For most Americans, "international adoption" means American couples adopting children from other countries. Over the past couple decades, this type of adoption has benefited children in need of families and U.S. couples who have usually exhausted state-side options for adoption or assisted reproduction. However, when standards by foreign governments or the scruples of certain agencies have been lax, issues such as child trafficking have arisen. Other times, children have been separated from their birth parents without full documentation of the parents' voluntarily giving up their right. When countries monitor their adoption process more closely or provide adoptive parents within their own nation, the prospects for adoptions by Americans from those countries slow or dwindle.
Recently, China has taken measures that make the process longer and more expensive for an American couple to adopt a Chinese orphan. Newsweek reported the details of the shrinking pool of international children available for adoption. The magazine website's interactive chart shows trends of various countries over the past decade.
Similarly, Korea is promoting adoption within its country. The New York Times reports "last year, for the first time, more babies here [in South Korea] were adopted by South Koreans than foreigners, as the government announced recently with great fanfare: 1,388 local adoptions compared with 1,264 foreign ones. What is more, South Korea — which still is one of the top countries from which Americans adopt — has set a goal of eliminating foreign adoptions altogether by 2012."
As plans in various countries continue and succeed, the "best interests" of the children involved will most likely be served, such as preserving their cultural and ethnic identities, assisting their sense of self-identity, and maintaining any family ties that may remain. The flip-side for many Americans is the shrinking range of opportunities to address a future without children to call their own.
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