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We have lived in Romania for 16 years now. We have 6 kids. The top photo of our family is the day we met the twins, just before their 4th birthday. We were granted custody of them on their 5th birthday.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Adoption Laws

How do I try to explain the laws? Where do I begin? Well lets start with what we learned in our class last Monday...how detrimental it is for the first few months of these babies lives to be in an institution...passing their babyhood by in a crib with little stimulation and little love and little touch...how bad this is. Ok we have established the fact that everyone realizes that this is very bad BUT...does the law protect the child from being in an institution and try and make it possible for these babies to go directly into loving homes...NO! In trying to cut down on the selling of babies they have made laws that make it impossible for adoption early in life. A mom, gives a false name and address at the hospital so that when she leaves the baby there no one can find her...to me this is evidance enough that she doesn't want the baby and you put the baby up for adoption but not here...the biological mom might change her mind and come back for her baby so leave it in the crib a while and see what happens....ok several months later no mom...baby still lying in a crib lets try and track down the mom...ok can't track down the mom by this time baby is past a year old and made adoptable but most Romanian couples waiting to adopt of course want a newborn...they have never had children and want a baby. Babies who have no parent listed on their birth certificate b/c mom took off that fast...you have to investigate and try and find mom so by the time he is declared adoptable he is older. The governement here is against teaching moms with unwanted pregnancies about adoption...why change the law in a small way and make the first signiture of a mom the one that says "my baby is up for adoption" many moms sign off on their babies in the hospital but this is not an signature for adoption this only leaves the child in the care of the department of child protection.
Pray with us...we are contemplating the need for a crisis pregnancy center. Teaching mom the option of adoption and giving them the name of the one lady in our county to contact saying they want their baby to be put up for adoption.
I don't know if all this makes sense...it is hard to put into writing the laws that so don't make sense. IN trying to cut back on child trafficking they have just done more to stop innocent children from being put in loving families. Those who want to sell their babies are still succeeding in doing so...it is very easy with the EU now to pass through borders so parents can easily take their baby to another country and sell him if they like.
The country is in denial that their is still an orphan problem...no, it is not like it was 17 years ago when communism fell as far as the horrid institutions...those are fewer in number now but there are still many orphans who are being denied the right to a loving family.
Pray for us as we will probably have to be pro active in picking out our children if we are to ever get them. This I think will be very hard.

1 comment:

Jackie said...

I hate most of the adoption process!!!! It just makes me sooooo mad! :-( I feel for you! And will be praying. We're thinking about #3, but just thinking about the paperwork and all makes me extremely tired!