Second of two parts


When Lyubov Selyavina started processing international adoptions, her bosses at city hall raised a fuss. "Why are you exporting our national pride?" they demanded of her.


"What kind of pride do we have if our children are sitting in orphanages?" responded Selyavina, director of the Moscow Adoption Center. "A child's first right is to have a family."


Three years and several hundred children later, Selyavina no longer gets complaints. As long as the process is legal, the powers-that-be no longer object.


But even though the local authorities are on her side, Selyavina and other officials facilitating adoptions for foreigners still face an uphill battle in parliament, where Duma members have politicized the issue with sensationalized accusations of baby trading. Many would like to ban the flow of children abroad altogether, and sharply criticized a draft law that was introduced to the Duma this July proposing new tighter regulations.


The draft introduces two major changes to the current adoption law, banning baby brokers and permitting adoption by foreigners only after all avenues of placing the child in a Russian home have been explored.


If passed, the law would supersede current legislation prohibiting international adoption unless it is in the medical interests of the child. Instead, to facilitate matches within Russia, the Education Ministry plans to create a centralized orphan information exchange, so that a child available for adoption in Vladivostok might find his way to an eager family in Murmansk.


According to Irina Volodina, the Education Ministry official in charge of adoption, the first priority is to place a child locally, and only after a family cannot be found within the district should a second comprehensive search begin at the regional level. If no match is made within the region, the child's data is to be passed on to the national level. Only after the country has been scoured unsuccessfully for a willing Russian home may the child be put up for international adoption where foreigners have been known to pay agency fees of $15,000 to $25,000.


This multilevel search process, according to Volodina, should take six months. But with no computerized data base and a limited history of information exchange from region to region, it is likely to take a great deal longer.


"This bureaucratic delay of looking at various levels -- even in the U.S. with its efficient search systems -- would probably tie children in orphanages longer than need be," said William Pierce, an international adoption specialist at the National Council for Adoption in Washington. "How can you ever fairly say you have checked all the way from Arkhangelsk to Russia's southern borders to find a family?"


Even at the local level, bureaucratic delays and the tortoise-like pace of information exchange can delay the most straightforward adoptions.


"The smarter parents start looking for themselves, going from orphanage to orphanage," said Marina Levina, director of Roditelsky Most, a St. Petersburg charitable agency that handles national adoptions. "Otherwise they may wait forever." As a result there are even fewer cases of interregional adoption.


In most regions one inspector is in charge of everything from schooling to housing to juvenile delinquency. And for those overworked, underpaid bureaucrats who are willing to forge a document or withhold information about a particular child for a little extra money, there is little chance of being caught.


The new law is not very harsh against those who present false information, calling for no more than a reprimand or a fine. More severe action is saved for the so-called baby brokers: Anyone assisting in adoption and receiving a fee may serve one to three years in prison.


The new law also calls for foreign adoption agencies to be accredited in Russia, and prohibits adoptions for foreigners who are not represented by such an agency.


This will make official a policy many orphanages have already adopted, as Carolyn Miller discovered when she arrived in Moscow from Toronto a month ago hoping to adopt two children. She was stonewalled for weeks by adoption officials who refused to deal with her unless she was represented by an agency.


"I was ready to go home," said Miller, 43, who finally found an orphanage director who would help her. "It would have broken my heart, but there is no way I am willing to buy a child." Miller and her husband refused to go through an agency because they believe paying the exorbitant agency fees is equivalent to buying babies. Instead of the $20,000 in agency fees, Miller managed to collect all the necessary documents and translations on her own for a few thousand dollars.


While foreigners like Miller may be suspicious of high-charging agencies, Russian officials are just as wary of parents working on their own. Selyavina claims this policy is necessary to weed out the couples who should never become parents. In spite of all the safeguards the new legislation aims to set in place, international adoption still sparks opposition in parliament. But for officials like Volodina and Selyavina, whose photo albums are full of orphans suffering from deformities and serious illness, international adoption remains a last hope for hard luck cases.