Haitian Orphans and My Infertility: What’s the Connection?
As the death toll reaches 200,000 in Haiti after the January 12th earthquake, and as we continue to see pictures of the survivors who muddle through this unthinkable heartbreak, one developing story that haunts me is the story of Haiti’s 33 orphans.
As you have probably seen by now, 10 American Baptists were detained while trying to leave Haiti illegally with Haitian orphans, many of whom it turns out, were not orphaned. They were not legally eligible for adoption.
And it’s just awful. Multiple layers of tragedy bleed through all of the unanswered questions:
1. Did their parents willingly give up their kids for adoption? According to yesterday’s New York Times article, several Haitian parents sent their children with the missionaries because their children were offered educational opportunities in the Dominican Republic. “If someone offers to take my children to paradise”, one of the parents said, “am I supposed to say no?” These are called ‘economic’ orphans.
2. Did the missionaries really try to take the kids out of the country because they were motivated by the desire to give the kids a better life? According to the AP, a spokeswoman for the group of detained Baptists acknowledged that they knew they didn’t have the right paperwork for the kids, and were just trying to do the Christian thing by getting them out of horrifying conditions. Or were they motivated by greed? We know that international adoptions can yield upwards of $30,000.
3. And no matter what the root cause of this ‘misunderstanding’, and general lack of compliance with international adoption law, the real question is: what will happen to the 33 Haitian ‘orphans’?
During the summer of 1999, I lived in Haiti for three months, volunteering for a human rights organization. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life because every day I was greeted with incredible warmth, kindness, and love from people who didn’t know me and who, for the most part, survived on next to nothing.
These are people who have no running water, no consistent food supply, no real source of income, no roads, no convenient transportation. I mean, as an American, it’s really hard to even imagine how they live, unless you have experienced it firsthand.
The need there–even in 1999– was incredible. While in Haiti, I was overwhelmed by what I saw and how I privileged I felt as ’struggling graduate student’. I can’t even imagine what it must be like there now since the earthquake and I don’t know what has happened to the people that treated me with such incredible kindness.
But the images that tug at my heart the most, images that have kept me up at night, are the images of this week’s orphans returning home and being totally and completely stranded.
Ironically, from the moment the Haitian story broke, I found myself saying from time to time, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could adopt a Haitian child who lost her parents? And, that spontaneous question answered for me a question that has plagued for some time–”yes,” I heard my heart whisper, “I could love another woman’s child as my own.”
The extra irony here is that I can’t adopt internationally because I’m in a same-sex marriage, but I’m not going to draft that rant right now.
The truth of the matter is that the infertility journey broke open my heart. I will forever carry this incredible sense of loss, and there is a part of me that will always struggle in “the land of what ifs,” but it also opened me up to understand deep trauma and incredible loss in ways I never imagined.
But my newfound empathy is really just a stark consolation. And so I give, I give money to SOS Children’s Villages because they are committed to working with Haiti’s orphans and I give time to Haitian groups, as a volunteer but, let’s face it, losses can never really be regained, merely transformed.
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