Are people allowed to adopt children with Aids?

Question

I was just reading this story:

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=109741&catid=3

and in it a couple is quoted for saying:

Jennifer says after they declined the boy, "They offered us a 2 year old boy with AIDS and unfortunately we wouldn't be able to adopt him either because the U.S. doesn't permit children with AIDS to come back."

Is this true? the US won't allow people to adopt children with Aids and bring them back to the United States?

Answer 1

wow.. I am COMPLETELY flabberghasted

not at the story, but at the fact that you actually appear to be insinuating that an adoption SHOULD HAVE taken place

Oh my WORD.. am I hallucinating here??

Has h**l frozen over??

WOW.. I guess there is SOME children you feel need a good home, eh??

Nah.. I probably read your question wrong..

Answer 2

Yes in Canada as well.  All international children must be adminsitered a HIV test (and Hep test) before they are allowed to enter the country.  

You can, though, adopt an HIV positive child already in the country.  For Canada, they are looking at cost on health care system etc.  BAd excuse not to help a child, but there you have it.

Answer 3

Surely it's not true!  I have a friend who adopted a little girl who is HIV positive from Russia.  Check more, I think it is legal.

Answer 4

i do feel bad for the children, it is not their fault. but why would you bring another person to the united states with such a deadly infectious disease? and why wouldn't you adopt a child HERE with the disease and help them?

i feel like it's kinda turning your back on the american children.

Answer 5

Does anyone feel so sad for the 2 rejected children. There is nothing that would have made me reject my son, poor kids. Who knows how many times those children were dangled in front of people as a way to extort more money.

"You can have these kids, BUT for $17,000, right here right now you can upgrade to a better one" Thats a real ego booster.

Answer 6

Yes.  That is true. Adults with communicable diseases are not allowed to enter the country either.

Answer 7

YOu are not allowed to adopt a child with AIDS from another country and bring them into the country. Now if they are here and in foster care they can be adopted

Answer 8

Because of the high price of medication for A.I.D.S.

Answer 9

Although my answer is somewhat off-topic, it seems worthy of mention.

A few years ago in the Spanish press, there were documented reports (sorry, I don't remember where/when) that a certain eastern European country had a policy of not allowing its children to be adopted by foreigners.  Realizing they had an overabundance of children in orphanages, they lifted the rule about foreign adoptions.  However, they purposely infected every child destined for a foreign adoption with HIV immediately before releasing them from their native country.  

Some one PLEASE tell me that I remember this incorrectly or that I am just flat-out wrong!

Answer 10

To answer the question, it seems to me that it is only recently been allowed to adopt HIV+ children and there are some serious regulations concerning it.  I know that previously it was not allowed.  I'm not sure when these events happened, but it's entirely possible they occurred before internationally adopting HIV+ children was allowed.

As to the article, unfortunately, some international programs are notorious for not fully disclosing health issues of the children prior to adoption.  These children do, of course, deserve homes as much as any other child, but for the foreign government to be less than honest about their condition isn't right.  Then, they do the "bait and switch" which seems to be what happened.  

It's a tragedy all around and I hope the children find homes and proper healthcare.

ETA: I've heard of the Tedi Bear adoptions.  I think it was one of the about fifty agencies we got information packets from when we were in the VERY early researching stages.  Don't remember much about it, other than the name being familiar.

Answer 11

yes it is true.

Answer 12

About nine years ago we were denied by I.C.E. (then called INS) because the three year old little boy we were to adopt tested positive for Hepatitis.

I have never stopped wondering about what happened to him.

Answer 13

I agree with Wynner.  We were told that the Ethiopian government would not let us adopt a child that was HIV positive.  Some children test negative initially and have to be retested for an accurate reading.  As the adoptive parents of the child we could then refuse further testing as a way to get around that.  At least that is what i was told by our agency.

Answer 14

That used to be the case. When we did our first adoption, our son had already tested negative for HIV. They wanted to test him again before we left the country, but we refused. The way I looked at it, if he had HIV, he'd be better off in the US with my insurance plan than dumped back in the orphanage with papers that made him unadoptable. (Back then, there weren't reliable NGOs with access to the inexpensive knock off AIDs meds, so donating money didn't help much)

I can't find a better link, but the law has changed a bit.

http://cache.search.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net...

There is a family unity waiver, or waiver of ineligibility that lets you bring in family members who are HIV positive into the US. It works for adoptive families.  I know that there are some people who are adopting HIV positive children from Ethiopia. Fortunately, there has been a real breakthrough in programs that provide meds to people there, especially pregnant mothers, so hopefully there will be less and less children born with HIV. (Not that what's available there is any way enough. The program I sponsor through is always putting out calls for help)

eta: I found a better link

http://www.immigrationequality.org/templ...

Answer 15

Did these people do any research into their adoption agency and possible corruption? Did they learn about adoption laws in both the US and the country they were looking at adopting from?  If you adopt, you have a responsibility to do your own research.

One warning sign would be that the office was in the person's home.

Another would be this: http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/17/State/...

The second I saw Tedi Bear Adoptions in that article it rang bells for me, there was a terrible scandal several years ago.  Granted, she was operating under a different agency name, but google Tedi Hedstrom and this comes up first for me.

To answer your question, you can adopt HIV positive children,  as the above person said.  Maybe these people just took someone's word for it they couldn't bring the child into the US. They don't seem to do their own research.  Or maybe they didn't want him because he was ill, but blamed it on US immigration instead.