Korea aims to end foreign adoptions

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/world/asia/09adopt.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Korea Aims to End Stigma of Adoption and Stop 'Exporting' Babies
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

SEOUL, South Korea - Daunted by the stigma surrounding adoption here, ChoJoong-bae and Kim In-soon delayed expanding their family for years. When they finally did six years ago, Mr. Cho chose to tell his elderly parentsthat the child was the result of an affair, rather than admit she was adopted.

"My parents later died believing that I'd had an affair," said Mr. Cho, 48,a civil engineer who has since adopted a second daughter.

Now, with South Korea becoming more accepting of adoptive families, Mr. Choand Ms. Kim feel they can be more open, with relatives and non-relatives alike. Ms. Kim, 49, attributed the change partly to the growth of other non-traditional families, like those headed by single parents or including foreign spouses.

"We feel attitudes have changed," she said.

Just how much, though, is the critical question as the South Korean government is pushing aggressively to increase adoptions by South Koreans and decrease what officials consider the shameful act of sending babies overseas for adoption. Since the 1950s, tens of thousands of South Korean children have been adopted by foreigners, mostly Americans, because of South Koreans' traditional emphasis on family bloodlines and reluctance to adopt. But last year, for the first time, more babies here were adopted by SouthKoreans than foreigners, as the government announced recently with great fanfare: 1,388 local adoptions compared with 1,264 foreign ones. What is more, South Korea - which still is one of the top countries from which Americans adopt - has set a goal of eliminating foreign adoptions altogether by 2012.

"South Korea is the world's 12th largest economy and is now almost an advanced country, so we would like to rid ourselves of the international stigma or disgrace of being a baby-exporting country," Kim Dong-won, who oversees adoptions at the Ministry of Health, said in an interview. "It's embarrassing."

To bolster domestic adoptions, the government last year began offering $90 monthly allowances per child for those who adopt children up to 12 years old, as well as more generous health benefits for the children. Even greater health benefits are now given to adopted disabled children.

The government also made it easier for South Koreans to adopt. Single people can now qualify, as well as older ones. Until last year, prospective adoptive parents could be no more than 50 years older than the child; now the age gap has been increased to 60 years. In addition, the government has made foreign adoptions more difficult by imposing a five-month waiting period before children can even be considered for overseas adoption. It also increased payments to foster parents to try to keep children inside South Korea longer and increase their chances of being adopted domestically.The government's goal has received much media attention and popular support here. But adoption agencies and some adoptive parents and experts say the government's new policies are concerned less with the children's welfare than with saving face. Increasing the age gap and allowing singles to adopt have lowered the standards for domestic adoptions in a way that could be detrimental to the children, they say, even as the government has created unnecessary obstacles to foreign ones.

"The government is hung up on numbers and on South Korea's image," said Lee Mira, who oversees domestic adoptions at Social Welfare Society, a private, nonprofit organization that is the second largest adoption agency in South Korea. "When North Korea taunts South Korea by saying we're selling Korean babies to foreigners, it hurts the pride of South Korea."

Since 1958, when South Korea began keeping track of adoptions, 230,635 children have been adopted. About 30 percent were adopted by South Koreans, while 70 percent found homes overseas. Two-thirds of all foreign adoptees ended up in the United States.

While orphans made up a majority of adopted children in the two decades following the Korean War, children born to unwed mothers have accounted for the largest numbers since then.

South Koreans who did adopt tended to hide their children's origins from the children and others.

In recent years, adoption agencies have conducted campaigns - some featuring movie and TV stars - urging adoptive parents to tell people about how their families were formed in the hopes that more openness would lead to less prejudice. The government's efforts got a boost when some celebrities adopted and went public with the news.

Still, many adoptive parents choose not to share how their families were formed, according to adoption agencies, with some engaging in elaborate ruses to pass off the children as their biological sons or daughters. A middle-aged couple now living in a suburb of Seoul learned long ago that the husband was sterile. But he was reluctant to consider adopting, unwilling to accept his condition and afraid of the lingering prejudice against adopted children. In a Confucian society that still values bloodlines, where many people keep detailed records of their ancestors, he was worried that adopted children might face difficulties in their careers or with marriage prospects.

So when the couple decided to adopt three years ago, they chose to fake a pregnancy, as many adoptive parents here do. The couple moved, and the husband, now 43 and a real estate agent, switched jobs.

The wife, an employee at a telecommunications company, began wearing maternity clothes over a special pillow, made by a company recommended by the couple's adoption agency.

All was going well until a colleague the woman had confided in spilled the secret to a supervisor.

"I was so hurt and embarrassed by that experience," she said. "I would like to adopt a second child, if only to go through the experience in a proper manner this time."

Given the bias against adoptions, some couples who are initially open become more guarded as their children grow older.

Yoo Hae-yon, 48, has told relatives and neighbors that his two sons, now 4 years old and 18 months, were adopted. But he has since become worried that the boys will suffer in a society where television shows typically portray adopted children negatively, as schemers who end up damaging families. "My sons haven't been teased yet, but that will be a possibility in elementary school," Mr. Yoo said. "So once they start school, we won't disclose their adoptions. And in junior high school or later on, we'll let them decide."

Holt International, a private American adoption agency that has long been South Korea's leading agency, welcomed the government's new financial incentives for families but said that trying to curb foreign adoptions would risk hurting the children least likely to be adopted by South Koreans: older ones; the disabled, who still face severe discrimination; and boys, who, once preferred by South Koreans, are now considered by many to be less devoted to their parents than daughters.

"The changes could end up postponing the adoption process of those children," said Lee Jin-hee, who oversees domestic adoptions at Holt here. And Huh Nam-soon, dean of the social welfare department at Hallym University outside Seoul, said changing the standards for domestic adoptions could cause serious problems in the future.

"How many of those adopted children will end up in orphanages because of broken adoptions?" she said.

Ms. Huh, who has researched the history of South Korean children adopted by Americans, said that, in general, they had found good homes in the United States, even though some struggled with their identities.

Mr. Kim, the Health Ministry official, acknowledged that the history ofAmerican adoption had been largely positive. But he said that the government believed that South Korean children would be happier if adopted by South Koreans and that it would stick to its goal of phasing out foreign adoptions in four years.

Agencies and adoptive parents said the goal was unrealistic, if only because very few disabled children had been adopted here. Last year, only 40 disabled children were adopted domestically, while 500 went abroad.

"We wouldn't feel confident adopting a disabled child since we even felt overwhelmed adopting a healthy one," said Kim Chang-shik, 37, who, with his wife, Yoon Yeo-rim, 38, adopted a daughter four years ago, after the birth of their biological son. "I don't know whether it's because I'm Korean, but I'm grateful that foreigners are willing to adopt children who can't find homes here."

China eases restrictions on illegally adopted children

A new policy guideline eases the law on most illegally adopted children in China.

The legal rights of these children are currently not guaranteed such as permanent residence of a city, schooling and inheritance.

The guideline was jointly issued by five ministries on Sept 5, but made public on Monday.

It allows people to register their illegally adopted children without fear of punishment.

Ji Gang, director of the China Center of Adoption Affairs, said the number of illegal adoptions has been increasing rapidly in recent years.

"In less developed areas, the number of unregistered adoptions can be two or three times more than registered ones," he said.

"In big cities where people have a better knowledge of the law, the number of unregistered adoptions is fewer."

Shanghai, for example, between 1992 and 2000, had more than 7,000 registered adoptions and about 4,000 unregistered ones.

Ji said China has more than 20,000 registered adoptions every year.

To adopt a child legally in China, a person must be more than 30 years old, healthy, childless and with a good and steady income.

Those seeking registration under the new guideline will be exempt from these requirements except in the case where a single male parent is not more than 40 years older than the girl he has adopted.

If this is not the case, the man will be persuaded to surrender the child to a children's welfare institute.

The guideline also requires anyone who finds abandoned babies to hand them over to police in the first instance.

If the police fail to find their biological parents, the children will be handed over to local children's welfare institutions.

If people who find such babies meet the necessary requirements and want to adopt them, they will be given first priority.

"It means you can not take an abandoned baby home and then apply for adoption. They must be handed over to the authorities first," Ji said.

He said the guideline will help in the fight against trafficking of infants and children.

Adoption Issues in the News

Headline: 66 Nigerians Held on Trafficking Charges
Serious adoption irregulaties found with Nigerian women living in Italy, would take children from orphanages and sell the infants in Europe.

Headline: Costa Rico Nabs 14 in Adoption Scheme
14 arrested in Costa Rico as it appears they were paying mothers to relinquish their children for adoption.

Headline: Driver Says Man Couldn’t Care for Baby Girl
In the recent child abandonment case that hit national headlines, the father who abandoned his child told the cab driver that he could not care for the child and that the birthmother had already left.

Time for one-child policy to change

On February 24th a YunFei, a 20 month old girl, was being taken by her paternal grandparents to be raised at their home in Guizhou Province. Instead, the grandparents left the train with her and attempted to kill her by placing her in the path of an oncoming train. Yunfei survived -- with both legs amputated. (Read the full story here)

The reason for this? Her mother spectulated that it was because the she had borne two daughters instead of sons.

The impact of the one-child policy continues to be felt far. Whether through child abductions and kidnappings, to infanticide, or infant abandonment, China need to move forward in as forceful a way as they did when the revolution occured. Truly, if there was need for a revolution, it would be one to shake preset beliefs to their foundations - and change how children in China are treated.

Today the LA Times reported on the potential for China to re-address its one child policy. More important than the discussion of the policy, will be a strong stand, backed by action, in determining what occurs to people who violate the laws in areas like kidnapping and child trafficking or infanticide. Make girls acceptable to family and society. Maybe pay families who have girls; free secondary education for second or third daughters; how about accepting all babies and making them legal, instead of forcing parents to hide daughters so they can have a son; how about hiring and training a force of 5,000 detectives to investigate and crack down on child trafficking -and making the penalty for getting in the way of the investigations worse than if that person had a no-papers child.

It's time for China to wake up, face the rest of teh world, admit there is a serious flaw in the one-child policy, and get aggressive on ways to deal with the issue now and in the future. How many YunFei's are there, that we never hear of? The drip of these issues hitting the press should continue until the impact of the full waterfall is felt and China reacts.

A guide to driving in Beijing during the Olympics

By Ken Wills

Tourists seeking their own Olympian challenge while attending the Beijing Games this August might be tempted to get behind the wheel of a rental car and take a spin on the roads of the Chinese capital.

For these intrepid tourists, here are some tips about how to drive in Beijing, a city with three million vehicles on its roads. Those who find the road rules overwhelming can ride the subway or take taxis, buses or limousines to sports venues. 1. Physics 101

Beijing drivers seem eager to challenge the physics principle that no two objects can simultaneously occupy the same point in space.

For instance, lane markers are largely ignored, serving no real purpose in keeping cars apart. When drivers want to get a good look down the road but the view is blocked by cars in front, drivers don't think twice about sliding halfway into the next lane and then straddling two lanes for as long as seems comfortable.

It's also not uncommon for drivers who have missed their exits to simply put the car in reverse and back up into traffic.

2. No-Look Turns

Some countries have rules allowing right turns on red lights. Beijing has something unique: No-look turns. That's right, they follow the maxim that "if you see me, you're responsible for not hitting me," and its corollary, "if I don't see you, it's not my fault if I hit you."

As a result, drivers regularly come flying into streets, merge onto highways or even switch lanes without the slightest attempt to check whether the way is clear.

This habit seems a direct extension of China's bicycle culture, whereby every move is a calculated negotiation among throngs of cyclists flowing at roughly the same speed and in the same direction.

Keep your eyes open.

3. Emergency Lights

Don't panic if you see a police vehicle's flashing lights in your rear-view mirror. As a Chinese friend explained, police and other emergency workers typically turn them on just to show they are on duty. If there's no accompanying siren or honking, you can ignore them. Everyone does.

China may be an authoritarian state, but that doesn't mean authorities get much respect. Certainly, on the road they have to fend for themselves. Ordinary drivers can be seen honking and flashing bright lights at patrol cars that were deemed to be going too slowly.

4. Lost in Beijing

Reading maps is critical for anyone navigating a foreign city. But newcomers to Beijing may want to familiarise themselves not just with Beijing's main streets but also its bridges. That's because major intersections are known by the names of the overpass bridges that link intersecting streets.

Strangely, English maps give only the names of the roads, not the bridges. Road signs, however, give distances to upcoming bridges, not the roads. Go figure.

5. Give An Inch

Perhaps it's understandable in a country of 1.3 billion people that you don't get ahead by patiently waiting your turn. On the road, as in other aspects of their lives, Beijingers tend to grab opportunities whenever they appear.

Such chances might come in the form of a few inches of space between cars in the next lane, just enough to squeeze in the car's nose and present the driver behind with the dilemma of giving way or causing a collision.

The good thing is that Chinese drivers are generally not aggressive, and the high-testosterone road rage that is common on many U.S. highways, for instance, is not typical in Beijing.

6. Now Exhale

To its credit, Beijing is trying to keep drunk drivers off the road by making random spot-checks. Officers armed with portable breathalyzers jump from the curb when cars stop for red lights, forcing drivers to exhale into the machines.

Unfortunately, the mouthpieces are used over and over as the officers move down a row of cars.

When this driver made a feeble attempt to blow into the machine without making contact with the mouthpiece, an impatient officer suspected he'd caught a transgressor. He ordered me to the curb-side for a more thorough check. This time, though, he took a new mouthpiece from its plastic seal before the second test, which gave me the all-clear.

Happy driving, but be careful out there!

Log jam in Vietnam adoptions

The New York Times published an article today about some of the issues being faced by families who are trying to adopt from Vietnam.

When There’s No Place Like Home

Below is the full Newsweek text on the impact of UNICEF on international adoptions...

Some advocates blame the decline in intercountry adoptions over the past three years on a single surprising source: UNICEF. The United Nations Children's Fund may be known worldwide for helping underprivileged children obtain better health care and education, but when it comes to finding homes for orphans, they argue, the organization places misguided emphasis on maintaining cultural and geographic ties rather than on the child's overall well-being. That's true even when there is little chance of domestic adoption and virtually no public programs to provide care for abandoned children or struggling families. "National boundaries should not prevent abandoned children from having families," says Thomas Atwood, president of America's National Council for Adoption. "UNICEF's exclusive focus on domestic programs amounts to an obstacle to international adoption and prevents untold numbers of children from improving their lives through international adoption."

There is no argument over the need for adoptive homes—UNICEF estimates that there are 143 million orphans in the world—or the unprecedented interest among Westerners eager to adopt. And children's advocates of all stripes agree that when possible, children should be raised by their own families and in their own cultures. But there seems to be a discrepancy over what qualifies as "when possible." Rather than promote research that demonstrates the beneficial effects for all types of adoption, critics say UNICEF plays up rare cases of abuse and corruption and actively discourages developing countries from making more abandoned children available. "UNICEF and some foreign critics have encouraged countries to look at international adoption as a form of colonialism," says Dana Johnson, director of the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota and an expert on global adoption trends. Critics compare such policies to those promoted in the 1970s by black American social workers, who argued that only African-American families could ethically adopt black babies. As a result, many minority children spent most of their childhoods in state care.

UNICEF argues that intercountry adoption is not the only—and certainly not always the best—option for the world's orphans. Alexandra Yuster, a senior adviser in the child-protection section, claims the organization advocates the inclusion of international adoption in the mix of potential solutions for countries seeking homes for orphaned children. But it is much more focused on helping birth families get adequate support from their governments so they can take care of their own kids. "That's our priority because that will help a much larger number of kids—as will promoting domestic adoption," she says. "It's not that we're against intercountry adoption; it's just not a main focus for us."

In part, that's because UNICEF fears financial profit is the driving force behind many intercountry transactions. Because few healthy infants are available for adoption in Western countries, she says, the amount of money prospective parents are willing to pay to complete adoptions of healthy babies has increased. And corruption inevitably follows the money. UNICEF is especially concerned about poor countries like Guatemala, where private attorneys largely control the process and charge upwards of $35,000 per child—almost twice the going rate in countries like China and Vietnam, where government agencies oversee programs.

That kind of profit margin creates a market where one didn't exist before. "We're concerned with the commercialization of vulnerable children," says Yuster. "It gives an incentive to intermediaries to look for the kind of children these families most want to adopt." Some poor mothers are tricked into relinquishing healthy babies, while disabled and older children living in state institutions are left out of the foreign adoption loop because there's no profit incentive to match them with families. "Adoption is supposed to be about finding homes for children, not finding children for families," she says.

UNICEF is equally wary of the less expensive and more transparent programs in such countries as Ethiopia, China and Vietnam, where a portion of the adoption fees charged by the government is used to provide protective services and better living conditions for the orphans who remain behind. "We think this is a slippery slope," Yuster says. "If the child-welfare system becomes dependent on children leaving, countries may do less to seek domestic placements or work to keep children with their own families."

Critics charge that UNICEF's obsession with preventing corruption at all costs often results in countries adopting such restrictive regulations that foreign adoptions are reduced to a trickle. "Forces at the very top are making international adoption more and more difficult," says Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who has written extensively on the subject. "What this means is that fewer kids are getting adopted, more children are required to spend time in orphanages, those who get out are of older ages, and are more likely to have developed serious disabilities that make them hard to parent."

Yuster insists that UNICEF never pressures countries to tighten their adoption regulations, and in fact gets involved only when asked. That was the case in 2006 in Liberia, when the government requested an investigation after intercountry adoptions began to rise. Of the several hundred adoptions done in a year, she says, they identified 50 that qualified as "relinquishments under false pretenses." In some cases, unsophisticated parents were led to believe that they would lose custody only temporarily, or would one day join their child in the West. Without good data, she acknowledges, it's hard to know how common such abuses are globally. But "unfortunately, they are not rare, and there seems to be evidence that they are on the rise," she says. "When the surface is scratched, violations can often be found."

With Washington set to begin implementing the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption this spring, some experts think that such violations will decrease, allowing UNICEF and its critics to find more middle ground and common goals. "All of these groups want more ethical practices in adoption," Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, an independent research and policy organization. "But we all need to keep our eye on the prize: finding homes for children who really need them." Wherever they are.

Newsweek Article: Baby corruption in China

Well, I've heard about this in the past, but Newsweek has just published an article outlining some of the issues surrounding wealth, priviledge and the one child policy in China. It's interesting that China is now considering adding additional, illegal kids to the corruption rules when dealing with party members. However, what to do with all of their new, wealthy and yuppie urbanites who have the money to defy the rules? Can China continue to police this law, and hundreds of others, when the system that they have allows for the wealthy and party members to circumvent the laws. Instead of being a party for the people, it seems that the only ones to come to the party are the political establishment and wealthy.

While I'm no fan of China's political system, it is apparent to me that this cannot last. The people will not tolerate exceptions based on the size of the bank account or political strings that can be pulled. As this issue, and any issue dealing with the wealthy v. the masses, continue to gain press and notariety, it seems that another revolution may come. It may not be bloody, but I'm curious to see how China reacts and what they will decide to do with their country in the future. They may soon be both one of the wealthiest countries, and one of the poorest countries in the world. And, I believe, they will get nowhere without a moral ground that they can stand on.

Birthparent searches

NY Times article on searching for birthparents is interesting. It is one of those interesting things - to search or not to search.

When I first adopted internationally, it was attractive - not knowing who the birth parents were. But now that I've adopted 3 times, I think it's the hardest part.

Two lives emerged from the ashes

Great article in the LA Times on the book "Saving Levi", which I read recently. Lisa Bentley works with the Philip Hayden Foundation, which I have donated to for a few years. Great read - both the article and the book!

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By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 12, 2007

Levi Bentley at age 4 in Langfang, China. He is standing in the field where he was found when he was about 6 weeks old, so badly burned that he wasn't expected to live. Lisa Misraje Bentley was a bored U.S. homemaker when she reluctantly went to China with her family to open an orphanage. A charred baby boy would change everything.


BEIJING -- Lisa Misraje Bentley watches the boy in the No. 8 jersey as he careens across the soccer field and she marvels. His lower face a mask of scar tissue, his left arm gone at the elbow, the toes on his left foot missing, he zigzags along the green grass in defiance of his disabilities."Isn't he happy?" she says. "Look at the joy coming out of him!"

Bentley knows the boy probably should not be alive. Five years ago, he was left for dead in a cornfield, his tiny body so ravaged by fire that the villagers who found him thought he looked more like a charred log than a 6-week-old baby.

Back then, Bentley was new to China. She had come begrudgingly with her four children, following her husband, John, from Washington state. Together, the couple founded a Christian orphanage for special-needs children -- those most at risk in the Chinese child welfare system, which often lacks the resources to meet the demands of the disabled.

They wanted to help the undesirables. And when Bentley first saw the abandoned baby, gasping for breath inside a hospital incubator, she knew she had found perhaps the most undesirable one of all.

What happened next would test the limits of modern medicine and put Bentley in conflict with local customs, laws, national bureaucracies and even her own family.

Who could have predicted the impact of one small life in China on a bored suburban homemaker from the Pacific Northwest?

Six years ago, Bentley sat in her four-bedroom home in Vancouver, Wash., and felt like crying. As a stay-at-home mother, she lived the good life: Her husband was a successful lawyer. She was pregnant with her fourth child. There was the minivan and the sports car. Yet she was miserable."I thought, 'If this is my life, this stinks,' " she says.

Then came an opportunity. John always had a fascination with China, and had seen his brother start a Christian orphanage in Africa. He wanted to start one in Beijing. Assured financial backing for one year by a Christian philanthropist, John quit his job and prepared for the journey.

Suddenly, the support fell through, but John still wanted to go.Bentley wasn't so sure. She wanted adventure, but China was like another planet. She had no Chinese language skills, and had always had a Woody Allen-like obsession with hygiene. China was no place to take four young children.

"I thought John was insane," she says. "But I said, 'OK, three months.' Then I figured I'd raise hell and we'd come back."

The family's first image of China didn't help. As they landed in Beijing, Bentley's 8-year-old daughter, Emily, looked out the plane window and remarked, "It looks like a trash can."

The couple settled in Langfang, a rural town an hour outside Beijing, and rented a concrete-block home without heat. Bentley remained a mother on guard, listening for the rats that scampered inside the building walls. Both she and John took jobs at a foreign-run orphanage.

No matter how hard she tried to comprehend the culture, China remained mysterious. She had run-ins with local hospital staff and officials, who considered her another pushy American. Bentley didn't fit the image of a Christian aid worker. She's hip and outspoken, likes '60s clothing, and doesn't come on strong with Bible-speak.

She didn't connect here, and she wanted to go home.

The ghastly discovery came on a dreary March day in 2002: A badly burned baby was found in a field. A cluster of curious villagers encircled the infant as he wailed in agony.

The baby's bright yellow jumper was soaked with blood and body fluids. Someone had carefully tucked a 10-yuan note -- less than $2 -- into his pocket.

One by one, the crowd drifted away. What could be done? The baby was sure to die. Except one old man. He saw that the infant's head had been shaved and a bandage remained where an IV had been inserted.

A desperate mother had no doubt tried to save this child and then, in defeat, abandoned him. The old man understood why: This no longer looked like a baby. He reached down. The infant was so charred that ashes fell when he tried to lift its left arm. The little hand was blackened, clenched.

The old man gathered up the baby and rode his bike to a local government office. He left the infant on the doorstep. The boy was rushed to a hospital, diagnosed with third-degree burns over 70% of his body. The orphanage was notified.

When Bentley arrived, she looked down inside the incubator. What she saw "grabbed me by my heart." The baby wailed in agony as he tried to suck his badly burned thumb -- his wounds so deep Bentley could see muscle, tendon and bone.

"This child had no mom, nobody pulling for him," she says.

Just then, Bentley recalls, the baby's eyes flickered. He looked right at her, expectantly, as if to say, "Are you my mother?"

Then Bentley made the decision that changed everything. Ignoring conventional wisdom limiting the jurisdiction of a foreigner in a strange land, she assigned herself as the child's advocate. Doctors discouraged her. They had never seen anyone so badly burned. No matter how much time and money she spent, they warned, this boy is dead.

Bentley named the boy Levi. She liked the sound of it. Later she learned the word means "to bind and unite." She liked the sound of that even more.

Levi's first surgery was a success. Doctor's removed part of his left arm and performed numerous skin grafts. But days later, infection set in. They operated again, taking more of his left arm. There would probably be more amputations.

Bentley flinched. Levi's scarred face and body were bad enough. She felt as though she was losing him limb by limb. That's when an orphanage colleague told her of an e-mail from a Boston surgeon. When told of the burned orphan, the doctor had offered to come to China. Bentley wanted more. Why not take the baby right to physicians at Boston's Shriners Hospitals for Children, where they could use their own equipment in their own surroundings?

She began a race to accomplish something others considered foolhardy: getting a dying, undocumented Chinese baby into the United States. She hadn't even registered Levi's hukou, or permanent residence, with Chinese authorities.Such documentation takes months. Bentley had days, if that. Chinese doctors were preparing for another surgery, perhaps to amputate the boy's remaining hand. She had to act fast. With the help of orphanage staff, she began a telephone and e-mail campaign aimed at foreign charities here and government offices in China and the U.S.

With each call, she learned a little more about how things get done in China. Hardball was out. She had to use connections, or guanxi, with people who were sympathetic to the boy's plight."I couldn't go in as the pushy American, become too highly emotional," she said. "In the U.S. that works. Go in, be the tough bitch, get what I want. That did not work here."

Friends donated baby clothes. Strangers who encountered the boy opened their wallets. People who knew people in power offered to make calls."

Lisa has this innocence, this naivete, about her that gets things done. People want to help her," said Melody Zhang, associate director of an adoption agency called Children's Hope International. "She's not good in dealing with government. Sometimes she has no idea. But she ignored everything for this boy. She had this connection with Levi, a mother's love as strong as it could be."The bureaucratic waters began to part. Levi was granted a hukou. He was issued a passport, and then a U.S. visa. Bentley's cold calls resulted in a free flight for her and the baby.

At home, the situation was not going as well. John felt Lisa was neglecting her family. She wasn't seeing the big picture.The two bickered. Colleagues in the Christian community took notice and began to whisper. "It became a problem for our marriage," John recalls. "Nannies were raising our children. We had 25 other kids at the orphanage. This was just one child."The tensions would eventually lead to talk of a divorce. But Bentley couldn't stop. With $50 in her purse, she boarded a plane for Boston with a baby still bleeding fluids.

Levi approaches a stranger in his kindergarten classroom."I only have one arm," the 5-year-old says cheerfully. "Will you tie my shoes?" He points to his left foot. "This one doesn't have any toes."So far, he has endured more than 20 surgeries, with more to come. As he grows, scar tissue rips and bleeds and must be removed. His left ankle remains bent at an odd angle.

Sometimes, children taunt him, holding out a crooked arm, saying, "I'm Levi!" Some don't want to sit next to him. People stare.But he perseveres with the help of his mother's discipline. She treats him just as she does her biological children or his fellow adopted sibling, a Chinese-born girl named Orly, who's 9. When he falls, he gets up by himself.Slowly, this rambunctious boy is developing a sense of self. He likes dinosaurs and singing his own rap lyrics. A recent self-image shows him as he is: a boy with a missing hand and toes. He even drew the scars.

There are setbacks. In Texas for surgery to create fingers on his right hand, Levi told the doctors he was a big boy and wouldn't cry. His mother had warned him the surgery would not produce perfect fingers, but she knew he hoped it would."When they removed the bandages, they were raw and stubby, not like mine," she says. "I saw his eyes. I knew his heart shrunk."She knows his most difficult days, emotionally, are yet to come, "when he falls in love and physicality becomes an issue." It is pain even a vigilant mother cannot prevent.

And today Bentley is emotionally and legally his mother. Levi was officially adopted in 2006.Lisa and John worked on their marriage, taking a year's leave of absence to return to the U.S. for couple's therapy.Not long ago, they faced a dilemma: If they didn't return to the U.S. immediately, the Bentleys risked losing their home and cars to repossession. They stayed put. China was home now, and their work with orphans was too important to abandon.Now, life in the U.S. suburbs seems like the other planet. They run their own Beijing-area foster home, Harmony Family House, with a deaf school to help poor Chinese mothers cope with raising special-needs children. Bentley calls these mothers heroes.

The circumstances behind Levi's injuries remain a mystery. But Bentley doesn't blame the mother. "I believe it was a terrible accident that befell a poor mother without resources," she says.She produces a tiny yellow bootie, part of the outfit she calls Levi's burial clothes. "How can you condemn her? She did what she could for her baby. Then wrapped him up and left him to die peacefully. Imagine how hard that must have been."

For years, Bentley was hard on herself, thinking she was never good enough. That's changed. At 43, she accepts who she is, the kind of kooky redhead who dares to be different, who knows it's all right to stand out either within the Christian community, back home in the U.S. or even here in China."I'm no longer afraid to say, 'This is the way I am.' I'm not trying to hide anymore," she says. "For the first time in my life, I'm comfortable in my own shoes."And a little boy no one else wanted made that happen.This year, she published a book on her experiences. It's called "Saving Levi: Left to Die . . . Destined to Live."Bentley knows the boy wasn't the only one who was saved.

BBC Photo Essay

BBC News has a great photo essay on life in a Guatemalan Orphanage, Asociacion Primavera Children's Home. I wonder how often these kiddos are at risk due to trafficking and when they are not - and if they are not, it's a shame about the slowdown - but they should eventually make their way to adoptive homes if everything is above the board.

New Newsweek Article on China Orphanages

Well, here is quite an extensive article from Newsweek on China's orphanages. It's a nice human interest story, and a nice look at how many orphanages now run...

Abandonment

Well, there is an article on Yahoo today about a dutch family who have relinquished custody of their 7 year old daughter (adopted from South Korea) for aparently no better reason than I can read than because they now have biological kids. They should be arrested and jailed for abandonment. And, since it is a diplomatic family, shame on the Dutch government for not firing this guy and sending their butts to jail somewhere.

Life on the street: Cairo

Very interesting article on young girls on the street in Cairo. Traffiking is such a huge issue, and I'm not sure when folks will deal with it.

Newsweek: Give me a BREAK

OK. Newsweek just published this amazingly horrid sounding article: When Adoptions Go Bad. The tone is negative, and starts out with a parent killing their adoptive child. What they didn't share is that most of what is listed in the article is actually symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder. It was disappointing to say the least that instead of talking about a serious subject, it was treated like FOXNews with the sensational story.

I'm going to need more time to think about this...

Guatemala Suspends US Adoptions after 1/1/08

Well, it was bound to happen at some point, and the news started yesterday and is rushing in today - Guatemala will suspend all adoptions to the US starting 1/1/08. This will leave thousands of children who are "in process" of being adopted in a legal limbo, and their parents in worse shape - trying to ascertain if the child that they having been waiting for has the right paperwork to prove that they were relinquished within the legal guidelines and boundaries.

You can see the CNN video here, or read the article here...

Guatemala is one of the only countries where birth parents receive renumeration (read money) for relinquishing a child for adoption. Lawyers are the first line, and they recruit children through birth parents in local papers. Often these kiddos are truely in a situation where the parents can't care for them and the BP's want a better life for them - and they are relinquished. But in some cases there is a strong case for the fact that either the BP's have been paid to relinquish their child, or even worse, bullied into relinquishment.

Adoption can be a fantastic thing for children who need homes, and for parents who want to provide homes. But we cannot forget that a birth parent has the right to parent their child, even if they live in poverty, don't drive fancy cars, etc. While Guatemala does this shut down, I think it needs to refocus and remember that the American adoptive parents (AP's) are not at fault. If Guatemala was serious about reform they would look to countries like China, where there is a spotless reputation - and work to emulate them. No money for relinquishment of birth children by birth parents. Continue streamlined process to place children quickly into adoptive homes. Remove the lawyers from the process, and set up orphanages to manage and house the children as they wait for adoption.

It's going to be a long road for Guatemala. Now we just have to wait and see what the next steps this government will take to quickly review the legal status of the thousands of "in process" children, so that they can be reunited with birth parents, or united with their adoptive parents. Unfortunately, this legal limbo does the child no good.

Birth control riots in Guangxi

Read more here about Guangxi riots around birth control...

More headlines

Raising your child with Chinese Roots - about families who have adopted Chinese children and their work to keep them grounded in Chinese culture - or at least, familiar with it!
Agony of AIDS Orphans - about issues when HIV status is known...
Chinese Baby Boom -- great article about the impending boom of babies that are going to be born in the Year of the Pig - a very auspicious year!

Korean Adoptee finds birth father

I love the articles in China Daily. Here is a great one on a US Olympic champion finding his birth family in Korea!

'One-child' policy violators to be put on shame list

China Daily is reporting today that the rich and famous who violate the countries one-child policy will be... well, blackballed?