On September 4, the US state department informed adoption service providers and waiting families that the People’s Republic of China (PRC), would “no longer carry out foreign adoption work,” except in a few narrow cases.
Several hundred American families have been matched with children in China. Many families were scheduled to bring their children home in January 2020, the same month that China closed down due to its zero-COVID policy and have been waiting for over four and a half years to bring their children home.
Aimee Welch was about to travel to China in March 2020 to finalize the adoption of a 6-year-old girl. After an agonizing past few years, Welch reflected on China’s announcement, saying, “It’s a closed door with no closure. And to think about this little girl, we promised to come for her. As a 6-year-old, how could she process the reason why we weren’t coming when we said we could?”
For years, China was “a leading country of origin” for adoptions and had one of the smoothest and most efficient programs. According to state department data between 1999 and 2023, more than 80,000 children from China were adopted into the US.
The landscape of intercountry adoption has changed over the past twenty years, and there’s been a steep decline in the number of such adoptions. In 2004, adoption across foreign borders peaked at 22,988. In 2023, only 1,275 children were welcomed into families through intercountry adoption.
The reasons for the global decline range from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, sending countries halting their programs, and countries and cultures becoming more open to domestic foster care and adoption.
Why Christians Are Abandoning the Orphanage
Another shift is that many of the children available for international adoption are older children and children with moderate to severe medical special needs. The waiting children are some of the most vulnerable, and for many, their only chance to grow up in a safe, loving, permanent home is having the option of intercountry adoption.
China’s announcement is devastating because it means that thousands of children will likely grow up in institutions and won’t have access to families around the world who would be willing to give them loving homes. It remains unclear and unlikely that China will allow the waiting families to finalize their adoptions.
The waiting Chinese children range in age from 5 to 16, and all have moderate medical needs. In addition to being separated from the families pursuing them, most of these children have gone without medical care and educational opportunities.
Christians should care about this announcement because God designed children to flourish in the safety and love of families. Each of these children is made in God’s image, and our hearts should be attuned to the suffering of the vulnerable.
Adoption is complex because it involves loss and sacrifice for all parties involved—birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees. Even though adoption is intricate, it must remain viable for children around the world who long to be raised in families where they are known and loved, not in impersonal institutions.
Although many orphanages in China seek to care well for children, institutions aren’t able to offer a child the same benefits, love, and safety as a permanent family. Children flourish to their greatest potential when their physical and emotional needs are being met in individualized ways.
Research has shown that the longer children remain in institutions, the more developmentally behind they can fall in comparison to their peers who are not in institutionalized settings. While we have great respect for professionals caring for children, there is no substitute for permanent families. One of the positive shifts over the past few years has been from Christians who understand and support local family-based care and deinstitutionalization.
Beijing’s termination of intercountry adoptions officially began on August 28, one day before US national security advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese president Xi Jinping. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and top US government officials should swiftly urge China to allow the waiting families who’ve been matched to complete their adoptions.
It is crucial that our government use all mechanisms available to seek a resolution that allows these families to complete their long-pending adoptions and ensure that the rights and well-being of children remain at the forefront of any diplomatic efforts.
My own life was forever transformed because of international adoption. I’m an adoptee from Romania. My five siblings and a cousin were all adopted internationally from Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. I remember helplessly watching President Vladimir Putin sign a law that prohibited the adoption of Russian children by US citizens beginning in 2013. It struck me that had the timing of my own family’s adoption story been different, my very own Russian siblings might never have joined our family.
My husband and I welcomed our son home through international adoption from India last year. I have the unique vantage point of being both an adoptee and an adoptive mother. My son and I, though our stories are distinct, both know what it’s like to join a family through international adoption.
When we said yes to our son’s file, we gleefully texted friends and family, joyfully showed his picture to anyone who’d pay attention, decorated his room, prayed fervently for him, and achingly counted down the days until we could be with our son.
The same was true for many of the waiting families who’ve held space in their hearts, homes, and lives for the children in China they were pursuing. Their grief and uncertainty of waiting an additional four and a half years only to hear this announcement is truly heartbreaking.
Scripture reminds us that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord” (Prov. 21:1, ESV). May we boldly ask the Lord to soften the heart of President Xi so that he might allow the waiting children to join their families. May we remember the adoptees from China, families who’ve adopted children from China, the waiting families, and the waiting children.
Christians must be at the forefront of fighting for what is right and just. We should use our voices to advocate for these children to be brought home into the permanency of loving families. Jesus loves the little children of the world, and so should we.
Chelsea Sobolik serves as director of government relations for World Relief and is the former director of public policy for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). She is the author of Called to Cultivate: A Gospel Vision for Women and Work and Longing for Motherhood: Holding on to Hope in the Midst of Childlessness.
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