China may not allow some people to adopt

By ANNA M. TINSLEY
Star-Telegram
Dec. 21, 2006

Single, overweight or older people may soon be out of luck if they hope to adopt children from China.

These and other potential new regulations geared to deal with a backlog of applications to adopt Chinese babies could take effect as soon as May, Fort Worth adoption officials say.

"This is a bad thing if you want to adopt and you might be a single mom, or you [are overweight] or you are over 50," said Marshall Williams, vice president of international adoptions and family services at Fort Worth's Gladney Center for Adoption.

"This will reduce the number of adoptions from China," he said. "And it will reduce the number of families that qualify."

China is traditionally the most popular place from which Americans adopt children. The country has a "single child" policy that allows most urban families to have only one child. Many parents keep their sons to provide for them in their old age and put their daughters up for adoption, Williams said.

Through the years, a growing number of potential parents have asked to adopt from China, creating a logjam of applications. What once was a delay of six months from when paperwork arrived in Beijing has now stretched to a delay of 13 to 14 months, adoption officials say.

The government-run China Center of Adoption Affairs "does not have enough files for children to meet this increased demand," according to the Web site of Harrah's Adoption International Mission in Spring.

The China Center plans to tighten its requirements so there are fewer applications and to improve standards in its orphanages so there are more adoptable children, the Web site said.

New restrictions being considered are expected to take effect May 1.

With them, several groups of people may no longer be eligible for Chinese adoptions:

Unmarried people

Overweight people, with a body mass index greater than 40

Those older than 50

People who take medicine for depression or anxiety or have a "severe facial deformity"

Other potential restrictions could require an adoptive family to earn more than $80,000 a year and not already have more than four children, adoption officials say.

"The Chinese put these out as a trial balloon," Williams said. "I think there will be restrictions and there will be tightening. We'll get a letter outlining the final rules probably in the first quarter of next year."

U.S. Embassy and Chinese officials have not spoken publicly about the proposals, although U.S. adoption officials say they were told about them during a meeting Dec. 8 in Beijing.

"This will probably affect quite a lot of people in 2007," Heather Terry, a spokeswoman for the Great Wall of China Adoption Agency in Austin, told The New York Times.

Estimates of how many Chinese children are adopted locally were not available late Tuesday. Officials say Gladney facilitates at least 400 adoptions worldwide each year.

This report includes material from The Associated Press and The New York Times.