If you want a good cry today… August 3, 2012 Jill Read this Modern Love about international adoption and “just how much the human heart can stretch beyond any boundaries we try to put around it.”
I hope one day her daughter will be able to write about the experience in her own words as well, and that if she ever does chose to return to Guatemala, her adoptive parents, however heartbroken, will support her. I still feel terribly for all the adopted children (and their biological families) whose adoptive parents are incapable or unwilling to navigate the same difficult terrain.
Yeah, so this article makes me even more skeptical of international adoption than I already was. I mean, I’m glad her adoptive parents are making an effort, but it is starting to seem like a less and less ethically valid option when you consider stuff like this: “In the meantime, the foundation he set up in 2004, DNA-Prokids, has been providing willing countries with thousands of free DNA tests and DNA collection kits. So far, he says, the free tests have been used in reuniting about 550 children with their families, most of them in Guatemala and Peru. The tests have also stopped more than 200 illegal adoptions.”
I must admit I am surprised to see a wholly uncritical link to an international adoption story, on a feminist website.