After growing unease with his country's adoption process, the president of Guatemala said he will suspend adoptions from his country starting Jan. 1, 2008, leaving 3,000 children already in the process of being adopted in limbo and countless other families mulling adoption to look elsewhere in the world.
The country's president said he is taking the measure -- seen by some as extreme in that it ignores the fate of what will quickly be thousands of abandoned children -- amid growing concerns about the current system, which opponents say has led to paying mothers for children or coercing them to give up their babies.
An average of 17 children born in Guatemala leave the country for the United States every day with the parents who adopted them. Guatemala has long been considered a place where adoptions are relatively fast and uncomplicated. The Central American country is behind only China in the number of children adopted out to American families every year.
Guatemala has the highest per capita rate of adoption of any country in the world. One of every 100 children born in the country is adopted internationally. American officials say 5,000 adoptions have been approved this year, an all-time high for Guatemalan adoptions to the U.S. American officials also say that last year's 4,000 adoptions were legal and untainted by any problems.
Hotels, lawyers, social workers and some orphanages and foster families have built up businesses around Guatemalan adoptions, which cost an average of $30,000 to process and include at least two trips to the country before bringing baby to a new home permanently.
Adoption has been hotly contested for years there, too, with some people claiming the fact that the process is run by lawyers and social workers -- not the government -- leaves it vulnerable to undesirable practices, such as baby selling or stealing.
NPR's recent report on the country's adoptions looks at charges against a recently raided agency in Guatemala, which was shut down pending charges of exchanging cash for children. The owners, an American and a Guatemalan, deny the charges.
International adoption has become very visible -- and even more attractive, some might say -- thanks to celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Mary-Louise Parker and others Hollywood stars. But it is a subject that is fraught, made even more so whenever accusations of baby-buying surface.
Still, who doesn't know a family who has created a family through international adoption? What do you think? Is Guatemala solving a humanitarian crisis but shutting down adoptions or is it creating one?
