Kudos to ABC on a decent report on the Guatemalan adoption quagmire. You can watch this video of the ABC news release in Wisconsin about two couples who are in the process of adopting from Guatemala right now.

Maybe I’m too optimistic, but it seems that the media is winding down from their “let’s slam Guatemalan adoptions” gig, and some are earnestly attempting to paint a more balanced picture.

I do at times have (brief) empathy for reporters who know very little about Guatemalan adoption and are given a few days to produce an article. I’ve adopted from Guatemala within the last two years and I've been researching Guatemalan adoptions intensively since I began doing this blog in March of 2007. However I still have a lot to learn, and since I’ve yet to do any “live” research on the ground in Guatemala, I’m still relying on other people’s reports and impressions on certain aspects of the adoption process.

Saturday mornings I tend to be a little more mellow than the rest of the week so that is why I’m declaring it “give journalists a break” day. There is one journalist, Laura, who has contacted me a couple times times for information on Guatemalan adoptions and written a few pieces. She is patient and a good listener as well. She has done an admirable job of presenting a balanced picture of the Guatemalan adoption scene. Here, here, and here are articles she wrote on the Casa Quivira incident, and really did a fine job. She will be traveling to Guatemala at the end of the month to interview birth mothers and is hoping to interview a family in process here in the US.

So I’d like to say thank you to all the journalists who observe, listen, research and then accurately report what they learn about their subject; reporters that are more invested in the story they are writing than making the front page by sensationalizing and exaggerating every little rumor they hear.

And speaking of rumors, there have been plenty surrounding exactly when the upcoming vote in the Guatemalan Congress on the amendments to the Ortega Law will take place. There have also been rumors about who will be the Central Authority in charge of processing adoptions when the Hague is implemented. PGN (the Attorney General’s Office) is unfortunately mentioned for this position.

Meanwhile our own country is getting ready to implement the Hague Treaty in 2008. The tentative date is April 1st. How will this affect adoptions from the US?
Canadians adopted 102 children from the US in 2005 and the Netherlands adopted 31. But according to Sunrise Adoptions, an adoption agency in the province of British, that number could decrease drastically with the implementation of the Hague Treaty. According to them:

“One of the main requirements of the Hague Convention is that the sending country (in this case the USA) must try to place the child for adoption in their home country. It will be necessary to show that attempts have been made to find parents in the USA, and that these efforts have not been successful.”

Sunrise Adoptions claims that some USA agencies have already said that they can place all their children in homes in the US; having to prove in court that no family in the US will adopt a given child would be a long, difficult and expensive process.

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