The Ethiopian Church Journal Blog

Source: The New Yorker, The American Prospect, NPR The practice of adoption goes back at least as far as Moses, who, the Bible says, was adopted by the daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt. In ancient Greece and Rome, adoption was commonly used, in the absence of male heirs, to transfer property rights to protégés. International adoption, however, is a more recent development. In the United States, it grew out of orphan-rescue missions in the wake of military conflicts, beginning with the airlift of German and Japanese orphans at the end of the Second World War. Similar rescues followed the Korean War, in 1953, the Bay of Pigs debacle, in 1961, and the Vietnam War, in 1975. These “babylifts” were, in part, political, fuelled by a new superpower’s desire both to demonstrate its good will to the rest of the world and to rescue children from Communism, but the press covered them uncritically, as humanitarian mercy missions. International adoption became widely available to ordinary Americans

The dark side of Chinese adoptions Source: NPR When Americans adopt babies from China, most assume they've been abandoned. But a scandal in 2005, in which 6 orphanages were found to be buying babies, threw that in doubt. Scott Tong reports that baby selling may be more widespread. Kai Ryssdal : A key Russian politician said this week there's been no formal ban on U.S adoption of Russian children. There is, though, a new agreement being worked out between the two sides. Last month, a Tennessee woman sent her Russian-born son back to Moscow unaccompanied. Russia is the number three source of international adoptions for American parents. China has been at the top of that list for years. Beijing is generally assumed to run a clean program -- orphanages that are above board and children who've actually been abandoned. But a scandal five years ago shook a lot of that confidence. Six orphanages were found to have been buying babies who were then adopted by families from other coun