As China stops foreign adoptions, MN families are in limbo

The change is “in accordance with the spirit of relevant international agreements,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a news conference in early September. She said China will not send children for adoption abroad except in certain family situations.

“We express our gratitude to those foreign governments and families who wish to adopt Chinese children for their good intentions and the love and kindness they have shown,” she said.

For three decades, adoptions from China to the U.S. had been stable and orderly, adding to the shock of the sudden stop, said Carla Thrasher, senior director of international adoption at Lifeline Children’s Services, an adoption agency used by Blacks. Of the 300 families in the U.S. looking to adopt Chinese children, 48 use Lifeline, Thrasher said.

Predictability of the adoption process was key for Janie Houser’s family of five children. In the spring of 2020, they planned to pick up an almost two-year-old girl with hydrocephalus, also known as hydrocephalus, from an orphanage in Nanjing.

Then COVID-19 hit and China suspended adoptions. At the Housers’ home in Greenfield, a half-hour drive west of the Twin Cities, the room was frozen in time as a girl in China outgrew the crib that would house her.

“We were just grasping at straws throughout the whole process,” she said. “But China was just silent, silent, silent.”