Orrington woman advocates for Down syndrome adoption

ORRINGTON – There are children with Down syndrome living overseas who are abandoned in mental institutions, and there are loving families in the United States who want to adopt them but lack the funds to do so, a local adoption advocate says.

Orrington resident Michelle Harmon, who is mother to a 9-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, said recently that there are ways to help those who want to adopt children with Down syndrome.

“The only thing stopping them is money,” she said. “Money talks. These kids have homes and families that want them. It’s just the money.”

Harmon is advocating that people go to the Reece’s Rainbow Web site, www.reecesrainbow.com, a nonprofit ministry created as a connecting point for adoptive families, to find out more about what can be done to help these children.

“Our goal is to raise awareness,” she said. “We’ve raised about $4,000, which isn’t much, but that’s four kids.”

The average cost to adopt a Down syndrome child from an overseas country is around $20,000, but a $1,000 donation to the country the child is from is generally enough to put a hold on that child, Harmon said. Reece’s Rainbow grants also can be used for travel or legal expenses, the Web site states.

The program, which Georgia resident Andrea Roberts started in 2002 after the birth of her son Reece, who has Down syndrome, expanded to include international adoptions in 2006.

“By raising money to offer adoption grants on waiting children, we are able to give adoptive families the extra financial help they need to bring a child with Down syndrome home from a miserable existence in overseas orphanages,” the Web site states. “These children are viewed as outcasts with no ability to learn or be functional members of society. They languish in mental institutions, hidden away from the world in shame.”

Down syndrome is usually caused by an error in cell division called nondisjunction. All people with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome, and it’s this additional genetic material that affects development.

Reece’s Rainbow works with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Estonia, Ethiopia, Republic of Georgia, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Latin America, Latvia, Moldova, Nepal, Peru, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, according to the Web site.

“Even if you are not able to adopt a child at this time, you truly can change the course of a child’s life by helping adoptive families afford the costs of international adoption,” the Web site states. By donating “$20, $50, $1,000 … whatever you have goes into an interest-bearing fund for any family adopting a child with Down syndrome” to use.

Harmon said the goal is to get the children adopted before they turn 4 and are moved from what she called “baby houses” to mental institutions, where they often are tied to their cribs.

“They are left to die,” she said.

She adding that her experience raising a child with Down syndrome has taught her the true meaning of love and acceptance.

“There is something about Down syndrome that is just magic,” she said.

nricker@bangordailynews.net

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