The role of adoption in the Sanctity of Human Life

We were asked to share our thoughts on the role of international adoption in the sanctity of human life.  We shared this at church during our Sunday morning worship service this morning.

Declaring human life sacred, fighting for the Sanctity of human life…not just at conception and during pregnancy, but even after a child is born.  This is what adoption is all about.  Each and every human life on this planet is sacred to God and should be to us as believers.

We met Asa when he was five months old.  We traveled to Kyrgyzstan, spent ten days bonding with him and came home to wait for our court date to adopt him. The week after we returned home, the Kyrgyz gov’t stopped processing adoptions.  We traveled back to Kyrgyzstan to advocate for our case when he was 10 months old.  A week after we left, the Kyrgyz government wiped all of their adoption laws off the books. And we found ourselves, along with 64 other families, on a torturous 4 year wait to bring our children home.

We watched Asa grow up in pictures and rare reports from people who visited the orphanage.  Our living room had pictures of him alongside pictures of our other children.  We worried about him, we prayed for him and we waited.  We cried on his birthday and sent Christmas gifts at the holidays.  We sent money for diapers and formula.  And rejoiced with every picture we received.

We begged our government to help us bring him home. We hired an attorney to advocate for us within our own government.  We contacted journalists and international news agencies; we made friends and enemies within the Kyrgyz government.  We had our hopes raised when Kyrgyzstan passed new adoption laws in 2010 and then those hopes were crushed when a violent rebellion overthrew the Kyrgyz government a month later. 

Some people asked us, “How long are you going to wait?”  “Why don’t you move on?” “Isn’t this a lot of money to spend on a kid that isn’t yours?” and perhaps the most heartbreaking question/statement, “Isn’t this a lot of trouble to be going through for one child?  Can’t you just adopt another child?”

The answer to all of those questions was the same, “He is our son.  We will wait as long as it takes.”
We did adopt another child while we waited.  But we didn’t adopt Ezra instead of Asa.  We were committed to Asa for however long we had to be, for however long we were allowed to be committed to him.  We had decided that we would wait until the government of Kyrgyzstan told us “Come and get him, or NO, you cannot have him.”

Last year we again had our hopes raised by adoption laws being passed.  We raced to get our paperwork in and raise funds to get him home before the door slammed shut again.  Six months ago, on August 2nd, we brought Asa home.  This was almost four years to the day since we first saw his picture in an email from our agency.  The day after we took him from the orphanage, a moratorium was again declared.  Asa was one of nine children who were adopted.  Two dozen more still wait as the American families matched to them in 2008 still fight to bring them home.

But what makes this one child so special?  Weren’t there other children you could have given a home in all those years you waited?  He is just one of 147 million orphaned children in the world.  Go adopt another one.

Asa and Ezra are both special.   And we don’t say that tritely just because we are their parents. We say that because it is true.  They are each made in the image of God.  They are each special because there are no other human beings on earth like them. 

This truth is foundational to the issue of sanctity of human life.  If we truly believe that every single person is made in the image of God, that every single person is unique, then we have to believe that every single life is worth protecting and preserving.  No matter the cost.  And no matter what stage of life we find that person in.  Whether it is before that person is born or after they are born.

Ezra was born with a cleft lip and palate.  A skilled sonographer can detect a cleft lip and palate very early in a pregnancy.  In a country that allows a family to have only one child, such a defect, if detected, would make having an abortion a non-choice.  And when such a child is born, keeping him or her is simply not an option for many families in China. 

Ezra has had six surgeries in his 3.5 years of life, the most recent one this last December.  Over the next several years, he will have several more surgeries. The cultural beliefs about physical deformities and the expense of the medical care involved to care for a child with cleft lip and palate make it impossible for most families in China to keep a child born with this condition.  We rejoice that Ezra is our son, but we weep that his birth parents live in a culture where human life is not held sacred and leaving your newborn baby on the steps of a hospital is the only way to insure that they have a life. 

Asa was born with bilateral hip dysplasia.  This is a common condition and, in the western world, a very treatable condition.  In a country where medical care is limited and expensive, and for a child who has no parents to advocate for him, a simple issue like bilateral hip dysplasia is devastating.  It can be the difference between a life with choices and a life lived on the corner of an intersection begging for enough bread to make it another day. 

Due to the lack of medical care, Asa’s hips have deteriorated to the point that the only option now is to have his hips completely rebuilt.  If he had remained in Kyrgyzstan, he likely would not have had access to the treatment he needs, and would likely have ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  We rejoice that Asa is our son, we weep that because of a cultural bias, his birthmother could not keep him and his best chance at life was to be left alone in an orphanage. 

Some are called to go, some are called to send, but no one is called to sit by and watch. 

We were called to go.  And so many of you obeyed the call to send us.  The ways that the Body of Christ came together to help us bring these boys home cannot be counted. Prayers, words of encouragement, practical help of childcare and financial gifts.  You have, by your actions, declared these boys’ lives “sacred” and worth fighting for.

I saw something the other day that has kept me thinking…it said, “People give the same reasons for not adopting as people give for having an abortion.”  We don’t want more children, we can’t afford another child, we are too busy, we like things the way they are, I am not cut out to parent a child with special needs or “issues”, my family would not understand or support me, a child would disrupt my plans for the future.

Some are called to go, some are called to send, but no one is called to sit by and watch. 

Adoption is about preserving sacred human life after that precious baby comes into the world.  Ezra and Asa were both born into cultures where abortion is rampant.  And where there is zero tolerance for any special need or physical difference.  The fact that they were born at all is a miracle! In those places, where life is not held sacred, either before birth or after birth, the church has to reach in and say, “We hold these children as sacred.”  And offer them a family, a hope at life, a look at redemption.