Adoption Law Expert Joel Kirsh "Russian Adoption Scandal"

(Huffington Post) Russian-U.S. relations devolved last week after an American mother sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia, alone, because, as she claimed in a letter she sent with the child, she was "lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues." The story has spurred tremendous concern and discussion, in large part over the seeming assumption on the part of the adoptive mother that the boy could be returned to place-of-purchase, like a faulty television set. On a broader scale, though, the drama brings out the very particular anxieties that the people of Russia and the United States feel about international adoption and forces us to focus, once again, on the confounding issues it raises.

Scott Drake interviews Indiana adoption law expert  Joel Kirsh