Conducive Magazine on Haitian Adoptions

ADOPTING HAITIAN ORPHANS: Saving Children or Repeating Unsuccessful History? by Mirah Riben

Removing children during times of disaster is not new.  We saw this with Operation Babylift after the Vietnam War, where the American government hurriedly removed almost 3,000 children from their homeland during the Fall of Saigon in 1975.  Lawsuits between birth parents and adopted parents tied up U.S. courts for years.  Birth parents claimed they never consented to the adoption, and adoptive parents claimed the adoption was legitimate.  Critical adoption theorists are seeing parallels with the current rushed adoption of Haitian children.  Author and former director of the American Adoption Congress Mirah Riben discusses the situation of adoption in Haiti, and argues that what these children need is time for relief workers to search for their families, not to be sent away from their homes and lives during already traumatic times......