Adoption and America’s Inherent Goodness

United States Senator Sam Brownback once stated in a speech: "America is great because she is good." This simple yet profound statement epitomizes the essence of the most eminent nation of our universe. Though not without deserved criticism, America is a land that has both changed and set an example to the world.

All too often, we speak of America's greatness from the standpoint of military might. Reasonable people can surely disagree on whether this power has always been used prudently. But what so many of us fail to notice, at the end of the day, is that America is great for far more than simply the power of her army, navy and air force.

From a demographic standpoint, America, in the Western World, stands alone. While Japan and many countries in Europe have a birthrate that makes their very existence a couple of hundred years from now untenable, the United States is the one nation in the Western World that continues to produce enough children to replace the elderly who perish.

Faith, family and country are at the centre of American life, with the promise of bearing children still viewed as a blessed opportunity to positively influence one’s nation and our world. The ability to reproduce is viewed as a gift that should be cherished and acted upon.

But what of those who, for whatever reason, are unable to bear children? Husbands and wives who have a simple dream - to experience the joy of a new baby's touch, to watch their child’s tentative first steps, and to hear the first utterance of "Mommy" and "Daddy". And then there are those who already have children, but who decide to adopt another child, wanting to expand their family and bring a better life to an abandoned baby.

I am not trying to suggest that America alone contains couples and parents eager to adopt. But the numbers are fascinating and revealing. On Wikipedia’s page about “adoption” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption), a table shows adoption statistics from various Western countries, and particularly highlights the ratio of adoptions to live births. In Australia, for every 100 births, there 0.2 adoptions. In England, the number is 0.7, and in Italy 0.6. In the United States, for every 100 live births, there are 3 adoptions. In other words the United States has an adoption to live birth rate at least 4 times, and upwards of 15 times, higher than other wealthy Western nations. Why is this case? I don’t have all the answers. But I believe that it is no co-incidence that the most religious nation in the Western World would also be the one that has a positive birthrate, and the highest adoption rate. At James 1:27, Christians are admonished to “look after orphans and widows in their distress”, for such action demonstrates “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless.”

On YouTube, countless videos exist showing parents meeting their baby daughter for the first time, an event often described as “Gotcha Day”. In the far away land of China, containing streets teaming with millions of people, young American couples see realized a simple dream. They become parents. They welcome into their lives a baby, not of their own race or culture or genes, and adopt her as their very own. A life to guide, shape, cherish and love. I have not in my life witnessed goodness greater than this.

Going back to Senator Brownback, there is something interesting to note. On his official Senate page, a photograph shows him and his wife with 7 children. Two of them, however are much younger than the rest, and have visibly Asian features. His daughter Jenna was adopted from China when she was 2 years old. Today Jenna grows up as a child of America, with little connection to the orphanage at which spent she spent the first few months of her life.

Sometimes I wonder what these baby girls will think when they grow up. What type of reflections will they have on their life, with the full force of maturity now behind them? For now, they are just normal and ordinary young girls, who simply look a little different from their parents, having jet black hair and beautiful black eyes. No doubt, before becoming completely grown up young women, they will go through the usual trials of adolescence, the sometimes painful rite of passage into womanhood. But when they are 20, 25, and 30, and marry and perhaps have children of their own, what will they think? I imagine that, perhaps, they will shed tears at the "goodness" exhibited by the parents they love, remembering the people who spent thousands of dollars and many years, that they might take a lonely ride to a nearby airport, and board a plane to travel to a land they never knew, to encounter a people they never met, all simply because they wanted to embrace her as their very own.

Truly, "America is great because she is good".