Justus is an 8-year-old boy from Florida, with bushy hair and a crooked smile. His bio says he enjoys writing and animals, and in his free time, he likes to go to the movies.
Fedeline, 8, and her sister Kettelove, 5, patiently glare upward in a picture. Residing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, they both wear multiple braids in their hair and white frocks contrasting their chocolate-shaded skin.
Although they're thousands of miles apart, these three children have one thing in common.
They're orphans.
It's hard to understand the true gravity of adoption without seeing orphans first. On www.photolisting.adoption.com, both American and international children are photo-listed with biographies that literally (and purposely) make your heart melt.
I'm not a new supporter to adoption. My mom was adopted in 1970, when she was taken into a farmhouse family in Beaverton, Mich. The only girl in a family of three boys, she wouldn't have wanted it any other way (brotherly torture and all).
Most Americans, at some point, will be affected by adoption. In 1997, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute conducted a survey of 1,554 American adults, in which it found that six in 10 Americans have had personal experience with adoption. This close experience was defined as meaning "they themselves, a family member or a close friend was adopted, had adopted a child or had placed a child for adoption." I am undoubtedly in this group, having an adopted mother and multiple adopted friends. I bet you are too.
Adoption is a balancing act within society. Controversial issues of birth mother rights versus adopted families have made recent news, specifically in the case of Anna Mae He. The birth parents, Shaoqiang and Qin Luo, gave their daughter to Jerry and Louise Baker, a married Memphis couple, eight years ago. The He couple, struggling with legal and health problems at the time, claim the Bakers promised to care for Anna Mae only temporarily — a claim the Bakers deny. In an arrangement with a Christian adoption agency, the Bakers took Anna Mae into their home.
Since she was 1 month old, Anna Mae resided with the Baker couple. In a recent court decision, Anna Mae must now be removed from the Baker home and returned to the custody of the He couple.
Qin Luo doesn't speak fluent English yet, a dilemma which will inevitably affect her American-raised daughter. Conflict doesn't end there. Qin Luo also was said to be "prone to strong emotional outbursts," and Shaoqiang was accused of sexually assaulting another student at the University of Memphis.
The court's decision to upheave an 8-year-old girl from her stable family to near-strangers is an unfair, problem-causing situation that will ultimately affect Anna Mae in ways only one can imagine. Occurrences like this also are deterrents that push away prospective adoptive parents from giving an adoptee a home.
Prospective adoptive parents also quickly disregard older children. In Michigan, only 3 percent of adoptions in 2004 were 16- to 18-year-olds, while 46 percent were children from 1 to 5 years old, according to the Administration for Children and Families.
To be a teenager without a mom or dad would certainly be difficult. Sure, they wouldn't have had someone to argue with, but who else would help them with their homework? The lack of couples adopting older children likely contributes to at-risk teenagers who face a higher chance of ending up in juvenile detention. These older children are shuffled around between foster homes, sometimes lacking concrete family relationships.
There are those who distastefully oppose adoption. These people are rather selfish. In adopting a child, you're not only fulfilling your own desire to build a family, but you're also fulfilling the needs of a child without a parent. In an already overpopulated world, giving a disadvantaged orphan an array of choices and opportunities is heroic.
Adoption doesn't necessarily change the world. But for the child being adopted, it can do just that: Change their world.
Thea Neal is a State News intern. Reach her at nealthea@msu.edu.
