Roelie Post was a woman who innocently started (with little experience) dealing with international or inter-country orphan adoption, but after reading her account of Romania adopting out orphans, starting way back in 1989, you could be forgiven for wondering how she coped. Without giving away too much of her life story, Ms. Post suffered from abuses to Children Services, bias and then straight-out slander by the media and then, if that was not enough, she suffered and continues to suffer from intimidation and straight-out threats to her life.
Ms. Post had stood up to Washington, Rome, Paris and Israel, you see, and said that, only in exceptional circumstances, could a child be adopted out of Romania. Each and every country, including Romania, must fix its' own inherent problems, when it comes to 'exporting' out babies and children. Essentially, the Eastern European Wall had collapsed in 1989 and the world was shocked when it saw a cold war policy by the Romanian government demanding women bear multiple children to repopulate its' country. Contraception had been banned ~ indeed, it was illegal. You see Romania back in 1989 was very very poor and women, in particular, were literary too poor to look after and raise multiple children.
This person believed it was a miracle, that a woman and her department, could turn around the problems that had engulfed Romania. But, it took many years for this to happen and a few governments along the way. It wasn't until 2005 that the Abandonment Law was finally abolished where women and families had to look after their new born children and could not just simply dump them at 'safe haven sites' or on the street and children could not be seen as a commodity that could be sold. "It is incompatible to put a price on a child's head for whoever wants to buy them". Romania, slowly but surely reduced abandonment of children through introducing contraception(!), reducing adoption agencies ~ the higher the number of agencies the higher the chances of orphaning off children (lower the demand drive market) and increase foster care which is cheaper and better than institutional care.
Every country is different, but some of the fundamentals will always stay the same. International Adoption is demand driven and undermines the very social support system which is there to support children. 'It is incompatible to put a price on a child's head for whoever wants to buy them'. Indeed, it is a 'universal human right that care is in place for children' and, to say it again, it is incompatible to put a price tag on them. Well done, Roelie Post. Well done I say.