An independent voice for ethical adoption
Letters from the President
Fighting for “orphans”
Ethica is happy to announce the addition of a new board member to our team. Rachel Schatz Wegner is a member of our international policy advocacy team. She became a passionate proponent of adoption ethics and transparency after she and her husband chose to abandon their plan to adopt from Vietnam amidst reports of corruption [...]
Wealth, Poverty and the Child’s Best Interests
It’s interesting how the public is drawn into celebrity adoptions and is beginning to explore the complex issues surrounding wealth, poverty, and how they play into building or in some cases, the need to rebuild families. I live in Michigan and work as a social worker here. Ironically enough, Michigan is also Madonna’s home state. Food banks are scrambling to meet the demands of hungry families and the state has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Now more than ever we can empathize with struggling families and the terror that comes with the need to feed and care for our children. Now more than ever we can empathize with the daily realities of families in developing countries. Most of us would recognize that tearing a family apart and institutionalizing our children, or placing them into adoption, would be a last resort. Yet, many of us are ready to condemn a Malawian grandmother for fighting to keep a child when it seems like the child’s best interests can be met by a wealthy stranger.
Adoption Is Not the Only Way to Help a Child
Ethica launched a fundraising campaign this week in response to the Madonna adoption case. We have received numerous positive comments back from many people, as well as donations for the cause of keeping Mercy with her family in Malawi. Thanks to those folks who got involved with our call to action.
We received some impassioned comments from other folks as well.
Letter from a Board Member: Protecting the Right of Parents to Raise Their Children
Recently in Michigan, the Court of Appeals ruled that Cody, the child
of Kenneth Barnett and Christine Wolfe, should remain with his
biological parents. Cody had been placed for adoption with another
couple but the adoption was never finalized and Barnett never
consented. Over the course of several years, the child bounced between
the two homes and lived a double life. As Barnett put it – he spent
three years of his life with two homes, two names, two schools, two
religions, two families and nobody could stop and say wait a minute,
let’s put an end to this. Letter Continued Here
The Consequences of Safe Haven Laws
I teach my children to look at both the small picture and large picture
in given situations. If one of them listens to friends and does
something stupid on a dare, I want them to think about the consequences
of that action, but also to think about what consequences await them in
similar, but larger circumstances. For example, one of my children was recently in trouble for throwing a rock that hit a classroom window.
No one was hurt, a teacher was mad, but after appropriate apologies
were made everything was fine. The lesson I drove home to my child was
that doing something because of a dare, without thinking, can lead to
dire consequences sometimes, such as a person being injured by the same rock.
I have been thinking about how our nation’s safe haven laws are
similar. Fifty states have enacted safe haven laws in recent years.
Nebraska’s recent law created huge consequences. It was poorly
written and as a result, parents have dropped off over 30 kids, most of
them teenagers. We all hear the news reports and imagine pained,
scared, teenagers not knowing what was going to happen to them, if they
would ever see their parents and extended families again. We imagine
them floating in foster care until they age out and wonder if the
connections to their parents will ever be repaired again, or whether
they are irretrievably broken. We picture a family so damaged by
whatever came before this decision, trying to move forward, but finding
more pain and more damage around the corner after this almost
unbelievable decision has been made to permanently sever family ties. We wonder what could have been done to help them before this decision
was made, and what help any of them might get to heal from it
afterwards. Statement Continued Here
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