Someone please explain to me why fertility and birthing a baby are such monumental issues for women. I am a woman, and I still don’t get it. I have never felt the desire to carry a baby in my body, feel it kick, then spend hours pushing it out. Not when there are so many children around the world who do not have a home or mother to love them. I don't feel like falling back on biology simply because I can. I don't relate to following a primitive instinct.

Human Rights Watch cannot even begin to estimate how many children live in orphanages worldwide, the number is obviously in the millions. With a planet that is showing the effects of being severely overloaded and millions of innocent children sentenced to live out their childhood in orphanages, I have a difficult time sympathizing when women have fertility issues.

I acknowledge the inalienable human “right” to procreate and that I fall into a vast minority, and I can live with that, but children shouldn't join me here. How easily children fall victim through no fault of their own, losing in bureaucratic decisions; whether war, public and foreign policy or financial constraint. Just knowing that over 1 million baby girls are abandoned *each year* in China is heartbreaking.





Knowing that about 7,000 Chinese girls came to the US last year and probably another 4-5,000 were adopted into Western Europe and China itself brings the grand total to around 12,000. Ever wonder what happens to the rest of the 1 million? They die. The "fortunate" ones who live but are not adopted, grow up and go to work at age 12, or stay and work in the same orphanage as a nanny to the next wave of baby girls. It is ALL they will ever know.

From the University of Washington's website “Babies without Boarders”, 1999 :

The numbers tell the tale: U.S. State Department records show that in 1991, just 62 Chinese children were adopted by American families and brought to the United States. Last year, there were 4,206 Chinese adoptees. During the same seven-year period, the number of international children adopted by Americans almost doubled, from 9,050 to 15,774.

I know women who feel that birthing a baby will exclude any physical or emotional problems that could be present with an adopted child; knowing my family history, I know I’ll get a near perfect child, or at least know what to expect. Unfortunately, there are no risk free babies. Risk is inherent with children, they are individuals, not little clones. There are no guarantees in life. Physical and emotional issues can reach back in time and present themselves in the present.

Dr. Julie Bledsoe, a pediatrician who runs the Center for Adoption Medicine, a clinic at the UW Medical Center-Roosevelt is the first pediatrician in the Northwest-one of only a few dozen across the United States-specializing in international adoption medicine. In her words:

"One study, sponsored by the Joint Council on International Children's Services, interviewed more than 700 families who had adopted internationally through agencies all over the country. The survey found that 90 percent of the parents felt they were with the child they were meant to be with-and that's all comers, even people whose children have major medical problems," Bledsoe says. "Those are pretty good statistics. It speaks to the fact that bonding between a parent and child goes beyond an illness."

An important fact for prospective parents to face is that no child comes with a guarantee. "It's not nice to hear that-but birth isn't risk-free, either," remarks Bledsoe. "At some point, you just have to take the leap."