The Advantages of International Adoption

Bigger Selection Pool

• According to Unicef and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as of March 2010, there are 6.6 million infants available abroad for adoption, while there are only 60,000 here in the United States. There are several reasons for this as Jean Nelson-Erichsen and Heino R. Erichsen explain in their book, "How to Adopt Internationally": "[there are] many older children, sibling groups, and special needs children [...] available for adoption, [but] there are relatively few healthy, U.S.-born babies compared to the number of people looking to adopt."

  According to Erichsen and Erichsen, the dilemma of adopting domestic babies is as follows: because babies are preferred over older children in many cases and more birth mothers have opted to keep their infants in the recent years, coupled with the fact that unwanted pregnancies are on the decline due to greater contraception and abortion accessibility in the United States, we end up with an insufficient selection pool of adoptable children in this country. Fewer babies available means longer wait times and more competition for the same baby with other prospective adoptive parents.

  However, it is a different story abroad where contraception and abortion are not as readily available, and the fact that there are more children in need of families outside of the United States. Due to a much wider selection pool of babies and children who need to be adopted overseas, the Erichsens claim that there is basically no competition in adopting a child; once the applicant parents are approved by the appropriate parties, the selected child is theirs.

Less Restrictive Requirements

• The requirements for adopting a child domestically have often been called "stringent;" according to Erichsen and Erichsen, some agencies have requirements where couples who do not have children have precedence over those who do. In extreme cases, agencies will only entertain couples who cannot conceive. In the case of international adoption, federal law requires prospective adoptive parents to fulfill basic criteria, such as being U.S. citizens, undergoing criminal background checks, and participating in home studies. There is no discrimination based on fertility status or how many children a couple already have, though there are additional requirements particular to the state the adoptive parents live in and requirements from the home country that the child comes from, according to the United States Department of State Office of Children's Issues. As stated by Erichsen and Erichsen, many prospective adoptive parents who get turned down by domestic agencies due to not being able to meet requirements, resort to international adoption.

Custodial Rights Clearly Defined

• Generally, in international adoption cases, the child is already an orphan, so the birth parents can not get involved during and after the adoption process; international birth parents do not have custodial rights to "claim" back their child. The Erichsens attribute this to "the stringent requirements concerning the documentation of a child's status as an orphan by both the U.S. and child-placing governments make custody suits by foreign birth parents virtually unheard of."

  On the other hand, according to an adoption fact sheet produced by Child Welfare Information Gateway, some level of contact is maintained between the birth parents and the adoptive family in domestic adoption situations. The controversial 1993 case of "Baby Jessica" paints an extreme but not impossible picture of domestic adoptions and custodial rights. In this case, the birth parents of "Baby Jessica" (the baby who was put up for adoption), had second thoughts about giving away their child. The biological parents took the necessary actions to claim back the baby and were successful in doing so; after a two-year legal struggle, "Baby Jessica" was court-ordered to be taken away from her adoptive family and returned to her biological parents, according to "The Best Interest of the Child," an article by Eleanor Willemsen and Michael Willemson.