Dateline NBC Story

The big Dateline NBC Story on Guatemalan adoptions was on last Sunday night. I didn't want this story to air. Simply for selfish reasons of course because I knew I would be faced with questions from friends and family that I might not be able to adequately answer. What's new. I knew the story would focus on the dark side of Guatemalan adoptions, and yes, there is a dark side, but it is the minority of cases. This dark side is the main reason cited by adoption reform advocates who helped pass the new law in Guatemala in December. Whether the new law will ultimately improves the lives of children in Guatemala is debatable since it doesn't really address most of the root causes of why families give up their children for adoption in the first place. Most other Latin American countries are open to intercountry adoption in theory, but in reality, the social infrastructure is not in place to support it. That is the likely result in Guatemala as well for the future.

I hope everyone realizes that not all Guatemalan adoptions are corrupt. Most are not. Any system with a financial incentive and terrible law enforcement can lead to corruption. My agency has all the safeguards in place to ensure my adoption is being handled ethically and responsibly. My agency has never worked with any of the corrupt adoption facilitators discussed on the Dateline program and only works with licensed attorneys with excellent track records. Everything in my paperwork has made sense from the beginning of my process, and I have never for one moment thought that something didn't add up. There are few certainties in life, but I do have great confidence that my adoption is like thousands before mine -totally above board and ethical. I want to protect Abby as much as possible from any stigma that might be attached to her simply because she was adopted from Guatemala. Let's not perpetuate the stigma by painting too broad a brush here. It is terribly unfair to the children. By the time Abby is old enough to ask questions, I will take her through step by step how her adoption was handled from beginining to end. He birth mother acted knowingly and selflessly by giving Abby up for adoption, and I am forever grateful to her for giving me an opportunity to adopt her.