Was Our Son Stolen from His Birth Mother?

Was David's adoption process a fraud? The Guatemalan Procuraduria and the US Embassy are implying that it was. In the charged climate of a Guatemalan election year, they are painting American families like mine as unwitting contributors to child trafficking in Guatemala and, perhaps worse, as inflicting unspeakable pain on women like David's birth mother.

Are they correct? I doubt it. Most adopting families, including mine, have followed the existing legal procedures of those very same government agencies slavishly. And when my family went through the process, there were many precautions in place, including a DNA test establishing his birth mom's biological connection to David, her statement of relinquishment carrying her photo and signature, and a voluminous report of the social worker.

Still, even after all this, who can say for sure? The uncertainty now leaves me wondering what to think and how to feel.

Maybe I should just blow the whole thing off. Aren't we First Worlders already used to sipping rich creamy lattes knowing that the Guatemalans who picked the beans received barely enough to support their kids? We've gotten used to these moral ambiguities. Why not just add this adoption issue to the list?

But, hold on. Despite what Guatemalan politicians may say, this is not another story of exploitation by greedy Americans. It is, instead, a result of the sad legacy of Efrain Rios Mont, Guatemala's former brutal dictator, and his many sidekicks.

Thanks to that legacy, a high percentage of Guatemalan children--perhaps as many as one in four--die of intestinal infections because their families cannot afford filtered water. Education for these kids is almost non-existent, rarely going past the second grade. And there are many, many Guatemalan children in the streets and (as pictured above) around the dump in Guatemala City who survive by selling candy, shoe shines, and their bodies. It's for good reason that agencies like Camino Seguro (Safe Passage) ask for our help. And that many of us choose to adopt from Guatemala.

Rob and I once considered the surrogate route to creating our family. But with so many homeless kids in the world, we decided it would be better for us to adopt a child from a poor country. As it turned out, our discernment took us to Guatemala and Casa Quivira, an agency known for its integrity and the quality of its care.

Along with the rest of the world, I keep hoping that the authorities will clean up the abuses in the Guatemalan adoption system. But I don't regret my family's adoption path for a moment--despite the eyebrows now being raised by government bureaucrats and well-intentioned friends. Because David, the light of our lives and an aspiring race car driver, is safe, healthy, and, as I write this, tugging my pant leg and badgering me for a trip to the park. It could have been otherwise.