Latest Adoption News

Safer buildings vs more housing: How new building codes may impact Hawaii

Nov. 20, 2024 17:15 PM EST

A month after wildfires ravaged Maui in August 2023, Gov. Josh Green issued an emergency proclamation to postpone the adoption of any new building codes that might exacerbate a housing shortage that had just gotten worse. The governor’s office is now moving to fast-track adoption...

Russian lawmakers endorse bill to ban adoptions by gender-transition countries

Nov. 20, 2024 10:18 AM EST

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s upper house of parliament on Wednesday endorsed a bill banning adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries where gender transitioning is legal. The Federation Council also approved bills that outlaw the spread of material that encourages people...

Russian parliament advances bill to ban adoptions by gender-transition countries

Nov. 12, 2024 07:50 AM EST

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's lower house of parliament on Tuesday passed final reading of a bill to ban adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries where gender transitioning is legal. The chamber, the State Duma, also approved a measure calling for banning the spread of...

Thousands of children adopted by Americans are without citizenship. Congress is unwilling to act

Oct. 25, 2024 11:44 AM EDT

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — The 50-year-old newspaper was turning yellow and its edges fraying, so she had it laminated, not as a memento but as proof — America made a promise to her, and did not keep it. She pointed to the picture in the corner of her as a little girl in the rural...

Thousands were adopted to the US but not made citizens. Decades later, they risk being deported

Oct. 24, 2024 22:03 PM EDT

The United States has brought hundreds of thousands of children from abroad to be adopted by American families. But along the way it left thousands of them without citizenship, through a bureaucratic loophole that the government has been aware of for decades, and hasn’t fixed. Some...

Adoptee deported from the US over lack of citizenship criticizes South Korea and agency

Oct. 23, 2024 08:20 AM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Adam Crapser, an adoptee who was deported to South Korea in 2016 because his American parents never secured his citizenship, delivered a scathing denunciation of the Korean government and his adoption agency in a Seoul appeals court on Wednesday. The...

A South Korean adoptee needed answers about the past. She got them — just not the ones she wanted

Oct. 15, 2024 21:25 PM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Rebecca Kimmel sat in a small room, stunned and speechless, staring at the baby photo she had just unearthed from her adoption file. It was a black-and-white shot of an infant, possibly taken at an orphanage in Gwangju, the South Korean city where Kimmel...

Rebecca Kimmel's search for her roots had an unlikely ending: Tips for other Korean adoptees

Oct. 14, 2024 22:18 PM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Rebecca Kimmel sat in a small room, stunned and speechless, staring at the baby photo she had just unearthed from her adoption file. Something about the photo — the eyes, the ears, an uneasy feeling deep in her gut — confirmed what the Korean adoptee...

South Korean woman sues government and adoption agency after her kidnapped daughter was sent abroad

Oct. 07, 2024 07:11 AM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A 70-year-old South Korean woman sued her government, an adoption agency, and an orphanage Monday over the adoption of her daughter, who was sent to the United States in 1976, months after she was kidnapped at age 4. The damage suit filed by Han Tae-soon,...

Did this happen to me also? Korean adoptees question their past and ask how to find their families

Oct. 04, 2024 02:15 AM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Dozens of South Korean adoptees, many in tears, have responded to an investigation led by The Associated Press and documented by Frontline (PBS) last week on Korean adoptions. The investigation reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving...