British double standards on China - adoption

Following my previous post concerning Elton John's plans to adopt a child from the Ukraine (which did not, in the end, materialise) Roy Peachey paid me the compliment of contacting me to plead the cause for inter-country adoption. Perhaps I had given the impression that I was against such adoption per se, but this is certainly not the case. I think my views are pretty well summed up by Mr Peachey himself in his article published in The Catholic Herald last July:

The ideal scenario, as the Hague Convention recognises, is for children to be raised by their birth parents but when that is not possible adoption can provide the happiness, love and understanding of which the Convention speaks.

The most obvious way for this to take place is through domestic adoption. Indeed, the many signatories to the Hague Convention recognise that it is preferable for children to be adopted within their own country but they also acknowledge that the hard reality is that there are hundreds of thousands of children worldwide for whom this is not possible. Inter-country adoption therefore meets an obvious and immediate need.

However, on reading his article, I linked it with the thoughts expressed by Fr Ray Blake in his post Empire State is Red and Babies are drowned in buckets in which he comments on the celebrations for a Republic that has cost and continues to cost the lives of millions of innocent human beings. Mr Peachey comments on the double standards of our government that allows the adoption of children from Chinese adoption agencies that restrict adoption to prospective parents who are heterosexual and married but which will not allow the Catholic adoption agencies in Britain to do the same:

What is not well known is that, in assessing prospective adopters, the British authorities are required to abide by very specific rules and regulations imposed by the country from which the child is to be adopted. In China's case, for example, neither unmarried couples nor single people may adopt.

Since adoption from China is both highly regulated and well established in this country, these restrictions come as no great surprise to the British authorities. That they are accepted by those authorities reveals a clear case of double standards. The Chinese can insist that only heterosexual, married couples may adopt: Catholic adoption agencies in Britain cannot.

Mr Peachey suggests that a way forward for Catholic adoption agencies is to facilitate inter-country adoption. His article, based on his own experience of adopting a little girl from China, merits reading.