Russian Adoptions

There has been a lot of talk in the news the past few days about the situation of Russia wanting to ban American adoptions. It is a really heartbreaking situation. The ban is effective next week and will affect 200-250 families who are already matched with children in Russia. Almost 50 of these adoptions were nearly complete. Many of the families have already met the children and were just waiting on paperwork to go through.

Russia says the reason for the ban is the rare situations when things go wrong for adopted children once they come to the US (this story talks about a couple of cases- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/world/europe/10russia.html?pagewanted=all). Apparently, though, on December 14, President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act which punishes Russians accused of human rights violations. If Russians violate human rights, they can't travel to the US or own property/assets here. This made the Russian government mad, so it seems the adoption ban is really a response to this act.

Some people in the US actually support this ban, saying there are plenty of kids in the US to adopt. My answer to that is that the very people saying this rarely take any action to actually help kids who need families, so they have no place to make that decision for those who do adopt. There are different types of adoptions for different types of families, and none is right or wrong. There are a lot of considerations, and I think all kids regardless of where they live should have the opportunity to be adopted if a family feels they are capable of doing so.

Say a prayer for these families who have invested so much time, money, and heart into adopting from Russia. Say another prayer for the 740,000 orphans in Russia who will have a much slimmer chance of leaving their orphanages in exchange for a family.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/world/europe/putin-to-sign-ban-on-us-adoptions-of-russian-children.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0