December 28, 2011

Bishops Say Rules on Gay Parents Limit Freedom of Religion

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.

For the nation’s Catholic bishops, the Illinois requirement is a prime example of what they see as an escalating campaign by the government to trample on their religious freedom while expanding the rights of gay people. The idea that religious Americans are the victims of government-backed persecution is now a frequent theme not just for Catholic bishops, but also for Republican presidential candidates and conservative evangelicals.

“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., a civil and canon lawyer who helped drive the church’s losing battle to retain its state contracts for foster care and adoption services.

The Illinois experience indicates that the bishops face formidable opponents who also claim to have justice and the Constitution on their side. They include not only gay rights advocates, but also many religious believers and churches that support gay equality (some Catholic legislators among them). They frame the issue as a matter of civil rights, saying that Catholic Charities was using taxpayer money to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Tim Kee, a teacher in Marion, Ill., who was turned away by Catholic Charities three years ago when he and his longtime partner, Rick Wade, tried to adopt a child, said: “We’re both Catholic, we love our church, but Catholic Charities closed the door to us. To add insult to injury, my tax dollars went to provide discrimination against me.”

The bishops are engaged in the religious liberty battle on several fronts. They have asked the Obama administration to lift a new requirement that Catholic and other religiously affiliated hospitals, universities and charity groups cover contraception in their employees’ health plans. A decision has been expected for weeks now.

At the same time, the bishops are protesting the recent denial of a federal contract to provide care for victims of sex trafficking, saying the decision was anti-Catholic. An official with the Department of Health and Human Services recently told a hearing on Capitol Hill that the bishops’ program was rejected because it did not provide the survivors of sex trafficking, some of whom are rape victims, with referrals for abortions or contraceptives.

Critics of the church argue that no group has a constitutional right to a government contract, especially if it refuses to provide required services.

But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”

The controversy in Illinois began when the state legislature voted in November 2010 to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples, which the state’s Catholic bishops lobbied against. The legislation was titled “The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act,” and Bishop Paprocki said he was given the impression that it would not affect state contracts for Catholic Charities and other religious social services.

In New York State, religious groups lobbied for specific exemption language in the same-sex marriage bill. But bishops in Illinois did not negotiate, Bishop Paprocki said.

“It would have been seen as, ‘We’re going to compromise on the principle as long as we get our exception.’ We didn’t want it to be seen as buying our support,” he said.

Catholic Charities is one of the nation’s most extensive social service networks, serving more than 10 million poor adults and children of many faiths across the country. It is made up of local affiliates that answer to local bishops and dioceses, but much of its revenue comes from the government. Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).

In Illinois, Catholic Charities in five of the six state dioceses had grown dependent on foster care contracts, receiving 60 percent to 92 percent of their revenues from the state, according to affidavits by the charities’ directors. (Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled out of foster care services in 2007 because of problems with its insurance provider.)

When the contracts came up for renewal in June, the state attorney general, along with the legal staff in the governor’s office and the Department of Children and Family Services, decided that the religious providers on state contracts would no longer be able to reject same-sex couples, said Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the department.

The Catholic providers offered to refer same-sex couples to other agencies (as they had been doing for unmarried couples), but that was not acceptable to the state, Mr. Marlowe said. “Separate but equal was not a sufficient solution on other civil rights issues in the past either,” he said.

Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockford decided at that point to get out of the foster care business. But the bishops in Springfield, Peoria, Joliet and Belleville decided to fight, filing a lawsuit against the state.

Taking a completely different tack was the agency affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, which, like the Catholic Church, does not sanction same-sex relationships. Gene Svebakken, president and chief executive of the agency, Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, visited all seven pastoral conferences in his state and explained that the best option was to compromise and continue caring for the children.

“We’ve been around 140 years, and if we didn’t follow the law we’d go out of business,” Mr. Svebakken said. “We believe it’s God-pleasing to serve these kids, and we know we do a good job.”

In August, Judge John Schmidt, a circuit judge in Sangamon County, ruled against Catholic Charities, saying, “No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government.” He did not address the religious liberty claims, ruling only that the state did not violate the church’s property rights.

Three of the dioceses filed an appeal, but in November filed a motion to dismiss their lawsuit. The Dioceses of Peoria and Belleville are spinning off their state-financed social services, with the caseworkers, top executives and foster children all moving to new nonprofits that will no longer be affiliated with either diocese.

Gary Huelsmann, executive director of Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois, in the Belleville Diocese, said the decision was excruciating for everyone.

“We have 600 children abused and neglected in an area where there are hardly any providers,” he said. “Us going out of business would have been detrimental to these children, and that’s a sin, too.”

The work will be carried on, but the Catholic Church’s seminal, historic connection with it has been severed, noted Mr. Marlowe, the spokesman for the state’s child welfare agency.  “The child welfare system that Catholic Charities helped build,” he said, “is now strong enough to survive their departure.”

'Brown babies' long search for family, identity

(CNN) –  Daniel Cardwell’s obsession consumed three decades of his life and $250,000 of his money, he estimates. His energy has been devoted to answering one basic question: “Who am I?”

Cardwell was a “brown baby” – one of thousands of children born to African-American GIs and white German women in the years after World War II. Inter-racial relationships still weren't common or accepted among most in the United States or Germany, and they weren't supported by the military brass, either.

Couples were often split apart by disapproving military officers. Their children were deemed "mischlingskinder" - a derogatory term for mixed race children. With fathers forced to move way, the single mothers of the African-American babies struggled to find support in a mostly white Germany and were encouraged to give their kids up.

Thousands of the children born from the inter-racial relationships were put up for adoption and placed in homes with African-American military families in the United States or Germany. Images of black, German-speaking toddlers with their adoptive American families were splashed across the pages of Jet and Ebony magazines and African-American newspapers.

Their long-forgotten stories have recently been shared in new films, "Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story," which was released last summer and "Brown Babies: Germany's Lost Children," which aired on German television this fall.

Cardwell, who appeared in both documentaries, was brought to the United States at age 4 and adopted by an African-American veteran and nurse in Washington, D.C. He has some memories of Germany, but didn't have any sense of his family's real story until he was an adult. He'd been raised to believe he was a light-skinned black man with African-American parents.

The hunt for his biological parents - and his own sense of identity - has dominated the second half of his life. He has traveled the country in search of aging documents, tried hypnotism therapy, built relationships with distant family members and visited Germany several times.

“Would I do it all again? Yes,” Cardwell said. “If only so others wouldn’t have to go through what I went through."

Between 2 and 3 million African-American civilian personnel, military members and their families lived in Germany from 1945 until the end of the Cold War, according to  the digital archive "The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GI's, and Germany."

Many German women perceived the black soldiers to be kinder than their white counterparts, even admiring - a rarity after the brutal war. After so many years of scarcity, a gift of stockings or canned milk might as well have been a diamond ring.

The soldiers wanted to seize the advantages of being away from Jim Crow America. In Germany, they could go to a biergarten, dance with a German woman at a bar and - if they ignored rules against fraternization - develop a relationship with her.

The total number of children born from those relationships is unclear. Some 5,000 "brown babies" were born between 1945 and 1955, according to the book “Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America," and by 1968, Americans had adopted about 7,000 of these German children, the book's author, historian Heide Fehrenbach, wrote. Still more of those kids remained in Germany.

But after the babies were born and the soldiers' superiors discovered the romances, they often transferred the black soldiers to other bases. The U.S. military's policy at the time was to reject any claims of paternity made by German mothers. Black soldiers who wanted to marry their white girlfriends were often forbidden from doing so.

Life wasn't simple for the mothers, either - they were sometimes judged unfit by child welfare officials based solely on the fact that they had a relationship with an African-American man. Some Germans condemned the mothers as "negerhueren" - Negro whores.

German authorities doubted the children would thrive in the country, where national identity was strongly tied to white German heritage. It became common for the babies to be adopted to couples living in the United States, where the children’s roots were hidden, often for years.  Many didn’t know of they had been adopted until they were adults.

Cardwell remembers his adoptive parents as cold and distant. He spent years at boarding schools, then later returned to their home, where he worked on their farmland. He can't remember being hugged, or told that they loved him.

It wasn't until he began trying to find his biological parents that he discovered his mother was actually a half-German refugee from Poland. She thought she was leaving him at an orphanage temporarily, and had searched for him for years. He learned, too, that his father was described as “colored” in official papers, and was a mixture of Portuguese, native Hawaiian, Japanese and Puerto Rican ancestry.

Regina Griffin, a Washington-area journalist, was inspired to make "Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story,"after a "brown baby" and family friend wrote a book about her search for her parents. Griffin realized most people had never heard the adoptees' remarkable stories, so she interviewed "brown babies," German mothers, historians, and the African-American fathers.

“It’s a part of our history,” Griffin said. “It’s not just African-American history, it’s not just American history, it’s world history. There were a lot of people who were caught between two countries, two warring nations. And we allowed those children to be abandoned, and people should know that.”

For the thousands of children who are now adults and seeking their biological families, time is running out. Henriette Cain, a "brown baby," from Rockford, Illinois, knows this all too well.

“People’s mothers are passing away, their fathers are passing away, and people are starting to wonder who they are,” Cain said from her home. “Now even we are passing away, and it’s a story that needs to be told.”

Since beginning her search in the 1970s, the 59-year-old retiree  has been fortunate - she located and met her biological sister, who was living in Darmstadt, Germany, and her biological mother, who had married a white U.S. soldier and moved to Virginia. The family now enjoys a close relationship. She tracked down her biological father, as well, but he died before they could meet.

Cain discovered that her mother had never really wanted to give her up. Her biological father had been reassigned to another military base, and promised to return to bring his family to the United States, but they never heard from him again.

Her mother found herself alone and impoverished in post-war Germany, with two young daughters, an unsupportive family and a choice to make: Keep the children and face poverty and scorn, or put them up for adoption in hopes of giving them a better life.

Cain’s older sister was adopted by the family with whom they had been living while Cain was sent to a local orphanage. When she was 2, she was adopted by an African-American couple living at a U.S. base nearby.

Her adoptive parents doted on her, and she was happy, but she always sensed she was different. Her adoptive parents were much darker in skin tone. They didn't reveal that she was adopted until she was 12. Children she grew up with taunted her and called her “Little Nazi.”

Soon after reuniting with her birth family, Cain began helping other adoptees. She now runs Sunco Public Records Research, a firm that helps black German adoptees, American fathers and German mothers find each other.

Cain said about 25 of her last 40 searches ended with a reunion or positive identification. She has about seven cases that remain open.

“Since I’ve been in their position, I understand how they feel and I know it’s important to get the answers for them,” Cain said.

Cardwell is still looking for answers.

After years without all the information he's looking for, he now sees America and Germany’s obsession with skin color as a destructive force in his life.

“My mother couldn’t marry my father because of color. I couldn’t stay in Germany because of color. Here in America they couldn’t figure out my color,” Cardwell said. “Maybe I should just be an American and just let it be with that. They won’t let me be German.”

Nevertheless, he continues to search for more clues about his father’s identity. Because he’s officially an illegitimate child, he can’t view his biological father’s military records and other papers until they become available to the general public. He's working on a book about his life. He helps other adoptees in their searches.

“My whole objective in this thing is to minimize the pain that I felt for so long,” Cardwell said. “I have come to know that there were a number of mothers that did love their children, and a number of fathers who did want those children, but because of color they weren’t allowed to have them.”

US report: Foster kids get high rate of psych meds

Original here.

Written by

KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press

Federal health officials are failing to monitor how state agencies are doling out powerful psychotropic drugs to foster children, according to a comprehensive investigation released Thursday showing foster kids are prescribed the drugs 2.7 to 4.5 times more than non-foster children and often at much higher doses.

Hundreds of foster children are being prescribed five or more of the medications at once, which can have severe side effects including diabetes and suicidal behavior. In some regions, foster children as young as 1 year old were twice as likely to be prescribed the medications, according to a two-year investigation by the Government Accountability Office. The investigation looks at 2008 data from more than 100,000 foster children in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Texas.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del, requested the investigation’s release after media reports of high prescribing rates and anecdotes from former foster children who said they were on multiple medications at the same time. The report was released ahead of a hearing Thursday by his congressional sub-committee that deals with federal services.

“This report we are releasing today confirms some of our worst fears,” Carper said.

Some of the drugs have “black box” label warning for children’s safety and are not approved for use by young children. But doctors often prescribe them off label. The drugs affect the central nervous system and can change behavior or perception. They are prescribed for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. Little is known about the long term side effects of the drugs and drug, experts said.

“We’re kind of flying blind as far as knowing the safety and efficacy long term risks (for children),” said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center.

The report offered several explanations for the high prescription rates, noting the children had greater exposure to trauma before entering foster care and that state agencies were lax in overseeing the Advertisement prescriptions.

Critics say the drugs are overused as a chemical restraint for unruly children.

Child welfare advocates say there’s a nationwide shortage of child psychiatrists, often leaving pediatricians to handle complex behavioral problems.

“I do believe that medications are being used almost in default and my concern is that is being used in lieu of psycho- therapeutic interventions,” Bellonci said. 

Six-year-old Brooke was on two psychiatric medications for an ADHD diagnosis when Todd and Lisa Ward adopted her out of Florida foster care in 2010.

Over the next two years, doctors put her on an array of powerful drugs as her parents watched her behavior become more aggressive, erratic and agitated. She twice tried to kill the family dog, pulled skin off her nose and wiped blood on the walls, threw tantrums as doctors plied her with more than a dozen medications over the years, her mother said.

“Her hands would just shake insanely and they would tell us, ‘oh that’s just her’. But it wasn’t her. It stopped once she went off the medication,” he mother said.

The Wards tried desperately to get her into a psychiatrist but wait lists were typically nine months long, so she ended going back to the same mental health center that Ward said constantly overmedicated her. The Wards finally found a psychiatrist last year who helped decrease Brooke’s medications and stabilize her behavior.

But this summer an incident with her sister triggered Brooke and she tried to set the house on fire in an attempt to kill her sister, said Lisa Ward, a 39-year-old accountant who adopted Brooke and her two siblings.

The Wards placed her in a residential facility where she got intensive therapy for the first time, including yoga and play therapy. Three months later, Brooke is home and down to one medication.

“The difference in her was night and day. She actually can express emotion,” Lisa Ward said. “They were able to figure out what this girl had held inside for eight years.”

Lisa Ward, who started a nonprofit to link other foster parents to doctors and therapists, says the medication was just a bandage and notes the girls no longer have Advertisement the ADHD they were diagnosed with when the Wards adopted them from foster care.

The new report found foster children in some areas were twice as likely to be prescribed five or more of those drugs at the same time compared to non-foster children. Texas foster children were prescribed five or more medications most often.

“No evidence supports the use of five or more psychotropic drugs in adults or children, and only limited evidence supports the use of even two drugs,” according to the report.

Eleven-year-old Ke’onte Cook, who entered Texas foster care at age 4, testified he was on 20 drugs during his time in foster care, sometimes taking five drugs at once. He didn’t know why he was taking them and was never told of possible side effects.

“It was the worst things someone could do to foster kids. I was upset about my situation and not because I was bipolar or had ADHD,” said Ke’onte, who has since been adopted and stopped taking all medications. “Meds aren’t going to help a child with their problems. It’s just going to sedate them for a little while until it comes back again.”

Thursday’s hearing comes a week after federal health officials notified state child welfare leaders they will have to provide more details about how they control the medications for foster kids starting next year.

A federal law passed in 2008 lays out oversight provisions required by law, but many states aren’t following them.

In most states, child welfare workers don’t have access to the Medicaid database to identify which medications their child is taking and the Medicaid database can’t identify which patients are foster kids.

Radio Program on "Late Discoveries" by Susan Bennett

Listen to internet radio with AACAdoptionNewsandViews on Blog Talk Radio

Adopting a new purpose:

Article on special needs adoption.

Adopting a new purpose: After the Clarks’ daughter was born with Down syndrome, they felt called to parent more special-needs children

By Julia Duin, Published: December 8

Everything was in place: the four balloons, the “Welcome home, Elizabeth” banner, a ready supply of tissues, a gaggle of family and friends. Then out of a bank of billowing white clouds under a blue summer sky emerged United Airlines Flight 965 from Moscow. The moment its wheels touched the Dulles Airport tarmac at 2:42 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 14, 7-year-old Elizabeth Clark became a U.S. citizen.
Her adoptive family, including three big brothers and two younger sisters, patiently stood outside the international arrivals area as Elizabeth and her new mom, Nina Clark, made it through customs, then through a review of Elizabeth’s papers. Finally, all was signed off, and at 4:50 p.m., the gray doors to the baggage claim area opened, and Elizabeth made her entrance.
Dressed in magenta pants and a striped shirt, the girl was perched, princess-like on the luggage trolley pushed by her mom, with a barrette tying back her light-brown hair. Nina paused at the sight of the welcoming crowd, then abandoned the cart to dash over to her husband, Jon.
Elizabeth hopped off the cart and cautiously approached her new sisters: Emma, also 7, and Abby, 3. Like Elizabeth, Abby is adopted. All three have Down syndrome.
As the adults brushed away tears, they cast covert glances at the little girls. Would Emma feel upstaged? Would Elizabeth bond with two strangers? Would either Emma or Abby understand Elizabeth was a sister, not just another playmate? Elizabeth gingerly ruffled Abby’s hair. Then, “Momma,” she said, pointing toward Nina. “Poppa!” she said, pointing toward Jon. Then, pointing toward Abby, “Happy!”
***
The Clarks are part of an unusual subset within the world of adoptive parenting: people who seek out special-needs children. The Germantown couple had led ordinary lives, working at McCarthy Wilson, a civil litigation firm in Rockville where he’s a partner and she’s a legal secretary. Eight years ago, they learned that after having three boys — Andy, now 14; Jacob, now 13; and Matthew, now 10 — Nina was pregnant with a girl.
Nina, then 34, never thought of having an amniocentesis test; after all, she was younger than 35, the age when women are believed to be at increased risk for a Down syndrome child. (The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists now recommends that women of all ages be screened.) When Emma emerged on Oct. 16, 2003, the couple knew life would never be the same.
Children with Down syndrome, a genetic condition in which an individual has three — instead of the usual two — sets of the 21st chromosome, are at risk for intellectual disabilities and health problems, and it wasn’t long before medical issues began to arise with Emma. Breathing problems resulted in a three-month hospital stay when she was 5 months old. Then there was the open-heart surgery to reroute a pulmonary artery at age 3 1/2.
Finally, Emma began to flourish when she turned 4, and Nina began thinking the unthinkable: adopting a child just like her.
After Emma was born, Nina, a member of Neelsville Presbyterian Church in Germantown, had searched the Bible for guidance, especially its command to care for orphans and widows. She began to believe that her seeming misfortune might be part of a divine plan. “I thought, ‘What do I do with this?’ ” she says. “I decided not to have more of our own but to save those already here. For me, it’s like a mission and a calling. If Emma wasn’t born, I would not be adopting a child with Down syndrome. So, her life already has had meaning.”
Nina decided she didn’t want to adopt domestically, since plenty of families are lined up to offer such children a home. But in some countries, she found, handicapped children are often left in dark rooms with poor nutrition and no stimulation. Many have rickets, the vitamin D deficiency, from lack of sunshine.
Especially poignant were the images from Reece’s Rainbow, a Gaithersburg-based “adoption ministry.” The charity, founded in 2006 by Andrea Roberts, whose oldest son, Reece, 9, has Down syndrome, facilitates adoptions of special-needs children from overseas by finding families for the children and sponsors to donate toward expenses. It has found families for 500 kids and offers an average grant of $10,000, covering a third of the average cost of an overseas adoption.
Nina was instantly drawn to the group’s Web site. “I thought, ‘That could be Emma,’ ” she says of the heart-rending list of dozens of “waiting” children. Two girls in a Ukrainian orphanage caught her interest, but they both died in a flu epidemic.
“That was my turning point,” Nina says. “I thought, ‘I have to do something. We have a strong marriage, a good family and a house that’s big enough for more.’ I wanted the kids no one likes.”
Roberts helped her locate a child from China, and in September 2010, the Clarks brought home Abby, then 2.
Emma and Abby took to each other like little magnets, and after a few weeks, Nina began wondering if the couple should try for one more. It was back to Reece’s Rainbow, where a picture of a Russian girl named Elizabeth Tsypkina, who was two months older than Emma and lived in an orphanage just outside St. Petersburg, spoke to Nina.
Jon was incredulous. “You want a what?” he said when his wife suggested a sixth child. They’d both be 42 years old by the time they got the child home.
“I’m non-adventurous,” he acknowledges now, “and a bit more nervous about doing this.” He soon calmed down, “because of faith,” he says. “Faith in Nina’s conviction that all would work out one way or the other. Faith in God that He would provide.”
One reason for Jon’s caution was that Russian adoptions are among the most expensive in the world, typically costing $50,000. Though the Clarks’ agency, the Tucson-based Hand in Hand, was willing to give them a price break for adopting a special-needs child, the $36,000 fee was daunting.
Another concern was that the Clarks would be bucking the conventional wisdom in adoption circles that one does not disturb the birth order in a family. How would things work between Emma and a slightly older new sibling?
On the other hand, Elizabeth’s situation was urgent. Once children are past age 7 in Eastern Europe, they are transferred to orphanages for older kids and effectively disappear off adoption lists.
Jon and Nina knew that if they were going to offer Elizabeth a better future, they needed to act quickly. They made their decision in December, just three months after adding Abby to the family, and Nina began to chronicle their journey on her blog, Our Journey ( saveanorphantoday.blogspot.com ).
Nine months, three trips to Russia, tens of thousands of dollars and endless paperwork later, Nina came home with Elizabeth, the first child to be adopted from her orphanage in 10 years.
***
Nina is not alone in seeing adoption as a divine calling. An evangelical Protestant “orphan care” movement has spawned conferences, Web sites, books and an annual “Orphan Sunday” in November (National Adoption Month) involving 2,000 churches.
The McLean-basedChristian Alliance for Orphans includes 100 organizations nationwide and urges Christians to adopt, foster or help care for children who might otherwise be aborted.
“Christians wanted to put their lives where their mouths were — both aiding mothers that chose to keep a child and standing willing to adopt whenever a child needed a family,” says Alliance President Jedd Medefind. “God adopted us and invited us to live as His children. When Christians take concern for children without parents — either by adoption or fostering — they feel they are reflecting God’s character.”
Some of these believers have opened their homes to Down syndrome children. Robin Steele, adoption coordinator for the National Down Syndrome Adoption Network in Cincinnati, arranges 26 adoptions a year for a pool of 200 waiting families. The majority identify themselves as Christians, Steele says, and 20 percent tell her they wish to save a child from being aborted (according to research cited by geneticist Brian Skotko at Children’s Hospital Boston, 92 percent of fetuses internationally that receive a Down syndrome diagnosis are aborted). As for the rest of the adoptive parents, “they have infertility issues, they want to adopt and they feel drawn to our program, but they don’t need a healthy infant. Or, they know someone with Down syndrome.”
She adds, “I talk with birth families who are devastated at hearing something is terribly wrong with their baby and tell them the birth of that child can be the most joyful event in another family’s life.”
***
The shadows are lengthening on a chilly November afternoon when a yellow Montgomery County school bus pulls up to the driveway of the Clarks’ six-bedroom white Colonial. A driver lifts Emma and Elizabeth out of the bus along with their pink backpacks. After months of paperwork for Elizabeth, both girls are now in the same special-needs program at a local elementary school — Elizabeth in second grade and Emma in first. Abby, 3, is at a special-needs public preschool and gets home at 11:30 a.m.
Nina relates that Elizabeth’s teacher “says she’s really smart, picking up words right and left. She’s using Starfall [a learning Web site for kids]. She’s using magnetic letters to spell her name. The teacher says she is very high-functioning.”
Nina parks herself at the curb to make sure her daughters make it to the front door. A few weeks before, the driver let Elizabeth off at the wrong stop. Another time, Emma was put on the sidewalk before Nina got there — and Emma took off down the street. Emma, in Down syndrome parlance, is known as a “runner”; she sprints off the moment she gets outside the house. Once, she made it to a nearby creek; another time she ended up on the median of a busy highway. She now wears a monitor bracelet around one of her ankles.
Today, Emma, who has a habit of taking off her shoes wherever she goes, gets off the bus barefoot. As Nina is trying to collect the two girls, Abby slips out of the house and goes charging toward the street. There’s brief pandemonium until Nina manages to corral all three inside the front door.
“Did you have a good day?” Nina tries to ask Elizabeth, who has dashed into the bathroom yelling, “Cookie! Cookie!”
Nina herds her girls back outside and into the family’s new 12-passenger van to pick up one of her sons from school. After buckling them in, she tosses a package of cookies on the seat beside them.
With special-needs babysitters nearly impossible to find, Nina takes her daughters with her as she carpools her sons to soccer and art lessons. But she puts her foot down when it comes to food shopping — taking the three girls is “impossible” — and leans on friends if Jon can’t be home.
“Yes, I am organized,” Nina says as the van makes its way through several neighborhoods. “The calendar is my best friend, but it’s tight. There’s no leeway for anything. I highlight all the doctor’s appointments in yellow just to make sure I see them. Sometimes, I forget things. Emma was supposed to have repeat blood work for her thyroid done. That’s two months late. Sometimes, I can’t get to everything. Sometimes you have to pick and choose what’s most important.”
Fitting Elizabeth into the household regimen has been a priority since she arrived in August, extremely nearsighted and never having seen a bathtub. She had no sooner joined the family, her brothers report, than she tried bossing around the other kids. When she didn’t get her way, she’d lapse into Russian, with “nyet” here and there.
“The house has gotten a bit louder,” says middle brother Jacob.
“She likes to be in control, so she tells Matthew to be quiet,” explains Andy, the oldest.
Matthew describes her as “bossy but smart.”
Despite their parents’ fears, Elizabeth and Emma seem to have completely bonded. The girls tend to get into mischief together, which is one reason the Clarks have installed a new wrought-iron fence in the back yard and extra locks on the doors. Elizabeth, now 8, sports new wire-rimmed glasses and had seven baby teeth pulled, as they had never come out and were crowding her permanent teeth.
Once the van has returned to the house with Matthew and all the kids are unloaded, Nina asks her son if he can watch the girls as they play in the basement, which has been outfitted with a swing set and a slide that dumps children into a pile of multi-colored plastic balls.
“Mom, I don’t feel like it,” Matthew says. “Sorry. Do you really need someone down there?”
Though the boys often help out, “they all have days when they say, ‘I don’t want to watch such and such while you go out and do so and so,’ ” Jon says. He and Nina try to mitigate the impact three needy younger sisters can have on the boys. Occasionally, one parent takes a son out to dinner for some one-on-one time, plus, when the girls are in bed, the parents have movie nights with the boys.
Nina decides the girls can be alone, then stands in the hallway, thinking. “The worst part of my job is dinner,” she confesses. At 4:30 p.m., she hasn’t figured out what all eight of them will eat.
Dinners tend to be tumultuous affairs. The girls have constant requests, for food, condiments, chair adjustments. Emma, who has apraxia, a speech disorder, often bellows her way through the meal. With all three girls bouncing about, Jon and Nina barely sit down. The boys seem to take it all in stride.
By 7:30 p.m., Emma, Elizabeth and Abby have had their baths and are dressed in pink and blue flannel sleepers. Giggling, they pile on Nina and Jon’s bed for a quick cuddle time. As Nina takes her place next to the three little bodies, Elizabeth reaches up and caresses her mother’s knee. “Mommy,” she murmurs.
It’s not likely Nina and Jon will get a full night’s sleep. Emma is usually up at 2:30 a.m. for a potty break, then Elizabeth at 5:30 a.m.
“Right now, we are young and we can do this,” Nina says. As for years from now when the girls hit their 20s? Both parents confess they haven’t thought much about it, though they hope that at least Elizabeth might live independently someday and that their sons can pitch in to help.
God will provide, the Clarks say. He already has, they point out. Thanks to a grant from Reece’s Rainbow and the proceeds from investments that Nina sold, Elizabeth’s adoption fees are paid off.
“My husband makes decent money,” Nina says, “but things are tight.” She has returned to work two days a week at the law firm. “Work is my vacation,” she says. “I can clear my head and sit on my butt and talk to adults.” Friends take care of the girls when she’s at the office.
One such friend is Bethany Nagel, a mother of two preschool-age boys.
“It was a huge learning curve for me to even watch them,” she remembers. “The first week, I just went home afterward and went to bed. But then I learned each of their individual needs, and the Clarks have set up things so the kids get what they need,” such as the play set in the basement. “And they have three brothers who love on them. Those are some of the coolest boys I’ve met in that age group.”
Bethany and her husband, Andy, the associate pastor at the Clarks’ church, have decided they, too, will adopt a Russian child with Down syndrome through Reece’s Rainbow. “Nina and Jon have been so encouraging,” Andy says. “We have a conviction that these children matter, and we can make a difference for one of them.”
Nina hopes that more people will face the fear of having a handicapped child — and come out on the other side, as she did. When she was pregnant with her other children, she says, she would think, “ ‘Oh, my God, what if I had a Down child?’ ”
Now she says, “Why was I so afraid?”

News Piece on Adoption Birth Certificates

Korean Single Mothers

This is an interesting paragraph from a campaign for Korean single mothers. 

According to the Report on Children in Protection by the Ministry of Health and Ministry (2011), the total number of 8,590 children were being protected by the various social welfare programs due to family poverty, parents’ jobless, or child abuse and so on in 2010. Among them, 2,804 children, about 33%, were under protection due to the reason of being born to unwed mothers. 

As has been quoted widely, about 90% of children who were sent for adoption are from unwed mothers in Korea (KWDI 2009). In other words, most children who were sent for adoption already have mothers who gave birth to them. These are mothers who say that if there had been no stigma on child birth out of wedlock and more support policies, they would chose raising their babies. Sadly 70% of them are giving up their babies for adoption as these basic conditions are missing. (Korean Women’s Social Welfare Association 2010) 

Regardless of these facts, the phrases like “Baby Angels without Parent” or “Orphans abandoned” are frequently used in the phrases used in adoption promotion campaigns. It is not true and keeps hiding the existence of unwed mothers who have equal rights to enjoy their motherhood like any other mothers. These babies are forced to be given up due to the stigma on their mothers and no support for raising them. This is very cruel to erase alive mothers and call their children orphans. In this regards, KUMSN promotes the right of mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, hoping for the end of stigma and for more support for unwed pregnancy and unwed mothers and their children. 

Adoption in Pakistan

This is an interesting article on adoptions in Pakistan.

Adoption: Demand for abandoned babies far outstrips supply

By Samia Saleem

Published: December 1, 2011

524570 The Edhi Centre says that applications have to be processed carefully as there are fake cases. DESIGN: SHEHREZAD MAHER

KARACHI: 

Every month, at least one or two babies rescued from garbage dumps or the Edhi Centre’s cradles arrive at its head office near Sarrafa Bazaar in Boulton Market. But while they may have been abandoned by their biological parents, plenty of other couples are lining up to give them a home. In fact, demand far outstrips supply.

The Edhi Centre, which has earned a reputation of being the most reliable philanthropic organisation in the country, has thousands of pending adoption applications, some of which have come from abroad. Bilquis Bano Edhi, who is in charge of the adoption process, puts the number of such forms in the range of 6,000 to 7,000.

She told The Express Tribune that since they set up the centre in 1951, about 19,600 babies have been given to foster parents. But though more and more people are abandoning their babies, there are still not enough to meet adoption demands. “Most of them do not even survive the stage where they can be given for adoption as they are premature,” Bilquis Edhi pointed out.

About 80% of these unwanted babies are girls because of the persistent perception in Pakistani society that this sex is a burden. Thus, the adoption form clearly states that if you want a baby boy, you will have to wait longer.

The process for adoption takes place through the Edhi’s head office in Karachi and can take from two to twelve months. “You have to be really careful who you hand over a child to as there are a lot of fakers,” said Edhi. Potential foster parents are first sifted out and then a team from the organisation visits their house.

The criteria for the selection of the parents is extremely stringent and inflexible. “I won’t give babies to a couple in which the husband is too dominating, where I see that the mother is getting no respect or where the parents are too poor to afford the cost of upbringing,” she said.

Over the years, Edhi has become pundit of the adoption process. There are couples who plead for a baby and want to present the child to their families as their own. Some women who feign pregnancy also plead for a newborn baby so that they can tell their husbands and their families that they have given birth to that child. “I never give babies to such people because when the truth is unveiled, it can devastate the entire family, including the child,” she said.

Babies are only given to couples who are well-off and happily married. But even then, some bitter experiences with these types have taught Bano Edhi to be extra cautious. About two years ago, a doctor and her husband came to adopt a baby and were immediately given a baby girl as their profile was stronger than that of the other applicants. But later it was discovered that the doctor had sold the baby. “I have become extremely careful since then,” said Bano Edhi.

There are 13 conditions for adopting a child. The first one is that the decision of the chairman, Bilquis Edhi, cannot be challenged. The details of the biological parents and adoptive parents are kept extremely secret. The law in Pakistan does not allow adoption – only ‘kifala’ is permitted in which monetary and emotional care can be given to the child, but not obligations or rights. An abandoned baby has no legal identity and the state does not register such a child as a citizen. (A petition has been filed recently to challenge this).

Adopting through Edhi is therefore ‘closed adoption’ (confidential or secret adoption), whereby the record of the biological parent is kept confidential and the child is given the name of the adoptive parent. Most of the abandoned babies are found with slips which mention the name and the religion of the baby.

A Lesbian Couple Raised A Baby

So this couple didn't adopt, but I've recently been interested in the effects of sperm donation on children so I'm including this here.  This charming young man is providing testimony on the Iowa amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Let sex offenders adopt and work with children, says report

• News
• Law
• Family law

London School of Economics family law expert calls for each case to be judged on merit

• Afua Hirsch
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 November 2010 04.40 EST
• Article history

Adoption: blanket bans on sex offenders are open to legal challenge, the LSE report argues. Photograph: Lisa Spindler/Getty Images

The government could face legal action if it continues to ban sex offenders from working with children, according to research published today.

A report by a family law expert argues that some sex offenders should be allowed to adopt or foster children, and claims that the current blanket ban is discriminatory.

"Sex offenders shouldn't all be tarred with the same brush," said Helen Reece at the London School of Economics, who wrote the report. "People need to be carefully screened for adoption and fostering, but each case should be taken on its merits.

"There shouldn't be blanket rules. What somebody has done before is not necessarily what he or she will do again. When someone has served a sentence, as far as you can, you should treat them the same as anyone else."

The report points to legal challenges that have overturned other blanket bans on adoption, including a 2008 case in which the House of Lords said rules in Northern Ireland preventing cohabiting couples from adopting children were discriminatory.

"If we believe that blanket bans are an effective and legitimate means to protect children then we should no more allow cohabiting couples to adopt or foster than convicted sex offenders," said Reece.

But claims in the report that cohabiting couples can present more of a risk to children than sex offenders are likely to provoke anger among groups concerned with child protection.

Responding to the report, the government said child and adult safety was its priority. "It is vital that children and vulnerable adults are protected," a Home Office spokesperson said. "We are committed to ensuring that decisions on who is suitable to work with the vulnerable are proportionate and meet the test of common sense."

Sex offenders have been prohibited from working with, and adopting, children since 2006, when measures were put in place to prevent a recurrence of the murder of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells by school caretaker Ian Huntley in Soham.

The "vetting and barring" scheme introduced by the 2006 law has divided opinion, and was halted by the home secretary, Theresa May, in June after criticism that it was "draconian" and would deter volunteers .

This month a group of nurses who had been automatically placed on the barred list after they committed offences at work successfully challenged the scheme in the high court, claiming their human rights had been violated.

"The vetting and barring scheme contradicts human rights legislation and is therefore challengeable," said Reece. "I agree with this government that it should be brought back to commonsense levels."