 orphans living in often squalid conditions shocked the world. Many well-meaning programs for children have gained traction across Romania since that time, mostly thanks to foreign aid groups.

Andra Gheorghiu is an 18-year-old art student in Bucharest who lived in an orphanage until a Romanian family adopted her at age 7.

"A permanent family is always the best solution for a child," she said. "And it shouldn't matter where the permanent family is from."




The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.- George Soros
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