Suspended Animation: The Implementation of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in the United States and Romania

Authors

Sarah Sargent

Publication Date

3-1-2004

Document Type

Symposium

Abstract

Recent high profile cases in the popular media highlight on going problems with intercountry adoption. These cases involved the sending of infants from the United States to families in the United Kingdom who had not been approved for adoption under United Kingdom standards. This is despite the efforts in each country to enact the protections afforded to children under the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption although at the time of the adoptions, these protections were not yet in force in either country. Are these headline cases of intercountry adoption gone catastrophically wrong the norm or the exception in intercountry adoption? Although the Convention is not yet in force in the United States and only went into force in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2003, the failure of each country to adhere to the protections that the Convention would provide, as well as the overriding monetary incentive in adoption, led to high profile baby selling cases. It is beyond the scope of this Article to look in-depth at the experience of each Hague member country; but a review of the implementation efforts in Romania and the United States illustrates the difficulties in meaningful implementation and provides a study in microcosm of the successes and failures of the Convention, with implications of what the future impact of the Hague Convention will be on intercountry adoption.

DOI

10.37419/TWLR.V10.I2.3

First Page

351

Last Page

380

Recommended Citation

Sarah Sargent, Suspended Animation: The Implementation of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in the United States and Romania, 10 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 351 (2004).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.37419/TWLR.V10.I2.3