Adoption

[Hallam]

My wife and I spent 5 weeks this summer in Ukraine and adopted a two year old boy from an orphanage near Kiev. Total cost was about $16,000. We will receive a $10,000 adoption tax credit which will offset a good chunk of the cost. E-mail me personally if you want further details about the process and the adoption experience in Ukraine.
Dave Hallam

haverhill@zoomnet.net

[Volodya987]

I'm sure that you dispossed of a bit of your self, but, I find it offensive that you plonked this bit of yourself into Redmans land.

[Hallam]

Why do you find this offensive?

[Hallam]

I disposed of my money, not my self while in Ukraine. This money was in the form of "donations" to the Ukrainian officials. I really dobut if in the future my son will care much who was offended by this.

[Volodya987]

(a) I don't like selling humans, because "in less sophisticated times" it is called slavery.
(b) Humans are connected, spiritually, to their ancestors, and physically to their relatives NOW, and should know and be brought up by their kin/blood, not by people with more money than brains, (genetic) dead ends, or brainless do gooders.
(c) Because of the spiritual/genetic gulf between yourself and your purchase/slave, it is unpredictable what he/she will end up as.
(d) You're contributing to the destruction of family/spritual ties. You're making it easier for women/men to abandon their own flesh & blood, because they think some suck from Um Er i Ka will absolve me of my responsibility.
(e) You think that what you do is somehow divorced from the whole, but the whole is far bigger than the individual.

[Hallam]

I have no desire to engage you in an on going discussion about this topic. However, I would like to reply to your post.

a- I believe most reasonable people will realize that comparing adopting a child to slavery is a rediculus comparison.

b- My son spent two years in an orphanage. The Ukrainian people had the chance to adopt him while he was there. Nonone show any interest in his life during this time. If his mother or any relative had made a visit during the time he was thre, he would have become ineligable for adoption for six monthes following the visit. This never happened. By the way, the orphange was built and clothing provided in large part by brainless do gooders from USA

c- Yes it is unpredictable how his life will turn out. However, if he had remainded in the orphanage it would be very easy to predict how he would have turned out. Statistics indicate that children raised in Ukrainian orphanages have high rates of alcholism as adults, suicide and drug promblems.

d- Our son was left by his mother at the hospital at the time of his birth. She had no resources to care for him. Apparently no one else her family did or simply did not care. Only 7% of adopted Ukrainian children end up in America. I don't think our son's birth mother left him with the hopes he would end up in the US. Since no one in my sons birth family seemed interested in his life, not even to visit him in the orphanage, I don't think my adopting him contributed to the destruction of his family ties. There were none.

e- I am to brainless to understand what you mean by this.

Although I don't agree with what you have written and I find. your mentality hard to understand, I thank you for your contribution. It has given me something to think about.

Just curious. Is a child better off staying in a Ukrainian orphanage or being raised in a stable home, be it American, Italtian whatever?

Maybe on our next adoption trip you and I can get together and visit face to face!



[Edited by Hallam on 27th October 2003 at 04:25]

[millgirl]

Congratulations on your adoption! I think it is wonderful. Do you have Ukrainian heritage? Why did you choose to go to Ukraine? Best wishes to you and your new son! God Bless you.