http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/05/Opinion/Domestic__special_nee.shtml

Domestic, special-needs adoptions can help all of us
Letters to the Editor
Published January 5, 2005

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Re: Poetry and pleas on eBay for Kazakh Case No. 629, Dec. 29.


Susan Barnes, who has "always dreamed of having a large family," is trying to
sell poetry over eBay to raise $40,000 to adopt an orphan from Russia.

She must be a big-hearted, generous person to go to such lengths to parent a
child in need. While I applaud her efforts and those of all adoptive parents, I
don't want her story to suggest that a willing prospective parent must have
$40,000 in order to adopt a child.

Thousands of children in need languish in our own foster care system. The cost
of adopting one of these children: $0. Many are minority children, many have
disabilities of varying degrees and many are older than cute little babies. But
all are special children in need of a "forever family."

Our state system supporting these adoptions can be difficult to navigate, and
these children come with all of the hurts of their often very heart-breaking
pasts. But in the end domestic special-needs adoptions can best serve all of
us: potential parents, waiting foster children and the community as a whole.


-- xxxxxx, adoptive mother, St. Petersburg


The trouble with domestic adoption

Why are American children waiting in foster homes for someone to adopt them
while American parents are going to Russia and China to find children to adopt?

The simple answer is the American court system.

American parents are sick and tired of having the child they nurtured and loved
for two, three or even six years snatched away and given to its natural,
drug-addict mother or its natural, jailbird father by some cold, unfeeling
judge.

So until our judges stop ripping children out of the arms of loving adoptive
parents - the only parents that the child has ever known - American couples
seeking a child will continue to go to Russia and China while thousands of
American kids will languish in foster care.


-- xxxxx, Clearwater


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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown

As an adoptive parent, I want the world to know that my opinions about
domestic adoption are about 180 degrees away from those of this nimrod.

In article <crjnov$bkp@wolfe.umd.edu>,
lfortney@dc.umd.edu (Linda Fortney) wrote:
As an adoptive parent, I want the world to know that my opinions about domestic adoption are about 180 degrees away from those of this nimrod.


Um, which one is the nimrod?

The first one writes, in part:

"Thousands of children in need languish in our own foster care system.
The cost of adopting one of these children: $0. Many are minority
children, many have disabilities of varying degrees and many are older
than cute little babies. But all are special children in need of a
'forever family.'"

I don't see a problem with that.

Then she writes:

"Our state system supporting these adoptions can be difficult to
navigate, and these children come with all of the hurts of their often
very heart-breaking pasts. But in the end domestic special-needs
adoptions can best serve all of us: potential parents, waiting foster
children and the community as a whole."

Gee, I don't see annything there to argue with either.

Now the second one writes, in part:

"American parents are sick and tired of having the child they nurtured
and loved for two, three or even six years snatched away and given to
its natural, drug-addict mother or its natural, jailbird father by some
cold, unfeeling judge."


Aside from speaking for all "American parents", one could certainly
understand the frustration of foster parents who want to adopt a child
who's been tossed around the system for years and years, only to be
thwarted when a parent, deemed unfit for all those years, now comes back
with the "birthparent uber alles" argument. With the backing of the
state in many cases.

So the writer may be some over-the-top, but gee, he'd probably fit right
into alt.adoption. We gotta couple like that here already.





steve