I had beer and pizza with my friend Matt today. He and his wife are adopting a baby from Vietnam. They chose not to have any children biologically wanting to instead give a home to an unwanted child. Apparently, unlike China, when adopting from Vietnam you are more likely to receive a boy than a girl. Matt and his wife were matched with a baby girl, however. Now Matt is just waiting for the Vietnam government to stamp the seal of approval on their application so that he and Melissa can fly over and pick up their child. The little girl was born in November and has either been in an orphanage or a foster care system since (Matt is not completely sure). The mother of the girl has an older son but cannot afford to keep both children so she was forced to give the newborn up for adoption. Hearing this story absolutely broke my heart. To think of any child spending time in an institution, away from a family is completely inexcusable in my mind. The international adoptions program in Vietnam was cancelled for five years due to allegations of human trafficking and abuse but has been allowed to resume adoptions.
I applaud my friend and his wife for choosing to open their hearts in such a manner.
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3 comments:
You say your friends chose to give a home to an 'unwanted child.'
The baby girl in Vietnam is not an 'unwanted child.'
Her mother is forced to give her up for adoption because she is poor.
She cant afford too keep her older son and her new born baby daughter.
If your friends really wanted what was best for this baby they would give the money for air fares and adoption lawyers to the natural mother to enable her to keep and raise her own child.
They could become this baby's dearly loved special Aunt and Uncle, and play a positive role her life.
Its inexcusable to take a baby from its mother, older brother, culture and country on the pretext they're giving a home to an unwated child.
Patricia Basquill. UK.
Wow, Patricia Basquill, how incredibly rude! She didn't say THIS child was unwanted, she said that was her friends' thinking when they decided to adopt rather than have children biologically.
I can think of any number of reasons why I wouldn't send blindly tens of thousands of dollars (the going price of international adoption these days) to another country. Government corruption, no guarantees that the money will go where it's supposed to, no guarantees that the child wouldn't eventually end up in an orphanage anyway.
The world is not a perfect place. It never will be. Yes, it sucks that this family couldn't keep their child. Happens in the United States every day, too. But thank God for people like her friends, who are willing to open their hearts and their home to an innocent child who is truly a victim of poverty. I applaud them.
Patricia, I will accept your criticsim of me using the phrase "unwanted child" as that is certainly not the case. However, your suggestion that my friend and his wife should just give money to the mother and be an aunt and uncle to the child is absurb. How exactly should they find the mother? Walk up and down the streets of Vietnam looking for poor women that are pregnant yet already have a child and offer her money and your phone number? Obviously the answer to solving the issue of these "homeless" children is neither scenario. Changing human rights practices in any country is a very difficult thing to do and is no much more solved by handing money out to poor women than it is to adopt the babies that are held in orphanages. Afterall, America itself has tons of children who go through their entire lives in the foster care program never having a family to call their own (which personally is offensive to me as can be) even though we have the money to care for them. People are filled with imperfections and chastising those who merely are trying to do a good deed is thoughtless and pointless.
Additionally, as a lifelong seasoned activist I have to tell you that rants like your I-know-it-all-and-I'm-better-than-you one is not only annoying it is far from an effective way to raise consciousness.
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