Under Pressure, Ethiopia Plans Crackdown on Baby Business

Boz and I read a pretty disturbing article yesterday. It was entitled, Under Pressure, Ethiopia Plans Crackdown on Baby Business. With a title like that, you know it can’t be good. The opening line wasn’t much better:
Ethiopia is planning to shut down dozens of orphanages and withdraw accreditation from several foreign adoption agencies, in an effort to halt what critics say is a thriving baby business.
Now that’s enough to get this (soon-to-be) momma’s heart pumping. So many thoughts started racing through my head! And the dreaded WHAT Ifs appeared!! What if they do shut it down!? OUR SON IS OVER THERE! What if our agency doesn’t get their re-accreditation. What if we’ve fallen in love with the culture, people and Ethiopia only to find out that they’re closing the program. *I know it sounds funny to a lot of you, that Boz and I have fallen in love with a place we’ve never been to. But it’s true. The more we read up on Ethiopia, the more in love we become. The more we meet people from there, the harder we fall. Then on top of that add the fact that our son is an Ethiopian, living in Ethiopia.... LOVE!*

If you want to read the article for yourself, you can do so by clicking on this link, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Under-Pressure-Ethiopia-Plans-Crackdown-on-Baby-Business-111848424.html

I’m not going to lie, this article did/does scare me a bit. However, I am SO HAPPY they’re cracking down for the sake of the kids! I mean, if they can find friends / relatives to take these children in and care for them, I think that’s wonderful. I think it’s so important for them to stay in their country of birth! They even said that in the article, “"Our main focus is to help the children here in Ethiopia," Getahun said. "Adoption, international adoption especially, is our last resort."

As I’m sure we can all agree on, international adoption NEEDS to be HIGHLY SCRUTINIZED and held to a much higher standard. I am all for the Ethiopian government shutting down questionable orphanages and agencies. Heaven forbid children are put up for adoption who aren’t truly orphaned. If they can shut down the unethical ones, and only work with a few that’d be awesome. I would really, REALLY hate for this to turn into an issue like Guatemala…. Korea…. Where they have closed their adoption programs. That would truly break my heart.

Shannon from our group put it best when she said, “Let's not forget that adopting is designed by God and Satan hates anything designed by God. Adoption in every country is constantly under attack. Just this past year there have been news stories on Russian and Ethiopian adoptions. However, our God is greater, stronger, and more powerful than these attacks.”

On a more selfish note, I’m praying this doesn’t in any way interfere with our adoption… or our next one. That’s right, we’re already planning our second (and third!) adoption. We would love to adopt from Ethiopia again and we have another country in mind for the one after that. Then who knows, maybe we’ll have a biological child just to mix things up a bit. LOL! Seriously though, Boz and I really do see ourselves with two children from Ethiopia, so we’re keeping this all in our prayers.

I haven’t talked about it much, but as you know, we’ve been DTE for 6 weeks now. And in those 6 weeks, there have been close to 0 referrals. There have been a few, but I don’t the number of the top of my head. After reading this article, I can see why it’s been so slow.