INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION

International Adoption

International Adoption

Introduction

Adoption - legally taking an individual born to others as one's own child - dates back to ancient times, though the practice has changed significantly over time and is not common to all cultures. In recent times adoption has become an international phenomenon that tests both precepts about universal human rights and the interface of different legal customs and systems.

In Europe, where traditions also vary from country to country, intercountry adoption has become entangled in the complicated process by which countries accede to the European Union, the supranational organization of states forming the world's largest single market. While Europe explicitly proclaims the rights of children among its extensive list of human rights, the welfare of abandoned children remains caught between the imperatives of, on the one hand, helping as many children as possible, and, on the other, ensuring that best practices are followed, protecting the child and respecting the laws of all states involved making the process lengthy, cumbersome and expensive.

In 2004, under pressure from the European Union to which it hopes to accede in 2007, Romania banned adoption by foreigners of Romanian children. The law, which took effect in 2005, aimed to crack down on the corruption that existed in a highly flawed system, but in doing so it consigned thousands of children to years of institutional life. For families hoping to adopt one or more of these children, the situation reveals a terrible void between European human rights declarations and enforceable national laws that actually ensure the welfare of children.

Putting It Together

It is highly improbable that a pediatrician will reconsider preadoptive notes and certify a progeny living in an orphanage in a foreign country as “normal.” really, most of these children are not “normal” by joined States standards. It is more expected that the reconsider will approve that the child is at “average risk,” granted the data available and the renowned sequelae of institutional life. In some cases, children apparently are at higher risk for poor outcome because of markedly abnormal health or developmental findings. Extremely low-birthweight offspring, children who have the facial characteristics of FAS, or those who have microcephaly out of proportion to other development parameters fit into this category. For numerous young kids of “average” risk, the prognosis is good. Most exhibit amazing catch-up growth, even in head circumference, once placed in an adoptive home. Developmental advancement furthermore can be anticipated, particularly if early diagnostic and therapeutic referrals are pursued. However, it is unrealistic for families to anticipate that “love solely” wsick erase the sick consequences of years in an institution. Many children extend to illustrate delays in dialect as well as exact behavioral, emotional, and communal impairments many years after adoptive placement. Long-term studies of institutionalized young kids who subsequent are taken up are lacking, such that the supreme developmental prognosis for this population is unknown. Some of the most entire data arrive from investigations of Romanian young kids who were taken up from appalling conditions in the orphanages ...