Pro-life vid of the day: Adopted children appeal to Putin
by Hans Johnson
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning adoptions of Russian children by Americans. In response, radio host Laura Ingraham, who has adopted two boys from Russia as well as a girl from Guatemala, founded the Adopt a New Attitude Project.
She discusses the ban on FBN’s Imus in the Morning and EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo (at about the 25:00 mark).
This is a video Miss Ingraham recently released featuring adoptees speaking directly to Mr. Putin:
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
Oct.10, 2013 12:00 pm |
Video of the day |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I want to know why we Americans feel some sense of entitlement to the world’s children.
Sorry folks, they are not ours.
Has it ever occured to us that people of other countries might be just as horrified by the situations some of our children live in? Our own children are abused, neglected, languishing in foster care and we’re telling the world to give us theirs?
Try calling a local social service agency. You’ll find children of every race, ethnicity, both genders, age, and background. We don’t need to travel the world to find them.
Internal adoptions in Russia are beyond reach for an average Russian thus Putin is missing the point. Russians do not have the means that the Russian state-adoption network requires of potential parents thus I wonder if he was under the influence of too much vodka when last year he banned Americans from adopting Russian children.
We have a saying here “cutting off the nose to spite the face.” More Russian children have languished in their orphanages since then instead of being adopted by willing Americans. He is using his country’s children’s lives as political football.
It’s not only our own country that is doing this. Spain and Canada, for example, have (or have had) large numbers of people adopting from third world countries, and apparently there are so few children available in the Netherlands* that some people from there are coming to the UNITED STATES to adopt!
*nothing wrong with this in my opinion, it just surprised me when I read about it.
I think more abused and/or neglected children in third world countries may be legally AVAILABLE for adoption then they are in this country, for various reasons.
I don’t oppose foreign adoptions per se, but rather the mentality that the world owes us Americans their children. We demand other countries make their children available to us for adoption. Excuse me?? Maybe we should focus on better caring for our own children before we presume to tell the rest of the world what to do with theirs.
I am troubled by American celebrities who think the world’s orphanages are litters of puppies from which to pick the cutest or most desirable little pet. Never mind this may be very traumatic to the child, has anyone ever seen Angelina and Brad’s adopted Vietnamese son Pax smile? Or that the children may have surviving parents and family, as do Madonna’s adopted children.
These are children who have been wrenched from their families or what has been their family, their culture and their people to satisfy the whims of well to do Americans. Let’s imagine Chinese or Russian citizens coming to our country and doing the same thing.
Like the Dutch people I just mentioned, you mean?
P.S. And I’m REALLY sorry to be taking up so much room here, and I also think children should not be taken away illegally from any good parent anywhere, but not every adoptive parent, domestically or internationally, is wealthy* and their quest to adopt is usually not a “whim.” its something they’ve been working at for a long time. And as to Pax, I’ve rarely seen any celebrity kids that young smile in pictures, so could it be maybe that he’d (and the other kids) just want the press to go away?
*not that there’s anything wrong with being wealthy if you are a good parent of course
Mary’s objecting to the entitlement mentality, not the wealth, if I understand her correctly. It’s rather… unnerving to see people demanding that another country open their borders to American adoptive parents. Russia is another sovereign nation that’s entitled to make their own rules regarding their own citizens, and I don’t think the no adoption rules breaks any international human rights or war laws, so it’s not really our place to demand that they give their children to Americans. I don’t necessarily think Russia is right in what they are doing, but neither do I think that another country gets to throw a fit because we don’t have access to another country’s citizens.
Besides the other ethical difficulties bound up in international adoption, of course, there are a lot of ethical concerns that people gloss over when it comes to international adoption, especially of older children. Internationally adopted children are much more susceptible to “rehoming”, which is when adoptive parents realize they bit off more than they could chew, and try to give their child to another American family, often lacking the strict requirements that legitimate adoptive families have to go through. This is a dangerous practice and people seem to ignore it a lot. Russia was one of the few countries that followed up on the children that are adopted from that country, so that might have played a part in their concerns (remember the story about the “mother” who sent her “son” back to Russia on an airplane?).
Read this article for some disturbing information on international adoptions in particular: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1
Oh, and I can’t believe anyone thinks that any child that isn’t a brand new infant is going to have NO issues being pulled out of their culture and language and away from the only people they have ever known. Most of these people who adopt internationally don’t speak Russian or Mandarin, or whatever language of the child they are adopting. Can you imagine the culture shock these kids have to deal with? Being transplanted into American suburbia with little to no knowledge of the culture and language here, after God knows what deprivations in their emotional and physical development? There is also the issue, particularly in Africa’s undeveloped nations, of unscrupulous adoption agencies paying parents to pretend their kids are orphans to “give their kids a better life”. Have these kids don’t even understand they are being adopted! It’s just an issue fraught with ethical concerns that people gloss over, maybe because the positive stories give them warm fuzzies and they don’t like the think about all the damage being done to many of these kids. I don’t think international adoption is BAD, but I do think there are many ethical issues that people seem to either not care about or gloss over, which is doing the world’s children a disservice.
memyselfandI.
I clearly stated I did not oppose foreign adoptions per se, so that covers the question about the Dutch couple. I oppose the mentality that other countries owe us their children and our demands that they let us adopt their children.
IMO, we have no right to make any such demands, any more than we would tolerate a country making that demand of us.
I did not say that all international adoptions are on a whim. I have a problem with celebrities shopping orphanages they like are pet stores. I have a problem when it is known the children have a surviving parent or family but that is of little concern.
Maybe Pax wants the press to go away, or maybe he is not happy with having been wrenched from the orphanage, the only family and home he knew, and taken away by total strangers.
Thank you Jack,
Very well stated.
I will say, about Angelina, that I really do like her and Brad (what little I know about them, which is a public image, for all I know they are secretly evil or whatever), and I do believe that they and many other adoptive parents think they are doing a great thing and maybe the majority do really help these children. I don’t think that their intentions are bad or selfish, but I do think that sometimes people do unethical and damaging things without realizing it or considering the consequences. Like you mentioned about Pax, that wasn’t an infant Angelina adopted, that was a boy who had made attachments at the place he was living, who suddenly got thrown into a celebrity lifestyle with people who couldn’t speak his language (though I suppose with the Jolie-Pitt family money they probably got tutors and interpreters), away from the other children and workers he had bonded with. Does no one think this might cause him issues? And Angelina and Brad adopted that little girl (Zahara, I think her name was?) like, a month after their biological kid Shiloh was born. Was that necessary? Are they giving those kids the chance to adjust to new family members of various backgrounds or are they fulfilling their own adult needs and fantasies of family life, without fully considering the effect on the kids? It’s just worrisome, to me, and if you read the article I posted there are people adopting three, four, up to even ten children and then (surprise surprise) complaining that it’s too much to handle, all these kids with emotional and physical needs that they aren’t capable of handling.
I really hope people will read that article I posted.
Hi Jack,
Excellent article, thank you. To think that girl could have been turned over to serial killers for all her adoptive parents knew or apparently cared.
Zahara, the product of a sexual assault, was a malnourished infant adopted by Angelina and Brad with the consent of her mother. I certainly don’t have a problem with this as opposed to the we know what’s best for them mentality.
I have a problem with Madonna adopting two children from Malawi who have surviving parents and family. I understand the little boy now needs a translator to speak with his father, who he sees on occasion. Despicable.
“I really hope people will read that article I posted.”
I just did. Thanks for posting it.
JDC I read the articles. I find the actions of these so-called parents appalling. You don’t give up a child like you do a cat or dog. That said, I wish pro-lifers would realize that not all adoptions end happily. We adopted my son at six weeks. He is American by birth. We had problems with him from a young age. He is 22 years old now and I had to take out a restraining order against him (it’s a long story). I still love him but I have to love him from afar. I’m still pro-adoption, but I would advise that parents really research the background of the child they are interested in.
Can you imagine the culture shock these kids have to deal with? Being transplanted into American suburbia with little to no knowledge of the culture and language here, after God knows what deprivations in their emotional and physical development?
If anything these children adapt quickly and are just overjoyed Jack. Language barrier, although there initially, becomes a non-issue as well. Our friends recently adopted siblings 4 and 3 years of age. It took them a WHOPPING 6 months to acculturate and pick up English.
Yes Thomas, some do adjust fairly quickly (especially at that age, where learning language comes quickly and naturally). But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a large percentage of foreign adoptions that turn out very poorly, and the children never adjust.
Its not due to the fact of it being a “foreign adoption” but a multitude of other factors. Do internal adoptions ensure better outcomes? It all depends..