India: Lost Children and Adoptable "Orphans"

We take certain things for granted in the developed world. One of these is the speedy return to their parents (by the government) of accidentally lost or missing children.

This is not the case everywhere in the world.

According to an article on India's Tehelka online, one of these places is Delhi, India.

There, purportedly, the discovery and reunion to their parents of lost and missing children is sometimes purposefully being made more difficult or even impossible in order to supply adoptable "orphaned" children to profiteering private adoption agencies.

Given India's child welfare system this should NOT be happening.


India's Child Welfare System In Regard to Lost Children and Adoption
Theoretically and practically, India's child welfare system has made excellent provision, not only for aiding the return to their parents of lost children, but also for the regulation of adoption to prevent child trafficking:

• India has a national missing child hotline, Childline


• India's national Juvenile Justice Act contains, among other things, exemplary nationally mandated procedures and regulations to facilitate the discovery and reunion to their parents of lost and stolen children


• India has a functioning national system of local Child Welfare Councils who are invested with the authority and judicial power to protect "the welfare of children who need care and protection"


• India has a federal governmental committee, the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) with the mandated authority to regulate and oversee both the domestic and foreign adoption of Indian children.


• The Central Adoption Resource Agency or CARA has exemplary, nationally-binding, clear, concise, and well-thought-out regulations for adoption (specifically written with an eye for keeping adoption from morphing into child trafficking)


• India has adequate governmental organization, local police forces, and local NGO's which should be knowledgeable about laws, be able to report abuses, be able to follow/enforce regulations, and be able to coordinate child welfare efforts according to mandated procedures and applicable laws.

All of these pieces together should ensure that lost/missing children are found and returned to their parents in a prompt manner. It should ensure that vulnerable children aren't co-opted for a lucrative adoption market.

But somehow, it doesn't seem to do so.

To help readers understand just how such a system could be and is failing families and children, the Tehelka article tells the anecdotal story of an Indian family whose child is lost from them and then examines the a "confidential" 2005 report on the functioning of private adoption agencies within the child welfare system.

Difficulties in Retrieving A "Found" Lost Child
The anecdotal story of one Delhi couple illustrates just how hard it can be to retrieve a child from the system even after he is "found."

A Delhi couple's young son was kidnapped by someone hoping to "settle a score" with them and then purposefully "lost" from his parents by being set loose alone in a major railway station.

As soon as the horrified parents discovered their son was missing, they began frantically searching for him.

A day later they found him at a local home run by a private adoption agency. Instead of returning their lost son promptly as required by law, orphanage officials were reportedly "extremely uncooperative"--to the extent that they even refused to let the parents see their son.

"After hour of waiting and pleading, [our son] was finally shown only to my wife and that too from a distance of some 10-15 yards."

--An Indian father speaking of what happened when he located his missing son at a private adoption agency

The orphanage refused to return the son and the parents were told to come back three days later, on Monday.

"They again refused to entertain us on Monday. We then had to go to the juvenile court, which directed us to the Child Welfare Committee [in another area of town.]"

--An Indian father speaking of what happened when he located his missing son at a private adoption agency

A day later, four full days after finding their lost son at the orphanage, the parents were finally allowed, with the intervention of the Child Welfare Committee and "some good Samaritans," to take their son home again.

Not all parents are so fortunate or resourceful. Not every couple is able, on their own, to successfully trace their missing child and find him. Not all parents have the tenacious hopefulness that it takes to keep trying to in the face of serious or seemingly insurmountable hurdles. In a extremely economically stratified and socially hierarchical society, those "at the bottom" may have already learned that they "can't win" and that their efforts will only bring them more misery--poor people in someplaces have been conditioned to expect beatings whenever they complain or ask for help and justice from those in authority. Not all parents are as resourceful in finding appropriately helpful aid.

In short, the Delhi couple was lucky in that their story ended happily. Many similar stories don't.

In Delhi India alone, during the three years of 2004, 2005, and 2006, a total of 6,687 children, reported missing by their parents, were declared "untraceable" by the Crime Branch's Missing Person's Squad.

This means that 6,687 families, who had enough tenacity and hope to make the effort to file police reports in an effort to get help in tracing their missing child(ren), have been told that there is little to no hope of finding their children. For all practical purposes these children might as well have vanished into thin air.

"A senior Department of Social Welfare (DSW) official lays the blame for this on voluntary adoption agencies. 'They [the missing children] are fated to live either an orphan's or an adopted child's life, all thanks to various voluntary organisations.'"

The Problem of Missing Children and the "Confidential" 2005 Department of Social Welfare Report on the Functioning of Voluntary Private Adoption Agencies
According to Tehelka online which claims access to this "confidential" report, the Department of Social Welfare found that voluntary adoption agencies including the specific one in the previous anecdotal story, "routinely flaunt norms and rules" concerning lost children and adoption. But the problem goes beyond the voluntary adoption agencies alone:

"[The] 2005 DSW report states, 'Childline and the police are unduly helping [the adoption agencies] in procuring children for [themselves] in violation of statutory provisions.'"

Violations of child welfare provisions, according to the report, purportedly include the following:

• "Found" lost children taken directly to private adoption agencies without first registering them with the police or the local Child Welfare Committees.


• Adoption agencies failing to notify (as mandated) the police, the local Child Welfare Committee, and Childline (the national hotline for missing children) of the receipt of "lost" children into their institution.

Note: If governmental authorities are not notified that "lost" children have been taken into care, there is no official record of their having been "found." Children "found" in this way, despite being "in care" effectively disappear without a trace for all practical purposes. Taking children off of the streets and into an institution without reporting their whereabouts to the proper authorities actually makes it harder, not easier, for their parents to find them. Without official records that can be shared between official governmental offices, parents are must visit every possible institution within a city in order to look for their lost children. In a large city like Delhi this could make it practically impossible for children to be found once they are lost from parents.


• Adoption agencies who receive lost children failing to prepare individual child histories and failing to review individual children's cases in a timely manner or at all.



"Such history sheets could help in tracing the natural parents of a lot of children. These agencies have thus separated innumerous children from their natural homes...in their urge to mint money through adoptions."

• Complying with the Juvenile Justice Act's requirement that found "lost" children be advertised in newspapers, in such a way that it is unlikely that searching parents would either 1) see the ad and 2) recognize their child in the vague and inaccurate information contained therein.



"The JJA states that before putting up a child for adoption, the adoption agency must publish his particulars in at least four leading newspapers, of which two must be in regional languages. But 'private adoption agencies ... have resorted to just a farcical eyewash by publishing their self proclaimed names [presumably names given the child by the adoption agency itself--not necessarily the name by which the child is known to his parents] and self-estimated dates of birth without any photograph--that too only of a few children, in some less popular newspapers, off and on only. The [DSW] report says that the agencies do this, 'to avoid finding 'their natural parents'.'Commenting on this, a CWC member asks, 'How can parents recognise their offspring by such an absurd publication which does not even have the child's correct name?'"

• Neglecting by numerous failings to follow mandated procedures, the expressly stated principle of the nationally binding Juvenile Justice Act in regard to lost children which states: "Every effort should be made to restore the child to his or her biological parents."


• Violating the clearly stated, nationally binding regulations of the Central Adoption Resource Agency including the following:


• Charging in excess of the allowable adoption fees as set forth in CARA guidelines.


Note: According to the Tehelka article, the maximum allowable domestic adoption fee is 10,000 rupees, and yet, according to the same article, the average amount a domestic Indian couple pays to adopt a child is 20,000 rupees.
From the CARA guidelines themselves, I glean that the maximum amount allowable fee for a foreign adoption is $3500 (about 10 times the maximum charge for a domestic adoption). Yet, American adoption agencies often charge $5,000 -$7,000 for the "foreign fee"--the part of the adoption fee that goes to the Indian orphanage. Recently one American adoption agency stated through private correspondence to a potential client that their Indian fee was $11,000.
Which brings us to another point in our long laundry list...


• Preferring foreign adoptive parents to domestic Indian adoptive parents because they have the ability to pay more money for the child--despite the fact that Indian Supreme Court and CARA guidelines for adoption clearly state that Indians must be given preference over foreigners for the adoption of Indian children. And also, its domestic corollary...


• Preferring middle class and wealthy Indian parents over poor ones because of their ability to pay fees beyond the legal limits.

That agencies must go to great lengths to secure adoptable children and once secured, that agencies are able to pass over some adoptive parents for others, points up the fact that, despite claims to the contrary, India is not overflowing with children who are legally free for adoption.

In fact, according to Tehelka article statistics, there are on average approximately 200 Indian parents on the adoption waiting list at each of the approximately 10 of the adoption agencies in Delhi.

As the middle class in India grows, the demand for adoptable children also grows. Where there is demand, there will be those who seek to make money by filling it.

"Had [the family in the anecdotal story]not have [traced him to the orphanage where he was themselves], says a senior DSW official, 'he would have been in [the orphanage] for months without the required effort to trace his family. The agency then would have secured a release order--mandatory to give a child in adoption--from the CWC, finally to give him to a total stranger in return for a huge sum of money.'"

Officially, he'd have been listed as one of the missing "untraceable" children. Children who disappear from their parents never to be heard of again.

In my mind I see an internationally adopted child struggling to come to terms with the fact that he was abandoned by his first parents--didn't they love me?--while on the other side of the world first parents are forever haunted by the memory of the child they loved and lost.

And somewhere else someone else is enjoying wealth and accolades for helping "orphans."

What a world we live in....and how little we understand it all...from our own side of the elephant...

Desiree

Article: "Missing Children: The Business of Adoption," Tehelka.com, July 1, 2007

Resources: CARA Guidelines Governing Adoption

The Juvenile Justice Act (India)

US DOS: Nepal Suspends Intercountry Adoptions

As of May 14, 2007, Nepal is closed for intercountry adoption:

"The Nepali Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (MWCS) has informed the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu that the Government of Nepal has suspended all intercountry adoptions pending approval of reforms of the adoption process by the Nepali cabinet. The Nepali Government has given no indication about when the suspension will be lifted.

The U.S. Embassy is working with the Government of Nepal to urge that they continue to process cases of American adoptive parents already matched with orphans to prevent undue delays of adoption cases already in process."

This action follows months of press reports detailing the corruption plaguing international adoption from Nepal.

"Nepal Suspends Intercountry Adoptions," US Department of State, Intercountry Adoption News, May 14, 2007

Desiree

Flea Feeding Frenzy--so why no bites lately?

With the unfortunate mountain of adoption-corruption-related news the adoption world has provided as of late, the last six weeks should have been a flea feeding frenzy with this blog churning out blog post after blog post....

Yet, as my regular readers may have noticed, this blog has been silent in the midst of it all.

My sincere apologies. For the past several weeks, this flea has been living at the hospital nurturing and caring for her wee one who has been seriously ill.

Home again, with the wee one on the mend, this flea will hopefully soon find time to again get back to biting.

Desiree

India: Obstetrician and Social Worker Charged in Scheme of Selling Newborns for Adoption

An apparent scheme for illegally selling newborn babies to agencies and families for the purpose of adoption was recently uncovered in the city of Navsari in the state of Gujarat, India.

The discovery of the alleged scheme happened when a woman gave premature birth to her baby at Krishna Maternity Hospital. She apparently had not intended to give birth at this facility, but had gone there after being refused treatment at a local hospital. When the woman later returned to reclaim her premature infant the doctor would not give the baby back--presumably because the child was not there.

(It is not clear from the articles exactly why she left the child behind in the first place. Did she leave the child behind for treatment of the child's prematurity? Or did she leave the child behind because she intended to relinquish the child and then changed her mind within the legal 60 days window for reclaiming children?)

At any rate, when she could not get her child back, the woman went to the local police.

This set in motion an investigation of the Krishna Maternity Home, the doctor who ran it, his wife (who is a social worker), and the wife's involvement in a local charity, the Ayappa Bal Asha Trust, an organization "to help the needy" which is registered with the Social Welfare Deparment.

According to the news articles, neither the Krishna Maternity Home nor the Ayappa Bal Asha Trust were registered to faciliatate the adoption of children.

Despite the lack of license to do adoptions, the doctor and his wife, according to news accounts, had "sold" for adoption (to both individual families and also to agencies, more than 60 children).

Police were attempting to track down where individual babies came from, and where exactly they went, but this was made harder by the fact that doctor and his wife apparently did not keep good records.

In apparent violation of the law, many of the births and deaths were not recorded.

The children allegedly sold for adoption were widely dispersed, ending up in various places in Gujarat as well as in the cities of Pune, Mumbai, and Thane, and also, allegedly "abroad"--outside of India. (Hmmm....)

As a result of the preliminary investigation, the Gujarati obstetrican/gynecologist and his social worker wife were arrested and charged with "concealment of birth by secret disposal of bodies, [the] selling of minors, causing miscarriage without consent, wrongful confinement or abduction, forgery, and criminal conspiracy" in India in March of 2007.

Despite the impressive number of news reports covering this case (as listed below), the details of the scheme of which these two are suspected and the details of the crimes with which they were charged, are hard to piece together.

With this dearth of information and only the facts of the case as they are presented in the news accounts, it might be possible to imagine this case as one of the doctor and his wife simply failing to follow proper paperwork procedures while carrying out essentially legal activities. (and this may yet turn out to be the situation)

However, the zealous way the police have pursued the case and the serious charges filed against the doctor and his wife suggest otherwise.

There was an argument for not covering this case on my blog until more facts were known, but the huge number of children involved makes this an important case.

As does the fact that the case may potentially shed light on the reportedly large underground domestic adoption trade in India.

I'll update this blog entry as further facts on the case become available in the press.

Desiree

Navsari adoption racket still out of police probe range, Yahoo News India (India Express), 4/04/07

Adoption scam: Doctor, wife remanded in police custody, Yahoo News India (India Express),3/31-07

Cops to Probe Mumbai Link in Gujarat Child Adoption Scam, MumbaiNewsline, Indian Express, 04/29/07

Cops to Probe Mumbai Link in Gujarat Child Adoption Scam, Yahoo News India, 04/29/07

Gujarat Gynecologist and his social worker wife arrested in adoption scam, Gujarat Global.com, 03/27/07

Adoption scam: Baby’s remains recovered near Navsari temple, Ahmedabad, 03/27/07

Kyrgyzstan:"Dead" Baby Allegedly Sold for Adoption Causes Investigation of Hospital Maternity Wards

A midwife and the department head of a hospital maternity ward were arrested after a police investigation found that they may have sold a baby for adoption after telling the newborn's mother that the child had died. The crime allegedly took place at National Hospital in Bishan, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, a country in Central Asia that was a part of the former Soviet Union.

Reports of the arrests set off a volley of phone calls from other mothers in the area who had recently given birth and had also been told that their babies had died. These mothers asked that the police also investigate their cases.

The health ministry of Kyrgyzstan responded by setting up a commission to investigate the records of the maternity and special care wards of hospitals in both the capital city of Bishan and in the neighboring region of Chu from the past three years.

Results of this investigation were presented at a press conference on March 28, 2007. According to newspaper sources summarizing the words of the deputy health minister, "there did not appear to be an organized racket selling babies, but irregularities had been uncovered in the paperwork for registering births and for the recording of transfers of babies to orphanages."

These irregularities included "birth certificates issues for stillborn babies," death certificates for newborn babies that did not include any cause of death, relatives and guardians being given newborn babies without presenting proof of their identities, and records of babies being sent to orphanages but no records of the same children ever having arrived at the orphanages to which they had supposedly been sent.

In other words, the investigations turned up sloppy paperwork that could very well have been hiding crimes involving newborn babies.

The heads of offending hospitals were issued reprimands and were instructed to take disciplinary action against the individual staff members who were involved in these irregularities.

As a precaution against further abuses, the health ministry said it intends to set up adoption units within the hospitals themselves.

(For my part, I'm not quite sure how this would help. Certainly, it would make it harder for babies to get "lost" between the hospital and the orphanage, but wouldn't it also make it easier for hospital staff to conduct their clandestine business dealings--with less chance for discovery--since the deal could be done quicker and closer to the source of the babies?)

The article in the Middle East times goes on to discuss the "ins and outs" of adoption in Kyrgyzstan. Of particular note are the following quotes:

Some hospital staff say the pitifully low wages paid in the public healthcare sector may tempt some to consider arranging an illegal "sale."

"The average monthly wage for a doctor is 1,200 soms [$35]. Of course, that is no excuse for committing a crime, but it is a factor tone needs to bear in mind," said Talant Marmytov, a surgeon at a Bishkek hospital."

The article reports that children who are legitimately available for domestic adoption in Kyrgyzstan are most often children born to women who abuse alcohol or drugs or children born to prostitutes. Many of these children, the article reports, have congenital health problems as a result of the poor lifestyle choices their mothers have made. Since most prospective adoptive parents want healthy children, reports the article, these orphans are, sadly, unlikely to ever find homes.

The shortage of healthy babies available for legal adoption could tempt prospective parents to consider trying to buy a baby. Even if they do find a child they want to adopt, going through the legal channels is a lengthy and complicated process.

So lengthy and involved ...it is implied... that some, apparently, would like to avoid the official process altogether.

Illegal Baby Trade Suspected in Kyrgyz Hospitals, Middle East Times, 4/18/07

Desiree

El Salvador: Matching "Lost Children" with First Parents Through DNA

From a less popular blind man's perspective on the the adoption elephant, all adoption is predicated on a human tragedy of one sort or another.

And so it ought to be.

Adoption that is not predicated on human tragedy is itself the instigator of needless human tragedy.

So it is that the popular press totally "misses the boat" when it portrays adoption as a happy-happy, all teddy bears and light and adoption angels affair.

An elephant understood ONLY from the perspective of the blind man standing at the trunk is an "elephant" that exists no where in the real world.

But that is the subject of another blog entry for another day....

This blog entry is about children who came into the international adoption stream as the result of a particular kind of human tragedy. And that tragedy is war.

War tends to lead to the separation--intentional or accidental--of children from their parents. Parents may have intentionally sent their children away to a safer place in a desperate attempt to save their lives. Parents may have helplessly watched as their children were torn from their own arms and taken away by hostile forces. Or parents may simply have been accidentally separated from their children in the usual chaos and confusion of war.

At any rate, if we imagine ourselves in the place of these parents and we ascribe to them the same humanity that we afford ourselves, we can imagine the anguish that these parents would feel and their desire to find their children again--to know what became of them. Whether they are dead, or whether they are alive and well. And if they are alive and well, the desire to see them again.

Adoption, despite promoting the fiction that children have only one set of parents--the ones who have current legal custody of them--doesn't magically erase the desire of human first parents who have lost their children to wartime danger and chaos, to find and to reconnect with them in some way.

"We all have an intense need to know. And the strongest human force on Earth is a parent searching for their disappeared child."

Eric Stover, director, Berkeley's Human Rights Center, speaking on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, 02/15/07

There are several news stories that have appeared in the press in the last few months detailing the efforts to reunite adoptees from El Salvador with their original parents by DNA testing.

This effort is being used as a model as part of a broader project to build DNA sample bases to reunite families and their children from various recently war-torn countries including North and South Korea, Vietnam, Rwanda, Chile, and Argentina.

At least 8,000 people are still officially listed as missing more than a decade after the end of El Salvador's civil war (fought from 1980-1992). Many of these missing persons were children. Warring parties routinely kidnapped children--some were killed and some eventually found their way into the international adoption stream, to be adopted by Americans and Europeans.

"..hundreds of [Salvadoran children] were kidnapped by the Salvadoran army and given to orphanages for adoption. During the war, the military would often turn over abducted children to the Salvadoran Red Cross, which either placed them in orphanages or arranged for their adoption in El Salvador or internationally. Forced into hiding and exile during the war, hundreds of families had completely lost track of their biological children by the time Peace Accords were signed in 1992"

--quote from article written by Elizabeth Barnert, The San Francisco Chronicle,04/09/06

Conditions for children in war-torn in El Salvador were so dangerous that thousands more children were voluntarily relinquished for adoption by their parents. Authorities urged parents to send their children away overseas in order to protect them. Parents did so in the desperate hope that their children would have a better chance of survival far away from El Salvador.

The children, who disappeared from El Salvador during the war, have been called the "lost generation." There are literally thousands of children who were separated from their parents and went "missing" in one way or another.

Until now, there was no way for parents to know what had become of their children--whether their children were long dead, or had grown to adulthood safely, far away in the household of another family in another country.

Now, there are human rights activists who are trying to help El Salvadoran parents know what happened to their children, and conversely, help El Salvadoran adoptees locate their original parents.

An NGO (non-governmental organization)called Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos (Search for the Missing Children), was established in El Salvador in 1994 with the express purpose of assisting families "in investigating the fate of their missing children."

More recently, the effort has gone more high tech. Berkeley's Human Rights Center director, Eric Stover is one of several people now collaborating to help reconnect adoptees in the US and elsewhere with their original parents through DNA testing and a computer database of DNA information.

"When I came up here to the village, we then went to the local radio station, and we made an announcement asking families to come forward who had disappeared children. And then the buses arrived, and people came off, and we went into the church, and we started taking blood samples"

Eric Stover, director Berkeley's Human Rights Center speaking on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer

The organization Pro-Busqueda has collected DNA samples from the families of hundreds of missing Salvadoran children. The DNA information is stored in a database that currently contains about 800 samples, but which organizers hope will eventually contain between 3,000 and 5,000 samples. Volunteers are even now in El Salvador tramping through remote areas trying to locate and take DNA samples from families who lost children.

Of the approximately 250 international adoptees from El Salvador that have experienced reunions with their original parents, nearly 70 have been made possible by the DNA matching project.

If you know any adoptees who might be from El Salvador or any of the
other countries featured, it would be good to notify them. This information just
might be the help they've been looking for to find their birthfamilies.

Desiree


Searching for lost children
Hundreds are still missing in El Salvador, The San Francisco Chronicle,04/09/06

El Salvador's war children return to their roots, The London Independent, 7/17/06

The following link provides several options for viewing The News Hour with Jim Lehrer's story including a transcript, audio, and video formats:

DNA Testing Reunites Families Separated by War, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, 2/15/07

DNA database offers Salvadoran war orphans key to stolen past, Berkeley Human Rights Center Press Release of 6/12/06

Link to the Berkeley Human Rights Center:
Berkeley Human Rights Center website

Guatemala: Baby Farming

Martha lives in Guatemala.

She is a 14 year old unwed mother who lives in a house for unwed mothers.

Sometime in the last year, Martha gave up her baby up for adoption.

If you adopted a young infant from Guatemala in the last year and were told that your child was given up for adoption by an unmarried teen, Martha or one of her unwed housemates could possibly be the birthmother of your son or daughter.

If you think that you understand something of Martha's story based on the above description...think again. It is NOT what you think.

Martha's story is the not the archetypal story of a teenager who became pregnant by accident.

In fact, Martha doesn't even have a boyfriend.

And no, her pregancy can't be blamed on a failed teen marriage.

Nor was Martha pregnant by a violent act--not by rape or even incest.

Martha was, in fact, even at age 13, pregnant by design. And before she ever became pregnant, she understood that she would not keep her baby. Her firstborn son or daughter, would have to be surrendered for adoption.

Martha knew that once she had given birth, she would likely never see her child again.

Two years ago when she was 12, Martha's father was approached by a man who came to their slum in a car.

For what it's worth, you should know that Martha's father is a man who works very hard--back-breakingly hard--and long hours on a nearby coffee plantation in order to try to support his family. Unfortunately, however, Martha's father's hard work falls woefully short of supporting his family. This is because he earns very low wages--wages so low that they have his family living in a cardboard box, wages so low that he has watched six of Martha's eleven siblings die from starvation and the related ravages of severe and grinding poverty. Martha's family's poverty dogs them like a lion guarding its prey. It is always there, watching them, lying in wait until the right moment--and then one by one, it leaps forward and devours them.

Anyway, this man in a car offered to take Martha away to live with him and his wife in their little house. It wouldn't be just the three of them, but Martha and the man and his wife would be living with several other young teen-aged girls. Martha would be looked after and be well fed. In terms of manual labor, Martha's work load would be light--she would be given household tasks like caring for the couple's garden and doing their and the other girls' laundry. However, the financially valuable work that Martha would be doing--the work for which this man in the car was willing to pay Martha's father-- would be unseen, showing only over the months as her belly grew to bulging proportions.

And if and when Martha succeeded in producing and successfully giving birth to a live, healthy baby, then the man in the car, would then pay Martha's father $300--the equivalent of a year's salary (at his coffee plantation wages). In fact, Martha could continue to live with this man for several years, producing babies, one after another. There would be money for Martha's father for every baby that Martha produced.

This kind of parental "choice"--the choice between helplessly watching all your children continue be in grave danger of dying or betraying one of them to possibly save the lives of the other(s)--is the kind of hellish choice that a movie called Sofie's Choice made famous.

Here it was in Martha's father's face.

What should he do? Should he prostitute out his 12 year old daughter to be a kind of brood mare for the adoption industry? Should be arrange to have his own grandchildren created and sold off like farm animals in an attempt to save his own remaining six children from dying from the ravages of poverty?

Or should he take the moral high ground and risk having his children--including Martha--die of starvation?

It was a Sophie's Choice, and in the end, like the tortured Sophie, he chose to gamble one child away to save the others.

What could he do but say yes?

And so, there it was. Martha's father said yes.

Martha was taken away at 12 years of age. A man whom she didn't know came shortly thereafter and impregnated her. Martha's valuable work happened over the months that followed as she lived in the little house with the man who had come in the car, the man's wife, and six other young teen girls. Those six other girls are also doing the same valuable work as Martha.

I guess it is what you call a home business. A clever way to keep a man and his wife and the families of the girls who do this valuable work for them, out of completely abject poverty.

A "cottage industry" for the new millenium.

A realistic business for the brave new world where the right to nurture a child from infancy through adulthood--the privilege of becoming a child's forever family--is worth thousands of dollars--a literal fortune by the time you take account of exchange rates in poor countries--on the world market.

A business for the global economy that finds and supplies whatever the global market demands without regard to local ecology, local suffering, or theoretical and unseen things like human rights and human decency.

In a world where adoption angels abound....the Martha's of the world simply do not exist. Period. End of story.

In regard to this particular example of the cottage industry, to save money and keep out of trouble (doctors can ask pesky questions sometimes), the girls are not provided with prenatal care. Neither are doctors or midwives provided when it comes time for the girls to give birth; in Martha's home, the man and his wife are the ones who assist with the girls' births.

Of course, there is a sometimes a high cost for do-it-yourself medical care. One of the girls recently died in childbirth.

I guess that death got Martha a little worried, because she secretly (against the rules) wandered into a nearby doctor's clinic, a humanitarian clinic operated by a US physician, to ask for some minimal prenatal care and some prenatal vitamins.

Which is how the outside world began to get the first real clue that she and this presumed cottage industry exist in Guatemala. How many Martha's and how many of these "cottage industries" churning out human children for adoption exist or don't exist is anyone's guess. The numbers may be large or small. Those who know about such things aren't talking about them.

The doctor that she approached became so disturbed at Martha's situation and her story that he decided to do something about it. He decided to start by telling someone local whom he trusted. He got nowhere with that. In fact, he was instead warned that he should drop it because frankly, no one cares and those who care, care because they are (literally) *invested* in seeing the practice continue. It might be dangerous to him to pursue justice.

The doctor was disturbed enough to be brave and take his knowledge to others--to human rights groups in both Guatemala and in the US. To his horror, no one seemed to care about the exploitation of Martha and her housemates. Well known human rights groups simply said the equivalent of SO WHAT??

The doctor wrote up an account of what he found and it was published on the last page of the newsletter for a non-profit group which works to better the lives of Guatemalan children through education.

The doctor's account is a plea for someone, somewhere to care about Martha and her friends and family and their situation.

It is a plea for the human community to care about Martha's exploitation as a human baby machine activated to keep her family from starving to death.

It is a plea for justice and human decency.

I write this account of his account because I think that is time for the world and the adoption community to be aware of the voiceless Martha's and Martha's fathers of the world.

As American adoption agencies scramble to assure prospective adoptive parents that Guatemala, a country that places more children per capita for international adoption than any other country in the world and thus has a $150,000,000 a year adoption industry to show for it--is not nearly as ethically risky a place from which to adopt as the US DOS states that it is (see my blog entry of March 15,2007 , "US DOS Issues Notice About Guatemalan Adoption"), the question is....is it?

Is Guatemala simply a country, that, for whatever reason, is so chock full of healthy young orphans in need of homes so that it is, with the help of an agency and a Guatemalan attorney, a prospective adoptive parent's dream come true?

Or is it a place where prospective parents, with their expendable $$$, have come to expect to find healthy, young baby orphans, and so there are those in Guatemala who are consequently continuing "to find" healthy, young baby orphans?

NOTE: I do not mean to imply that Guatemala produces no legitimate orphans, I am merely questioning their continuing goodly supply of orphans. And asking the world and us adoptive parents to start demanded answers. Investigations. Whatever it takes to ensure that we aren't receiving our adoptable babies on the backs of the Martha's of the world.

When the adoption of a single Guatemalan child involves up to $30,000 (the equivalent of more than a lifetime of wages for those who are producing the children), and a country is filled with poor people eaking out a living on $300 a year, could there maybe be some real incentive for corruption in adoption. And where there is that kind of incentive for corruption, is it reasonable to believe that it doesn't exist and it isn't gobbling up girls like Martha?

Desiree

GSSG News, Volume IV, Number 1, March 2006