Minnesota families in limbo as China halts foreign adoptions

ESKO, MINN. — It had been a long time since Kelly Black looked through the big cardboard box stored in the back of a closet.

There was the sweatshirt she had specially designed that would no longer fit Judah. Blue galoshes. A little baseball glove. Outlines of Mandarin characters to help their other kids learn the language. A stuffed lion that plays Chinese songs if you pull its cord.

Six years of hopeful purchases, ready for the day they could finally bring the little boy from the Chinese orphanage to northern Minnesota. Now the Blacks don’t know if they will ever adopt Judah, or what will happen to the boy whose picture is everywhere in their Esko home.

Chinese authorities announced a few months ago that they are ceasing international adoptions, ending a practice that has led to roughly 160,000 Chinese kids being adopted across the world over the past three decades.

The policy change — lamented by some, cheered by others — left about 300 U.S. families with a pending adoption in limbo. Nearly all of those children reportedly have a serious illness or disability, and many are older, like now-8-year-old Judah, who has Down syndrome. Those kids are unlikely to be adopted in their home country, experts say.

“No one is questioning China’s right to end the program,” Black said. “But if it’s going to end, then it should end well, and really with uniting the last 300 already-matched children with their families.”

Families like the Blacks are urging politicians, including members of Congress, governors and President Joe Biden, to advocate on their behalf. But their plight is subject to geopolitics they cannot control or fully understand.

Hannah Black, 10, started a card to the president on a piece of folded computer paper. On the front she drew a red heart below the words “Mr. Biden.” Inside she wrote, “Dear Mr. Biden, I have a brother in China named Judah (Ju-dah) and we can’t bring him home because the” ...

She still needs to put into words what is keeping her brother.

Families across the world started adopting children from China after the country opened up foreign adoptions in 1992. The country’s one-child policy, instituted about a decade before that, resulted in many children — particularly girls — stuck in orphanages, known as children’s homes.

The decades that followed were fraught with ethical concerns and complexities. Stories emerged of kids being abducted and put up for foreign adoption to make money. Adoptees have grappled with the identity and cultural challenges and trauma of being removed from their birth country.

Over the years, there’s been a broader shift away from international adoptions, likely due in part to more stringent standards intended to prevent child trafficking and adoptions that aren’t in a kid’s best interest. U.S. adoptions of children from other countries has plummeted over the past two decades, according to State Department data.

China ended its one-child policy ended in 2015 and the country’s population is now in decline, with the country reporting more deaths than births for the first time in 2022.

China’s state-sponsored media has suggested adoptions are not needed because the country is able to care for the children, but the full reason is “shrouded in mystery,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.

The change is “in line with the spirit of relevant international covenants,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a news conference in early September. She said China will not send children abroad for adoption, apart from certain family situations.

“We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown,” she said.

For three decades, adoptions from China to the U.S. were steady and streamlined, compounding the shock of the abrupt halt, said Karla Thrasher, the senior director of international adoption at Lifeline Children’s Services, the adoption agency the Blacks use. Of the 300 U.S. families with pending adoptions of Chinese children, Thrasher said 48 are using Lifeline.

Predictability in the adoption process was key for Jeni Houser’s family, which includes five kids. In spring of 2020, they planned to pick up an almost 2-year-old girl who had hydrocephalus, also known as water on the brain, from a Nanjing orphanage.

Then COVID-19 hit and China paused adoptions. In the Housers’ Greenfield home a half-hour west of the Twin Cities, a room has remained frozen in time while the girl in China outgrew the crib that was supposed to hold her.

“Through the entire process, we were just grasping at straws,” she said. “But China was just silent, silent, silent.”

After China’s announcement that it was ending adoptions, she contacted politicians, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is co-chair of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.

Klobuchar said in a statement that she and group of lawmakers have been asking the State Department to provide clarity for the U.S. families and to call on the Chinese government to complete their pending adoptions. In early November, more than 100 Congressional members sent a letter to Biden urging him to work on the families’ behalf.

Advocates hoped Biden would bring it up a couple weeks ago when he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Lima. But a rundown of their discussion does not say the issue was broached.

However, a Department of State spokesperson said the White House has raised the issue with Chinese interlocutors, including in Lima, and the White House and Department of State continue to press for the U.S. families to be able to complete the adoptions.

For a while, Houser joined video calls with other families where federal officials talked about the situation. But she has stopped tuning in.

“Every single time the answer is, ‘We have no more information. We have advocated for you, and China will not respond,’” she said.

Thrasher said they don’t know whether anyone has told children with pending adoptions that the families that planned to adopt them aren’t able to. She said they are continuing to advocate, but if they exhaust all options, they will look for ways to care for the kids from afar, such as supporting their education or providing resources to orphanages.

When those kids age out of the institutions they often don’t have the education, vocational skills or support they need, she said.

“Those children will basically be on the street,” Thrasher said. “The future is just really bleak.”

Black and her husband, Andrew, had planned to adopt a child but didn’t know whether it would be a domestic or international adoption. Then they saw the adoption profile for a 2-year-old boy in China with down syndrome and the advocacy name “Judah.”

“There was just like this overwhelming response that this is my child,” she said. “It was like this, ‘I’m your mom,’ type of response. I would say from that point on it was just this done deal. We would do whatever we need to do to care for you.”

After six years of waiting, she’s still ready for the word that they can go pick him up. But updates and pictures from his orphanage stopped coming long ago.

Her last attempt to reach him was around his eighth birthday this spring, which falls close to Mother’s Day. She asked their contact in China, who has tried to help them stay in touch with the orphanage, to pass along their gratitude to Judah’s foster mom in the orphanage and a request.

“If you’d be willing to let the orphanage director know that we wanted to wish him a happy birthday,” Black wrote. “And that we are still waiting and ready to be his family when the program moves forward.”