The pitfalls of Internet adoption

WEB EXCLUSIVE

Charles Feldman on the internet adoption controversy

By Douglas Herbert, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The tale of the U.S. twins sold twice to separate parents by an Internet adoption agency illustrates a downside of adoption in the Internet age.

Cyberspace teems with Web sites -- many of them with U.S. addresses -- offering lists and photo galleries of children with cherubic faces from countries such as Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, China and Romania.

One site, Yunona USA, based in Napa, California, offers to arrange for orphanages to send prospective parents updated photos of their child, along with artwork and letters.

"This will give you new material for a family scrapbook which can be shared over and over again in the coming years," Yunona says on its Web site.

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Yunona charges a $200 application fee to cover administrative costs -- a common and legal practice.

Experts say that while much Web-based adoption activity is legal and professional, the risk lies in not knowing for sure who you are dealing with and what motives they may have.

Others warn that running adoption as a for-profit business can undermine the child's welfare.

"Anything that moves away from the child's interest being the first and paramount consideration, and anything that makes the child subject to market forces is utterly unacceptable," said Gill Haworth of the UK-based Overseas Adoption Helpline.

The Helpline, an independently funded charitable organisation, offers advice to local authorities and would-be adopters on the legal aspects relating to overseas adoptions.

The sale of six-month-old twins Kimberley and Belinda to a British couple via the Internet has also touched a raw nerve in a country where private adoption is illegal.

When UK Home Minister Jack Straw on Wednesday decried baby commerce on the Web as "frankly a revolting idea," he spoke for scores of social workers appalled by the e-trade.

Straw was referring to a Welsh couple's payment of �8,200 ($12,000) to a U.S. Internet firm to the twins who had been given up by their natural mother. That fee trumped the $6,000 a California couple had already paid for the girls.

The children have since been flown to Britain, where their case has cast a sharp light on the pitfalls of transatlantic adoption in the electronic age.

Picking up adoption costs

In Britain, unlike the U.S., private adoption is illegal except in special cases, such as when relatives from an extended family are placed with other members of that family, typically due to a problem within the family.

Of the 3,200 Britons who successfully adopted children in 1999, virtually all of them had their application and legal costs subsidised by a local adoption agency.

There are about 300 such agencies throughout the country licensed by the UK Department of Health to place children in adoptive families.

Prospective adopters must be approved by a local adoption agency, which considers the age, health, financial situation and family circumstances of all applicants.

Nick Glanville, the project manager of Adoption Online, an information service on adoption issues, said there had been a discernible increase in recent years in the number of Britons looking to adopt overseas.

He attributes the rise to delays inherent in local child-placement services, as well as to basic laws of supply and demand.

"Most people are wanting to adopt very young children -- most agencies have children three years or over. A lot of people want to adopt a child under 12 months," Glanville said.

A new directive issued by the Department of Health in late December aims to speed up British adoption by creating a national database of would-be adopters and available children.

If a local adoption agency had trouble finding a suitable match, it would be able to broaden its search nationally.

Glanville says using the Internet in the adoption process is acceptable, within limits.

"The idea of purchasing children is abhorrent," he said. "But if you're talking about people paying money to have U.S. lawyers go through an adoption process in the states that has some credence, then that's fine."