A NEWLY-ENACTED law banning adoption of Russian children by Americans prompted immediate outrage this week by the American press and politicians, who generally consider any desire by an American for a foreign child to be sacred and inviolable. The ban was signed into law by Vladimir Putin yesterday and is part of a larger bill that has nothing to do with adoption. John McCain, who has a daughter adopted from Bangladesh, called it “shameful and appalling.” According to The New York Times, McCain said, “The effects of this legislation are cruel and malicious. To punish innocent babies and children over a political disagreement between our governments is a new low, even for Putin’s Russia.”

Americans believe they have a right to any child anywhere who may be suffering.

I highly recommend this presentation, “International Adoption: In Whose Best Interest?” by Peter Dodds, an eloquent critic of the adoption industry and the modern practice of sending children far from their native countries to homes of affluent Westerners, typically those who have put off having children of their own until it is too late. The transnational adoption industry is largely unregulated, reduces children to commodities and violates their inborn sense of cultural identity. Many children who are adopted have at least one parent who is alive.

Putin, to his credit, brushed aside the idea that the thousands of adoptions a year by Americans were justified because America is a wealthier nation.

“There are probably many places in the world where living standards are better than ours. So what? Shall we send all children there, or move there ourselves?”

The new adoption ban was included in a bill that was a response to the American Magnitsky Act, signed into law this month, which bars Russians involved in “human rights” violations from traveling to the United States.

—- Comments —

Daniel S. writes:

I say good for Vladimir Putin and the Russian people for enacting said legislation. And it is none of John McCain’s business; though of course the man never misses a chance to spew his Slavophobia and bash Russia especially. I loath it when foreign leftists like Piers Morgan lecture Americans about how they should enact draconian gun control measures that would essentially abolish the second amendment, likewise I cringe to hear self-righteous American politicians like John McCain and Hillary Clinton pontificating about how Russia and other Eastern European countries aren’t sufficiently democratic or respecting of homosexualism or feminism.