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01-31-2005, 07:47 AM
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/jan/31/yehey/opinion/20050131opi2.html
DOUBLETAKE
By Eric F. Mallonga
Resolving child misery
FEMALE infanticide was a non-too rare occurrence in China when its communist
party started promoting a One-Child Policy to rein in its rapidly growing
population. As sons were preferred and as families with more than one child
were penalized via reduction of their share of food rations and social security
benefits, infant daughters were literally massacred. Some female infants were
surrendered to orphanages to die as Chinese caregivers were basically burial
undertakers, without any interest in keeping the children alive. The murder of
female infants, while it would eventually generate much international
condemnation, created no equivalent social outrage in China.
In the Philippines the government chooses to deal with population explosion by
ignoring it. Politicians fear the wrath of the Catholic Church, which opposes
all but “natural” forms of family planning Church allies, in resisting an
aggressive family planning program, insist that the problem is not
overpopulation but efficient management of resources. While the debate rages
on, impoverished families push their tender-aged children out of squatter
shacks into the streets. Rabid police incarcerate street children for such
absurd offenses as vagrancy, curfew violations, tattooing, littering and public
urination. In city jails, minors die from inmate torture, police brutality and
deleterious jail conditions. Unlike the rapid child murders in China, a
Filipino child is subjected to an agonizing and tortuous life on the streets
and in the jails that eventually results in death. It is still child murder.
International pressure would soon prod China to allow intercountry adoption
(ICA) as the principal option to female infanticide. Allowing a speedy ICA
process to reduce its spillover population made more sense than child murder.
Thus, China burst onto the scene in 1995 as a major ICA country of origin.
Today, tens of thousands of female Chinese infants are placed with nurturing
families outside China yearly. Approximately 5,000 Chinese children are placed
for each recipient country, such as USA, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the
Netherlands.
Today also, the Philippine government continues to rely on the Catholic Church
to dictate its population policies while ironically allowing even offspring of
priests to be adopted through the ICA system, rather than be nurtured by their
birth fathers. The lengthy and tedious judicial adoption process, including the
extra-lengthy and adversarial judicial process in the declaration of child
abandonment, discourages both domestic and foreign adoptive parents as
overbearing Family Court judges arrogantly scrutinize every legal technicality
to preclude a suitable adoption. Although the Intercountry Adoption Board has
been able to expedite ICA placements, only approximately 500 Filipino children
are placed yearly with foreign families with only 15 to 20 children placed with
child-oriented Scandinavian countries, which are discouraged by absurd judicial
entanglements before Filipino children are cleared for intercountry adoption.
Gary Gamer, president of Holt International Children’s Services, stresses
that in China, the system is run through an autonomous national level central
authority affiliated with the ministry of social welfare. Foreign adoptive
families are allowed to pick up their foreign adoptive child within three
months after they have been matched and the matching process is a mere
administrative procedure that determines availability of the child and
suitability of adoptive parents. China’s orphanages are no longer burial
grounds for female infants but have been transformed into effective,
compassionate and nurturing environments.
As an aside, although this should not be deemed essential to adoption, the
system generates much revenue for government, including provisions for material
necessities of orphanages to enable them to provide first class childcare,
through a standard donation of US$3,000. Gamer emphasizes that childcare in
orphanages and foster homes have improved dramatically with ICA, with anecdotal
evidence suggesting increase in domestic adoption as well. Even if there are
concerns about large donations to orphanages, childcare has improved
significantly and the lives of many children have undoubtedly been saved as a
result.
In the Philippines there has been no move toward transforming our adoption
system into an effective humanitarian machinery of finding suitable families
for abandoned, orphaned, abused and neglected children. Adoption remains an
adversarial judicial process even when social welfare workers possess more
expertise and skills than judges in the determination of availability of
children and suitability of prospective parents through their home visits and
social case investigations. An administrative process should be created that
effectively cuts the adoption process to a three-month period rather than a
two-year period for every judicial petition required by Family Courts such as
Petitions for Rectification of Simulated Birth Certificate, Declaration of
Abandonment, Change of First Names and Adoption Proper. With an administrative
process, children need not languish in orphanages or foster homes nor do they
have to become street children or child criminals while awaiting social
compassion. All it takes is a little legislative creativity and less judicial
intervention. Improving adoption legislation is certainly the only option that
politicians must take without fearing the paranoid hysteria of the Catholic
Church toward family planning.
-------------------------
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
DOUBLETAKE
By Eric F. Mallonga
Resolving child misery
FEMALE infanticide was a non-too rare occurrence in China when its communist
party started promoting a One-Child Policy to rein in its rapidly growing
population. As sons were preferred and as families with more than one child
were penalized via reduction of their share of food rations and social security
benefits, infant daughters were literally massacred. Some female infants were
surrendered to orphanages to die as Chinese caregivers were basically burial
undertakers, without any interest in keeping the children alive. The murder of
female infants, while it would eventually generate much international
condemnation, created no equivalent social outrage in China.
In the Philippines the government chooses to deal with population explosion by
ignoring it. Politicians fear the wrath of the Catholic Church, which opposes
all but “natural” forms of family planning Church allies, in resisting an
aggressive family planning program, insist that the problem is not
overpopulation but efficient management of resources. While the debate rages
on, impoverished families push their tender-aged children out of squatter
shacks into the streets. Rabid police incarcerate street children for such
absurd offenses as vagrancy, curfew violations, tattooing, littering and public
urination. In city jails, minors die from inmate torture, police brutality and
deleterious jail conditions. Unlike the rapid child murders in China, a
Filipino child is subjected to an agonizing and tortuous life on the streets
and in the jails that eventually results in death. It is still child murder.
International pressure would soon prod China to allow intercountry adoption
(ICA) as the principal option to female infanticide. Allowing a speedy ICA
process to reduce its spillover population made more sense than child murder.
Thus, China burst onto the scene in 1995 as a major ICA country of origin.
Today, tens of thousands of female Chinese infants are placed with nurturing
families outside China yearly. Approximately 5,000 Chinese children are placed
for each recipient country, such as USA, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the
Netherlands.
Today also, the Philippine government continues to rely on the Catholic Church
to dictate its population policies while ironically allowing even offspring of
priests to be adopted through the ICA system, rather than be nurtured by their
birth fathers. The lengthy and tedious judicial adoption process, including the
extra-lengthy and adversarial judicial process in the declaration of child
abandonment, discourages both domestic and foreign adoptive parents as
overbearing Family Court judges arrogantly scrutinize every legal technicality
to preclude a suitable adoption. Although the Intercountry Adoption Board has
been able to expedite ICA placements, only approximately 500 Filipino children
are placed yearly with foreign families with only 15 to 20 children placed with
child-oriented Scandinavian countries, which are discouraged by absurd judicial
entanglements before Filipino children are cleared for intercountry adoption.
Gary Gamer, president of Holt International Children’s Services, stresses
that in China, the system is run through an autonomous national level central
authority affiliated with the ministry of social welfare. Foreign adoptive
families are allowed to pick up their foreign adoptive child within three
months after they have been matched and the matching process is a mere
administrative procedure that determines availability of the child and
suitability of adoptive parents. China’s orphanages are no longer burial
grounds for female infants but have been transformed into effective,
compassionate and nurturing environments.
As an aside, although this should not be deemed essential to adoption, the
system generates much revenue for government, including provisions for material
necessities of orphanages to enable them to provide first class childcare,
through a standard donation of US$3,000. Gamer emphasizes that childcare in
orphanages and foster homes have improved dramatically with ICA, with anecdotal
evidence suggesting increase in domestic adoption as well. Even if there are
concerns about large donations to orphanages, childcare has improved
significantly and the lives of many children have undoubtedly been saved as a
result.
In the Philippines there has been no move toward transforming our adoption
system into an effective humanitarian machinery of finding suitable families
for abandoned, orphaned, abused and neglected children. Adoption remains an
adversarial judicial process even when social welfare workers possess more
expertise and skills than judges in the determination of availability of
children and suitability of prospective parents through their home visits and
social case investigations. An administrative process should be created that
effectively cuts the adoption process to a three-month period rather than a
two-year period for every judicial petition required by Family Courts such as
Petitions for Rectification of Simulated Birth Certificate, Declaration of
Abandonment, Change of First Names and Adoption Proper. With an administrative
process, children need not languish in orphanages or foster homes nor do they
have to become street children or child criminals while awaiting social
compassion. All it takes is a little legislative creativity and less judicial
intervention. Improving adoption legislation is certainly the only option that
politicians must take without fearing the paranoid hysteria of the Catholic
Church toward family planning.
-------------------------
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
