Americans Go Abroad for Adoption : Families: More would-be parents are taking in foreign-born children, primarily because of their availability. The obstacles however, can be great.

By now, Hemlata Momaya can recognize the look in an instant. It is an expression of past disappointment and desperation on the faces of would-be adoptive parents, mixed with the smallest glimmer of hope.

“After having spent years with their names on a waiting list, watching repeatedly as apparent sure-things fall through or discovering that the odds of their adopting a healthy child are next to nothing, many of them are very hesitant to let their hopes rise one more time,” said Momaya, director of Bal Jagad Childrens World, a licensed private adoption agency in Chatsworth that helps arrange about 20 adoptions each year from India, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, the Philippines and several other countries.

“But I tell them that there are children all over the world who need homes,” she said. “Usually, these people are so anxious for a child that they say they will take a child from any country.”

The attitude is not difficult to understand. Between 1971 and 1982, the last year for which statistics were available, the number of adoptions between unrelated people in the United States declined 38%, according to the National Committee for Adoption, an association of 130 private adoption agencies. That decline has been attributed to a fewer number of available children--principally because of increased abortions, wider use of contraceptives and the decreased stigma among unwed parents.

Not coincidentally, the number of foreign-born children adopted in the United States has increased. In 1981, 4,868 children were adopted from other countries; in 1986, that number had risen to 6,188. Of those, nearly two-thirds came from South Korea.

“Sometimes the obstacles to adopting foreign-born children can seem just as great, but at least the children are out there,” said Linda Nunez, a Tustin attorney who specializes in adoption. Nunez has adopted four children, one of whom is from Mexico.

The decreased availability of children in this country, though, may not be the only motivating factor for some prospective parents to look outside the borders of the United States.

“Many people say they don’t want to adopt American children because they are born from drug-addicted parents. Also, here the birth mothers have a right to change their minds during the first six months,” Momaya said. “I have had many couples that had tried to adopt through the county and had a child for nearly six months, and then the mother wanted the child back. That’s a horrible thing to have to go through.”

Andrea Esfahani, a 34-year-old psychiatric nurse who lives in Northridge, said she decided to adopt a child after her marriage broke up and her two closest relatives died within a few months of each other. Her marital status, though, limited her chances of adopting a U.S. born child.

“I was told that unless I was willing to take a handicapped or mentally deficient child, or one who had been through numerous foster homes, I could pretty much forget it,” she said. “I didn’t care about the child’s race, but I didn’t want one that had been emotionally scarred. I’m already a psychiatric nurse, and what I wanted to be was a mom.”

Esfahani began her search by writing to several private agencies throughout the country. From their replies, she said, she learned that different countries imposed different restrictions on prospective parents.

“Some countries wouldn’t consider me because of my marital status, others because I’m not Catholic, and there also are some age requirements,” she said.

Within a few months of contacting the Bal Jagad agency, Esfahani said she was notified about a child in Peru. Not long afterward, after informing her employers that she was “going to have a baby and would be back in a few weeks,” she was on a plane to Lima. On arrival, she said, there were 14 other American couples and singles who also had come to adopt.

Six weeks later, in October, 19888, Esfahani was on a plane headed back to Los Angeles, this time with her 2-month-old Peruvian Indian daughter in her arms.

“I was very lucky,” she said. “Many of the children there are given up for adoption because of poverty, and many of them are malnourished. But Jordana had chubby little cheeks and was very healthy.”

Since then, Esfahani has found another reason to be grateful. She recently adopted a second child, a healthy baby boy from Brazil.

Not all foreign adoptions go as smoothly, however.

“In any intercountry adoption, the adoptive parents are at the mercy of the child’s government,” Nunez said. “I’ve heard of people falling in love with a child in a foreign country, having to come back to the U.S. without the child and then not being able to get the child because of some political situation that has developed,” she said. “It’s not an uncommon thing to have happen.”

Such was the case with several U.S. couples who had met and then set their hearts on adopting children in Romania. In recent years, the difficult living conditions in that country had forced many women to send their children to live in orphanages, which had made Romania an important source for childless couples in several countries.

In 1987, however, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu abruptly refused to grant passports to more than 250 orphans waiting to be adopted by foreigners. It is only now, since the dictator’s fall, that American couples have experienced renewed hope about their chances of adopting those children.

For the purpose of adoption, a child is classified as an orphan by immigration officials in their country if both parents are no longer living, or if a single woman gives birth who cannot afford to raise the child, according to Judith Chen Haggerty, an attorney in the City of Industry who specializes in foreign adoptions.

There are other potential problems as well. Bonnie Beall, an administrator with Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles, said she worked with two different agencies over a four-year period and still had been unable to adopt a foreign-born child. Six referrals for children in different countries had all fallen through, she said.

“They wasted my time, my energy and my emotions,” said Beall, who said she spent $8,000 that was non-refundable. “The second agency had a small staff and small budget, and I think they were overextended. Toward the end, they wouldn’t even return my phone calls.”

In most cases, Momaya said, a cash advance of about $7,000 must be paid by would-be parents to foreign attorneys. The fee for a home study--conducted by agencies in all cases of adoption to determine the suitability of each prospective parent’s living environment and financial situation--are non-refundable. Although the total cost for a foreign adoption generally costs a minimum of $10,000, Momaya said, a prolonged stay in a foreign country can increase that amount significantly.

After moving from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, Beall, who is single, decided to give it one last try. Ten months after contacting the Bal Jagad agency, her son, Joshua, arrived with an escort from India at Los Angeles International Airport.

The arrival, though, was not what she had expected.

“I was stunned, because he looked dreadful,” she said. “He was 11 weeks old and weighed five pounds. I had said I would accept a low birth-weight child, because many of the children in India are born prematurely. But he was dying.”

Joshua spent the next three weeks in a neonatal intensive-care unit, Beall said, and later made what doctors called a miraculous recovery. He is now 3 and “incredibly healthy.”

Because of the complex laws and procedures required for foreign adoptions, attorneys caution people from making any hasty moves on their own.

“A lot of times people will hear about a child in Mexico or Korea or wherever through a friend of a friend, and then they’ll just hop on a plane and go down there and stumble around,” Nunez said. “It’s heartbreaking, not to mention very expensive, when it doesn’t work out.

For Luis Menendez, an unmarried real estate agent who lives in Laguna Niguel, adopting an infant girl from Peru last year gave him a sense of security he had never known before.

Menendez, who is from Cuba, said he had been in and out of relationships and still felt no closer to having a child of his own. He also had watched friends get divorced and then struggle emotionally when their ex-wives moved away to other states with their children. He didn’t want it to happen to him.

“That’s when I decided to be a father on my own,” he said.

Although neither the agency that conducted the home study nor officials in Peru had ever dealt with a single man wishing to adopt a child, Menendez said he was warmly--albeit perhaps a bit skeptically--received.

“Everybody’s eyes down in Peru were really big, because Latin men don’t do things like that. Everyone wanted to look at me. And when I showed up in front of the judge with the baby, I knew he was looking at me like, ‘Can this man really take care of this child?’

“That’s when I decided to change her diaper,” he said, laughing. “She didn’t need a change, but it seemed like the proper time to do it.”