Monday, August 23, 2010

NOT TRUE!

There's a long line of comments, some typical, some interesting, at the NPR story of Scott Simon's interview promoting his book about adopting two children from China, Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other. One comment is Simon's:
Thanks for all of the comments. I think this will be my last in this forum. To answer a few negative remarks: our daughters could not have been adopted by a family in China. It is against the law.
Huh?  Since when?  The same 1992 laws that allowed foreigners to adopt from China allowed for domestic adoption in China.  Amy Eldridge knows there's domestic adoption in China, citing the growth of domestic adoption as one of the reasons fewer non-special-needs kids are available for international adoption from China. This China Daily article from 2008 tracks the growth of domestic adoption in China, leading one inescapably to the conclusion that domestic adoption is not against the law in China.  The CCAA site has a category for domestic adoption -- you know, that CCAA, the Chinese government body that oversees adoption, both domestic and international?  Remember all those post-earthquake articles (see here and here  for example) about Sichuan earthquake orphans being adopted in China by Chinese? Would those articles be out there, in Chinese media no less, if domestic adoption was illegal in China? And as a last resort, one could read the actual adoption law of China, and see that no distinction in the law is made between domestic and international adopters.

Wouldn't a journalist of Scott Simon's stature have had access to this and similar information?

And yes, I felt the need to comment at the NPR site!  My last line: "I hate to see incorrect information from a noted journalist, especially from one who has two very good reasons to stay abreast of adoption in China."

6 comments:

everythingismeowsome said...

That's pretty bad. I heard he was going to be on Fresh Air today, but couldn't stomach it.....

Jeff and Madeline said...

Don't you know, once you adopt you become the expert! Geez. That is only his way of trying to shutdown negative (informative!!!!) comments thinking the uninformed or untouched will just believe him, discredit you, and move on.

Mei Ling said...

I was pretty sure I had heard that domestic adoption in China was, in fact, legal...

Maybe his daughters were special needs or something and they would have grown up with a cultural/social stigma?

*shrug*

Lee said...

I finally gave up responding to people who emailed me the article or posted it on Facebook. The comment that best summed up my feelings about the title of the book was this one:

"If the children were "meant for you" and your lovely wife, with your nice middle-class life, then surely you understand that some poor woman, without resources, in a country that forces her to give up her children, in another part of the world was "chosen" to be the bearer of those children and know the awful sorrow of having to say goodbye to them because she could not keep them."

I also like that the white guy gets to decide "their ethnicity is still only a feature of their personality, not a defining trait."

Claudia said...

GAAAAAAAAAAH! Has he fixed it?

YoonSeon said...

I really do not like him. Why is it that when an AP advocates so strongly for adoption, they become a hero? But when adoptees or natural mothers speak out, we're horrible?