A World of Hope

There’s not much to do in Fort Smith, Ark., the locals say, but it’s a great place to raise kids.

When they married two years ago, Cindi and Jerry Glidewell, both 39, had already raised four in previous marriages. The Glidewells--he is a youth director, she is a nurse--could not have any more children of their own and wanted to adopt. But like thousands of other infertile couples, they faced intense competition for healthy, white babies. What’s more, recent court cases had made them afraid a remorseful birth parent might someday come knocking on their door.

“I was more than willing to raise another child or two,” Cindi said, “but the idea of someone deciding to take him or her back in a few years would break my heart.”

Eventually, they found just what they wanted: a healthy boy who, according to the videotapes sent from the orphanage and medical records, is developing properly and actually looks something like them. This summer, they will be bringing him home to Fort Smith--from Vidin, Bulgaria.

Their global quest has given them a bird’s-eye view of the turmoil surrounding inter-country adoption--an option that is becoming increasingly attractive among those who can afford it, experts say. Some infertile couples, wary of high-tech medical interventions, are driven to seek adoptable children overseas by trends in domestic adoption, such as a “sellers market” created by decreasing numbers of infants placed for adoption and high-profile cases upholding birth parents’ rights.

While the unquestioned neediness of abandoned children in poorer countries has made the practice admirable, even politically correct, in some quarters, some wonder if the prospective parents’ needs and substantial pocketbooks are the overriding force behind some of the thousands of foreign adoptions carried out every year in the U.S. “When you’re talking about infants, you’re talking about a marketplace and not child welfare,” said Kate Burke, president of the American Adoption Congress, a birth parents’ rights group.

Baby-selling scandals, rumor and suspicion continue to haunt international adoption. While an international treaty three years ago aimed to impose some uniformity on the practice, the United States--which, few realize, also sends children to adoptive parents in other countries--has yet to sign it.

Meanwhile, prospective adoptive parents, unsure of what to expect, rely on one another’s experiences. Adoption expert Joan Heifetz Hollinger, a UC Berkeley law professor, said, “You’ll hear at least two kinds of stories from people who have adopted children in other countries in the last three years: One, it cost a lot of money but it went through without a hitch. And two, it was a nightmare, we didn’t know if we were in Peru, Paraguay or Brazil. We didn’t know if we were going to end up in jail.”

Inter-country adoption began in earnest after the Korean War with the abandoned children of foreign servicemen, and grew rapidly after the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion made fewer white infants available for adoption. Over the past 10 years, Americans have adopted between 6,000 and 10,000 foreign children every year--half the estimated inter-country adoptions worldwide.

In the current fiscal year ending in September, State Department officials predict that that number will be close to 11,000 due in part to a surge of nearly 4,000 infants, almost all girls, coming from China. “China has replaced Romania in the early ‘90s and subsequently Russia as a country from which most children come from adoption,” said Peter Pfund, a legal consultant with the department.

Skeptics wonder why prospective parents can’t accept older, “special needs” children from the U.S. or perhaps contribute to poor families overseas to enable them to raise their own children. But many adoptive parents have been motivated by altruism, for instance, after hearing dramatic reports of “dying rooms” in orphanages, where Chinese parents reportedly have taken their infant daughters, under government edicts to limit their families and cultural practices that favor males.

At the same time, adoptive parents are also attracted by reports of healthier children and shorter waiting periods in other countries. In China, unlike most other countries, adoptive parents are not required to be married and must be older than 35. “So a great number of Chinese adoptions have been completed by single people,” Hollinger said.

But governments are sensitive to outside criticism and prospective parents worried that the controversy might cause China to shut down its adoption program, as it did for a year in 1993 after charges of poor conditions and baby selling in some institutions.

In Beijing in March, security officials stormed a fund-raiser for Chinese orphanages featuring a speech by Chinese American author Amy Tan and ripped down posters that said “Love Children,” despite protests from the attending U.S. ambassador. But adoptions have proceeded relatively smoothly.

Similarly, South Korea, which has adopted out more than 135,000 children, is still trying to shed its image as a “baby exporter” country. Until recently, few South Koreans would take in the children because the economy had been poor; children with deformities were rejected; and a cultural taboo discouraged South Koreans from raising unrelated children as full-fledged family members.

But when South Koreans hosted the Olympic Games in 1988, some were ashamed that the situation became known internationally. In the 1990s, the annual overseas adoption of 6,500 has been reduced to about 2,000 and domestic adoption has steadily risen to about 1,000. Last year, the government revised laws to provide privileges and benefits to South Korean families that adopt children.

As shifting governments cope with how to handle their abandoned children--and the Americans’ enthusiasm for them--it seems to some prospective parents as though countries open, suspend, reopen or modify adoption without warning. Faced with a welter of rumors and legal changes, bewildered Americans just beginning to explore international adoption have a steep learning curve, about everything from diseases, residency requirements and paperwork to bribery requests and who to trust.

Cindi Glidewell said information was so difficult to obtain two years ago in Fort Smith that she gave up until she began researching on the Internet. There, she found agencies, photographs of individual children, and other parents who shared information and experiences. At one time, she said, they had considered adopting from South America. But rumors and reports of child trafficking frightened them off.

Indeed, “Some people, including lawyers, judges and government officials, have been payable for their cooperation,” the State Department’s Pfund said. In September, Paraguay suspended new international adoptions for a year following allegations that many babies put up for adoption were stolen and sold.

In Guatemala, the leader in the Central American adoption industry, illegal adoptions continue to thrive. In March, Guatemalan police raided the third suspected “fattening house” in a month.

Some countries, including El Salvador and Costa Rica, have updated their laws increasing the number of legal adoptions. But in Guatemala, many frustrated foreigners end up arranging adoptions through traffickers, paying for false birth certificates or illegal registrations and making large “donations” to orphanages because its adoption laws are 40 years old and overwhelmed with red tape.

At the same time, Latin Americans and others have suspected that their children are being stolen to be used as organ donors, domestic servants or for prostitution. When in doubt, some U.S. embassies in Guatemala, El Salvador and elsewhere have suggested DNA tests to prove the relinquishing mother is biologically related to the child.

After rejecting South America, the Glidewells focused their search on Russia--which, they soon learned, had problems of its own. Glidewell said the medical reports she saw from there about orphans were so vague, she couldn’t be sure they were genuine.

In September, Russia lifted a moratorium on adoptions. It had been imposed so the government could deal with a scandal of its own: unscrupulous middlemen who had been charging prospective parents up to $20,000 to procure a healthy baby with false medical reports. Regulations had restricted foreign adoptions to children with birth defects or medical problems.

New regulations allow the adoption of healthy babies by foreigners and outlawed commercial adoption brokers. Waiting periods have been reduced to three months.

A similar scandal erupted in Ukraine. Last year, six people associated with a Lviv maternity home were arrested and charged with stealing newborns and selling them to foreign families.

One child with severe disabilities, known as “the Brooks baby,” was adopted and then returned three years later. The Massachusetts couple who adopted the boy as an infant asked a court to rescind the adoption because they could not afford the medical bills they said were running $7,000 a month.

A new law, put into effect April 1, bans foreign intermediaries, imposes a one-year waiting period for foreign parents so officials can search for a local family and requires the child to retain Ukrainian citizenship.

In addition to unscrupulous foreign brokers, the Glidewells learned that they also had to be wary of U.S. facilitators. From acquaintances on the Internet, Glidewell heard that a certain agent had demanded increased fees from couples once they were abroad. Hollinger, of UC Berkeley, said at least one facilitator in Washington, D.C., was uncovered doing a bait-and-switch--presenting photographs of children who, it turned out, were not the children available for adoption.

Said the American Adoption Congress’ Burke: “People have lost their life savings. They live in Tijuana for six months, sitting with the baby, hoping to grease the right palms to get out.”

Hollinger said international adoption remains unpredictable largely because out of 66 participating countries, only 10 have ratified the 1993 Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption. The treaty requires every country to establish a central authority to process international adoptions and to certify private facilitators as well as agencies.

Ratification efforts have stalled in the United States because of what Hollinger called “turf issues” in the adoption community. “There’s so much dissension among the adoption world in America,” she said. “Who’s going to control what and under what terms, what are the credentials and what’s the criteria?”

Private adoption facilitators (not allowed in most other countries) are worried that they may be cut out of the practice, while some adoption agencies are concerned about an added layer of bureaucracy.

Because family law matters are generally dealt with by the individual states, Pfund, who headed the U.S. delegation to the convention, explained that federal implementation of legislation will be necessary “to ensure it is uniformly and fully implemented throughout the U.S.” That could not be passed until next year, he said.

But he said there will be increasing pressure on the U.S. as the world’s major receiving country to “put its money where its mouth is” and ratify the treaty. If not, he said, the “sending” countries may prefer to place their adopted children in countries bound by the treaty, unless officials are paid under the table.

Surprisingly, the treaty process has made the United States aware that a small number of its children are also leaving to be adopted in other countries. Little is known about them, Pfund said, except they are unprotected by state or federal safeguards. He said that for example, in 1993, 46 children were adopted by Canadians and 76 in 1994.

Some are believed to have been placed by U.S. birth mothers hoping to circumvent birth fathers’ rights. Others are thought to be minority or mixed race children who had been unable to find permanent homes here. Others have been adopted by relatives.

If the treaty is ratified, it would be more certain that the children’s parents have relinquished them voluntarily and that they have been placed in safe and nurturing homes, said Susan Freivalds, a consultant to the Maryland-based Joint Council on International Children’s Services. “We need to know what’s happening to them, and we don’t,” she said.

The situation makes it easier for Americans to understand other countries’ suspicions and desires for control. “If we’re not finding homes for these children in the U.S., then they certainly need a family wherever a family can be found for them,” she said.

On one point, the U.S. and international adoption community is unanimously agreed, she said: “If kids can be adopted in their own countries, that’s good and we shouldn’t be trying to save them from that.”

Cindi Glidewell said she is sure the Bulgarian boy, a 2-year-old named Evalio, needs them as much as they want him. The boy is the third child given up for adoption by a 38-year-old impoverished mother of 10 who said she could not afford to raise him.

Glidewell has given him a new name, Jay, after Jerry’s ancestors. She said they also want to give him “strong Christian values, morals that he can cope with life with.” Mostly, she said, they want to “give him the opportunity of growing up where he knows he’s loved and wanted.”

* Contributing to this story were Times staff writers and correspondents Maggie Farley in China, John-Thor Dahlburg in India, Dean Murphy in Central Europe, Mary Mycio in Ukraine, Juanita Darling in Central America, Elizabeth Beard in Russia and Chi Jung Nam in South Korea.