When Josh* and his wife decided to adopt an orphan from China in 2010, they knew their limits. They felt they could adopt a child with some minor disabilities, but they didn’t think they could handle one who was blind. Then Josh remembers looking at an email from their adoption agency at work one day and finding a picture and description of a boy with severe visual impairment. “As soon as I opened up this photo, I knew that he was the one we wanted,” Josh told me.
Three years later, that little boy is a part of their family. He has had a number of surgeries to help his vision. Things that come easily for other children are difficult for him, but Josh and his wife have no regrets. Maybe it sounds superficial that these parents made such an important choice on the basis of a picture and a story. In his defense, Josh says: “People, in general, make decisions when it comes to family, love, and connection on an emotive basis. There is nothing wrong with that.”
But that’s not the view of the U.S. State Department, which late last year decided that agencies should no longer be able to offer “soft referrals” to families. This means that until families have completed their home studies and children have been deemed officially available for adoption, no family can receive information about or pictures of any specific child. The problem is that seeing a picture and hearing a child’s story is often the very thing that motivates a family to begin to pursue the lengthy and expensive process of international adoption.
In November, the National Council for Adoption, which represents more than 100 adoption agencies, filed suit against the State Department, arguing that the ban is illegal because they the agency didn’t follow the federally-mandated “notice and comment” process. Moreover, they noted that the policy has had the unfortunate effect of significantly reducing the number of children with special needs who can be adopted by American families. International adoption reached an all-time low last year, but it is special-needs kids who need access to the kind of medical treatment available in the U.S., who, without the intervention of American families, will languish in foreign orphanages. Earlier this year, the NCFA filed for summary judgment.
But what motivated this policy change in the first place? Lawyers for the State Department claim that this is not a new policy so much as a reinterpretation of an older policy, which was not in the “best interests of the child,” as defined by the Hague Adoption Convention. Policymakers seem to be concerned that children are being trafficked and that agencies’ use of these children’s pictures and stories is somehow going to exacerbate the problem.