Word: adopting
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...most of their 17-year marriage, Ann and Fred Redman of Magnolia, Texas, struggled in vain to have children. "We tried everything from fertility treatments to laser surgery," recalls Ann. "Nothing worked." The avenue of adoption seemed blocked: Fred, 53, was considered too old for fatherhood by U.S. adoption agencies. Then the Redmans discovered Los Ninos International Adoption Center, a Houston-based, nonprofit organization that helps Americans adopt youngsters in Latin America. Within months the Redmans arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, where they were introduced to baby twin sisters and their Indian mother, who was offering the infants for adoption...
Every day, an average of 20 American couples adopt babies from overseas. Most of them come from Third World nations where orphanages are overflowing, abandoned children sleep in the streets, and poor parents see foreign adoption as one of the few ways to give their children a decent life. In the U.S., the number of foreign-born adoptees has ranged from 7,000 to 10,000 each year since 1983. About 13,000 foreign-born children are adopted annually in Western Europe, Canada and elsewhere...
Though few adopting parents would admit it, race can be another important factor. Most couples who decide to seek an infant overseas have concluded it isn't important -- or possible -- to find a child who looks just like themselves, but most experts acknowledge that the rush of bidders in Romania last year was largely explained by the fact that the children were Caucasian. Some aspiring parents, seeking to adopt in Latin America, prefer to go to Chile rather than, say, Peru or Colombia, because they consider Chilean children more likely to be light skinned and Caucasian-looking...
...amount of planning and forethought can prevent the occasional nightmare. Last June, Greg Davis, 34, an Elk River, Minn., florist, arrived in New Delhi to adopt a baby girl. He expected to end his 2 1/2-year quest for a child in a week's time. But a small Indian newspaper suddenly published a report declaring that Davis' prospective daughter was being purchased for organ donations abroad. The charge was outrageous, but local lawyers filed suit to prevent Davis from taking custody of the child. After spending two months and $4,500 in legal battles, Davis returned to Minnesota empty-handed...
...raided a seaside hotel owned by a German and his Sri Lankan wife. The building was occupied not by tourists but by 20 young Sri Lankan women and their 22 infants, some just a few weeks old. The hotel was a "baby farm," where foreigners looking for children to adopt could come to browse, and for a fee $ of $1,000 to $5,000, have their pick of the babies. The mothers, all desperately poor, would get about $50 in exchange for each of their children...