Russia's adoption ban penalizes orphans

Homeless Russian street children

Russia's ban on adoptions by American parents, considered a retaliatory response to U.S. sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses, will instead punish vulnerable orphans languishing in the foreign country, Christians at the forefront of the issue fear.

Moreover, the ban halts in mid-stream adoptions already initiated by American families ready to give homes to some of Russia's more than 120,000 orphans, said Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean and administrator Russell Moore, who with his wife Maria adopted two sons from Russia.

"With this awful retaliation against his own nation's orphans, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin has demonstrated once again that he wants to be a tin-pot Stalinist governing a frozen banana republic," Moore told Baptist Press. "And, as it has been since the days of Pharaoh and Herod, when tyrants throw tantrums, children are caught in the crossfire. His action demonstrates the very human rights atrocities the Obama Administration rightly sought to sanction in the first place."

Moore, dean of Southern Seminary's School of Theology and senior vice president for academic administration, called on the Russian Orthodox Church to "speak truth to power against the Putin Administration, and to place justice for orphans over nationalistic egoism." Read more