"The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guides UNICEF’s work, clearly states that every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. Recognising this, and the value and importance of families in children’s lives, UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for him or her...." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption
" Adoption is defined by
American ethnocentrism. What 'we' do is right. We have the solution for
everything. We can take better care of these children than you can."
-Jennie Anderson
"Adoption is based in the leveraging of inequality by a dominant class in order to procure children for those who have none from those who ideally would keep their children except for circumstances that are a direct result of this class difference to begin with." Daniel Ibn Zayd.
"Mr. Drennan [aka Daniel Ibn Zayd] began a process of critically evaluating adoption, seeing it as a way that wealthier families, and wealthier parts of the world, absorb the children of families whose poverty they have a role in causing. " Lebanese Adoptee, Searching for His Roots, Finds Islam, New York Times, Aug. 1, 2014.
-Jennie Anderson
"Adoption is based in the leveraging of inequality by a dominant class in order to procure children for those who have none from those who ideally would keep their children except for circumstances that are a direct result of this class difference to begin with." Daniel Ibn Zayd.
"Mr. Drennan [aka Daniel Ibn Zayd] began a process of critically evaluating adoption, seeing it as a way that wealthier families, and wealthier parts of the world, absorb the children of families whose poverty they have a role in causing. " Lebanese Adoptee, Searching for His Roots, Finds Islam, New York Times, Aug. 1, 2014.
"There is no greater sorrow on Earth than the loss of one's native land." Euripdes, Meda, v. 650-651
"Every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it." UNICEF The Uniform Adoption Act calls for the protection of "minor children against unnecessary separation from their birth parents."
"The traditional blood-kin family is composed of one mother, one father, and their child or children. The adoptive family is composed of two mothers, two fathers and a child common to them. Although society, and to some extent adoptive parents, would like to pretend that it is exactly like a traditional family, it is the differences that are extremely significant in each member's life." Dr Herbert Weider, a psychiatrist who has studied adoption
“Adoption experts concur that we need to transform... adoption... into a social service in which payments by adoptive parents play no part.” Elizabeth Samuels, Time To Decide? The Laws Governing Mothers’ Consents To The Adoption of Their Newborn Infants. 2005, Tenn. L. Rev. 509
"If ... the best interests of the child is to be the determining factor in child custody cases ... persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies from carts when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job or whatever, and that the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers. Children of parents living in public housing or other conditions deemed less affluent and children of single parents might be considered particularly fair game." -- Justice James Heiple, Illinois Supreme Court in the "Baby Richard" case.
"Ethiopia is vowing to put a stop to what has been described as a 'free for all' in the adoption of its children by foreigners. But cleaning up a system rife with fraud and deception will require international assistance to fight well-entrenched and well-financed interests." Voice of America 12/10
"It should matter to everyone that adopted people, on reaching the age of majority, cannot automatically obtain their own original birth certificates like the rest of us. We should care, and we should feel outraged, for the same reason so many men supported suffrage for women and so many white Americans joined the civil rights struggle -- because we should find it offensive when any minority group in society is deprived of equal rights." “A Civil Right: Adoptees Should Have Access to their Birth Certificates” by Adam Pertman, The Huffington Post, 1/12/11
Although the adoption process has altered dramatically over the past 40 years, Gary Coles [manager of Australia's Victorian Adoption Network for Information and Self Help] believes more changes are to come. "The next step will be to replace adoption with a ‘guardianship order’,” he says. “Guardians have the same rights as adoptive parents, but children won’t have two birth certificates. They’ll keep the name given by their birth parents, which will eliminate much confusion.” Why is Adoption Still a Struggle? The Herald Sun.com.au 1/28/11
“Yet a birth certificate, like a death certificate, is a snapshot of an historical event. It records information that’s pertinent on the day of the birth, including the names of the parents, the weight and length of the infant and the kid’s name. As a record of birth, it’s not meant to change to reflect who we become in life, which is why women (or men) choosing to assume new last names upon marriage aren’t required to change their birth certificates. Parents’ divorcing does not result in amended birth certificates for their children. In some states, an adopted child’s birth parents’ names can be replaced on a birth certificate with the adoptive parents’ names - but this, too, is bad policy as closed adoptions become more rare in accordance with what has been discovered to be best for knowing a child’s historical identity." Editorial: The latest birth certificate scandal. Washington Times, April 4, 2011.
“I think Christians are the worst at this sometimes, about the ends justifying the means. ‘I will do anything to save this one child’s life’; ‘I will falsify a visa application if I have to.’” Chuck Johnson, president of the secular adoption lobby group the National Council for Adoption (NCFA).
"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE
"One of the troubling trends in the general literature and the practice community is the use, misuse, and even occasional abuse of the term orphan. ....Orphanhood may be defined by death of one or both birth parents, by age of the child, and even by the reasons for parental death, as is the case of AIDS. There are “double orphans” who have lost both parents to death or some other permanent separation, and there are “single orphans” (Abebe, 2009). This latter group would be called children of single parents in industrialized nations; however, in low-resource countries, they are often counted as orphans, illustrating differences of word usages across cultures and economic contexts.
"Defining the child as an orphan is frequently done by people who have a vested interest in the final outcome." In an Era of Reform: A review of social work literature on Intercountry adoption, Rotabi and Bunkers
sgo.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/14/2158244011428160.full#aff-1
"From the data being reported...there is good reason to believe that when they surrendered their children, few mothers understood the full meaning of the confidentiality agencies now say they simplicity promised them. Are agencies forcing on these mothers the 'right' to a confidentiality they never intended to have and may not with to maintain with respect to their children?" Doris H. Bertocci, LCSW, 1987.
Mirah Riben
"From the data being reported...there is good reason to believe that when they surrendered their children, few mothers understood the full meaning of the confidentiality agencies now say they simplicity promised them. Are agencies forcing on these mothers the 'right' to a confidentiality they never intended to have and may not with to maintain with respect to their children?" Doris H. Bertocci, LCSW, 1987.
Mirah Riben
