Pray that there will be an equitable way found to balance the vetting of would-be-parents with children who are in need of good homes in America.

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Matt 18:5 ESV)

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New regulations and fees announced by the U.S. State Department in February could spell the end of intercountry adoptions in the United States, according to adoption advocates.

The changes, which went into effect Feb. 15, include a new $500 monitoring and oversight fee for adoptive families, as well as an increase in the cost of accreditation for adoption agencies. Most agencies, or adoption service providers (ASPs), believe their costs to attain accreditation every four years will triple under the new schedule of fees.

But the costs are not the main concern, according to Daniel Nehrbass, president of Nightlight Christian Adoptions. In requiring the new fees, he told me, adoption agencies are being forced to buy the rope that will be used to hang them.

“We aren’t going to be doing fewer adoptions [next year] because of $500,” Nehrbass said. “We will do fewer adoptions next year because of what the money is for.”…

Nehrbass conducted a straw poll of licensed ASPs after the February announcement. Of the 60 that responded, nearly half said they were uncertain about their future or planned to stop offering international adoptions due to regulations.

Chuck Johnson, president of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), believes that without significant changes, the current posture of the State Department toward ASPs will soon bring about the end of international adoption.…

In September 2016, OCI chief Trish Maskew proposed a number of stricter regulations for intercountry adoptions. The regulations—which were opposed by the Obama-era Small Business Administration, COA, and a group of more than 80 adoption agencies who wrote a letter to then–Secretary of State John Kerry asking they be halted—did not go into effect because of the election of President Donald Trump. But Johnson said in the last year or so he has seen “an effort to backdoor those failed regulations into policies.”…

Johnson, Nehrbass, and others are lobbying Congress and the White House to step in and replace Maskew, reinstate COA instead of IAAME for accreditation, and move toward policies that further ethical practices without shuttering intercountry adoptions for Americans. (Excerpts from Kiley Crossland’s article in WORLD)