Two women share their adoption stories — one a daughter, and the other a mother.
Tag Archives: Adoptions
Putting Babies Up for Adoption Isn’t an Alternative to Abortion
There are good reasons American women overwhelmingly choose having an abortion over giving up a child for adoption.
Paola Pivi’s American Moment
Behind an artist’s recasting of the Statue of Liberty with an Asian boy’s face is a searing personal story of an orphan.
Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Law on Adopting Native American Children
The Indian Child Welfare Act calls for special solicitude for the sovereignty and heritage of tribes in adoption decisions.
Tennessee Couple Says Adoption Agency Turned Them Away for Being Jewish
Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram are plaintiffs in a lawsuit claiming that state funding of a child-placing agency that discriminates based on religion is unconstitutional.
Amy Coney Barrett’s View: Adoption, Not Abortion
Readers offer personal stories to challenge the justice’s suggestion that adoption is a good alternative.
Stolen at Birth, Chilean Adoptees Uncover Their Past
Hundreds of Chileans adopted abroad have learned that they were trafficked. Investigators believe thousands of children may have been taken from their parents during Chile’s dictatorship.
Hyun Sook Han, Korean Social Worker and Adoption Pioneer, Dies at 83
Over three decades, she placed thousands of Korean orphans with families in the Midwest and made sure the children never forgot their heritage.
Amy Coney Barrett Doesn’t Understand the Trauma of Adoption
What Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t realize is that adoption is often infinitely more difficult, expensive, dangerous and potentially traumatic than terminating a pregnancy in its early stages.
The Abortion I Didn’t Have
I never thought about ending my pregnancy. Instead, at 19, I erased the future I had imagined for myself.
How ‘Shadow’ Foster Care Is Tearing Families Apart
Across the country, an unregulated system is severing parents from children, who often end up abandoned by the agencies that are supposed to protect them.
Becoming a Parent, or Deciding Not To
Betty Rollin and other readers discuss whether it is “still OK to procreate.” Also: Following the kids’ lead on masks; regulating cyberwar.
What Parental Leave Means to Dads and Non-birthing Partners
Parents told us what having paid parental leave — or not — meant for their families.
No Paid Family Leave? That Hurts Dads, Too.
Until everyone has it, paid parental leave will be seen as nonessential.
They Wanted to Foster Their Great-Grandson. Why Did New York Say No?
A lawsuit challenges New York’s system of disqualifying potential foster parents because of their criminal records.
Race Manners: Transracial Adoption and Race Politics
There’s one big thing to remember before your kids hang out.
End the Secrecy. Open Up Adoption Records.
Adopted children and their birth parents should have the chance to know one another. Also: Erasing older women; aging prisoners; talking with voters.
The Son My Sister Placed for Adoption Wants to Find Her. What Should I Do?
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on confidentiality and our claims to know our biological ancestry.
Sam Anthony, Facing Death, Found the Courage to Find His Father
After struggling with cancer for years, Sam Anthony was running out of time. Before he died, he found the courage to mail a letter that he had long been afraid to send.
Swiss Voters Approve Law Allowing Same-Sex Marriages
The legislation, endorsed in a referendum, will also allow same-sex couples to use sperm banks and to adopt children for the first time.
Adoptees Shouldn’t Have to Live in Fear of Being Deported
There’s bipartisan support for legislation that could put an end to the peril facing transnational adoptees.
Hearing His Voice Changed Everything
I never knew my father. Did he know me?
Our Foster Care System Is Fundamentally Broken
Group homes have to go before more youths are harmed.
Modern Love Podcast: She Left Me There
Kacey Vu Shap spent 25 years trying to forget the Vietnamese orphanage of his childhood. Why did he go back?
Prancer, the ‘Demonic Chihuahua,’ Finds a Home
An adoption ad said he was “literally the Chihuahua meme that describes them as being 50% hate and 50% tremble.” Undeterred, a Connecticut woman has adopted him.
For Adoptees, a Deep Yearning ‘to Know Where You Come From’
Should adoption records be open? Several adoptees, birth parents and others offer their personal, often heart-rending stories.
Why Were Strangers Allowed to Hide Part of Me From Myself?
For 50 years, my state denied me the story of my birth. All adoptees deserve better.
Woman’s Search for Her Birth Parents Leads to a Story of Murder
Kathy Gillcrist said a DNA test she took in 2017 revealed that her father may have been William Bradford Bishop Jr., a fugitive suspected of killing his wife, mother and three sons in 1976.
After Meghan and Harry’s Interview: Sympathy and Cynicism
A British reader relates how “our love was eroded” by Meghan’s public actions. Also: Censoring Dr. Seuss; gay adoption; when birth control fails.
Bethany Christian Services Will Now Help LGBTQ Parents Adopt Children
The decision comes as more cities and states require organizations to accept applications from L.G.B.T.Q. couples or risk losing government contracts.
Netherlands Halts Adoptions From Abroad After Exposing Past Abuses
An inquiry found systemic abuses like child trafficking, lack of record-keeping and government complicity until 1998. Practices have since improved, the government said, but not enough.
Advice on How to Become a Foster Parent
The process has changed during the pandemic, but getting started is easier than you might think.
Couple Forced to Adopt Their Own Children After a Surrogate Pregnancy
Tammy and Jordan Myers will have to adopt their twins after two Michigan judges denied them parental rights because the children had been carried by a surrogate.
The Ethics of Adoption in America
Gabrielle Glaser talks about “American Baby,” and Kenneth R. Rosen discusses “Troubled: The Failed Promise of America’s Behavioral Treatment Programs.”
Adoption Used to Be Hush-Hush. This Book Amplifies the Human Toll.
In “American Baby,” Gabrielle Glaser unravels family secrets and considers the motivations that wove them into American life in the first place.
In Ireland, Lifting a Veil of Prejudice Against Mixed-Race Children
The singer Jess Kavanagh is working to raise awareness about the experiences of mixed-race Irish people, particularly those born in the country’s infamous mother and baby homes.
Ireland Report on Mother and Baby Homes Reveals Abuse and Thousands of Deaths
A government commission found high death rates, unethical vaccine trials and traumatic living conditions at 18 homes that were used to house unwed mothers up until the 1990s.
Foster Care Was Always Tough. Covid-19 Made It Tougher.
While some child welfare systems have pivoted to a remote reality, advocates say it hasn’t been uniform or quick enough for the country’s 400,000 foster kids.
My Dad Is Going to Paint His Way Through the Pandemic
It’s how he loves.
Pandemic Disrupts South Korean Adoptee Reunions, but Some Find a Way
For members of the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees, returning to the country of their birth was a rite of passage — until the coronavirus pandemic changed everything. Some found a way to make the trip anyway.
An Earthquake, an Orphanage, and New Beginnings for Haitian Children in America
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 19 children from one orphanage were flown to the U.S. to be adopted by American families. One would later meet President Trump.
Amy Coney Barrett Raised Her Haitian Adoptions. Other Families and Children Were Listening.
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 19 children from one orphanage were flown to the U.S. to be adopted by American families. One would later meet President Trump.
How Many Children Do I Have? It’s Not So Simple
I gave birth to two, but I also was a foster parent to another child for a year and a half, and he is still a child of my heart.
When the Forms Don’t Fit Your Family
The majority of American families don’t fit the married mom-and-dad model, so why does heteronormative paperwork persist?
Why Did She Leave Me There?
A young man returns to the Vietnamese orphanage he had spent 25 years trying to forget.
Tiny Love Stories: ‘Monogamous Birds of N.Y.C.’
Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.
A Woman Without a Country: Adopted at Birth and Deportable at 30
She grew up thinking she was American. When she realized that she wasn’t, her quest to fix the problem put her at risk of deportation.
Former Arizona Official Pleads Guilty in Adoption Scheme
Paul D. Petersen charged as much as $30,000 to bring pregnant women into the United States and give up their newborn children for adoption, officials said.
Should Any Parents Be Instagramming Their Kids?
Sure, those of us who do may not all be Myka Stauffers. But we’re all selling some kind of story about ourselves, and using our children to do so.
Korean Adoptee Wins Landmark Case in Search for Birth Parents
In the first verdict of its kind, a South Korean court has ruled that Kara Bos, an American, is a daughter of an 85-year-old man in Seoul.