"After giving birth to two, we had decided we should give a home to a child
who doesn't have a family," she said.

Initially the proceedings to adopt Adina moved smoothly.

"We were issued an adoption number and thought everything was fine," said
Millie, who has since learned conversational Romanian. "But then we received
a letter from the Romanian government saying that international adoptions
had been banned."

Now the couple is torn.

"We consider Adina a member of our family, and it hurts us to think of
switching to another country to adopt a child," Millie said. "We love her so
much and don't want to leave her behind. But we are at the mercy of the
Romanian government. If this is a dead end, how can we spend years waiting
and waiting?"

Unfortunately for the Bridgeses, the chances of Adina ever being brought to
Atlanta are slim.

EU pushes adoption ban

In a bid to join the European Union by 2007, the Romanian government
implemented a ban on international adoptions in January as part of new child
welfare legislation. The government, with the EU's prodding, hopes to
encourage Romanians to adopt their own children, or at least sign up to be
foster parents.

Rarely has the prospect of EU integration packed such an emotional wallop
for a population's youngest members - or on American families. The ban has
left the Bridgeses and at least 200 other American couples - as well as
1,500 European and Israeli couples - mourning the families they might have
had. All were in various stages of the adoption process when the ban took
effect. EU officials allege that Romanian orphans were winding up in the
human organ trade or in the hands of pedophiles due to profound corruption
in Romania's adoption system.

Romania's notorious orphanage system was revealed 15 years ago with the
collapse of the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Televised pictures of
orphans suffering in horrible living conditions prompted thousands of
American couples to adopt from Romania.

UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, estimates about 80,000
children are now in the state's care. A recent UNICEF survey of 150 medical
institutions found that about 4,000 babies were abandoned in Romanian
maternity hospitals immediately after delivery in 2004. That's almost 2
percent of all newborns.

"The abandonment situation has not improved in the last 10 or 20 or 30
years," said Pierre Poupard, head of the UNICEF office in Bucharest.

The traditionally discriminated-against Gypsy - or Roma - people make up 10
percent of the country's population but account for 60 to 70 percent of
abandoned children.

"Romanians only want to adopt young healthy babies and they certainly don't
want to adopt Gypsy children," said Ani Manea, who until recently ran a home
for abandoned babies in Galati.

Another problem, Manea said, was that Romanian foster families often keep
children until they are 18 but won't consider adoption because the families
don't want to lose out on a government subsidy that often generates twice as
much income as the average wage of $220 per month.

Halfway around the world from Atlanta, at a small home for abandoned
children in Botosani, an eight-hour drive north of Bucharest, at least
one-third of the 15 orphans in residence had received all the necessary
approvals to be adopted by U.S. couples when the ban took effect on Jan. 1.

The orphans, ranging in age from 2 to 7, greet the arrival of strangers as a
rare and spectacular miracle. They scream. They jump up and down. They tug
at ears and peer under skirts. The older ones are so fascinated by
wristwatches that they take turns grabbing a visitor's arm to press it
against their cheeks.

Ancuta Constantinescu was eager to show off where she sleeps. The
knobby-kneed 6-year-old bounded up the stairs to the barren bedroom she's
shared for four years with other kids. She hoisted herself over a railing
and into a crib - her bed. A beach towel serves as her blanket. There is no
pillow.

The room is enlivened only by a few worn stuffed animals and a broken
See-n-Say on an otherwise empty shelf. When a visitor tries to leave the
room, she yells "no, no, no." It's the only English word she knows.

Local adoptions controversial

Even as American couples continue to hope that their near-final adoptions of
the orphans living at this home will one day be allowed to go forward, plans
are already in place for two girls in Botosani to be adopted by Romanian
farmers.

"There is a concern that these people are only adopting the children so that
they can work on their farms," said Freddy Filip, executive director in
Romania of Special Additions, a non-profit aid agency based in Stilwell,
Kan., that finances the home.

The home's budget of about $6,000 a month is a major concern now that the
money generated through international adoptions has vaporized as a result of
the ban.

"Domestic adoptions don't bring in any money," Filip said.

Proponents of the new child welfare legislation argue that it keeps families
together by forcing the government to seek biological family members who
would be willing to care for the child. If that doesn't work, then foster
families are found.

"We don't have abandoned children anymore here in Romania," said Cristiana
Ionescu, an attorney and children's advocate in Bucharest. "The new law is
good because we had much corruption before."

But even some government officials admit there are weaknesses to the new
law.

"Many women 40 to 50 want to be foster parents simply because they can't
find other jobs," said Hagiu Danut-Mirel, vice director of the government
office that facilitates adoptions and foster care in Galati, east of
Bucharest. "Another problem is that most Romanian families only want
newborns that are girls with blond hair and blue eyes."

Doina Ivas, a talkative, energetic woman in Botosani, has cared for 12
foster children over the past several years - 10 of whom have been adopted
by American couples and two by French couples. For the last three years,
she's cared for Sabina, a 7-year-old Gypsy girl with a learning disability.
She's not likely to be adopted domestically.

"If there hadn't been this ban on adoptions," Ivas said, "Sabina would be in
the United States right now."

C 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution