Official statistics show that since 1999 over 64,000 Chinese babies, most of them girls, have been adopted by Americans. China’s one child policy has caused an increase in the number of children abandoned, many of whom end up in orphanages. But China has changed a great deal in the last two decades, and so has its attitude towards adoption. The Chinese government recently paid for 90 adopted Chinese children and their families to travel from the U.S. to the country of their birth on a "heritage tour" — billed as an opportunity for these children to learn more about their roots.

Congresswoman Gwen Moore was on The Takeaway to talk about women’s access to family planning and health care services, particularly for poor, black women in the U.S. Congresswoman Moore (D-Wis.) gave an impassioned speech recently on the House floor defending the funding of Planned Parenthood. This week we're joined by Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of The Radiance Foundation, which advocates cutting funding for programs like Planned Parenthood. Ryan Bomberger rents billboards in states like California and Louisiana, with messages like, “Black Children Are an Endagered Species” and “Too Many Aborted.”

Michael Fosberg was raised in a working class Armenian American family led by his biological mother and adoptive father. When he was in his thirties, his parents decided to divorce. Michael responded to the split by going out in search of the long lost father he never knew and discovering that he was black.

In January, Lisa Scoppa and her husband, Duke, were in the process of adopting two young Haitian children when the news struck that Port-au-Prince had been hit by a devastating earthquake. The Scoppas feared their children were lost, but after several anxious days, discovered they had been evacuated to Florida. Now, ten months later, the family is together for their first Thanksgiving, and the two kids, Therline and Erikson, are officially U.S. citizens.

Last week, things looked a lot different for aspiring gay and lesbian parents in Florida, where a ban on adoption by gay couples has been in place since the 1970s. But after 13 months, the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami struck down the ban, saying it was unconstitutional. One of the people rejoicing today is former television anchor Charles Perez, who joined us last week to talk about the ban.

To people in Miami, Charles Perez is a familiar face. He used to be a television news anchor, and he’s currently writing a book called “Confessions of a Gay Anchorman.”

But behind Charles’s familiar face and authoritative television presence is a journey to parenthood that has been incredibly difficult, at times. Charles and his husband wanted to adopt a child. But in the state of Florida, it’s still against the law for gay and lesbian people to adopt. In order to adopt, they temporarily moved to Illinois, and then later to Kansas, where they were eventually able to adopt their daughter.

When an unmarried woman places her child up for adoption, how much say should the reputed father — or putative father, as they’re referred to legally — have?

Courts across the country have been grappling with this question. In Ohio, a man has been fighting to stop the finalization of his child’s adoption for more than a year. Several men in states across the country have been trying to stop the adoptions of their children in Utah, which is widely regarded as the most complicated state for putative fathers who want to claim parental rights. And two other cases have just been settled in Ohio, which gave the putative fathers more leeway than previously existed to stop adoptions.

There are between six and eight million adopted people in the United States and the vast majority of them will never have access to their original birth certificates. All information on their birth parents is sealed. For decades, several advocacy groups have been trying to change this, claiming that humans have a right to own their own histories.

A Tennessee woman who returned her adopted child to Russia is causing a diplomatic crisis. We talk about how it feels to be rejected as an adopted child with Orlando Modeno, a man who lived through the experience when he was only a boy. We also talk with Lisa Belkin, Motherlod blogger for our partner the New York Times. 

We started the conversation early on this, and want to know what you think: Should a parent be allowed to return a child?

Last week, ten American Baptist community members attempted to take 33 children out of Haiti, claiming their goal was to rescue the children. The Haitian government disagreed and charged the Americans with kidnapping.  For many, the story has raised new concerns and questions about adoption.

It’s Monday, when we talk about family issues on The Takeaway. Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes the parenting blog Motherlode for The New York Times, is here to talk with us about what happens when parents make the decision to dissolve an adoption. 

We also talk wtih Anita Tedaldi about this painful process. Tedaldi wrote an essay for Motherlode about her very personal experience of terminating an adoption. She had adopted a baby from an undisclosed country and after months of raising the baby, decided that she and her husband were not equipped to take care of him.