Resources:

"Ethica is a nonprofit corporation that seeks to be an impartial voice for ethical adoption practices worldwide, and provides education, assistance, and advocacy to the adoption and foster care communities." Ethica is the best voice we currently have for ethical adoptions. Their site is chock full of information and news. They are organizing a Coalition for Change. They need your participation and support. Visit www.ethicanet.org.

Dr. Ellen Fitzenrider has written about the adoption of her daughter Katherine in Vietnam in her book, Finding Katherine...A Spiritual Journey to Vietnam and Motherhood. Now she's started a site that should prove to be both a valuable resource and a place to voice your adoption thoughts. Its magazine style format makes it both informative and entertaining. Check out www.internationaladoptionnews.com.

Karen Holt has maintained a site containing a page of adoption links for many years. It is a worthwhile resource at www.karensadoptionlinks.com.

The US State Department has something to say about International Adoption at http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption.html.

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute is a very worthwhile organization with a very useful and informative website at www.adoptioninstitute.org.

Nancy Hoffman works at Rainbow Travel Services in Antigua, Guatemala. After serving adoptive families with travel arrangements, she went into the Adoption Placement and Facilitation business. While I do not endorse any adoption service provider, I do find Nancy's website extremely informative regarding Guatemalan adoptions. Her links page is one of the best at http://www.guatemalaadopt.com/links.htm. Three other useful Guatemalan adoption links are http://www.guatadopt.com/,  http://www.guatefam.org/ and http://www.adoptinginguatemala.com/.

The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse is another good information resource. Visit their website at http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/.

The Internet Archive contains The Wayback Machine, a tool that you can use to look up archived old web pages that have been taken down. This is especially useful for a variety of reasons. Go to http://www.archive.org.

At www.guidestar.org, you can check the finances and tax returns of not-for-profit organizations. As such, you can see how your favorite adoption agency director paid for his/her mansion with money you obtained by taking out a second mortgage to pay exhorbitant agency fees.

Dale Edmonds put up a site that originally focused on Cambodian adoption issues, but it now encompasses far more than that. See http://www.oggham.com/cambodia/.

Here's a site of Mexican adoption links. You can find some interesting things there. http://www.myadoptionlinks.com/Mexico

A relatively new site if from John and Susan Wall. Here's their description:

For my wife and me, the quest to have a child has led to the process of international adoption. And the decision to adopt internationally has opened our eyes to an incredibly diverse community of people who have adopted, are thinking about foreign adoption or are in the process of adopting. And this inspired us to build the site http://www.internationaladoptionstories.com.

Tales of Woe:

Click here: When You Wish Upon A Star: An Adoption Story for our adoption story.

I know my story, When You Wish Upon a Star: An Adoption Story, inspired Dan and Eliazbeth Case to post their own adoption nightmare on a website, but they have outdone anyone's effort by far with the sheer scope, depth and breath of their efforts. Grab a box of tissues and check out the site affectionately known as "The Filth and the Fury" at www.bewareofbbas.org. Their story makes mine look like a picnic.

The Porter's Guatemalan adoption nightmare has some striking similarities to both our story and the Case's story. It's elsewhere on this site at http://www.adoptionagencychecklist.com/page733.html.

When were investigating International Adoption, we attended an information/orientation meeting at a well-established agency on NYC's Upper East Side. We left very turned off. Here's another client's experience with the same agency at www.truthinadoption.org.

Automne Heather asked me to link to her devastating adoption story. You can see it at http://www.justiceforethan.com/. If you can't click on this link, just copy and paste it into your browser.

Submit your links and/or stories for posting here to saradave2@yahoo.com.