WASHINGTON (BP) — A bipartisan congressional letter with more than 100 signatures has been delivered to President Donald Trump urging him to open discussions with China regarding its discontinued intercountry adoption program that left nearly 300 U.S. families in limbo.
“We understand that the State Department is working on behalf of these families and seeking clarity on the Chinese government’s decision,” the letter reads in part. “We urge you to elevate this engagement and press the Chinese government to finalize pending adoption cases so these children may finally be united with their adoptive families in the United States.”
President and CEO Herbie Newell of Lifeline Children’s Services, the largest evangelical adoption agency in the U.S., told Baptist Press the agency “played a key role in drafting the letter and ensuring it was delivered” to Trump.
“We are profoundly grateful to the Congress members championing this cause and working tirelessly to bring it to the president’s attention,” said Newell, leading an agency that represents 48 families whose adoptions had been approved and were in the late stages of completion when the program was halted in August 2024.
“On behalf of these families and the children desperately awaiting a permanent, loving home, we urge President Trump to raise this critical issue with President Xi Jinping at their next meeting,” Newell told Baptist Press. “The United States has long been a beacon of hope for orphaned children around the world. We cannot abandon this ideal now.
“Denying these children the chance to join a family so late in the adoption process would be a profound injustice.”
Robert Aderholt, R-AL, and Danny Davis, D-IL, co-led the bipartisan effort in the U.S. House of Representatives, joined by U.S. Senators Rand Paul, R-KY, Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, Kevin Cramer, R-ND, and Chuck Grassley, R-IA in the bicameral effort. The letter, dated March 14 and posted on Paul’s website March 17, had garnered 100 additional signatures.
Multiple Grammy- and Dove-award-winning artist Stephen Curtis Chapman, along with his wife Mary Beth and their daughter Emily Chapman Richards, expressed their hopes for the outcome of the letter in comments Lifeline emailed to Baptist Press. The Chapmans have adopted from China and founded Show Hope, a Lifeline partner that provides parents adoption aid grants averaging $5,000 each.
“Helping unite these children to their promised families is the right thing to do. These families have never lost hope that their matched children would come home,” the Chapmans said in their statement. “They’ve tirelessly advocated — renewing paperwork and following the robust requirements for intercountry adoption to ensure their children come home legally and in accordance with safeguards put in place by central authorities in both the People’s Republic of China and the U.S.”
The Chapmans described Trump as “a leader who values family, enjoying the gift of life and time spent with your children and grandchildren,” imploring him that, “now is the time to act to ensure these children — who have spent a better part of their childhood waiting — are able to enjoy the same gift of family.”
Lifeline began advocating for the completion of the adoptions anew under Trump’s current term, the agency’s Senior Director of International Adoptions Karla Thrasher told Baptist Press, in hopes his administration would bring renewed energy to the issue.
“We’re hoping maybe somebody new and fresh will take this on,” Thrasher said in January. “We all give credence to the new policy out of China. We understand there will be no new adoptions going forward. I don’t think that was unanticipated by the adoption community. But our hope is that the 300 families that were in process when suspension happened would be able to finalize their adoptions.”
In the letter, senators and representatives informed Trump that the safety of adopted children and hundreds of would-be adoptees was the politicians’ top priority.
“The sudden termination of China’s adoption program in August 2024 only exacerbated our concern for these children’s well-being,” the letter reads. “Many of these children have special health care needs, and some will soon age out of care systems without the support of a permanent family. It is particularly critical that these children have access to the care and support that they need — which hundreds of American families approved for adoption are willing to provide.”
There is some indication that after China announced the end of its intercountry adoption program, a handful of adoptions in the final stages from Italy and Spain were allowed to be finalized, Thrasher has said, based on its “resources on the ground in China.” But official finalizations of those adoptions from Italy and Spain were never announced, she said.
(EDITOR’S NOTE — Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.)
