Reply - - sent in to author of article and published on guatadopt.com
written by the webmaster of guatadopt.com

I am also disheartened to hear the rhetoric which is meant to de-personalize the children and families involved in a Guatemala adoption. The audio interview was also conducted with Mr. Lacey which was rather offensive.

Bill (Biglist) posted these statistics from the CIA World Factbook. I think they speak volumes to what is really going on in Guatemala.

1 out of 100 children are adopted to US families.
5 will not make it to their 5th birthday
16 will be born with low birth weight
22 will never see the inside of a school
28 will never learn how to read and write
54 will grow up in extreme poverty and malnourished
74 will never make it to the 7th grade
84 will need to travel over an hour to reach a health care facility

I would also add....
0 receive government sponsored assistance
0 receive grants from UNICEF for education
0 will be benefit from Government adoption programs
A nearly unnoticeable fraction will be adopted domestically by middle and upperclass families. This will not change despite how many children are prevented from leaving the country.

The focus for several years has been to shame the Guatemalan government for the number of children leaving the country. So the changes proposed by adoption critics have been aimed primarily at limiting the number of adoptions of children who will leave the country not solving the statistics above! The primary reasons for birth mother's choosing an adoption plan are poverty related. So if poverty was more of a priority, then the adoption "market" would diminish. Its hard for me to believe that birth mothers are so cavalier with accepting money for their children when the shame and the consequences are so extreme in Guatemala. If it is happening, then it is sheer desperation.

During the attempted Hague implementation of 2003, adoptions came to a grinding halt. The government was not accountable to the children's welfare...Thousands of cases were delayed casually for no decernable reason. It was not in an effort to improve or crack down on unethical activity; it was CLEARLY to STALL adoptions. Workable reform recognizes the child's welfare in the process...and this has not been addressed in current nor previous proposals supported by so called Human Rights organizations like UNICEF.

The use of offensive wording like "Baby Factory" is typical lingo used by organizations like UNICEF, press organizations and government organizations to de-personalize each child and the circumstances surrounding their adoption (who remembers Bruce Harris and the baby with the barcode?). It is unnecessary and degrading. I will go a step further and say that it is borderline racist...Why? Because, folks that use this terminology to describe children have not acknowledged their rights as human beings. Adoptive parents do not view their children as exports from Guatemala...they are human beings that need to be fed, loved and cared for. Furthermore, several large "human rights" organizations believe that a child is better off dying in their country than being adopted into a loving home. I wonder how many of the poor would agree...(Yes, I recently saw a commercial which insinuated this on none-other than Cartoon Network...a station that my daughter USED to watch).

The "Hague" does not address the welfare of the child. It does not mandate that a child is given a family nor whether the child is fed and taken care of. Those little facts are swept under the rug once restrictions keep the children from leaving the country. It neglects the birthmother's opinion for the child's best interest...and it does not condemn prolonged institutionalization which is clearly damaging to children and their chances of growing up in loving families.