Adoption advocates ask the courts to block a crippling new State Department policy that would harm waiting families and children.
Jacques and Emily Rancourt have the kind of family you don’t see every day. Not only are they raising seven children—five through adoption—but most of their adopted children have life-threatening congenital heart defects. The Rancourts have spent so much time in cardiac care at Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. that they and another couple started a charity for families of children in cardiac crisis.
“Lily can connect with these children in the hospital like no one else can,” Emily says of her 9-year-old daughter, whose remarkable story includes receiving a heart transplant at age four. “She’s using the gift she was given to the maximum. She blesses people everywhere she goes.”
This video, originally made for the American Heart Association, gives a glimpse of what Lily has overcome:
But according to Emily, their adoption of Lily and her four siblings almost didn’t happen. The Rancourts had always been interested in adopting, but when they started to research the process about ten years ago, they quickly became overwhelmed. “The process just seemed so complicated, and the cost seemed prohibitive,” Emily says. “We began to think, ‘Adoption isn’t for people like us.’”