Spanish Adoption Rates Hit All-Time High
Spanish Adoption Rates Hit All-Time High
Wednesday, May 04 2005 @ 11:38 PM Central Daylight Time
Spain has become Europe’s first country and the world’s second after the United States in adopting foreign children as marriage and birth rates in the southern European country are hitting all-time low.
The latest government statistics showed that foreign adoptees in 2004 reached 6,000 with a 40% increase compared to the previous year.
The statistics indicate that adoptive parents go abroad, bringing about 80 percent of the overall number of adopted children and then finalizing legal adoption requirements at home.
France, China, Russia and Ukraine are the leading adoption destinations for the adoptive parents.
“Adoptive parents are coming to Morocco under the guise of tourism and return home with adopted children,” a Moroccan source with a child-care NGO told IslamOnline.net on condition not to be named.
The official statistics do not include children smuggled into the country, most of whom are coming from Morocco through the two Spanish colonies of Sebta and Leila.
In Spain, the child welfare agency for the protection of minors is the entity in charge of adoptions. Only with the approval of this agency can a judge authorize an adoption.
To receive approval from the agency, a prospective parent must be declared capable of carrying out the duties of parenthood and must be at least twenty-five years old and be at least fourteen years older than the adoptee.
The government is mulling now amendments to the adoption law, allowing the adoptees to know their biological parents and return to their native countries if they will.
Since the enactment of the 1997 Family Law Act, the number of adoptees has exceeded 25,000 children, according to official statistics.
Phenomenon
One of the main reasons behind the adoption phenomenon in Spain is that many youths refrain from tying the knot.
Many couples further are abstaining from having more than two or three children.
Add to that, a law, passed by parliament last month in the Catholic country, allowing same-sex couple to wed and gave them the same rights -- chiefly inheritance, tax cuts and adoption -- as heterosexuals.
The Vatican lambasted Monday, May 2, the law as a destruction of the marriage institution, and urged Christians around the world to oppose such unions.
The increasing adoption cases in Spain has made the country the target for international “adoption rings” based mainly in China and African countries like Ethiopia and Morocco.
A United Nations report warned in March that the European population rate will drop by 18 percent. It predicted that the Spanish population will drop from 39 million to 38 million over the coming 30 years.
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