Vietnam’s National Assembly struggles to answer a familiar but labyrinthine question: how do you create an international adoption framework that doesn’t allow for abuse?

Last month, an adoption fraud trial opened in Vietnam, naming sixteen charity and medical workers as defendants. All of the individuals were found guilty of fraud in over 266 adoptions, generating fake documents for adoption agencies to facilitate foreign adoptions. (The official charge was “abuse of official position”, and six of the defendants were sentenced to jail time.) In some cases, the infants’ parents had not actually given their consent.

The widespread nature of the fraud has persuaded many countries (including the United States) to halt Vietnamese adoptions without exception. Ireland has said that an adoption of a Vietnamese baby under the current law “might not be recognized” by the state. The international attention has granted a renewed sense of urgency to the National Assembly’s pending revisions of its adoption law.

The significance of foreign adoptions in Vietnam can be put into context by sheer numbers: of the 20,000 infants adopted in the last five years, 7,000 were adopted by international petitioners. To ensure the legitimacy of future foreign adoptions, changes are being considered for both the structure and oversight of the process. Under new law (Draft Article 15), a child will first be eligible for adoption within Vietnam. After a 30-day period, if the child has not found a placement, foreign families may pursue adoption of the child. The only children for whom this regulation would not apply are those suffering from specific disabilities, HIV/AIDS, or another serious illness. The new law would also increase the involvement of the Ministry of Justice and other state agencies; the former would be inserted in the process as a liaison between foreign parents and domestic, eligible infants. Some disagreement remains, particularly as to whether or not the Ministry of Justice is well-suited for this proposed role.

Following a polemic debate, the Parliament in Uruguay passed a new law earlier this month legalizing same-sex couple adoption. Like most of the continent, Uruguay has a strong Roman Catholic culture and history; no other Latin American country has passed similar law. Church leaders quickly renounced the decision, claiming that children placed in gay homes would be blasphemously “conditioned”. The bill also encountered opposition from the country’s central-right Nationalist Party.

This new law is one in a string of laws directed at broadening rights within Uruguay’s gay community. In 2007, the country allowed homosexuals to have civil unions (although not “marriages”) and earlier this year, Parliament voted to relax some of the restrictions on gays in the military.

Nonetheless, the decision may have more to do with the needs of Uruguayan children than the rights of gay adults. Both sides of the debate claim to have the “higher interest” of the child in focus, with the undisputed need to find homes for displaced children in conflict with what the Bishop’s Conference of Uruguay claims is the child’s interest in having a traditional mother-father family structure.

Even for those in support of the law, there are two outstanding concerns. First, the bill still requires President Vazquez’s signature. More significantly, the bill may not actually make adoption as accessible to same-sex couples as initial media coverage purported. The law’s text says nothing about same-sex couple adoptions – it simply does not prohibit them. The stipulation that the adopted child take the surname of the father and the mother might, depending on interpretation, complicate the adoption process for homosexuals such that it is effectively illegal.

The legalization of homosexual couple adoption may seem ‘settled’ in the United States, but three states continue to prohibit same-sex couple foster care or adoption. Only twelve states have made it illegal to deny a couple the right to adopt on the basis of sexual orientation. Opinion polls suggest that the American public remains divided on the issue. What do you think: is it in the best interest of the child to find a happy, healthy home, or does a displaced child have a protectable interest in a traditional family paradigm?

INTERDISCIPLINARY CHILD WELFARE INSTITUTE (ICWI)
At Capital University Law School
May 18 - 22, 2009
Columbus, Ohio

For more information visit the ICWI website.

Capital University Law School, in conjunction with the National Center for Adoption Law and Policy, is pleased to offer a one-week intensive Interdisciplinary Child Welfare Institute (ICWI). This two-credit course will provide law students and graduate level social work students with a mutual understanding of the legal and sociological principles central to child welfare practice. In the increasingly complex world of child welfare, quality collaboration among legal and social work professionals is critical to keeping children safe and strengthening families. Interdisciplinary learning provides a common foundation for students from different professional programs and an environment for developing the skills required of future child welfare attorneys and social workers.

It was reported in the Volokh Conspiracy a couple of weeks ago that the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel decided that children of couples in civil unions are eligible for Social Security benefits. The decision was reached when the Office decided that the Social Security Act gives eligibility for benefits to any child who can “inherit from a parent regardless of marital status of the parent.”

The Office’s interpretation:

Although DOMA limits the definition of “marriage” and “spouse” for purposes of federal law, the Social Security Act does not condition eligibility for CIB [child's insurance benefits] on the existence of a marriage or on the federal rights of a spouse in the circumstances of this case; rather, eligibility turns upon the State’s recognition of a parent-child relationship, and specifically, the right to inherit as a child under state law. A child’s inheritance rights under state law may be independent of the existence of a marriage or spousal relationship, and that is indeed the case in Vermont. Accordingly, we conclude that nothing in DOMA would prevent the non-biological child of a partner in a Vermont civil union from receiving CIB under the Social Security Act.

The Office of Legal Counsel’s Opinion

Additional information at law.com

Erika Asgiersson’s article Autonomy Under 18 examines the recent publication of Hidden in Plain Sight: The Tragedy of Children’s Rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate by child advocate and professor Barbara Bennett Woodhouse

A recurring subject throughout the book is foster care; Woodhouse’s main criticism is that the system too often ignores the child’s voice when determining best interests. While most have turned away from the notion that children are objects without autonomy, her examples show that the foster care system often gets stuck in old reasoning. Lost in the system, there can be a lack of concern to satisfy a child’s need for a sense of belonging and family relationships. “Abused and neglected children in state custody have fewer rights than accused criminals,” Woodhouse argues.

Woodhouse also criticizes the foster care system for relying too heavily on removing children from their homes. While she recognizes that there are cases where the best option is to remove the child from the home, the decision must be made carefully. A recent article from Ms. Magazine shares this same frustration as it cites the overrepresentation of poor, black youth in the foster care system not because their mothers are unfit, but because poverty is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed. Poor mothers predictability have a harder time providing basic needs for their children, but as the article points out, “race and poverty should not be a barrier to raising one’s children.” Addressing poverty first will prevent children from unnecessarily being placed in the foster care system.

The book also details the wider historical treatment of children in American society:

Hidden in Plain Sight tells the tragic untold story of children’s rights in America. It asks why the United States today, alone among nations, rejects the most universally embraced human-rights document in history, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This book is a call to arms for America to again be a leader in human rights, and to join the rest of the civilized world in recognizing that the thirst for justice is not for adults alone.

Barbara Bennett Woodhouse explores the meaning of children’s rights throughout American history, interweaving the childhood stories of iconic figures such as Benjamin Franklin with those of children less known but no less courageous, like the heroic youngsters who marched for civil rights. How did America become a place where twelve-year-old Lionel Tate could be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1999 death of a young playmate? In answering questions like this, Woodhouse challenges those who misguidedly believe that America’s children already have more rights than they need, or that children’s rights pose a threat to parental autonomy or family values. She reveals why fundamental human rights and principles of dignity, equality, privacy, protection, and voice are essential to a child’s journey into adulthood, and why understanding rights for children leads to a better understanding of human rights for all.