The impending revolution : the prospect for openness in Korean-American adoptions
This thesis explores the potential for openness in international adoptions and, more specifically, in Korean-American adoptions. Open adoptions are becoming more common in the United States. More adoptees are also searching for their birthfamilies. These changes resulted from social evolutions that reduced the stigmas surrounding adoption and illegitimacy. Changes in domestic adoptions affect international adoptions because both international adoptees and their adoptive parents are exposed to the adoption rights movements in this country. It seems probable that international adoptees will desire contact with their birthfamily as domestic adoptees have. This thesis uses the trend toward openness in the United States and the regulations governing international adoptions to create a list of factors to be evaluated when determining if openness in an international adoption would be beneficial to all members of the adoption triad, specifically the birthmothers, and therefore, probable. It is important to recognize that a birthmother may not always benefit from an open adoption. These factors include residency requirements for the adoptive parents during the adoption proceedings; specific definitions of adoption; stigmatization of illegitimacy; reverence for blood ties; the national divorce rate; population control legislation; a women's health care movement; and an adoption rights movement or birthmother organizations. Evaluating the specific situation in Korea at this time, it seems unlikely that open adoptions are currently possible. However, many social changes, especially connected with the status of women in Korean society, are currently taking place that will likely make open adoptions possible in the future. Thesis Advisor: Sally Haslanger Associate Professor of Philosophy
Abortion and international adoption in post-Ceausescu Romania.
The situation of abortion an international adoption in post-Ceausescu Romania are reviewed. The legacy of that regime has been social fragmentation and dehumanization. Womens role was relegated to obligatory childbearing denial of rights policing by physicians of womens reproduction and fines for childlessness. Fertility control belonged to the states. Abortion was allowed under Ceausescu after 1966 only after having given birth to 4 live children and in 1985 to 5 children. Abortion became legal on December 26 1989 and July 16 1991 a new adoption law provided for institutionalization of orphaned children in order to curb the sale of infants and children in the adoption market. Between 1966 and 1989 9452 women died form illegal abortion. Many unwanted children were also born and abandoned. Legal abortion was a welcome relief so welcome that there were reports of 70-100 abortions/day performed in hospitals in 1990. By 1991 the ratio of abortions to live births was 3:1. Maternal mortality and the birth rate meanwhile declined. The need for family planning and health education was recognized by the government and nongovernmental organizations. Obstacles were the state control of mass media the propaganda that had been generated about the use of contraceptives and the lack of support from the Ministry of Education. AIDS is similarly ignored. Condoms are more easily available form tobacco shops; condoms pills and IUDs are less available from pharmacies and hospital clinics which are viewed with suspicion as places of illness. The cost of abortions was increased as a disincentive. The practice of international adoption was begun late under the Ceausescu regime in exchange for hard currency. Publicity about the humanitarian rescue of children and the village systemization plans led to adoption by the French and Belgians and later the international community. Adoptions increased from 480 in 1990 to 1451 in mid-1991. In July 1991 legislation was passed to stop private adoptions but requiring adoptions through institutional channels. Many children were Gypsies unwanted by the Romanians and coercion was sometimes employed in private adoptions which the patriarchal authority structure encouraged. The 1991 law will help to alleviate the abuse of children and women.
Some theoretical considerations on confidential adoptions, part I: The birth mother
In all cases of newborn adoption where placement is made directly into the permanent adoptive home, the adoptive parents become the psychological parents for that child. While birth parents give the gift of birth, they do not experience the developmental process of being a parent because in reality they are emotionally unprepared for this responsibility. We discuss the clinical meaning of a voluntary termination of parental rights, the appropriate grieving of the real narcissistic loss of the baby, and the meaning of adoption for a birth parent.There is a new trend in the field of child welfare toward “openness in adoption” which purports to change traditional confidential adoptions. We discuss the crucial aspects of the intrapsychic difference for a birth parent experiencing an open or confidential adoption.