Christian Families Wait To Complete Chinese Adoptions, But Hope Dims
For over five years, Lauren Hawley has been waiting to hold her little girl, Elenor. A pink banner still hangs in their house waiting to welcome her home from China.
First it was COVID-19 shutdowns that caused delays. Then in September 2024, China announced it was closing its international adoption program.
The Hawley family was devastated. They had been matched with Elenor in January 2020 when she was 20 months old.
READ: Jimmy Lai Submits Appeal Over Life-Threatening Detention Conditions
They immediately considered her part of their family. Under ordinary circumstances, they would have traveled to China in spring of 2020 to bring her home in time for her 2nd birthday. That’s when they hung the pink banner. Now, five years later, it serves as a banner of hope.
Elenor is a regular part of family conversation. Her three sisters talk about her constantly. Recently, the Hawleys took a family vacation to national parks in the western U.S. and felt the void of Elenor’s absence.
Now, Elenor is 7 years old, but the Hawleys haven’t been able to speak to her for a year. Lauren continues to write letters to Elenor, expressing how much she misses her and hopes for the day they are together.
Herbie Newell, the president and executive director of Lifeline Children’s Services — the agency the Hawleys are using for their adoption — is cautiously hopeful that something can still be done to unite the 300 waiting children with their families.
“We have some hope, but it feels like we are running out of time,” Newell told MinistryWatch. The agency represents 61 of the 300 families who have been matched with children from China, but who cannot travel to China to bring those children home.
Lifeline has advocated with several members of the Trump administration, including the Department of State, Domestic Policy Council, and the White House Press Office, to draw attention to the plight of these children and their waiting families.
“It feels like a ‘Hail Mary’ but these kids’ lives are worth it,” Newell said.
Since 1992, China has facilitated the adoption of 160,000 children internationally — over half of those to families in the United States.
Adoption agencies considered the international adoption process with China as a model for other programs, many of which replicated China’s regulations, standards, and protocols.
As domestic adoption in China grew, the children available for international adoption tended to be older or those with serious medical needs. During 2019, the number of children adopted by U.S. families dropped to only about 819 children.
When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, all Chinese international adoptions stopped. At that time, over 400 families had been approved to adopt a specific Chinese child.
China slowly reopened in 2023, inviting about 40 U.S. families over the course of nine months to come retrieve their children. The last family traveled in February 2024, according to Lifeline.
The remaining families grew expectant, hoping their invitation to travel to China would soon arrive.
But on Sept. 4, 2024, hope grew dim as the Department of State sent an email notifying U.S. agencies and waiting families that China would no longer allow international adoptions.
The number of waiting U.S. families remains at about 300 — some children have aged out of the adoption system, some families have had to withdraw from the process, and, sadly, some children have died.
Action
Precedent exists for negotiations to bring closure to waiting families even after a country closes its international adoption program. When Russia banned international adoption by U.S. citizens, the Department of State pressured the Russian government to clarify that adoptions approved before Jan. 1, 2013, could be completed. About 56 adoptions were fulfilled in this way.
In March, a bipartisan letter by members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives asked President Donald Trump “to elevate this engagement and press the Chinese government to finalize pending adoption cases so these children may finally be united with their adoptive families in the United States.”
As recently as June, Sen. Chuck Grassley drew attention to the waiting families. On the floor of the Senate, he quoted China, whose leaders have claimed, “The Chinese always honor and deliver what has been promised.” However, he said the Chinese government has not honored its commitment to families waiting to finalize their adoptions.
In September 2024, Grassley sent a letter to the Chinese ambassador, urging the Chinese government to fulfill “matched adoptions.”
According to Lifeline, the National Council for Adoption is planning soon to send a letter to waiting families urging them to discontinue the adoption process for their Chinese child. Newell said he asked the council to hold the letter until the end of September to give waiting families a little more time to lobby the administration.
He is concerned that the National Council for Adoption letter will be seen by China as “a white flag of surrender” that will bring any possibility of finalizing adoptions to an end.
Newell understands there are large political issues that the U.S. is negotiating with China, and he is not blaming the current administration for the unfulfilled adoptions. But he hopes and prays the stories of these waiting children and their families will reach the right official and become part of a conversation with the Chinese government.
Recently, the Trump administration has been engaging in negotiations with China over the operation of Tik Tok in the United States. Trump plans to meet in-person with Xi Jinping next month during a summit in South Korea.
The children
Aimee Welch, who is waiting to bring her 11-year-old daughter Penelope home from China, has started a group called Hope Leads Home to “coordinate the efforts of waiting parents to unite the last 300 children matched via the China-US adoption partnership with their promised families.” Families from all over the world are connected through this group.
Welch pointed out that the Hague Adoption Convention requires that children who are waiting to be adopted internationally have already been ruled out for possible domestic adoption. The children available to American families tended to be children with more serious disabilities or medical conditions.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, from 2014 to 2018, 95% of international adoptions involved children with disabilities, demonstrating the crucial role of foreign adoption for these vulnerable children.
Welch said it is not a question of whether these vulnerable children should be adopted domestically or internationally. It is really a question of whether they’ll be adopted internationally or spend their lives in an institution. Chinese families tend to adopt young children — from birth to 3 years old — who may have minor medical conditions.
During the last year, after China announced that its international adoption program was closed, the waiting families network began to hear of Spanish and Italian families being invited to travel to China to complete their adoptions.
“It shows that China is capable of making exceptions to honor the promises they have made to these matched children,” Welch said.
A simple way to assist families in this effort, Welch said, is to like and share Lifeline’s campaign on Instagram.
“Please pray for these children and their waiting families who persist in hope and love,” she asked.
This article was originally published at MinistryWatch.
Kim Roberts is a freelance writer who holds a Juris Doctorate with honors from Baylor University and an undergraduate degree in government from Angelo State University. She has three young adult children who were home schooled and is happily married to her husband of 28 years.