Baby trafficking in Sri Lanka

In December, police in Sri Lanka found a newborn who had been grabbed at Colombo Hospital while his mother was in the restroom. Admidst much public attention including the President of Sri Lanka, police searched around the clock and apprehended the woman who allegedly snatched the infant. Two more infants were kidnapped from the same hospital and police were questioning the same woman in connection with those stolen babies.

The kidnapping at Colombo Hospital in December prompted an investigation by the CID of three major state-run hospitals in Sri Lanka, probing into what may be a large baby smuggling ring and document forgery racket: the De Soysa Women’s Hospital, the Castle Street Hospital for Women and the Colombo South Teaching Hospital. The investigations were also prompted by the kidnapping of a newborn from the Kalubowila Hospital and the disappearance of another child from the same hospital.

The CID is looking for a “wealthy” woman who is believed to be the mastermind behind the alleged baby trafficking ring, Kompanna Veediya. Several hospital workers were allegedly in on the racket which was revealed after the attempt a Dutch couple to smuggle a Sri Lankan baby out of the country. It is suspected that at least four babies have already been smuggled out of the country in the past year. According to CID ASP Mewan Silva, the hospital employees at Castle Hospital target mothers with various problems including financial difficulties and convince them to turn over their babies to be adopted by rich families. Veediya reportedly pays the hospital employees between Rs 5,000 and 10,000 per baby.

At De Soysa Hospital, investigations revealed that two babies born on different dates in 2005 were issued birth certificates with the same number by the hospital. It was reported that the registrar at De Soysa Hospital would be arrested shortly. According to a source at the National Child Protection Authority, “in some instances, the hospital authorities seem to hand over blank ‘birth declaration forms’ to people, so that anyone can fill in any details they want. That explains how bogus names are listed as those of the actual mother and father.”

Regarding the case of a Dutch woman who had allegedly given birth at Nagoda Hospital, a former mayor and another individual who were charged under the Penal Code with cheating, forging documents and child trafficking, was scheduled to be heard by the Colombo High Court on February 8. That transaction allegedly cost Rs. 750,000.

Another case involves four suspects who were remanded for allegedly attempting to smuggle a baby girl out of the country to Dubai on January 6 using forged documents. Those being held in the case are the woman who was allegedly attempting to smuggle the baby, her mother, the biological mother of the baby and an employee of the Castle Street Hospital for Women who was allegedly the middleman. The mother and daughter who were arrested reportedly paid Rs. 85,000 to the hospital employee for the baby girl and the employee reportedly persuaded the biological mother to give up the baby. The daughter who was arrested is an accountant married to an electrical engineer and were described as desperate to have a baby after struggling through infertility.

Usha

Major baby trafficking racket bared, January 12, 2008, Daily Mirror

Sri Lanka family reunited with abducted baby on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2007, Lanka Business Online

Baby racket in three major hospitals, January 27, 2008, Sunday Times Online

Workshop 4.3: Ethical Issues in New Reproductive Technologies

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during Workshop 4.3:

• Which ethical issues in adoption should apply to the professionals, donors and recipients of new reproductive technologies – and which should not?


• Are there aspects of new reproductive technologies that raise questions related to “the best interest of the child”?


• Are there ethical issues that require attention regarding donors’ and recipients’ participation in these technologies?


• What laws, policies and “best practices” should be applied to reproductive technology practitioners, donors and recipients in the U.S.?

Panelists:

Jean Benward, LCSW is a psychotherapist with over 25 years of experience in the areas of adoption, infertility, and donor conception. In her private practice, she works with adoptive families, adoptees, and individuals considering use of donor gametes for family formation. In 1994, Ms. Benward joined the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), where she has spoken at several symposia and postgraduate courses. She served as a member of its Mental Health Professional Group (MHPG) Executive Committee for seven years, is former MHPG chair and former co-chair of its donor registry task force. She has presented at conferences of the ASRM, the American Society for Bioethics and Humanism, the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, the American Adoption Congress, and Resolve. Ms. Benward currently is co-president of the Board of Directors of the Sperm Bank of California and has been a consultant on the Sperm Bank’s identity release task force for seven years. Her clinical background includes several years as a clinical supervisor and adjunct professor, training graduate students in child and family therapy and providing consultation to the staff of child treatment programs. Ms. Benward holds an undergraduate degree from Barnard College and a graduate degree from the Columbia University School of Social Work.

Naomi Cahn is Associate Dean for Faculty Development and John Theodore Fey Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. Her areas of expertise include family law, reproductive technology, and adoption law. She has written numerous law review articles on family law and other subjects, and has co-authored several books, including Contemporary Family Law (Thomson/West 2006), Families By Law: An Adoption Reader (NYU Press 2004), and Confinements: Fertility and Infertility in Contemporary Culture (Rutgers University Press 1997). Her current project is a book tentatively titled, The Parent Plan: A Legal Examination of the Means of Collaborative Reproduction (forthcoming NYU Press). She is the Legal Intersections Co-Editor of Adoption Quarterly. From 2002 to 2004, Professor Cahn was on leave in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington in 1993, Professor Cahn practiced with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, DC, and as a staff attorney with Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, where she represented clients in the abuse and neglect system.

Bill Cordray is an architect practicing in Salt Lake City, Utah and an advocate for people conceived through donor insemination (DI). Mr. Corday was born through DI conception in July 1945; at age 37, his mother disclosed his conception. Since that time, he has been an outspoken critic of reproductive technologies in the media, at conferences, on the Internet, and on an interpersonal level. His work focuses on eliminating secrecy within DI families, promoting early disclosure to children, ending anonymity in gamete donation, and proclaiming the retrospective right of access of DI adults to the identity of their mother’s sperm donor. Mr. Cordray’s web site seeks to give a voice to the rapidly growing numbers of DI adults who want to speak freely about their experiences. Mr. Cordray regularly presents at conferences on DI. He has appeared in television interviews and documentaries in Utah, in the US national media, and in the media of Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. Mr. Cordray holds a BA in English and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Utah.

Susan Golombok is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research as a member of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, England. Her research examines the impact on children’s social, emotional and identity development and on parent-child relationships when children are reared in new family forms. Her work has focused on these issues in relation to lesbian mother families, solo mother families, and families created by assisted reproduction procedures such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. Professor Golombok is the author of Parenting: What really counts? and co-author of Bottling it up, Growing up in a lesbian family and Modern Psychometrics.

Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, is also the Associate Editor of Adoption Quarterly, the premier professional journal in its field, and is the author of Adoption Nation, which was named Book of the Year by the National Adoption Foundation and has been reviewed as “the most important book ever written on the subject.” He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about adoption in The Boston Globe, where he was a senior reporter and editor for 22 years before turning his career toward adoption. Pertman’s other honors include: the Angel in Adoption Award from the U.S. Congress; the Special Friend of Children Award from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists; the Friend of Adoption Award from the ODS Adoption Community of New England; the Dave Thomas Center for Adoption Law’s first award for “the nation’s greatest contributor to public understanding about adoption and permanency placement issues”; the American Adoption Congress’ first award to the journalist who has done most to inform our nation about adoption and “for his eloquent witnessing of contemporary adoption”; and the Year 2000 Journalism Award from Holt International Children’s Services.

Jean Benward

• Her professional career started 25 years ago working with adoption issues. 15-20 years later, her professional focus moved to reproductive technology issues especially donor conceived families


• People in adoption tend to feel strongly about the similarities between adoption and donor conception. Professionals and families affected by donor conception tend to not feel that adoption is a model that can be translated.


• Similarities between adoption and donor conception:
  Premises and belief that there is shame and secrecy, families formed this way dealt with stigma and isolation, power held by professionals, birth parents deemed invisible and deemed important to banish them from families they helped create.
  In 1970s, begin to see the voices of adoptees and birth parents resulting in grassroots change in adoption practice. Openness is valued, birth parent connections deemed important and of significance to adoptees, families are supported in the larger community with resources, laws changed, and adoptees are supported in search.
  Donor conception is pretty much the same since when it began until relatively recently. There is an emerging change in how people think about donor conception. ASRM goes on record of advocating disclosure of donor conception to offspring. Now seeing grassroots efforts outside of professionals where people are seeking to connect with each other. Identity release programs guarantee offspring identifying information about sperm donors. Abolition of anonymity is becoming increasingly widespread around the world. In other countries, donors cannot be anonymous.
  In the environment in which donor conceived families live, there is a tremendous amount of stigma and emotional impetus behind fear of disclosure.


• How are donors viewed? As biological fathers? People in adoption tend to put them in same category as birth parents, but donors go into this not thinking of offspring as children of the type one nurtures and lives with. On the other hand, they have significant meaning to offspring and vice versa but we don’t have a vocabulary for understanding these connections. Offspring and donors will help create the context for understanding these connections.


• Ethics – both fields face identical issues, for example, the role of commercialism, how the practice is market driven, participants are subject to exploitation, professionals still assume power in the transactions, and issue of openness.

Naomi Cahn

• Her husband is an adoptee who searched about 10 years ago and that has influenced her perceptions in much of this field. Before he searched, she went through a reproductive technology clinic where donor eggs were suggested. She did not go that route, but her reaction guides her as she thinks through much of this.


• Similarities between adoption and reproductive technology: forming families with outside help. Issues of tort suits that overlap with respect to misrepresentations, issues of fertility tourism, and overlap in professionals involved in both fields.


• Enormous differences between adoption and reproductive technology: Completely different sets of regulations. Adoption is in many ways far ahead of reproductive technologies. Fundamentally different assumptions in each field: adoption at least pays lip service to best interest of child. Best interest of the child is not a hallmark of reproductive technology world. Children’s interest are starting to assume more importance as offspring are coming forward, but it is a very consumer-driven field as a result of lack of regulation. To create a new adoptive relation requires a court order but there is practically no legal involvement in the context of reproductive technology.


• Statistics in the reproductive technology field: There are more than 400 fertility clinics nationwide, $3 billion annual business, in 2004 130,000 IVF cycles in the U.S. with 50,000 IVF babies born, half a million frozen embryos, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology estimates 9,000 donor egg children born in the U.S. in 2005, and an estimated 30,000 donor sperm conceived children born annually. Language in both fields is evolving as there is more sensitivity. Sperm providers and egg providers are not donors.
  Unlike adoption, where from the mid 19th century has been distinguished by laws, gamete technology developed with secrecy and little regulation. First known donor conception was in the late 19th from a physician on a woman who never realized there was a donor outsider her husband.


• Market forces are strong and well entrenched and there is not same advocacy for best interest of the child. Little incentive to regulate this field further because clinics make a lot of money and parents are willing to pay a lot of money in order to have children. Gamete providers are often in this to make money and so regulation will affect their source of income and many donor conceived children don’t know they are so there is no strong advocacy group there, either. Federal law regulates the safety and health of donated tissue including sperm and eggs which are regulated primarily against transmission of AIDS. About 35 states deal with parenthood issues when it comes to sperm, only 4-5 states when it comes to eggs and only 1-2 states when it comes to embryos: Louisiana and Florida. There is some movement to limit prices but studies show it is not successful because there is state oversight over adoption but not the reproductive technology system.


• For the future, secrecy in both areas is starting to crack a bit. Parenthood issues to be resolved.
  

Bill Cordray

• Donor insemination in his point of view is a form of adoption. He has a problem with perceiving it as something else. It comes from the fact that the language is determined by the medical profession so people are asked to believe all we are dealing with are tissues. When we see sperm, think original father; embryos, original families; eggs, original mothers. Sperm, eggs and embryos are part of adoption too.


• DI people don’t have much of a voice. He is reluctantly taking that role because few are doing it. He wants to take command of how language is forming and how we see ethical issues by humanizing it. He is tired of being infantilized. He doesn’t want to use best interests of child for determining ethics, but rather, the best interests of vulnerable human beings who have no say in how contracts or transactions are occurring.


• DI has sociological and psychological issues that the medical profession does not see because they see the end as the baby in the cradle.


• 2 other common axioms:
  1. adopted person is anyone who has no connection to genetic parents, therefore, he considers himself an adopted person because he doesn’t know who his birth father is
  2. DI people have a right to know about their origins and have this info disclosed to them. This is not happening in many DI adoption families. He likes to focus on DI because it is the primary way reproductive technology families are being formed.


• Differences between DI and traditional adoption: Lack of regulation. There are contracts signed by donors and by prospective adoptive parents that require they not try to find the identity of the other person. Legal aspects are strange because the medical profession is treating it in a laissez faire manner in the U.S. so anything the doctor does is right and ethical because they have a code of ethics, but in reality, it has evolved into a business and is the least regulated of all medical branches and technically is not medicine. Anyone can be involved in donor insemination with a turkey baster.


• Best practices and laws that should apply: There should be independent counseling that ensures true informed consent. The lack of informed consent is astounding. Clinics don’t even know the truth of what it means to be conceived through anonymous gametes. Part of human fabric, texture and makeup of child and should not dehumanize it.


• We need mechanisms to ensure disclosure and take away liberty of contract clinics enjoy because it is not a valid legal stance in the medical profession. These records need to belong to the courts like in adoption. Records ought to be considered a property right of identity to offspring. It’s about time we started honoring the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child.


• As in adoption, DI individuals don’t have their original birth certificates either.
  
  

Susan Golombok
Discussed ethical issues with respect to different kinds of reproductive technology:

1) “high tech” families – involves, procedures such as IVF, ICSI, and sometimes gamete donation. Kinds of concerns raised:

• Theory that parents who have gone through years of infertility and have a very much wanted child will be overprotective parents and will have high expectations of their child or themselves as parents which causes tension and stress in family. In summarizing findings of many studies worldwide, these concerns about these families are unfounded. If anything, studies show quality of relationships are in a sense more positive.


• One area where there is a problem is in high number of multiple births. 1% of natural births result in multiples. With high tech procedures, usually 25-33% of pregnancies result in multiples. With multiples, there is an increased rate of prematurity and health related problems, disability and psychological functioning e.g., language development and for parents themselves, especially those who have triplets or more, experience extreme stress with large numbers of children growing up at same age. Some European countries have legislated only 1-2 embryos can be transferred whereas there is no legislation in the U.S. Should the number of embryos that may be transferred be limited?

2) gamete donation

• A number of groups have carried out large scale studies of children conceived through gamete donation. Generally, the children don’t seem to be in any way experiencing psychological problems as a result of this method of conception but a striking finding is that a majority of parents until recently have not disclosed donor conception origins. More recent studies have shown disclosure to children in very early years seems to be the best way. There is a movement toward openness.


• Donor siblings, donors and parents are making contact. Some have found up to 55 siblings. When there has been contact, there has been generally a positive experience.
  

3) Non-traditional families – includes same sex parents and single heterosexual women who have conceived through donor insemination.

• We now have 30 years of research for same sex parents with no evidence of problems that were thought would arise


• There is less research available with respect to single parents.

4) surrogacy

• One study in UK follows children at ages 1, 2 and 3 with NIH funding to study at ages 5 and 7.


• Should restriction be placed on the number of embryos that may be transferred? Should offspring have access to the identity of donors? Who should be donors, for example family members? Should donors be paid? Should parents be screened?
  
  

Questions:

1. Adam Pertman commented that he could not understand how one could not tell the child about the donation. How do they deal with their medical history?

Cordray: He is creating his own research on the attitudes of donor-conceived adults.

2. A member of ASRM and RESOLVE commented on the importance of counseling. She has had women who are pregnant through egg donation who are considering abortion because they have not been helped with their feelings and they feel like they are carrying an alien. ASRM took the position of advising disclosure to children last year.

Benward: Having been on both sides, she notes that families conceived by donor conception still face a huge amount of stigma and hold a lot of pain whereas it’s easier for adoptive parents to find support. The idea of overprotectiveness represents a stereotype and stigma and disapproval of families formed thru ART. There is a great deal of unacceptance and negative assumptions about parents who have conceived through ART.

Cahn: More recent studies on adoptive families have found little difference in parenting and in fact, parenting qualifies as extremely good.

3. A director of an adoption program in California presented a dilemma she faced. A couple approached her agency to adopt. They had two children from her eggs and her husband’s brother’s sperm and they were not going to tell the children. Now they wanted to adopt and were open to open adoption. She made a decision to say no to that family because she felt like their children were adopted too and she was concerned the adopted child would find out. The family was incredulous. She felt her responsibility was the best interest of adopted child and there was no shortage of families because the child was a newborn.

Cordray: Commented that this happens quite a bit in DI families.

Someone commented that increasingly folks getting donor insemination are getting counseling and can get them to a point where they are open to disclosure. It’s harder for family to keep the secret over the long haul. Often, 5-10 people know outside the child.

4. A student at Duke University/adoptee commented that shame and stigma is not an option for lesbians who are trying to get pregnant. She also asked for feedback on fertility tourism where industries are developing in places like India and people are traveling from wealthier countries to other countries. She has serious concerns about this as an adoptee.

Cahn: studies show same sex parents or single parents are most likely to disclose facts of conception to their children. Regarding fertility tourism, there are the same issues of exploitation as in adoption. It is also a way of completely escaping regulation. In adoption, have to finalize the relationship, but not in fertility tourism

Golombok: Paradoxical because in some countries, surrogacy has become regulated or subject to legislation so people travel to other countries where it is allowed.

5. A mother/lawyer asked if there are studies following surrogates and egg donors to see how well they are doing? The egg donor is having invasive surgery and is in desperate need of independent counseling, but women usually give eggs because of big bucks and do not get independent counseling and are every bit as vulnerable as birth mothers.

Cordray: They are birth mothers.

Golombok: Egg donor studies have been done by Andrea Braverman. Vasanti has taken the lead in following up with 34 surrogate mothers two years after birth of the child.

Benward: Have seen egg donors interviewed and screened. It does them a disservice to see them as victims. They are adult, competent women who should be treated as such. Granted, as fees go up, it induces women to lie or do it if they otherwise wouldn’t. She has met many women over the years who like the money, but that isn’t the only reason they do it. It is not easy to find egg donors and many who have donated have thought about it for a year, researched it and talked to family about it.

6. A self-identified queer/bastard wanted to address the language issue. As an adopted person, it is painful to hear Bill say we are not children. It is very difficult in these conversations to hear that the people who are the result of these processes are children and don’t have legal rights. It would be really nice if they were treated as free agents within the course of these conversations. Words like “offspring” and “children” are very difficult to hear from her perspective. Concerned about language like “donor” because so much comes down to money and calling them donors hides that.

She has looked into the way the U.S. is treating frozen embryos. There are a set of laws prohibiting frozen embryos from being destroyed. In Louisiana, embryos can be defrosted to be implanted in a married woman for the prospect of pregnancy. One and only option is that embryos end up in snowflake adoption which is really embryo transfer.

Usha

Workshop 2.5: Supporting Adopted Children After Adoption: What are Their Post-Placement Needs?

Ethics and Accountability Conference
Sponsored by Ethica and Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
October 15-16, 2007

Bullet points for discussion during Workshop 2.5:

1. What are the most important needs of adopted persons after adoption – both in the short and long term?
   
   
   
2. To what extent to current practices and policies respond effectively to these needs?
   
   
   
3. What new services and supports are needed to ensure that the needs of adopted persons are met?

Panelists:

Carrie Kent is the Director of Research for Ethica, Inc. and an adoptive mother of two children, Jack and Desiree. She is active both locally and nationally in issues related to openness in adoption, as well as transethnic placement. She has been co-owner of the XcultureAdopt list for four years and has spoken at the 1999 Traverse City Open Adoption Conference, the fall 2000 LifeGivers Workshop at Higgins Lake, Michigan, and the 2003 Open Door Society spring conference. In her “day job,” she is head of Research Services at Harvard University’s Widener Library, and is an as-of-yet unpublished novelist.

Joyce Maguire Pavao, Ed.D., LCSW, LMFT, is the Founder and CEO of Center For Family Connections, Inc. (CFFC - est. 1995) in Cambridge, MA and New York. Dr. Pavao has done extensive training, both nationally and internationally. She is an adjunct faculty member in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and has consulted to various public and private agencies, schools, and the court system. She works closely with individuals and families created by adoption, foster care and other complex blended family constructions. She has developed models for treatment and training using her systemic, intergenerational, and developmental framework, The Normative Crises in the Development of the Adoptive Family. Her book, The Family of Adoption, has received high acclaim. Dr. Pavao has received many awards and honors, including the Adoption Excellence Award for Family Contribution (2003) and the Angels in Adoption award (2000).

Debbie B Riley is Executive Director of The Center for Adoption Support and Education, Inc. (C.A.S.E.), an independent post-adoption organization in the Baltimore-Washington area and co-author of Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens. Since 1993, her work has focused exclusively on the field of adoption. She has created a continuum of post-adoption programs in the Washington, DC area and a variety of innovative and effective programs to address the complex needs of families with a variety of adoption backgrounds, including public and private, international and domestic. Ms. Riley presents both locally and nationally on numerous topics related to adoption and adolescent mental health. She serves on the Research and Practice Committee of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the Editorial Committee for the Adoptive Families Magazine, and the Children’s Agenda Advisory Committee of the Montgomery County Collaboration Council for Children, Youth, and Families. Ms. Riley holds a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Maryland. She is the adoptive mom of a teenage son.

Indigo Willing OAM, is a doctoral student at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include transnational families and migration, as well as links among race, culture and child welfare services. Her thesis focuses on the experiences of Australian parents who have adopted children from Asia and Africa. Ms. Willing was adopted from Vietnam into a white Australian family in 1972, and as a young adult, she received a Medal in the Order of Australia in 2006, in recognition of her work in developing the Adopted Vietnamese International community network. This network is dedicated to assisting adopted people from the Vietnam War and their adoptive families to develop stronger connections to Vietnamese culture, history and surviving/missing relatives. The network works closely with a range of adoption groups in Australia.

Debbie Riley

• When she thought about what are the most important needs of adoptees post-adoption and what extent current practices and policies respond effectively to the issues discussed by this panel, she came to the realization that adoption professionals know that there are normal but complex issues facing adopted persons, many of whom will seek professional services in charting their adoption journey.
  
  
  
• Adoption is not a one-time event but a lifelong process that warrants specialized support upon the way.
  
  
  
• Most important need of adopted persons is the funding, availability, accessibility and quality of adoption-competent mental health services. Current socio-political factors don’t ensure the availability of these services. It is the ethical and legal obligation of her field to ensure all adopted persons have access to competent mental health services. Why are the children with the most complex adoption and mental health needs being referred and seen by the least qualified experienced clinicians?
  
  
  
• The Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Work states that when generally accepted standards do not exist with respect to an emerging area of practice, then they should exercise careful judgement and take responsible steps with respect to education, training, consultation and supervision to ensure competency in their work and to protect clients from harm.
  
  
  
• We must join together to expand the knowledge base of practitioners set the standards for competency through federal, state and local collaborations and advocate for flexible funding streams to sustain the services. Adoption competent providers can be instrumental in ensuring positive outcomes for adoptees and their families.
  
  It is our ethical responsibility to ensure that adoptive families have access to high quality adoption services.

Indigo Willing

• Shared insight from the Australian perspective.




• Since 2000 she has been working with adopted Vietnamese war orphans. She runs a search registry for people looking for relatives and notes the paucity of resources. Her doctoral studies focus on the identity construction of adoptive parents and how they negotiate problems of adoption.
  
  
  
• Australia is undergoing several adoption legislation reviews at the state level and has just had a federal inquiry into the adoption process. People are speaking up and saying things need to be changed, but who are being heard?
  
  
  
• Adoptees are highly experienced adoption educators and run excellent support groups among themselves, but they are rarely funded and rarely heard.
  
  
  
• Most common issues adopted people are focusing on with respect to post-adoption needs:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1. Representation – the need for adoption institutions, agencies and groups etc. to allow for adult adoptee perspectives to illuminate both the strengths and weaknesses of the practices. Also a push to call for adoptee inclusion on more boards, committees and forums.
     
     
     
  2. Administration – need for tighter record keeping, inclusive fees planning for services such as searching for birth parent assistance, return visits and counseling support. A lot of uproar in Australia at the moment for fees to adopt. None of those fee increases are covering post-adoption services other than 2,000 per year for a festival where children can dress in their national costume.
     
     
     
  3. Transnational planning – providing guidance and services relating to assisting adoptees who embark on return trips. A lot of adoptees travel independently and find themselves thrown in the deep end. They are left in an incredibly vulnerable place. If so much preparation goes into bringing these children overseas, surely some preparation could exist to help them return to explore birth countries.
     
     
     
  4. Cultural strategies – offering of programs dedicated to issues such as language and cross-cultural competency. For example, the documentary Daughter from Danang illustrated a cross- cultural collision.
     
     
     
  5. Ensuring emotional and psychological capital – relates to making sure there are suitable programs and appropriately educated counselors who can assist adopted people manage issues related to their emotional well being and mental health. There is no post-adoption training for people like psychologists and family health practitioners in Australia.
  
  
  
  
• Education, if it does exist, generally consists of getting volunteer adoptees to speak about their life story. Would like to see stronger programs being built.
  

Joyce Maguire Pavao

• What adoption is not: adoption is not a problem, illness or a bad thing though it stems from what many think are problems. Society tends to view adoption as a problem. It’s very important to realize that pathologizing leads to pathology and a lot of that goes on in adoption and is that ethical?
  
  
  
• Adoption is taking on and extending or making of family by admitting others to the clan and claiming them as relatives as in marriage. It is a lifelong process and it affects the generations before and after in many direct and indirect ways. It is complex, it is never simple.
  
  
  
• Cannot focus on post-adoption needs of the child without focusing on the parents. If you don’t take care of the adults, the child isn’t taken care of. We need to provide more support and services to foster families.
  
  
  
• With respect to birth parents, it is important to pay attention not just in the moment, but post-adoption these issues go on. There’s a developmental process for birth parents. We are not doing enough for birth parents, they are hardly considered. If you care about the child, you care about all of their parents. This includes parents whose children were removed – the children are in permanent homes and messages they give those children will make a huge difference in the emotional stability of their child.
  
  
  
• For adoptive parents, there are ongoing needs. Often it comes in the guise of the children’s needs, but parents have developmental issues, including in and out of doubt about feeling genuine.
  
  
  
• Therapy is not the answer to everything. Need to provide consultations and programs and not necessarily be in therapy.
  
  
  
• Developmental issues for children – many points in time where things will come up that are quickly pathologized. Under anger lies sadness or fear. Larger community needs to have education e.g., schools where learning disabilities diagnosed are in fact teaching disabilities; medical and health professionals – rampant medications and crazy therapies done in the name of attachment, bizarre overdosing of adult medications for kids is unethical. Need to have extended family educated

Discussion from Workshop 2.5

Question 1.A person from CASE raised concerns with other mental health professionals. Instead of pathologizing adoption, they minimize and fail to recognize normal reactions to adoption. They suggest other things are going on instead of validating what is happening is normal. Are there more ideas of how to educate other professionals?

Riley: It’s been a delicate balance for many years of how much to attribute to adoption. Education is important.

Willing: She is a sociologist by training, but sees attachment come up a lot. It’s important to remind parents to keep a critical mind and do research.

Question 2. An adoptive parent/adoption worker referenced developmental stages members of the triad undergo and requested references.

Pavao: A lot of the grass roots organizations can be helpful. For example Lee Campbell of Concerned United Birthparents put together material on developmental issues of birthparents; she has a long vision of birthparenthood. There is also Romanchik’s organization. For adoptive parents, there are wonderful adoptive parent networks. Always go to the elders, parents whose children are in 30's and 40's and who have kept up with the times. Some people are better at some stages than others. The family is an organism, so it is important to see how everyone is relating to each other. Adult adoptee groups are incredibly important for people to listen to. Find people who can reflect on things.

Willing: Sometimes the diagnosis of adult adoptees is wrong. For example, low-self esteem is attributed to being separated from mothers. That may be true, but a more well rounded approach needed, for example, an examination of what else is going on in their lives like racism. Look at studies by adoptees in addition to personal narratives.

Question 3. Another adoptive parent/adoption worker wondered how we can help better prepare families in adoption by saying that post-placement services are more likely than if they had given birth to a child because there will be an added layer of issues.

Pavao: People should be trained to provide them. Important the services not all be therapy, but often need consultation and support.

Riley: We need to start advocating for the funding and that these services are accessible.

Question 4. An adoptive parent and educator said he tried to start a club for adoptees at his high school but he ran into confidentiality laws. Doesn’t know how to go about it.

Pavao: Suggest normalize it by expanding it, for example, to kids who live in complex families. Emotional and psychological issues are the same even if the legal situation is different. The kids may feel pathologized if limited to adoptees.

Riley: Look at the environment. A lot of adoptive parents don’t want their children to share they are adopted because of the stigma attached to them. See how one can create adoption sensitivity among peers.

Willing: As a teen, there might be issues of gender. At an adoption camp in Australia they showed a video with stories by intercountry adoptees who were a little older. Accompanying that they showed the movie Transformers and lots of boys came. Adoptive father groups have football days.

Question 5. Someone from Open asked what if you have parents who are in denial or who are reluctant? How do you draw these parents in?

Pavao: Help isn’t help unless you want it. No one starts out gung ho understanding all of this, but opens up along the way. Pre-adoption, prospective adoptive parents may not be interested even if they attend pre-adoption education, but they will have the information to get more help when needed. Sometimes information doesn’t take seed for awhile.

Willing: There is a real need for this. Can’t adopt in Australia without going through a state agency. Reasonably good program in the pre-adoption stage where prospective adoptive parents needs to go through education sessions, provide a life storybook, and undertake home studies. Adoptive parents have to compete for children so they join networks to learn how to get through the system and make friendships that way and then are keen to learn more, but there are not enough professionals to do the training.

Question 6. A mother said she runs an online support group for individuals who worked with her network of agencies she lost her daughter to. So she is in a position to help even though she is not a professional. What other things can she do besides recommend books?

Pavao: Suggests reading, going to conferences and lectures, support groups. Worry about the word “support groups” sometimes. Some like the information but don’t like the name. Hearing other people normalizes experiences.

Riley: Something she has found useful is journaling.

Question 7. An adoptive parent/adoption social worker asked whether there is a need for more professional standards when it comes to adoption social work in schools of social work. Should there be more standards of practice across the board?

Riley: Yes, there should be. What is an adoption-competent therapist? There is no standardization of knowledge base or core competency. It is important that we come up with standards before an outside entity does.

Pavao: Post-graduate programs are great but they are not nearly enough. Supervision is a key factor, for example, in the child welfare system people often become supervisors if they are near retirement and are going part time. There should be a lot more done to make sure people are trained.

Question 8. Adoptive parent/adoption worker ask about the importance of providing services to siblings, both biological and adoptive.

Pavao: Siblings really need support. We don’t do enough work with siblings before a placement or before removal.

Riley: Do siblings get to be a part of the process? Doesn’t want to see the child as separate from everyone else and usually siblings are left out entirely.

Usha

Republic of Togo Suspends Child Adoption

On February 7, the Togolese government suspended all forms of child adoption due to problems in its adoption system. According to the government, courts granted adoptions on the basis of "abandonment judgments without any social inquiry" while overlooking adoption procedures. The President of Togo, Faure Gnassingbe, asked the Minister of Social Actions and Minister of Justice, to create order in child adoption procedures, settle adoption within Togo in the interest of parties outside the country and clarify legal procedures for children’s law.

Usha

Togo Suspends Child Adoption, Mathaba News Agency, February 11, 2008

Togo: Togolese Government Suspends Child Adoption, allAfrica.com, February 8, 2008

Book Review: Once a Mother: Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers in South India by Pien Bos

Pien Bos is an education specialist and anthropologist who worked in the adoption field before becoming a researcher in 2001. Once a Mother is her dissertation published resulting from two years of field work in South India with mothers, families and social welfare NGOs. Pien Bos defended her dissertation on January 10, 2008 for which she received a PhD with distinction from Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

The subject of the book is the mostly unheard “supply side” of the adoption equation: first mothers in India. The goal of Bos’ research was to fill this knowledge gap and document and probe the process of child relinquishment from the perspective of their mothers. In this respect, Once a Mother is equivalent to The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade in that Bos documents present-day relinquishment practices in South India which are in many ways reminiscent of the Baby Scoop Era in the United States.

Bos interviewed 36 mothers whose factual circumstances varied widely, both in their socioeconomic station in life as well as the circumstances of their children’s conception. Seven of these mothers had relinquished their child at least 15 years earlier. The other 29 were in the process of relinquishing. In addition, Bos interviewed 16 other mothers who decided not to relinquish and were raising their children on their own.

From her fieldwork, Bos developed three main findings:

1. Many mothers who relinquished their children considered themselves married, not unmarried.

The social stigma of unwed motherhood is generally assumed to be the primary reason why children are surrendered for adoption in India. However, Bos notes that many of the mothers she interviewed adopted a more flexible and informal definition of marriage, specifically the tying by a man of a “tali” to a woman without regard to other ceremonies and formalisation. The varying interpretations of marital status tended to be denied by institutions.

2. Blood bond in general, and the blood bond between mother and child specifically, has an extremely significant cultural meaning in Tamil culture. The cultural significance of motherhood, in combination with the meaning of the notion mother in its broader cultural sense implies that motherhood is irreplaceable and life-long. Despite the legal significance of relinquishment, mothers continued to view themselves as their children’s mothers who handed over care of their children to others, but not their motherhood.

Although care of the child was transferable, motherhood is not. According to Bos, “[b]iological mothers of surrendered children still felt and eventually claimed to be the only true mother, and this aspect explained feelings, hopes and eventual expectations after adoption, for instance with regard to possible future reunions with their children.” Bos found that some mothers tended to relinquish out of a sense of gratitude to the NGO for taking them in: “[K]eeping the baby would imply the breach of an informal agreement and some mothers also assumed they would be charged an amount comparable to adoption fees for reclaiming their child.”

Reunion with a surrendered child was a recurring theme in Bos’ research. For this topic, in particular, differences in the individual perceptions and processes of mothers emerged. Whereas one mother raised the issue spontaneously as a consolation after surrendering her beloved baby; for another, the idea of reunion appeared a worse-case scenario. Bos discovered that time was an influential factor in a mother’s attitude towards a potential reunion. Some mothers who took into account their circumstances decades after relinquishment did not immediately reject a future reunion. Married mothers in particular expressed a strong urge to meet their surrendered children again. Despite the interest of many adoptees and biological mothers in reuniting, Bos found that adoption agencies typically do not seriously cooperate in searching for biological families to the point of actively obstructing such searches. The people working for NGOs typically assume that secrecy is demanded to protect the lives of mothers, without regard to the circumstances of the actual mother sought to be traced.

3. The relinquishment process is the equivalent of a “fyke” (a funnel-shaped net used to trap fish) where women who enter the social welfare system upon an unexpected pregnancy are set on a single-minded trajectory toward relinquishment.

Bos writes:

“From the moment of admission in a licensed agency, the internal flows and
forces, determined by prevailing dominant discourses, isolation, hierarchy,
loyalties and money are pushing her deeper inside the fyke. She is trapped
until the day she signs a surrender deed. On that day, the mother is
released from the institution and the child receives the status of ‘parentless
child’ until it is placed into an adoptive family.”

Bos finds the discrepancy between the stated objectives of formal adoption rules and daily practices “shocking.”

Bos notes that the consequences of a premarital pregnancy and the decision to relinquish expands beyond the mother and also encompasses her family and community. Hierarchically, mothers are not in a powerful position owing to their youth, lack of money, education and opinion that they “went astray” through engaging in premarital sex. Like mothers in Western countries, particularly during the Baby Scoop era, Indian mothers are strongly influenced and at times completely overruled in their decision of whether to relinquish by family members and/or staff of institutions. “Counseling” of unwed mothers by NGOs typically means advising relinquishment; other options are more commonly explored in the case of married mothers. Some mothers acknowledged the desire to hand over the decision-making process to others, however, Bos met other mothers who revealed that they were manipulated and essentially forced to relinquish against their will. Bos felt that good communication between mothers and their relatives would be beneficial, however, during her field work she discovered that pregnant women or new mothers more often than not were isolated with limited contact with family since they were sequestered through institutionalization or hospitalization. Input in the decision-making process by relatives was often conducted outside the presence or prolonged time spent with the mothers themselves. Bos pleas for informed decision-making; a transmission of cumulative knowledge and sharing with mothers who did or did not surrender.

Bos does an excellent job of noting the inherent conflicts on the part of NGOs that engage in adoption:

“My conclusion is that people on the work floor, practitioners and counselors
working in or for NGOs work with extremely complicated dilemmas. They
balance on a continuum with the voice of their personal conscience, their
perception of acceptable and suitable solutions for women on one side and
financial responsibilities on the other. On the one hand, they need to act
according to the politically correct conventions concerning mothers and their
children; on the other, they need to ‘sell babies’ to adoptive parents to be
able to run their agencies. NGOs are trapped by the construction of an
adoption field where financial income and the placement of children in adoptive
families are intertwined.”

Although legal adoptions are painted as a non-profit endeavor, the fact is that adoption is a lucrative financial means to maintain a flow of money from adopters to licensed NGOs. Bos cites the deleterious impact institutionalization has on the health and welfare of children, and therefore acknowledges that the outflow of children from institutions into foster or adoptive family care can upgrade their lives. However, her research examines how adoption simultaneously “sucks children into residential care” by putting pressure on women to supply babies. Bos concludes that “adoption, as it is legally organized, induces a flow of children towards institutions.”

Bos’ thesis is valuable because it offers a unique exploration voices of the mothers we in the West do not have the opportunity to hear while simultaneously affirming common place present-day attitudes and procedures that conflict with ethical adoption practices.

Once a Mother can be ordered by contacting Pien Bos at p.bos@maw.ru.nl The price is 15.00 euro plus postage.

Usha

Once a Mother: Relinquishment and adoption from the perspective of unmarried mothers, Pien Bos, ISBN 978-90-9022453-4, 2007

Indian women giving up their children for adoption affected by lack of information, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, January 15, 2008

US DOS: A Warning and Concerns About Adoptions from Vietnam

The US Department of State has issued two Intercountry Adoption News Alerts concerning adoptions from Vietnam: 1) "Warning Concerning Adoptions in Vietnam" and 2)"Vietnam Intercountry Adoption Concerns." Both appear below.

First:

Warning Concerning Adoptions in Vietnam

January 2008

The Department of State warns potential adoptive parents and adoption service providers of the risk of initiating new adoptions from Vietnam at this time. The 2005 Memorandum of Agreement, required by Vietnamese law to authorize adoptions between the United States and Vietnam, expires on September 1, 2008. The United States is strongly committed to continuing intercountry adoptions from Vietnam if possible. Our primary concern is to ensure that the children and families involved in the adoption process are protected from exploitation. The Government of Vietnam shares this concern. Both countries acknowledge that more needs to be done.

Discussions about revision and renewal of the Agreement are a priority for both governments, but there is no certainty a new Agreement will be in place on September 1. In view of the processing time required in Vietnam from placement to the Giving and Receiving Ceremony, an adoption process begun now cannot be completed before the current Agreement expires. We do not know whether the Government of Vietnam will continue to process pending cases if the current Agreement expires before a new Agreement takes effect. Moreover, given concerns about the existing level of protection for children in Vietnam, it is unlikely that the Agreement can be renewed in its current form.

The United States Government stands ready to support Vietnam’s efforts to strengthen and improve accountability in its adoption system and to develop its capacity to regulate adoptions. In some cases, our background investigations have revealed evidence of irregularities, ranging from forged or altered documentation to cases where children have been offered for adoption without the apparent knowledge or consent of their birth parents.

In response to these problems, in November 2007, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service and the Department of State instituted new procedures to verify that children identified for placement meet the requirements of Vietnamese and U.S. law, before the child has been adopted under Vietnamese law. The Embassy strongly advises prospective adoptive parents not to travel to Vietnam until they have received notification from the Embassy that their case is ready for final processing and travel is appropriate. Parents should contact the Embassy immediately if anyone, including their adoption service provider, encourages them to travel to Vietnam prior to receiving this notification. The Embassy can work together with adoption service providers, Vietnam’s Department of International Adoptions, and local authorities to resolve issues such as the scheduling of a Giving and Receiving Ceremony.

We continue to urge Vietnam to comply with the terms of the 2005 Agreement and to establish a process that protects the interests of all parties involved in adoptions.

and secondly:

VIETNAM INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION CONCERNS

1. What are the problems with the present Agreement that warrant a renegotiation of the MOU between the two countries at this point in time?
   
2. Does the USG want to end all intercountry adoptions from Vietnam?
   
3. Why is the U.S. Government issuing this warning?
   
4. What steps has the USG undertaken to address concerns about fraud and baby-selling while it is negotiating a new MOA with the Vietnamese government?
   
5. What is the USG doing about the families whose cases have been issued Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs)?
   
6. What is the current status of the NOIDs?
   
7. What is the USG’s goal regarding intercountry adoptions from Vietnam?

1. Q: What are the problems with the present Agreement that warrant a renegotiation of the MOU between the two countries at this point in time?
   
   GVN has not complied with specific terms of our 2005 bilateral Agreement on adoptions which both parties agreed were essential to a process that is transparent and protects the rights of infants and families.
   
   
   
2. Q: Does the USG want to end all intercountry adoptions from Vietnam?
   
   The USG does not want to end adoptions from Vietnam.
   Instead, we hope that this renegotiation process will result in concrete steps towards establishing a more transparent adoption process with the safeguards necessary to protect children, birth parents, and adoptive parents.
   Field investigations by USG personnel have revealed evidence of fraud which undermine the reliability of the adoption process in Vietnam.
   This evidence requires us to scrutinize individual cases carefully to verify whether the children involved are actually eligible for adoption under Vietnamese and U.S. law.
   
   
   
3. Q: Why is the U.S. Government issuing this warning?
   
   Vietnamese law, not U.S. law, requires a Memorandum of Agreement. The current Agreement expires on September 1.
   We hope that a new Agreement can be finalized before that date.
   We cannot predict, however, whether this will be the case and want prospective parents to be aware of that risk.
   
   
   
4. Q: What steps has the USG undertaken to address concerns about fraud and baby-selling while it is negotiating a new MOA with the Vietnamese government?
   
   The USG has instituted the Orphan First program, under which the USG conducts field investigations to verify the child is eligible for a U.S. visa before the adoption is finalized in Vietnam.
   Orphan First allows us to address questions of fraud before the adoption is finalized and spare American parents the pain of learning that an adopted child is not eligible for an immigrant visa.
   
   
   
5. Q: What is the USG doing about the families whose cases have been issued Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs)?
   
   The USG is doing everything in its power to complete these cases quickly.
   We know that the period of review of adoption cases is difficult for families, but the U.S. government has a responsibility to ensure that any irregularities in these orphan adoption cases do not undermine the validity of the petition or visa application.
   
   
   
6. Q: What is the current status of the NOIDs?
   
   Specific questions about NOIDs should be addressed to USCIS, which has responsibility for this process.
   Further, out of respect for the privacy of individual families, we cannot discuss individual cases.
   
   
   
7. Q: What is the USG’s goal regarding intercountry adoptions from Vietnam?
   
   Our goal for Vietnam and for all countires is an intercountry adoption process solidly based on the standards set by the Hague Adoption Convention.
   We have strongly urged the GVN to accede to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, to promptly draft Hague compliant adoption legislation and implementing regulations, and to develop a child welfare infrastructure that will bring Vietnam into conformity with Hague Standards.

Desiree

Warning Concerning Adoptions from Vietnam,US Department of State, 28 January 2008

Vietnam Intercountry Adoption Concerns, US Department of State, 28 January 2008

Austrian Adoption Agency Under Investigation

An Austrian international adoption agency, Family For You, is being investigated by Vienna’s prosecutor for allegations of implementing “illegal adoption procedures.” The investigation is being prompted by an article published in Falter, an Austrian weekly magazine, detailing the story of a young girl from Ethiopia and adopted to Austria who claims she was stolen from her first family. According to the magazine, the girl’s mother in Ethiopia alleges that Family for You convinced her to give up her child in order to receive money from the agency. The case was investigated last year by the prosecutor but was called off. The case will now be re-opened based on new evidence obtained in December 2007.

The article also traces reports to 2001 by Austrian diplomats who expressed concerns that Family For You worked with “dubious representatives” or orphanages suspected of caring for stolen children in both India and Vietnam.

The director of Family for You, Petra Fembeck, disclaimed any blame on the basis that the agency only interacts with prospective adoptive parents and “others” are the ones who actually take care of the children.

Family For You ceased adoption activities in Ethiopia in July 2007, purportedly due to unnamed problems with local authorities. According to Family For You’s website, continuation of the agency’s activities is now impossible due to recent media coverage and the prosecutor’s investigation.

Usha

Family For You Agency website

Adoption Agency in Child Kidnap Probe, news.com.au, January 9, 2008