Aimee Welch
The Welch family with a photo of Penelope, who they pledged to adopt
Eight-year-old Grace Welch has been waiting since 2019 for her older sister to occupy the bed next to hers.
Her parents told her that Penelope, a 10-year-old girl born in China, would join the family who lives in Kentucky in the United States.
Grace, also adopted from China, was born without her left forearm. Her mother, Aimee Welch, said Penelope also had a “serious but manageable” special need, although she did not wish to reveal it.
The Welch family, which has four biological sons, sought to adopt children with disabilities after the birth of an unarmed nephew.
“He taught us what a person with limb differences can accomplish with the right love and support. Her birth set us on the path to adopting Grace,” Ms. Welch said. “We believe in the dignity and value of each person, as they are, in all their diversity. »
But the pandemic delayed their plans.
Then, in September, China announced it was halting international adoptions, including in cases where families were already matched with adopted children.
This painful wait will particularly determine the fate of the most vulnerable Chinese children, those with special needs.
Up-to-date statistics are not readily available, but Beijing's Ministry of Civil Affairs said 95% of international adoptions between 2014 and 2018 involved children with disabilities.
Aimee Welch
Grace, 6 years old, has been waiting since 2019 for her older sister to occupy the bed next to hers
These children “will have no future” without international adoption because they are unlikely to be adopted domestically, says Huang Yanzhong, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations.
Ms Welch said Grace was particularly saddened by the news that Penelope might never come home: “She told me, 'We were supposed to be a family of eight so everyone could have a boyfriend. '”
Ms Welch called on China to “keep the promises made to children already matched with adoptive parents”.
Beijing has made no comment since the September announcement, when it thanked the families for their “love in adopting Chinese children.” She said the ban was in line with international agreements and showed “China's comprehensive development and progress.”
Disabled life in China
China began allowing international adoptions in 1992, as the country opened up, and they peaked in the mid-2000s. More than 160,000 children have been adopted by families around the world in the past three decades.
A controversial one-child policy has forced families to abandon their children, especially girls and children with special needs. Social stigma around disability has also led to more children with special needs ending up in orphanages.
Dani Nelson, who was adopted from the United States in 2017, said she received basic care at an orphanage in the southwestern city of Guiyang, but it “wasn't enough for me to live a normal life.
The 21-year-old was born with spina bifida – a spinal abnormality – and hydrocephalus, a neurological disorder that causes water to build up around her brain.
During her first three years in the United States, she underwent seven surgeries that she said helped her “lead a normal life.”
“I joined a swim team. I got a job…Adoption saved my life,” said Ms Nelson, who now works as a cashier at a cafe.
As in many Asian societies, people with disabilities in China face discrimination and are sometimes even considered a source of “bad luck.”
China has made some progress in improving accessibility for people with disabilities, but public infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is still weaker than that in Western countries. Only recently has it begun to develop educational facilities and study programs for students with special needs.
Only the most severely disabled receive financial assistance from the government.
The BBC has previously interviewed Chinese adults with special needs whose parents had to stop working to care for them.
Aware of these challenges, waiting families worry about the fate of the children they were supposed to adopt, some of whom need emergency medical care.
Meghan and David Briggs were matched with a boy in Zhengzhou, Henan, in 2020. The 10-year-old has a “moderate special need that requires medical intervention”, Ms Briggs said.
The couple lives with their biological son, also 10, in Pennsylvania. Mr. Briggs said the family made a “deliberate choice” to adopt a child who is more vulnerable and less likely to benefit from specialized care and therapy in an institution in China than in a family in the United States. .
“Such care constitutes a financial and emotional responsibility. We were willing to provide this care because we consider this child our family,” said Mr. Briggs, himself adopted from South Korea.
“His own government promised him a family,” Ms Briggs said. “It is the children who will suffer from this decision,” she said.
Meghan Briggs
David and Meghan Briggs, seen here with their biological son, were matched with a boy in Zhengzhou in 2020
A feeling of relief for some
Not everyone agrees.
Some, including adult adoptees, are relieved to learn that Beijing has ended overseas adoption.
“My experience as a transracial adoptee growing up in a predominantly white Christian town is that you are often looked down upon. I was constantly reminded that I didn’t belong,” said Lucy Sheen, adopted by a white family in the United Kingdom.
Ms Sheen, now in her 60s, added that her adoptive family knew little about her Chinese culture and heritage. One day, he was criticized for asking to learn Mandarin.
“Some adopters have a 'white savior' mentality or have the ideology that they are taking us to where they come from because 'the West is best', I think that needs to change,” he said. she added.
Nanchang Project, a nonprofit group that helps connect adoptees to their roots in China, said it feels “a sense of relief that no child will be separated from their birthplace, culture and of his identity.
“We hope this moment can shift the focus to the need for post-adoption services to support Chinese adoptees and their families for the remainder of their lives,” the group said in a statement last month.
Under the new policy, China will only send children abroad for adoption if the adoptive parents are blood relatives. The BBC understands that US authorities are in talks with Beijing to see whether a new exception can be granted to waiting families.
John and Anne Contant, who were matched with five-year-old Corrine in 2019, said they “honored China's decision to change course in its adoption policy”.
“If there are more families who want to adopt domestically, that's wonderful… We ask that these 300 children who have been matched (with families in the United States) be allowed to return home,” he said. he declared.
The couple lives in Chicago with six children. Three of them were adopted from China and live with albinism, just like Corinne.
The Contants spoke to Corinne via WeChat when their plans to travel to China were scrapped due to the pandemic.
“Corinne met our children, saw her house and the room that had been prepared for her, and felt the excitement our children felt in anticipation of her arrival,” Mr Contant said.
“During one of our conversations, she pointedly asked, 'When are you coming to pick me up?' » »
