A new law here on the ''protection and promotion of the rights of the child'' has done little to protect Vasile, a 7-year-old who has lived his whole life in an orphanage in Botosani.
More than two years ago, Becky Hubbell, a pharmaceutical executive from Overland Park, Kan., submitted the required papers to adopt the wide-eyed, dark-haired boy, whom she and her husband had met during medical missions here.
But before that process was completed, the government passed its new child welfare law, which essentially forbids international adoptions. The measure has left hundreds of families without children they had counted as theirs. More important, critics say, the sweeping law leaves thousands of abandoned Romanian children stranded indefinitely in institutions or foster care.
''You have a child in your heart and you've made all the arrangements, and it's clear that child wants a family, too,'' Ms. Hubbell said. ''But for Vasile, time is passing without the stability of a home. And that's harder and harder to make up for.''
When, in 2002, officials in Brussels demanded that Romania clean up a chaotic and sometimes corrupt child welfare system as a condition for admission to the European Union, Romanian politicians jumped into action. Law 272, written in collaboration with European Union advisers, aimed to halt decades of mismanagement with edicts that critics say were overzealous and impractical.
In response to criticism that orphans were growing up in sterile institutions, the government mandated that no child under 2 could live in one; the new law, it noted, favored reuniting children with biological relatives or placing them in foster care. In response to charges that foreign adoptions were so poorly managed that they sometimes resembled child trafficking, the government declared there would be no more.
Experts applaud the central goal: to encourage Romanian families to stay together and to end the longstanding practice here of abandoning unwanted children. But many child advocates doubt that this poor country, just 15 years removed from a brutal dictatorship, will be able to find good living situations quickly for its huge population of orphaned and abandoned children. Many children currently in orphanages and hospitals, they say, will be stranded.
''There are good impulses behind the law -- to provide more assistance to mothers, to keep children out of institutions -- and we all felt the system needed more standards,'' said Gabi Mihaela Comanescu, program director of the ProChild Romania Foundation. ''But there are problems. For example, there are older children who are as adoptable as ever, but there is no one to adopt them now. Also, the law says every abandoned child under 2 should be in foster care, but as far as I know there aren't nearly enough foster homes.''
The unintended result is that deserted infants are now passing their precious first years in a hospital ward. There are close to 10,000 children abandoned at hospitals each year in Romania, according to a new study by Unicef, and up to 50,000 children in the care of the state.
Romania's unusual tradition of child abandonment began with a ban on birth control imposed in 1966 by Nicolae Ceausescu, the former dictator, to increase the population. Within a year, women began dropping off unwanted children at state orphanages or hospitals. Their logic was that ''the government wanted them, so the government should raise them,'' according to the Unicef report.
Child abandonment has continued at the same level for 40 years, said Pierre Poupard, head of the Unicef office in Bucharest, even though birth control is widely available in post-Communist Romania. Now, mothers desert babies because they feel they cannot afford to raise them.
Before Law 272 took effect on Jan. 1, politicians from France, Italy and the United States, among others, vigorously lobbied the government to rethink the ban on international adoptions, or at least to allow cases already started to proceed. In January the new Romanian prime minister, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, said he would ''not forget foreign families'' who had taken steps to adopt Romanian children. To date, however, nothing has been done.
According to the Romanian Adoptions Office, 467 babies were adopted by foreigners in 2002, although a partial moratorium was already in effect. Before that, several hundred Romanian children were adopted annually by families in Italy, France, Israel and the United States, according to adoption groups in those countries. Today the number is zero.
Instead, Romanian county child welfare officials are now required to ''reintegrate or integrate the children into their biological or extended families or to place them with a Romanian foster family,'' said Theodora Bertzi, head of the adoption office.
New families are being trained in foster care to meet the need, she said. Romanian couples (or grandparents living overseas) are being encouraged to adopt unwanted children. Orphanages, called ''placement centers,'' can take children over 2 when no home is available.
Florin Catanescu, 28, grew up in the centers after being abandoned at birth by a schizophrenic mother. Handsome and articulate, he carries his past in one small photo album decorated with a child's glittery stickers. He is skeptical about Law 272, at least in the short term.
''I just don't think the resources are sufficient in our country for this new law, and attitudes will not change that quickly,'' said Mr. Catanescu, who is starting a nongovernmental organization to help graduates of the centers integrate into society: find jobs, rent apartments, order food in a restaurant. ''Children will be stuck -- there are still so many families who abandon children.''
Because so many of the children are given up for economic reasons, they continue to have contact with their mothers even if they live in orphanages for years, making it hard to define their family status.
Under the old law, if a mother disappeared for more than six months, the child could be put up for adoption. But the new law, with its emphasis on maintaining biological families, stipulates that a mother's right to her child is indefinite, extending through years of separation.
In order for a child to be put up for adoption, the mother must sign a paper formally ending the relationship, which is impossible in cases like Vasile's, in which the mother has long since disappeared. Other relatives have to decline the child as well.
At the Sunbeam Complex of Community Service, a placement center 60 miles from Bucharest, 15 of the 16 children (aged 4 to 9) have had some contact with their biological families. Only one girl, who is 4, is technically adoptable. The tidy two-story house, lying amid dusty fields, is far superior to the huge, impersonal orphanages that made the child welfare system of Communist Romania so notorious.
On a recent afternoon, young residents busied themselves drawing pictures at low tables and playing with blocks. But before Law 272, five children left here each year, adopted by foreign families, said Letitia Stefanescu, the home's director.
The new law ''has many good aspects,'' Ms. Stefanescu said, like offering preventive counseling and financial assistance to young mothers deemed at risk of abandoning babies. But she acknowledged the downside for the children in her care: ''International adoptions gave them a chance for a family.''
A cute 9-year-old with pigtails, who can only be identified as M.S., said, ''I like being here, but I would like more to be with my mom.'' The girl's mother, who lives nearby, has not visited for several years.
Ms. Stefanescu has faith that the faults of the new system will be dealt with: New programs will encourage or force some mothers to pick up abandoned children; other children will find foster homes. The four-year-old, she hopes, will be adopted by Romanians, even though they traditionally do not adopt older children.
The Unicef report said it was crucial to take steps to prevent future abandonment, like allowing mothers to start rooming with their newborns in order to encourage bonding and prevent desertion.
Becky Hubbell, who spends holidays volunteering at the Botosani orphanage, says it is great that the government is now helping families stay together. But in the meantime, she said, ''there are kids like Vasile who have no options but adoption abroad.
''We already provide support for him,'' she said. ''We will be his family, no matter what.''
Photo: An orphanage near Ploesti, Romania. Their parents have left them, but the children cannot be adopted. (Photo by Amarjit Sidhu/Sipa, for The International Herald Tribune)