It is important to criticize adoptions and the flaws that are in the system both domestic and international. I think very few people in the adoption triad will say that adoption in its current state is perfect, or even very good. Great steps forward have been made in regards to openness, background check, and curbing the black market. However people still slip through, agencies still coerce, and babies are still bought. Bringing these issues to light force us to look at our situations, and work for more ethical adoptions. I as a future adoptive mom I want to hear about problems with adoption because I want to have the healthiest most ethical adoption I can provide for my daughter.

I am pleased marymartha that having an ethical and healthy adoption are important to you! Having an ethical adoption should be paramount IMHO.

Educating yourself is so important, and will insure that you are equipped to parent an adopted child in the best possible way. Good for you.

Thanks so much for your comments!

Actually, it's Masha, not Sasha. : )

And keep on speaking up about needed reforms. Anyone who really believes in adoption should also want it to be handled with the highest ethical standards.

I don't get people who are content to let things stay as they are. Adoptions, both domestic and international, could be done better.

I like Ethica's vision:
http://www.ethicanet.org/item.php?recordid=webelieve&pagestyle=default

Of course it's Masha - brain fade - thanks, Heather.

I'm with you there, I don't get why some people are content with the status quo and resist needed changes.

I hope Ethica continues to grow, and more people begin to think of ethics in adoption more often. Their vision is a clear reasonable one.

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to stop any form of abuse by adoptive parents from happening. And involving government(s) and more government regulation, IMHO, almost never works. Governments can't keep track of individuals and true sociopaths can always fool a social worker. Also, if the government were to get involved, who should get its attention? If you compare abuse rates of children who are adopted to abuse rates of children who stayed with their natural parents or who live with a parent and an unrelated person (step-parent or live-in lover), I'm guessing the rates would be much higher for the latter two groups. Anyone who is fertile can have a child and abuse/neglect/molest it or leave him/her with someone who will do him/her harm. No one stops you on your way out of the hospital for a quick homestudy to see if you're truly capable of raising this child. You have to screw up royally and repeatedly and have it documented for anyone to intervene. To adopt a child, however, you have to prove yourself, at least on paper, and you have to go through reams of paperwork and write a boatload of checks. Though not perfect, one would assume that this lengthy, complicated, and intrusive process would weed out most of the people not serious about parenting.

I do not have an explanation for why 13 children adopted by Americans in the last 15 or so years have come to harm. Each case is an awful, unjustifiable tragedy. But I do know that MosNews recently reported that in roughly that same period of time, since 1991, 1,220 Russia children adopted by Russians have died. So the odds are way better for the kids who have come here than for those who stayed there.

That does not make Masha's tragedy any less horrific.

I do think that any system can stand some reform. I am not amazingly impressed by the way economics affects domestic adoption. I think it would be much better if no adoption were to proceed until after the mother has made up her mind and fully relinquished her rights to her child which is the way it was in our adoption. We didn't receive our referral until our son was 7.5 months old which was 7.5 months minus one day from the day he was relinquished. The drawback of this is that the risk of RAD goes up - by the time a child is shuffled through the paperwork system, he may have developed blocks in his ability to attach. Again, if the gov't is doing the paperwork, there's really no one driving the car. And if no one is driving the car, well, accidents happen.

Also, with foreign adoptions US citizens have absolutely no control over the process and how it is run. The only thing they can choose to do is not work with an unethical-seeming agency. But you kind of have to go on trust there too. If I'd had any suspicion that our adoption had any element of baby brokering, I'd have immediately backed out. OTOH, if there were bribes passed out to make sure paperwork was processed in a timely manner, I'm not losing any sleep over it.