Dear Journal: There was an e-mail in the newsgroup today that created quite a ruckus. A woman wrote about a letter to the editor that had appeared in her local paper in response to an article about a family who had just completed an international adoption. The gist of the letter was that American children are languishing in foster homes, so why don't we, as prospective adoptive parents, take care of our own before flying off to the far corners of the world to rescue some third world child? What an outcry that provoked!

Many of these people have been foster parents and have tried to adopt their charges, only to see these vulnerable children thrust back into the care of parents who are on their third or fourth attempt at drug or alcohol rehabilitation. Other qualifications are equally unjust, from deciding at what age a person is too old to become an adoptive parent, to requiring that you have been married for five years before your relationship is judged to be stable enough to adopt a child.

One woman wrote about how she and her husband had tried to adopt a two-year-old who was in foster care. The judge kept giving the mother, a drug addict, another chance to rehabilitate herself. The child is now 15 and is still in the foster care system because her mother couldn't stay off drugs. It is a very tragic story.

I admit I feel guilty telling people that I am adopting from Ukraine . I have seen the faces of children waiting to be adopted in this country. They are cute, clever, and desperate for a loving family. They also get excellent medical and mental health treatment, a family that clothes and feeds them, and access to the best schools in the world. Compare that to children in Ukraine or other third world countries that survive on pennies a day for their food and clothing allowance. Education is minimal and their future in a society that blames them for their parents' indiscretions is bleak at best. Yet economics is only part of the decision-making process. Deciding whether to pursue a domestic or foreign adoption is a difficult and personal choice. Much depends on one's circumstances and the health, age and gender of the child one wants to adopt.

For myself, I'd rather focus the attention on how we can improve the lives of all orphaned and abandoned children instead of pointing fingers and making accusations. The bottom line is that no child deserves to be left behind, regardless of where he or she lives.