Local musician Jim Duff has the blues

Comment by drzrocks: Wednesday, July 14

I never heard anything impressive on his site at all....read more...

Humane Society comes under fire in local farming magazine

Comment by Truthseekerme: Thursday, July 8

Patti Strand, of the National Animal Interest Alliance, author of "The Hijacking of the Humane Movem...read more...

Humane Society comes under fire in local farming magazine

Comment by HillaryatHSUS: Wednesday, July 7

I work at the HSUS, and I’ve also worked at several animal shelters. Shelters do great work – ad...read more...

» Read more recent story comments
» Register for your account

There are two stories in this week’s paper you should read, and they both involve children. The first is actually two stories of your neighbors adopting children overseas and bringing them into loving homes here in Kentucky. The other story is an ugly account of a local father/son team that stand accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a 13 year-old Ohio girl.

There are many bad people in the world, people who would hurt and abuse the most vulnerable, but for the most part, when given the chance, people are caring, generous and protective of children.

There are many of us who would open our homes to children in need were it not for a daunting bureaucracy and overwhelming costs associated with adoption.

It speaks well of your neighbors who have adopted that they have tenaciously persevered and sacrificed to give needy children good homes, but frankly, it shouldn’t be this difficult or expensive

The problem is that adoption and foster care are businesses, big businesses. To put it in proportion, there are around 6,800 kids in foster care in Kentucky, and that costs taxpayers around $50 million per year. Federal statistics say that the average cost of domestic adoption is more than $20,000 dollars, foreign adoption can cost far more. Anytime you have an industry whose business volume is measured in the billions of dollars (more than $3 billion last year), there will be institutional resistance to changing anything that cuts into that volume; it is a business after all.

Sadly, both domestic and foreign adoption has declined over the past five years, while the number of orphans entering the system has remained relatively steady. The fact that the cost of adoption has increased defies the basic tenets of microeconomics; a surplus of needy children should lower the cost, but the huge amounts of cash involved means that regulations will remain in place that masquerade as protection against predators like those in the second story, while squeezing the last penny possible out of families like those in the first.

Story comments

No comments on this article yet.

Posting comments on this web site requires free registration.

• Create your account
• Log in to your account