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Study of the Impact of Indoctrinated views of Society on Abortion Rates
• Fifty percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 17%.[7]
• Thirty-seven percent of abortions occur to black women, 34% to non-Hispanic white women, 22% to Hispanic women and 8% to women of other races.**
• Forty-three percent of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as Protestant, and 27% as Catholic.[3]
• Women who have never married obtain two-thirds of all abortions.[3]
• About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.[7]
• The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women[3,1]
• The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.[8]
1. Has as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
2. Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
3. Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;
4. Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity;
5. Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
6. Teaches that bearing children out of wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society;
7. Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increase vulnerability to sexual advances, and
8. Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.
For over a quarter century, the federal government has supported abstinence-only education programs that censor information to youth. Federal support of such programs began in 1982 with a limited pool of funding through the Adolescent Family Life Act. Then beginning in 1996, funding for abstinence-only and abstinence-only-until-marriage programs (hereafter, collectively called abstinence-only) grew exponentially with the enactment of welfare reform (P.L. 104-193). The law contained a little noticed mandate of $50 million a year to fund abstinence-only programs. In fact, the law amended the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant legislation (Title V of the Social Security Act) and was groundbreaking, both for its funding level and also for its unprecedented, eight-point definition of abstinence education. This definition (see below) has remained at the core of all federal abstinence-only funding streams, including the newest and, arguably, the most controversial – Community-Based Abstinence Education
Title V provides funds to teach abstinence before marriage in schools. When Congress established the program in 1997, they made $50 million per year available to states, which provide $3 for every four federal dollars. Federal funding for abstinence-only programs increased an average of $22.1 million per year since 2000, according to statistics compiled by the non-profit Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. The proposed amount for 2006 was $206 million, up from $170.5 million in 2005.
There are three federal programs dedicated to funding restrictive abstinence-only education: Section 510 of the Social Security Act, the Adolescent Family Life Act’s teen pregnancy prevention component and Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE). The total funding for these programs is $176 million for FY 2006.[25]
• Federal law establishes a stringent eight-point definition of “abstinence-only education” that requires programs to teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong and harmful—for people of any age. The law also prohibits programs from advocating contraceptive use or discussing contraceptive methods except to emphasize their failure rates.[26]
• Federal guidelines now define sexual activity to include any behavior between two people that may be sexually stimulating, which could be interpreted as including even kissing or hand-holding.[27]
• New federal restrictions have been expanded to target adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 29.[28]
• There is currently no federal program dedicated to supporting comprehensive sex education that teaches young people about both abstinence and contraception.[29]
www.heritage.org...
In fact, programs promoting contraceptive use already receive very large amounts of government funding. In 2002, the federal and state governments spent an estimated $1.73 billion on a wide variety of contraception promotion and pregnancy prevention programs.1 More than a third of that money ($653 million) was spent specifically to fund contraceptive programs for teens.2
By contrast, programs teaching teens to abstain from sexual activity received only an estimated $144.1 million in the same year.
While the effectiveness of abstinence pledges that are so popular among evangelicals has long been contested, I never knew inflation was a problem. A pledge movement often collapses in a school when it becomes too popular. As soon as it loses its magical minority milieu — 30 percent is the tipping point — teens feel less unique and pledges get tossed aside like last year’s yellow.
Minding the gap between sexual beliefs and behavior becomes even harder when looking at the outcome of abstinence pledges. To find out how effective they are, read more.
According to a 2001 estimate, 2.5 million people in the US pledged to abstain from premarital sex, yet more than half of them do it anyway. Pledges do have some impact though. Teens who take them lose their virginity 18 months later than those who do not and have fewer partners on average.
Research on virginity pledges found that for a select group of young people, pledges did delay the onset of sexual intercourse for an average of 18 months (a goal still far short of the average age of marriage).1 However, the same study also found that young people who took a pledge were one-third less likely to use contraception when they did become sexually active than their peers who had not pledged.2 In other words, pledging can create harm by undermining contraceptive use when young people who take them become sexually active.
Lawmakers in nearly half the states have introduced bills in this year's legislative sessions to allow pharmacists not to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception or other birth-control medicines based on their religious or moral objections.
Four states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakotaare available by prescription only, and so may not be an option for someone who has no access to health insurance or relies upon a parent’s permission to receive a prescription.
Lawmakers in nearly half the states have introduced bills in this year's legislative sessions to allow pharmacists not to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception or other birth-control medicines based on their religious or moral objections.
Four states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota -- have passed laws that permit druggists to deny certain prescriptions, including emergency or other contraceptives.
Social Reasons (given as primary reason)
- Feels unready for child/responsibility 25%
- - Feels she can't afford baby 23%
- - Has all the children she wants/Other family responsibilities 19%
- - Relationship problem/Single motherhood 8%
- - Feels she isn't mature enough 7%
- - Interference with education/career plans 4%
- - Parents/Partner wants abortion
[5]
The abortion rate for minor girls in Japan reached a record high last year, the sixth straight year it has done so according to a health ministry report on Thursday. About 46,500 abortions were performed in the Asian nation on girls 19 and under. Overall there were 341,588 abortions in the country which has a total population of 64.6 million women. The number of abortion for girls 19 and under was 46,571, almost twice what it was in 1995, when 26,117 abortions were performed on girls in that age group.
[6]
Experts say part of the reason is that, the pill is a prescription drug and therefore can't be advertised. They say other factors are simple conservatism, vague concerns about possible side effects and an unwillingness to enter into a daily pill-taking regime.
[7]
On the lack of pressure from Japanese women for a legal pill, the authors attribute it "in part because of their ignorance of the greatly reduced risks and non-contraceptive benefits of low-dose oral contraceptives.
[8]
Studies indicate that only 35 per cent of pregnancies in Japan are wanted; 35 per cent are unexpected, 3 per cent are unwanted but carried to term, and 27 per cent are aborted. Researchers estimate the ratio of unmarried women’s abortions to pregnancies carried to term is considerably higher. Studies show that unwanted pregnancies are generally the result of condom failure, or more commonly, of the failure to use any contraception.
[1]
Only 1.1 percent of births in Japan were to unwed mothers in 1994, the most recent year for which figures are available, compared with 30.1 percent in the United States. In America the proportion has soared in recent years, fueling a debate over family values. But in Japan it has tumbled -- Japanese women are much less likely to become single mothers in the 1990's than in the unsettling years after the war, in the late 1940's and 1950's. In 1994, 14,700 babies were born to unmarried mothers in Japan. (The United States, which has twice Japan's population, recorded 1,240,172 births to unwed mothers in 1993, the latest year for which official figures are available.) The Japanese figure was a slight increase over the previous years, but it was only about one-tenth the number of births to single mothers in 1947, the first year for which figures were made available. Why has Japan not had a surge in single mothers? For a start, it may be that Japanese teen-agers are less active sexually than young people abroad. Moreover, abortions are easily available -- and common -- for those who become pregnant. But the most important factor is social pressure. Single mothers face economic and social discrimination. In Japan, having a baby without being married is still a humiliation.
[1]
Social pressures are also intense. Marriage prospects for the children are slimmer, and sometimes even funeral services are affected: in one case relatives refused to enshrine the ashes of a man in the family tomb because he had been born out of wedlock.
[1]
Unwed Are Shunned In a Family Culture- There is ubiquitous name-calling and bullying, high schools sometimes turn down the children, and companies often will not hire the parents. Some older children of single mothers have reported being told by teachers that even if they excel in national examinations they will not get into prominent schools. And if all these pressures were not enough, official discrimination against single mothers and their children is still overwhelming. Children of single parents, for instance, have weaker inheritance rights and their unusual status is recorded on their family registration, a document the Government requires every family to file. Moreover, tax policies discriminate against women who choose single motherhood. Mothers who were divorced or widowed after having children can take a few thousand dollars in tax deductions against their income. In contrast, mothers single by choice get none. Not only do they pay more national and local income taxes, but by reporting higher income because they do not get the deductions, single mothers also pay higher public day care fees and, in some areas, health premiums. "It seems the national Government thinks that if you allow single motherhood to proliferate, it would damage Japan," said Shuhei Ninomiya, a law professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, who has researched children's rights.
[2]
Many Buddhists come to temples to pray for good health, a new husband or a pile of money, but not Miss Sugimoto. Every month she comes to this temple in the ancient Japanese capital of Kamakura to make amends with the fetus that she aborted nearly two years ago as an unmarried student. It is not that she broods over whether she made the proper decision, given the circumstances. To her it was an act that was necessary, though evil. And like tens of thousands of women throughout the country, Miss Sugimoto regularly visits a Buddhist temple to console a tiny statuette, known as a mizuko jizo, that to her personifies her forgone baby.
[1]
Single mothers are not permitted in Japanese society," Miss Yokota said.
Adopting from the U.S. foster care system is generally the least expensive type of adoption, usually involving little or no cost, and states often provide subsidies to adoptive parents. Stepparent and kinship adoptions are often not very costly. Agency and private adoptions can range from $5,000 to $40,000 or more depending on a variety of factors including services provided, travel expenses, birthmother expenses, requirements in the state, and other factors. International adoptions can range from $7,000 to $30,000
The federal and state governments do not mandate that private domestic adoption statistics be recorded and tracked from year to year. For this reason, it is difficult to determine the number of families that have taken concrete steps to adopt domestically. The most recent reliable data related to adoption statistics dates from 1992. During this calendar year, 127,000 children were adopted. This total includes children that were adopted domestically and internationally, through both private agencies and attorney-facilitated adoptions; as well as through foster care and step-parent adoptions.
There is one trend that can be identified with a high degree of certainty. At the current time, a far greater number of adults seek to adopt newborn infants than the number of newborn infants available to be adopted. Published statistics indicate that there are 3.3 adoption seekers for every child that is actually adopted.
Additional statistics indicate that 20,000 or more newborn infants are placed for adoption each year in the United States. It is also true that 11% to 24% of couples that experience infertility decide to pursue adoption.
Nearly One Quarter of Foster Care Children Are Waiting for Adoptive Families
In 1999, the latest year for which totals have been finalized, there were about 581,000 children in foster care in the United States.[1] Twenty-two percent of these children -- about 127,000 kids -- were available for adoption.[2]
nternational Adoption in the U.S. Prompted by War, Poverty and Social Upheaval
United States citizens started adopting children from other countries in substantial numbers after World War II (1939-1945).[1] Many of the children adopted were European and Japanese war orphans. Additional adoptions followed after the civil war in Greece (1946-49), the Korean War (1950-53) and the war in Vietnam (1954-1975). But war and its aftermath are not the only factors leading countries to allow their children to be adopted abroad. Desperate poverty and social upheaval have been critical factors in the adoption of children from Latin America, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe over the last twenty years. In China, government population control policies contributed to abandonment of infant girls and overcrowded orphanages, factors in the government's decision to facilitate international adoptions. [2]
Over a Quarter Million Children Adopted In Three Decades
Between 1971 and 2001, U.S. citizens adopted 265,677 children from other countries.[3]
States that Ban Gay Adoption
* States that prohibit gays from adopting: Florida
* States that don’t prohibit gays from adopting, but don’t practice it: Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, North Dakota
* States considering constitutional amendments or laws banning gay adoption: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Missouri
* States that prohibit gays from serving as foster parents: Arkansas, Nebraska, Utah
“Summary of legal grounds and time limits for abortion as laid out in the 1967 Abortion Act
Up to 24 weeks two doctors must decide that the risk to a woman’s physical or mental health or the risk to her child(ren)’s physical or mental health will be greater if she continues with the pregnancy than if she ends it.
There is no time limit on abortion where two doctors agree that a woman’s health or life is gravely threatened by continuing with the pregnancy or that the fetus is likely to be born with severe physical or mental abnormalities.
In the event that an abortion must be performed as a matter of medical emergency a second doctor’s agreement does not need to be sought.”
In 2007, for women resident in England and Wales:
• the total number of abortions was 198,500, compared with 193,700 in 2006, a rise of 2.5%
• the age-standardised abortion rate was 18.6 per 1,000 resident women aged 15-44, compared with 18.3 in 2006
• the abortion rate was highest at 36 per 1,000, for women age 19
• the under-16 abortion rate was 4.4 and the under- 18 rate was 19.8 per 1,000 women, both higher than in 2006
• 89% of abortions were funded by the NHS; of these, just over half (57%) took place in the independent sector under NHS contract
• 90% of abortions were carried out at under 13 weeks gestation; 70% were at under 10 weeks
• medical abortions accounted for 35% of the total compared with 30% in 2006
• 1,900 abortions (1%) were under ground E, risk that the child would be born handicapped
Non-residents:
• in 2007, there were 7,100 abortions for non-residents carried out in hospitals and clinics in England and Wales (7,400 in 2006)
The 1967 Abortion Act was based on a desire to end backstreet abortions. Prior to the Act many women underwent unsafe illegal abortions, which included the risk of death or subsequent infertility. The Act sets a range of conditions and safeguards in order for terminations to take place. It requires women to have a specific medical justification for an abortion (see below); a registered medical practitioner (a doctor) to administer it; and, except in emergency situations, two doctors to be of the opinion that the abortion meets the legal criteria, and the abortion to be administered in NHS or approved premises.
Key findings are:
• There was no single reason why women have abortions in the second trimester: respondents reported a whole variety of reasons that explained their delay in seeking and obtaining an abortion.
• A major reason for delay in the pathway to abortion was women not realising that they were pregnant.
• Much of the delay occurs prior to women requesting an abortion: half the women questioned were more than 13 weeks pregnant by the time they requested an abortion.
• Women’s concerns about what is involved in having the abortion are also important in creating delay.
• Various aspects of relationships with their partners and/or parents played a role in delays in women’s decision-making about whether to have an abortion.
• Forty one per cent of women in the study said that they were unsure about having an abortion and therefore it took some time to make up their minds. Over half the teenage women said they were worried how their parents would react, while 23 per cent overall said that their relationship with their partners had broken down or changed.
• After requesting an abortion, delays were partly service-related, to do with waiting for appointments, and partly ‘women-related’, to do with missing or cancelling appointments. Service-related reasons for delay at this stage included delays in getting further appointments and confusion amongst doctors first approached about where a procedure should take place.
Contraceptive advice and prescription-dispensed contraceptive products are available free of charge through general practitioners. Family planning clinics, young people's sexual health services, voluntary organisations such as Brook Advisory Centres, a few hospital-based departments and genito-urinary medicine clinics supply a wide range of contraceptive services and products free of charge. Condoms can also be easily purchased from retail outlets. The most popular forms of contraception used in England and Wales are oral contraceptives, sterilisation and condoms. Men and women's contraceptive preferences change throughout their life cycle, so age and lifestyle are important categories. All methods of contraception have a failure rate, and each has characteristics that make it more or less suitable for different categories of the population.
Almost half admitted they conceived because they were not using any contraception at the time they had sex or had forgotten to take the Pill. One in three women taking part in the survey went through an unplanned pregnancy - with most using no contraception at the time - while in a long term relationship.
Approximately 86% of women of childbearing age would become pregnant within a year if no method of contraception were used. However, many women do not want to be pregnant but are not using contraceptives or are using methods with relatively high rates of failure.
• 82 per cent of GPs describe themselves as 'pro-choice'
• 18 per cent said they were anti-abortion
• 76 per cent of GPs thought women should be entitled to free NHS abortions
• 85 per cent thought GPs with a conscientious objection to abortion should declare their position to women
• 10 per cent said there was no need to inform women of a conscientious objection
• One in five of those against abortion said they still supported a woman's right to chose
• More than a quarter of anti-abortion GPs said they did not believe they should have to tell women that they conscientiously objected to the practice
There are currently up to 4,000 children in the UK waiting for adoptive families.
Many children needing adoption have been abused, either physically or sexually. Others may have been neglected and not given love and stimulation. All will have experienced changes and uncertainty. As a result, many children are angry or confused about what is happening to them. They need a great deal of love and attention to help them adjust to stable family life.
On 30 December 2005, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 was fully implemented. It replaced the Adoption Act 1976 and modernised the legal framework for adoption in England and Wales. The Act provides for an adoption order to be made in favour of single people, married couples and, for the first time, civil partners, same-sex couples and unmarried couples.
For a baby under the age of one in this country the average time between the child being placed in local authority care and being adopted is 820 days.
What information do I have to give to the social services?
If you do decide to give your baby up for adoption, the social worker will spend some time with you talking things through. At some point you'll need to give some personal information about yourself, your family and your family's health. This is so that the people who adopt your child can tell them information about you as they grow up.
Once I've decided, is that it?
Although you can prepare for the adoption before the baby's born, nothing will definitely be arranged until after the birth. Once your baby's born you'll have to talk over your decision with a social worker again and you can't sign any papers agreeing to the adoption until your child is at least six weeks old.
What happens to my baby in the mean time?
An adoption agency can take the child into care temporarily during these six weeks and then they'll arrange to place your child with the most suitable adopters.
Fostering is looking after a child or young person in your home and caring for them while their own parents are unable to do so.
There are 50,000 children in foster care on any given day in the UK.
They do this through two distinct types of article in the press. The first goes like this: Some very young women are having abortions (sometimes, shock horror, without telling their parents). These women are portrayed as immature and highly irresponsible (though the biggest group of women who have abortions are aged 20 to 24).
In terms of irresponsible and wicked behaviour, abortion is second only to being a teenage or single (or teenage and single) parent. And as, once pregnant, these women are therefore vilified if they go ahead with the pregnancy or vilified if they abort it, there is only one answer - abstinence. Essentially, these articles are about telling women - and it is women that these pieces focus on - not to have sex.
"The initial response was one of horror and shame and it made the kids feel terrible. They meet prejudice on every single corner. Going down the road looking pregnant, people looking at them in a hateful way.
"They are seen as feckless and promiscuous when all it is is kids that are brought into the teenage world under-prepared and incredibly ignorant. We let them watch it on television but we don't talk about it."
The figures from the Office of National Statistics show that just seven per cent of pregnancies to married women ended in termination in 2006 compared with 35 per cent to unmarried women.
Women under the age of 20 were most likely to end their pregnancy, with 41.9 per cent ending in termination in 2006.
One of the most common misconceptions is that most single parents are unemployed teenagers, when the reality shows they account for only two per cent of single parents nationally.
"These findings show that too many people still have an image of single parents as teenage, never married and on benefits. The reality is far more complex.
Sixty-one per cent of the single-parent homes are reliant on state support, compared with just 9% of those with two parents, according to the report.
Unmarried parents are up to five times more likely to experience family breakdown, according to the survey of 15,000 families carried out for the social justice policy review group
Religion In The UK
Census shows 72% identify as Christians
Judeo-Christian tradition going back thousands of years has always valued human life, including unborn human life.
The Catholic Church opposes abortion because it believes that life is sacred and inviolable.
The Church of England states that the unborn child is alive and created by God. However, the Church of England also believes that abortion is sometimes morally acceptable such as when a baby is suffering from a serious disability.
Abortion on any grounds is forbidden in the Islamic holy book Al'Quran. "Do not kill or take a human life which God has declared to be sacred." (Chapter 6,verse 151)
They say that if women couldn't have abortions so easily, governments would have to invest more money in supporting mothers.
It is in the interests of governments to pay for abortion rather than providing housing and maintenance for women and children in need. In the UK, mothers in need can ask for state benefits and housing.
The NHS pays for four out of five - but half of these are carried out by private sector providers.
• Motherhood is a woman's highest calling
• All women should be (and want to be) mothers.
• Women should endure the discomfort and pain of pregnancy and childbirth as their natural duty.
• Women should sacrifice themselves to raise kids.
• Women who have abortions are "bad" or "victims."
• Women who have abortions suffer psychologically (at least they should).
• Women are irresponsible or too emotional, and need direction and guidance
• To "protect" women, we must restrict abortion.
• Pro-natalism - societies have a preference for birth over abortion
• The Church, God, and Bible are anti-abortion.
The Catholic CSU's rule book states: "Marriage and the family are at the centre of our policy. They are the natural way of life and the basic pillar of a free society that displays solidarity."
Section 59 of the Housing Act 1985 put unmarried pregnant mothers at the top of the queue for council housing. Our failure to apply Godly principles to welfare is reflected in the statistics for illegitimate births and for the percentage of families headed by a lone parent. The latter saw a particularly steep rise after the 1985 Act.
The average age for first marriages in England and Wales is 31 for men and 29 for women.
Current Norwegian legislation and public health policy provides for abortion on demand in the first 12 weeks of gestation, by application up to the 18th week, and only under special circumstances thereafter.
The chief obstetrician of the Russian Ministry of Health succinctly summarized the Russian political problems confronting family planning programs when he quoted lawmakers telling him "few enough of us were being born as it is, and then you come along with your [family planning] program." Complicating these matters is strong resistance, dating from Communist days, to formal education on sexuality. Education on sexuality issues was absent from Soviet medical schools. Even today, few Russian schools are willing to go against public opinion opposing sex education.
Russia reportedly leads the world in the total number of abortions performed each year, which currently exceeds the country's annual number of live births. Abortion is freely available during the first 12 weeks of gestation as well as at any point during the pregnancy in cases involving a risk to the life or health of the mother or severe fetal abnormalities. Since 2003, abortion has also been legal between the 12th and 22nd weeks of pregnancy on certain social grounds, including imprisonment, rape, or spousal disability or death.
A 1997 report by UNICEF stated that over 600,000 Russian children were lacking parental care. Nearly 350,000 of these children resided in state-run institutions; another 30,000 were committed to locked psychoneurological homes for "uneducable" children. Another report the following year contended that there was a total of 860,000 children in institutions. But even that staggering amount may be in doubt; Russia's own government recently has suggested that as many as two million of the country's children do not have parents to look after them. The situation is showing no signs of improving. On average, every 100th child born in Russia today is sent to an orphanage directly from the maternity hospital because the parents cannot or will not care for their child; UNICEF notes that the annual number of children registered as "left without parental care" doubled between 1989 and 1999.
[edit on 12/9/2008 by TINSTACT]
Some reports estimate 700,000 children wait to be adopted in Russia. Russians wants their children to remain in their country, but according to current reporting, Russian families rarely adopt. Interfax found from a recent June 2005 poll by the Russian Public Opinion Studies Center (VTsIOM), which polled 153 cities, towns, and villages of 46 regions of Russia that: * 81% of Russians do not plan to adopt a child. * 61% believe that the government should not ban adoption by foreign families. * 13% believe that foreign adoption was necessary to solve the problem of neglected children.
Children and disabled children can be fostered on a contractual basis in Russia. Such contracts are signed between the public authority in charge of the fosterling and the foster parent or organization. The foster parent receives money for his services and care.
The Education Ministry, which oversees the adoption of Russian children by foreigners, has been heavily scrutinized by the State Duma(lower house of the Federal Assembly, the parliament of the Russian Federation) after the most recent two deaths in 2003 and 2005 of Russian children by U.S. adoptive parents. The State Duma is accusing the Education Ministry of being corrupt and making money off of the sell of Russian children. This has prompted the current investigation of Russian adoptions. Now Russian adoptions have been put on hold and have stopped accepting new applications from American adoption agencies. This is all part of its accreditation process.