[adorno]

Roy Blunt, wife adopt Russian toddler

It's great that the Russian kid will have parents who will care for him and have the means to do so.

But, why did Blunt have to go to Russia to adopt? Don't we have enough kids right here in the U.S. who need adoption into a good family?

[Menehune56]

It sounds like there's too much risk in the U.S. that the bio mother will reassert her material ''rights'' to take the kid back and the court system lets them.

[silverleaf]

Very few parents in their late 40's and early 50's have any chance to adopt an 18 month old toddler unless they seek a private placement. Furthermore the cases where birth mothers and fathers decide to reclaim their children after years of not being in their lives, gives many would-be adoptive parents pause. "Open adoption", also popular in the US, can be tantamount to deciding to adopt an entire family, not just the child. It's a choice some choose not to make.

Young children are often adopted out of foster care, by foster parents... Some of us choose not to foster because of the uncertainty and loss and heartbreak faced when a child grows dear but is never relinquished.

As poor as you may think American foster care is, you cannot compare it to the dismal conditions faced by institutionalized babies growing up in cribs in Russian hospitals and orphanages. Mr and Mrs Blunt may well have become aware of the desperate need of institutionalized Russian orphans and decided to act.

And finally, for every critic of an international adoption who snipes that "we need to take care of our own first", I say, I salute your determination to make America better by adopting an American child. Send me some pictures of your children after you adopt them.