On the recordDecember 31, 2012
I come to the floor today to join my colleague, Senator Landrieu from Louisiana, to talk about Russian adoptions and the decision by the Russian Duma and the President, President Putin, to sign a law that includes a provision that bans adoption of Russian children by American families. This ban is going into effect tomorrow--tomorrow. This is a ban which would go into effect tomorrow with four dozen American families in the process of bringing a child home from Russia. My wife Abby and I adopted our son Charlie from Russia a number of years ago now. After visits to Russia and as we were leaving the courthouse the day the court procedures were accomplished, we were in the car with people who had helped us with that adoption who represented an organization here in the United States--in this case, the Gladney organization in Texas--and they got a call that four of their fellow organizations had just been decertified in Russia. They were decertified for some technical reason with their papers. All of the adoptions they had done were reviewed, and at least one error was found in one paper somewhere. Over the course of the next 12 months, as every single agency came up for review--and this was about 6 years ago now--every one of them had a problem that wound up with their being disqualified.…
