Welcome to Maine, Baby Jing

Written by Jennifer Osborn
Thursday, December 21, 2006

ELLSWORTH — A Chinese baby girl, abandoned when 6 days old under a highway overpass in Hunan Province, is getting ready to spend her first Christmas with her adopted family on Riverside Lane.


George Russell and Mary Pat Champeau adopted Jing Hui Fan last summer, after more than two years of trying to adopt a child. Jing Hui means “smart” in Chinese.

Millions of Chinese girls have been abandoned as Jing was as a result of China’s population-growth policy, according to Russell. China’s overpopulation problem prompted the government to institute the Planned Birth policy, which varies from rural to urban areas.


“You can’t have a baby unless you get a certificate,” said Russell. Those who have a girl can apply a few months later for a second permit, but “that will be it, no matter what.”

When a woman grows up, her responsibilities shift to her husband’s family, Russell said. Those who have sons consider themselves fortunate because sons will take care of them in their old age.

China has no social welfare programs, Russell said.

“You reach a point where you can no longer provide for yourself and you’ll basically starve,” he said.

“If you’re a girl, you go to an orphanage,” Russell said. “There they sit. After a while, they get a little older and start working in the orphanage and that’s that.”

Mothers leave their babies in heavily trafficked areas, Russell said. Many think the mothers stay and watch until they see a police officer pick up the baby, he said.

Some mothers make a notch in the baby’s ear or some other identifying mark in hopes of someday recognizing their children.

Russell has a photo of an abandoned baby, neatly dressed and swaddled, lying in a cardboard box next to bags of baby clothes, bottles and food.

“Someone has been forced to abandon their daughter in the hopes of getting a permit to have a boy,” Russell said. “In that picture, I think it reflects how hard it is for the mom to let that baby go.”

“If I had one wish, I’d like to tell Jing’s mom that she’s OK,” Russell said. “That she’s loved.”

And loved she is, by Russell and Champeau, siblings Liam, 15, and Claire, 11 — as well as seven cats and three dogs.

Jing looks as if she belongs with the family, which is no coincidence.

The Chinese “read faces” to match children with adoptive families, Russell said. They do this by studying photos of the prospective parents and children.

Russell said the family’s guide told them, “‘She has a long face, just like you, George.’”

Russell and Champeau had asked for and were expecting a child — not a baby — until a few weeks before their departure for China.

“We thought there would be somebody waiting there, starting to lose hope,” Russell said.

Champeau got a call from the adoption agency while Russell was at work, telling her a baby had been found for them.

“‘It’s not like fishing,’” Champeau recalled Russell had said. “‘We can’t throw her back just because she’s too little.’”

“By the time we got her picture a few days later, we were already buying booties and sippy cups,” Champeau said.

Their son Liam, a student at George Stevens Academy, made a film to welcome Jing. It features Hancock County families who have adopted Chinese girls.

At Christmas, Jing and her new family will be visited by relatives.

“…I’m sure she’ll receive many gifts but for us, she is the gift,” Champeau said. “We are crazy about her.”

American adoption of Chinese children is ticking upward.

Last year, 7,906 children were adopted, according to the U.S. Department of State. In 2002, 5,053 were adopted. Russell said there’s a designated line at the Los Angeles Airport for those adopting.

In China, abortions are free, Russell said. But there are laws restricting women from determining the sex of their unborn child.

A new government policy allows a couple to have two children if both the mother and father are only children, according to a report in The Shanghai Daily Tuesday.

The article stated that China’s population would be 400 million higher than it is now without the one-child policy.

Wanted: Young, pretty, slim parents to adopt orphaned Chinese babies

By JOE McDONALD
The Associated Press

BEIJING — China is imposing new restrictions on foreign adoptions, according to U.S. adoption agencies, barring applicants who are:

• Unmarried

• Obese

• Older than 50

• Taking antidepressants

The restrictions are in response to an enormous spike in applications by foreigners, which has far exceeded the number of available babies, said leaders of American adoption agencies who were briefed this month.

The new regulations, not yet formally announced by the government-run China Center of Adoption Affairs, are expected to take effect May 1 and have raised concern and anxiety among prospective adoptive parents.

China has in recent years been the No. 1 source of foreign-born children adopted by Americans — in fiscal year 2006, the State Department granted 6,493 visas to Chinese orphans — and its regulations on who can adopt have been less restrictive than some other countries.

Now the Chinese government has created guidelines intended to recruit adoptive families with qualities Chinese officials believe will provide the greatest chance the children will be raised by healthy, economically stable parents.

“Their feeling is that while singles can be good parents, it is better for a child to be raised in a two-parent family, it’s better for a parent to be educated, it’s better for a parent not to be obese because they have a chance of living longer. What CCAA really wanted was the cream of the crop,” said Jackie Harrah, executive director of Harrah’s Adoption International Mission in Spring, Texas.

Several agencies said they had been flooded with confused, anxious or disappointed calls and e-mails from people wanting to adopt. Most were told that if they got all their paperwork in by May 1, they likely would be approved. But international adoption agencies have already begun turning away applicants who did not meet the new criteria.

Among China’s new guidelines are that applicants:

• Have a body mass index of less than 40

• Have no criminal record

• Have a high school diploma

• Be free of certain health problems such as AIDS and cancer

Also, couples must have been married for at least two years and have had no more than two divorces between them. If either spouse was previously divorced, the couple cannot apply until they have been married for at least five years.

In addition, adoptive parents must have a net worth of at least $80,000 and income of at least $10,000 per person in the household, including the prospective adoptive child.

Parents can be as old as 55 if adopting a child with special needs.

Timothy Sutfin, executive director of New Beginnings Family and Children’s Services, an international adoption agency in Mineola, N.Y., said the new guidelines put China in the middle of the spectrum — not as restrictive as South Korea, but stricter than Guatemala and Vietnam.

China faces suspicions about organ harvesting

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

A pair of human rights activists are charging that "a crime against humanity" is happening on a large scale in China. Members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government since 1999, are being "in effect, murdered for their organs," which are being sold to buyers from China and abroad, says David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament and coauthor of the report.

Mr. Kilgour and his partner, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, are now traveling the world speaking with governments and professional and human rights organizations urging further investigation of the allegations. Early last month, the pair released a report laying out details of an investigation they undertook on behalf of a Falun Gong support group, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China.

"Ideally, we would like to pursue further research before we come to any firm conclusions," the two conceded, while noting the difficulty in obtaining accurate information within the closed society of the People's Republic of China.

But while the evidence may not persuade everyone who reads their report, it is strong enough in their minds to render a verdict. "Based on what we now know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true," the report says. "We believe that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners."

The source of some 41,500 organ transplants in China in the years 2000 through 2005 remains unexplained, leading to the possibility that they may be the result of the execution of Falun Gong members, the report says.

The Chinese government "since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience," the report alleges. Their vital organs were seized involuntarily "for sale at high prices, sometimes to foreigners, who normally face long waits for voluntary donations of such organs in their home countries."

The Falun Gong movement, whose guiding principles are truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, was founded in China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, who now lives in the United States. Its philosophies incorporate ideas from Buddhism and Taoism and include slow-motion meditative exercises. Falun Gong is generally seen as a peaceful and law-abiding movement outside China, but within its borders it is officially deemed a dangerous cult. For several years, Falun Gong followers around the world have been actively protesting the treatment of the movement's adherents inside China.

The Chinese Embassy in Canada issued a reply to the Kilgour-Matas report July 6, the same day the report was released. China abides by World Health Organization principles that prohibit the sale of human organs and require written voluntary consent from donors, the statement said. "It is obvious that their purpose is to smear China's image," the statement continues. "[T]he so-called 'independent investigation report' made by a few Canadians based on rumors and false allegations is groundless and biased."

In a phone call, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Li Jianhua, also called the allegations "totally fake" and said the Chinese government had already investigated the claims and found them meritless.

But by immediately dismissing their report "out of hand," Kilgour and Mr. Matas said in a reply, the Chinese government has admitted that it has conducted "no investigations to determine whether or not what the report contains is true."

Whether the organ harvesting - taking corneas, livers, hearts, and kidneys for transplantation - is being done as part of the official crackdown on Falun Gong or simply as the result of local corruption in prisons and hospitals around China is not clear, Matas says, and may be a result of both motives. China has a history of harvesting organs from executed prisoners, he says. The number of Falun Gong prisoners in China remains a mystery outside China. The Falun Gong "are completely defenseless in prison: unidentified, no protectors," Matas says. "They become an easy victim for this form of greed."

The Kilgour-Matas report "makes a very convincing case," says Kirk Allison, associate director of the Program in Human Rights and Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He says academic journals and conferences now should take an ethical stand to reject papers and presentations from authors who rely on data derived from transplantations performed in China.

"Given the evidence at hand, international transplant patients who obtain organs in China do so at the cost of benefiting from, and tacitly supporting, the continuance of an ongoing lethal violation of human dignity and human rights," Dr. Allison said in a published statement circulated at the World Transplantation Congress in Boston last week. "Prospective patients should be informed of this fact and actively discouraged from pursing this avenue of treatment."

Kilgour took on the Falun Gong project last spring after retiring from the Canadian Parliament, where he had been elected as a member since 1979. Neither he nor Matas are Falun Gong practitioners.

In March, the Chinese government announced that a new law, to take effect July 1, would ban sales of human organs and require that donors give written permission for their organs to be transplanted. But, according to Kilgour, the fact that a new law was passed "highlights the fact that there is no such legislation in place now."