Kevin Kreutner, 33, a marketing specialist from the Bay Area city of Pittsburg, and his wife, Sheila, are adopting a 6-month-old girl from Guatemala, currently in foster care there.
Among the reasons they chose the foreign route, he said, was their worry about the ability of American birth parents to reclaim a child within the first few months of an adoption. But the high costs of domestic adoption also were a factor.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday November 18, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
International adoptions -- An article in Friday's Section A said that the public had until Nov. 14 to submit comments on proposed rules for international adoptions. The deadline has been extended to Dec. 15.
"We just wanted a normal, healthy baby to start our family," said Kreutner, noting that, so far, he has been impressed by the efficiency of the adoption procedure in Guatemala, in contrast to the disorder often associated with that nation.
Adopting a foreign child typically costs $15,000 to $25,000, according to various representatives of international adoption agencies.
The price of acquiring a newborn American infant with the help of a private adoption agency sometimes hits $50,000.
Some agencies say the new rules would drive up the costs of international adoptions.
If the proposed rules become law, they say, many smaller agencies may be put out of business. And because a chunk of the additional costs would have to be shouldered by prospective adoptive parents, many might rethink their decisions to adopt foreign children, depriving scores of needy youngsters the opportunity of finding new families.
One concern about the draft regulations involves provisions that would make U.S. agencies responsible for the actions of people they hire abroad. The agencies would become responsible for clerical errors, medical misdiagnoses or inaccurate documentation by foreign contractors even if the errors were the contractors' fault.
That would be unfair, some agencies say, because they generally have little meaningful control over their foreign counterparts, who might be working in countries where medical training, health care, record keeping and legal services are often of poor quality.
"American agencies cannot reasonably be expected to visit every orphanage, attend every doctor's visit, file every paper for every child eligible for international adoption," the New Jersey-based agency Reaching Out Thru International Adoption said in comments submitted to the State Department.
"It's hard enough already to police your own employees, but we are being asked to police the employees of other agencies in foreign countries as well," said Debbie Spivack, executive director of Reaching Out.
