In my younger days, I never thought much about adoption. I heard some other kids in primary school who were adopted and I simply thought they were different. I never thought that I will ever be involved in adoption.
Then, in my early days of marriage, one of our friends could not have children so they decided to have an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure. After about five attempts, they realised that the sanity of the wife was more important than having children. She was extremely affected by the effects of IVF procedure where she was having terrible mood swings that the husband could barely handle. So, they decided to stop the procedure and accepted that children are not for them. They simply prepared for a life without kids.
IVF is an expensive procedure and few couples can afford such a procedure.
There are thousands of children in orphanages around the world and they are there due to several reasons. Thousands of children have been abandoned by their parents due to their financial limitations or parental issues. Yet, many more are displaced due to war and forced migration.
Children who are placed in orphanages have to wait to be adopted out. The process of adoption can be intricate in order to protect the children from unscrupulous people who are ready to take advantage of the children’s situation.
The adoption process can take at least two years, and for overseas adoption, it can take four or more years to complete. There is a long waiting list for parents to adopt children when in actual fact, there are so many children waiting to meet their adoptive parents.
An international law called the Hague Convention on Children’s Rights have provided for necessary steps and procedures before an international adoption can be completed. The website of the Australian Attorney-General’s department states the following:
“The international principles that govern intercountry adoption are set out in the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, an international treaty to safeguard children in intercountry adoptions.
The convention aims to ensure that intercountry adoption only occurs when it is in the best interests of the child. A guiding principle of the convention is that, whenever possible, a child should be raised by his or her birth family or extended family. If this is not possible, other forms of permanent family care in the child’s country of birth should be considered. Only after local solutions have been exhausted, should intercountry adoption be considered – and then only if it is in the child’s best interests.
The convention also focuses on the need for countries to work together to prevent the abduction, sale, or trafficking of children.”
Recently, Pope Francis spoke to employees and patients of an Italian hospital for abandoned children. He said, “so many times there are people who want to adopt children, but there is such enormous bureaucracy.” He continued: “Many, many families who do not have children and would certainly have the desire to have one with adoption.” He then encouraged people to “go forward, to create a culture of adoption, because there are so many abandoned children, alone, victims of war and so on.”
My husband convinced me to adopt children from overseas. We waited four years for each one of them to arrive. They are now nineteen and thirteen years old. Indeed, it took a while for each of the adoption process to complete. However, after twenty one years, I am truly glad that we made that difficult decision to adopt two children as they have enriched our lives much more than we do theirs.
Every day we thank God for giving us these two people to love and journey with us in life.