Olympics Put Spotlight on Chinese Children Waiting for Adoption
An estimated 60,000 people have traveled from all over the world to Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. China provided as many as 15 inbound flights and 13 outbound flights each day in order to accommodate athletes, staff, media and others trying to get into Beijing.
So why, given all this travel, have 400 families been waiting for two years to complete their adoption of a Chinese child?
Why can 60,000 people travel across the border for sports while hundreds of vulnerable children wait and suffer in silence, barred from meeting their adoptive families?
As president of Lifeline Children’s Services, an adoption agency, I’m confident that, with the right precautions, adoption can be resumed without significant risk.
This isn’t to downplay anyone’s commitment to safety. I commend the instinct to protect children from COVID-19 infection, and understand a national commitment to minimizing viral risk. But it’s clearly time to resume adoptions in China.
It’s time for the U.S. State Department to proactively work with China to find safe and effective ways to bring these children home. If we can safely get athletes in and out to compete for a fading crown of glory, we must prioritize the lives of these precious children.
Hundreds of parents have waited without word on the status of their adopted children, all while officials made elaborate logistical preparations for Olympics travel.
And some of these parents and children are fighting the clock. Increasingly, children who are orphaned in China have special needs. Many of these waiting children with special medical challenges are effectively being denied therapies they could receive in the U.S. — therapies and attention their soon-to-be parents desperately want to provide them.
In the meantime, the Olympics are underway. China has locked down 20 million civilians, canceled normal airline travel and shut down highways and rail travel. At the same time, the Chinese government and businesses have spent $3.9 billion preparing to welcome thousands of international travelers into Beijing for the Olympics.
A system of three massive quarantine “bubbles” will be staffed by tens of thousands of people, all recruited and trained for the event and housed nearby while the Olympic games are ongoing. There are robots making drinks and meals a la carte for those living and working on the grounds.
If all of this is possible, surely it is also possible to do what is necessary to help 400 vulnerable children and their waiting parents complete the process of adoption. Many countries have come up with quarantine and testing guidelines that serve to protect the children and families traveling across their borders to complete adoptions.
China is unique in their continued commitment to closed borders.
That said, China has long been a leader in international adoption, and we’re incredibly grateful for the relationship we’ve forged over the past decades. We look forward to uniting these beloved children with the families who wait for them here, in the United States.
These parents are committed to their children, working diligently over the past years to make sure they’re prepared for the moment adoption resumes. Their lives have been on hold since 2020, but they’ve never once stopped believing in their future together.
Children who have been waiting for so long through tragic circumstances, deserve to be united with their adoptive parents. These families deserve to know how much longer they will have to wait. They deserve a real path home, a delivery from the fear, grief and uncertainty of the past two years.
So let’s give it to them. Let’s work together to develop clear safety guidelines. Let’s work together to identify the next steps forward.
Let’s work together to reopen the Chinese adoption process, and bring joy and peace to hundreds of families after years of waiting.