So you're selling my baby.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)

In his article "Lost Generation" (August 4) Kevin D. Williamson illustrates another tragic result of the Roe v. Wade decision and its concomitant 50 million abortions: a trend toward fewer children available for adoption in the United States.

Yet in commenting on the apparent disconnect between millions of white Americans seeking to adopt while 500,000 children, most of them minorities, "languish" in foster care, he takes too great a leap in embracing the actual sale of parental rights.

Williamson claims that the system is stacked against potential adoptive parents, citing a survey that found antipathy to transracial adoptions on the part of caseworkers in New York. But the "tilt" against transracial placements, as perceived by Williamson, can be explained instead by the realities of foster care.

Here at Little Flower Children & Family Services, more than 30 percent of all foster-care placements are in "kinship" homes--that is, with a child's family member. These adoptions are thus not likely to be "transracial." If no family members are available, the policy of Little Flower is to try to place foster children in their home communities, providing continuity and greater likelihood for a successful placement. In practice, this means that a black child placed in a non-kinship foster home will often continue to live in a neighborhood that is significantly black.

Despite the "adoption bureaucracy" cited by Williamson, Little Flower has won repeated "outstanding" ratings from New York City's Administration for Children's Services, achieving 227 adoptions from foster care in 2006 and 2007. We charged no one a ...