Good evening. Welcome to Horizon. I'm Michael Grant. Most of the world is
focusing its attention on Seoul South Korea these days that of course,
where the 24 summer Olympic Games are being held tonight. We will look at
South Korea for a different reason that Southeast Asian country is a haven
for American couples looking to adopt a child in a few minutes. We'll
profile two Valley couples who adopt Children from overseas countries and
we'll speak with an attorney who specializes in legal problems associated
with adoption in general. But first, we'll update you on an interesting
political development in the East Valley. Normally when candidates are
defeated in the primary election, that is the end of their campaign or is
it in last Tuesday's primary race? Representative Don Straw and Senator
Jack Taylor. Both of mesa lost their bids for re election while their
defeat prevents them from running for their respective offices in the
November election. They may run for each other's legislative seat in order
to do so. They will need to turn in 253 valid signatures from registered
voters who did not vote in the primary. Those signatures need to be into
the Secretary of State's office by the end of business on Friday and Straw
and Taylor, both Republicans would have to run as independents joining us
this evening to discuss his political plans is Senator Jack Taylor. Also
with me is Representative Don Stroll before we speak to them. We have this
comment from State Attorney General Bob Corbyn on the legality of their
office switch. It's a very close question, but we believe looking back at
the history of the amendment to our statute in 1980 we believe that the
way the statute is drafted, that the two individuals, Mr Taylor and Mr
Strock can run as independents in the general election and that's our best
legal interpretation of the matter at the present time. But we think that
we're still going to continue looking at the question because we probably
have to defend a lawsuit on that in the near future. I'm sure somebody
will bring an action as far as whether or not they can run as Republicans.
The answer to that is no, they cannot run as Republicans. They can. We
believe a state previously stated, run as independents in the general
election for a different office other than the one they were defeated for
in the primary election. Representative. I understand that you're still
struggling with this concept. Haven't quite made up your mind. That's very
, very true. I'm having very difficult problems making up my mind. It's
not an easy issue. For me, it's not an issue that I can quantify and put
down specific numbers and say this will answer that question, that will
answer the other question. I, I'm finding it very difficult to make a
question. What are that you've indicated though, that you'll make a
decision by Wednesday. And in the meantime, I would assume that you've at
least authorized the collecting of signatures. So you'd be in a position
to proceed. Yes, if you do decide the best information we have, I think we
probably have more than enough signatures. Right. At this exact moment.
The people aren't working this last night of registration. So they're
working. Yes, we are actively gathering signatures. But I'm, that's one
barrier, the signatures. The attorney general's opinion was another
barrier that dropped the ability to run and the ability to remain a
Republican even though we would be as identified as independents. But it's
been a strong believer in the two party system for many, many years. Am I
circumventing the two party system? The election I did not believe was
representative of the 51,000 people who were registered voters in 29. Many
things that I'm just uncertain of yet. Are you also concerned
realistically about your future political plans? I suppose if you win in
November, maybe this becomes a moot question. But if you lose, do you fear
the repercussions from that? Yes, I'm being realistic. I do one of the
questions I ask myself and others. What effect will this have on any, if I
have one future political career? It's not my major concern. However,
because I think that could be overcome if I've done the proper thing in
the beginning. Senator Taylor. Do I understand that there is a wonderful
irony in this and that you get this idea from, uh, chief supporter of Max
Hawkins. Yes. I, I listened to the radio and I think I saw on television,
I'm pretty sure I saw it on television. I know I heard it on the radio
that Max Hawkins was planning to, to put candidates into, in races that
have certain incumbents who voted against Evan Me on the impeachment
situation. So, I thought, well, gosh, if it's good for Max Hawkins and,
and Mr Me, it ought to be good for Taylor and Straw. It's the strongest
argument against radio interviews, I guess. I've, I've heard in a, in a
long time, Senator Taylor. Why are you doing it? Well, I'm, uh, just like
, uh, Don, uh, I feel just exactly like Don does if, I think the fact that
we had a turnout of, of, uh, less than 30% of our people. And I feel also
that, uh, our, uh, district 29 precinct chairman had loaded our district
29 with me people and those people got out and worked three and four times
a week. This is the internal party organization that the district 29
internal party and the commit precinct committee members. Uh The, the
chairman of the district 29 has the prerogative of appointing people to
fill vacancies. And he even, I even understand that he uh asked for and
they had, they were, he asked some people to resign so that he could
appoint other people. So I I wasn't satisfied with that part in the
absence of a Democratic candidate, which there will be no, the speculation
was on the Friday edition for what that is worth. It may be the curse of
death that this could be a very viable candidacy for the two of you. Is
that a major contributing factor? The fact that you don't have to fear a
three way split of the vote. I Schulz Warner and make him 86. I think it
was our decision was totally based on the fact that we did not have a
Democratic candidate in the race. Absolutely. There are, I'm not sure what
the total turnout was, but there are approximately 40,000 people
registered in 29 have been disenfranchised because they will be unable to
vote for anyone in the general election. And it's one of the concerns that
we Jack and I have, we felt the election was not truly a representative
election of the belief of the majority of the citizens in 29. It's a
rather vicious election and it's well and also both of you as former Mason
mayors, we can presume fairly heavy name identification out in Mesa with a
high turnout race and the presidential general election should be high
turnout 75% or so. I would think that that would operate in both of your
favors as well. True. Absolutely. I think very definitely it would operate
in our favor. I think we would get some, probably some Republican drop off.
However, and that's a point that I wanted to bring up Senator Taylor. I
think one of the things that hurt the Bill Schulz candidacy was a very
palpable, perhaps unstated feeling that hold on though, this, this, this
really subverted the electoral process. I mean, Bill Schulz didn't do it
the good old American way and the feeling was a lot of people kicked back
from the candidacy because of that factor. Do you fear that element? Well
, of course, that's a definite possibility, Michael, that could, that
could happen. But I believe that we can overcome it by the numbers. And as
you say, from 75 to 85% will turn out for a presidential election. And I
think there will be an adequate number there to offset that situation for
spending and financing purposes. Is this a new race or is this an old race
? Anybody know the answer to that question? No one seems to know the
answer at this moment. The only advice that we've had is from the
Secretary of State and he says it's an old race there are legal, other
people with uh, legal opinions who say they believe it's a new race but
under prop 200 who knows? There are too many unanswered questions at this
moment. I spoke to Mr She of Secretary of State's office this afternoon
about the subject and, uh, he without hesitation said, well, it's a
continuation of your original race. And I said, then why are you asking us
to furnish uh, uh new financial statements in this case? And that kind of
set him to thinking a little bit. And then we, when we got through talking
, uh, he was going to call the attorney general again and see if he could
get his attention diverted into that situation. So he'd be prepared for it
when the petitions are filed. I know both of you are over at the
legislature today is the media overstating, the chaos that last Tuesday's
results perhaps have reed over there with the loss of the speaker of the
House, the Senate president, you Senator Taylor Don Straub Broughton, or
do we have this one accurate for the first time in our lives? I'm not sure
that it's being overstated and I'm not sure anyone really knows what the
consequences are going to be of the election on Tuesday.
Unprecedented. I don't think anything like this has ever happened in an
election in Arizona. I think it was 62 the Democrats were having fights,
but I don't think it was this bad. So I'm not sure we have anything to
compare it with Barry Goldwater though over the weekend. Said hold it
Republican Party has always been like this and it's being overblown. What
do you think? Well, I think, I think that that is absolutely right. And I
think we've got a great diversion in the, in the Republican Party and I
hope the again is that we aren't creating more of the diversion and maybe
hopefully it might present a an answer to the problem. All right, Senator
Taylor, thank you very much for joining us. Representative. Uh ST uh we'll
know for sure on Wednesday. Ok. Coming up next on horizon, we will look at
the joys and the difficulties of adopting a child.
Yeah,
times have changed and so too has adoption in this country. Nowadays,
there are fewer newborns to adopt because mothers are either keeping their
babies or choosing abortion. So many couples are turning to foreign
adoption to improve chances of having a newborn. Tonight, we profile two
couples here in the valley who adopted Children from overseas and we learn
why one particular country is very willing to work with the United States
on adoptions.
These two little girls were born in Korea but their home is now Scottsdale
, Arizona. Carly is 3.5 years old. Krista is two. They were adopted by
Terry and Marsha Turner who knew all along they wanted to adopt after
having three Children of their own. But their decision to adopt Children
with a different ethnic background was a family decision. And one that was
carefully thought out, we talked a lot about it and it's a concern that
will be with us the rest of our lives. We're all going to learn and grow
together. But we really believe in accepting people however they look for
the way that they are and our kids have been raised that way and we're
just trying to keep everyone open minded and you look at the inside of a
person and a lot of people were very surprised and thought the older
Children would be resentful. They were unquestionably the driving force
behind our adopting the first and even more so the second
Korea has worked with the US on adoptions for a number of reasons. One is
because many Koreans don't believe in adopting other people's Children.
Emily Sundy is the administrator for Dilan Southwest, an adoption agency
in Scottsdale, which places Korean Children. The other thing is that in
Korea,
there's a great deal of discrimination against the unmarried mother. And
it's probably similar to the situation we had in our country 50 or 60
years ago where that's really not an ok situation. And it becomes a
difficult situation for the mother, for the mother's extended family, for
the child, him or herself, couples who adopt from Korea get a first
glimpse of their baby this way. Pictures and a history of the child are
sent to the adoptive family for approval that says Marsha Turner is when
the bond begins. So by the time the airport day arrives, you're madly in
love with this child that you haven't seen. You know, and in some ways
that is what's different than giving birth because you've carried the baby.
But you don't have a lot of the information, you know, that we had
already about weight and eye color, et cetera. So we really felt like we
knew this little person and it was just like welcoming someone home. The
Wells family agrees. Craig and Debbie adopted Lauren from Korea. Like many
couples today not being able to conceive, wasn't going to stop them from
making their dream come true. We just wanted to be parents so we had
always had adoption as something that we wanted to do in life. Anyway, our
plan was that we would have one or two of our own Children biologically
and then we would adopt and when that didn't happen, ok, we'll just do the
adoption and if some day we should ever get pregnant, that's great too for
the Wells. And the Turners foreign Adoption was the way to go. It was a
way to avoid the waiting list in this country and a way to give a needy
child, a loving home. Joining me tonight to discuss some of the legal
problems involved with adopting a child is Michael Sullivan. Mr Sullivan
is an attorney for the Southwest Adoption Center in Scottsdale, the
largest private adoption agency in Arizona, Michael. Welcome to Horizon.
We hear about these long waiting lists for newborns. How long are those
lists? Well across the country, Mike, the some of the lists are as many as
5 to 10 years. About two million couples every year want to adopt. And
we're talking about the typical newborn caucasian infant but some place
between 40 and 200 couples out there across the country waiting for every
available healthy newborn infant that's born. Is this increasing demand
phenomena or a dwindling supply phenomena? Or perhaps actually, it's a
little bit of both over the last 12 to 15 years, we've had a great
increase in infertility today. My infertility doctors tell me that about
one out of every five or six couples has a problem conceiving and having a
child 10 or 15 years ago, that was one out of 20 couples on the side of
adoptions. We have gone from the days when about 80% of all unwed mothers
would consider adoption as their option to a point. Now where 60% of all
people who get pregnant terminate their pregnancy, that takes a large
chunk of those who might have considered adoption out of the process and
of those who go full term, we're looking at something in the neighborhood
of about 95% who keep their Children. And that leaves a very, very small
percentage of women and birth fathers who would consider adoption as a way
of handling their pregnancy. We saw in the package that there are some
obvious positives to foreign adoption, but there are negatives as well.
What are those? Well, there's two ways to adopt a foreign child. One would
be to go through an agency that deals with foreign adoptions and they have
already figured out how to do it the right way. And of course, I think
that's probably the safest for most adoptive parents. But there are
individuals who want to go to Colombia or South Korea or Thailand and do
their own adoption and they may find someone who is willing to do that
adoption and go over on their own. And some of the horror stories that
I've been told by adoptive parents that you can get over to a foreign
country on your own and find out that the rules that apply here in the
United States simply don't exist in a foreign country longer waiting
periods. You may think you're going to have a baby home in a month and it
may be four months. You may have to grease palms and think it's going to
cost you one set of a certain amount of money and it's much more expensive
, I guess, perseverance is probably the biggest asset that a person has in
adopting on their own in a foreign country. Not to mention all the red
tape of getting Children across from a foreign country to the United
States, you still have some problems even with agencies in the sense that
you need to know what kind of prenatal care your birth parent in a foreign
country is getting or, or who's been, which doctor has certified that the
child is healthy in this circumstance? Do you adopt under the law of the
country where you are and then transport the child or do you get
permission to transport the child and adopt under the laws of this country
, you're gonna adopt under the laws of this country, but you have to pass
whatever, through whatever legal channels in the other country to get the
baby outside the country. And that may mean that a court in Colombia that
a judge has to rule that it's ok for the child to leave that country. And
then when you bring the baby over here, you have to go through an entire a
separate adoption proceeding here. Frankly, once you get a child to the
United States, your problems are probably over because I haven't seen any
judges send babies back to another country. If you want to adopt in this
country, what are some of the requirements, age marital status? You know
those kinds of things. Well, if you want to adopt in this country, I think
that you have to be financially sound meaning that you can't be switching
jobs every three weeks, you have to probably have a stable marriage.
Traditionally, adoption has been done by couples who are between 20 and
40. But it doesn't mean that if you're 50 that you couldn't adopt, you
have to have a source, someone who would be willing to place a child with
you as you get a little bit older. Do you have to be married? No, you can
, you can be a single parent and do an adoption. That's not a norm. In
fact, the kinds of things that we've done in the last few years, the norms
that we've broken have been inter religious marriages, which are
oftentimes, no nos and adoption, single parent, adoptions. People who are
a little older than the traditional, those who have handicaps, those are
all areas that are changing across the country. Ok, Michael Sullivan,
thank you for joining us. I understand you have a book coming out on this
topic. Sure. Do a complete guide to adoption. Simon and Schuster is
publishing and it's coming out in a year. Ok. Thank you. Just ahead. Hat
Babbitt with her views on the economic and political problems of our south
of the border neighbor.
Yeah,
our neighbor to the south has been going through some tough times, both
politically and economically when Mexico has problems, it affects our
country as well. Tonight, guest commentator Hatty Babbitt offers her views
on how the US can help its neighbor cope with these problems. MS Babe is a
Phoenix attorney and the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate
Bruce bat
future is Americans unhappily. When our government looks south, it focuses
only on Nicaragua, a country of three million people with whom we share no
common border. But what about the giant to our immediate South Mexico, a
country of 83 million people with whom this country shares a 2000 mile
border. And what about the historic near rejection of the ruling pr party
in Mexico's recent presidential election? We in Arizona have long
recognized the importance of Mexico. Our common border with Sonora gives
us constant reminders of that hard fact that environmental pollutants
don't stop at lines drawn on a map and that the devalued peso devastates
Nogales Arizona as surely as it affects. Nogales. Sonora, their drug
problem is our drug problem and their unemployment crisis is reflected by
growing numbers of workers crossing north to support their families. On
the positive side, the ethnic diversity of Arizona's population enriches
our daily lives. This state has repeatedly recognized through cooperative
efforts with Sonora that we are ready, willing and able to be good
neighbors. The U of environmental research lab operating on the sea of
Cortez is leading the way in developing halos capable of feeding millions
from previously infertile land. The Arizona Mexico Border Health
Foundation has worked hand in hand with doctors and nurses in Puerto
Penasco to bring quality emergency medical care to that area. But the
political and economic problems are much too large to be addressed by the
border States themselves per capita income in Mexico is 1/10 of that in
the US worse yet, it has declined by nearly 40% since the beginning of the
crisis in 1982. Even more ominous, 50% of Mexico's population is under 18
years of age. Even with reasonable birth control measures, the population
growth will create demands for millions of jobs that just aren't there.
What can the United States do to enhance Mexico's chance of successfully
coping with the economic and political upheaval, threatening its nation
and ours. There are three obvious steps. First, Mexico is being strangled
by its foreign debt payments on its external debt, create a net flow of
capital out of Mexico. Just when Mexico most needs investment for economic
recovery. The next United States administration must take a strong line in
favor of action to reduce that debt. Second, we must protect the maquila
industry by keeping our markets open. The maquila plants lining the border
have created some 300,000 jobs in Mexico by allowing goods to be shipped
to Mexico and re enter this country free of tariffs, but they haven't
provided what Mexico really needs the seeds of modernization and real
economic growth. How can Mexico initiate genuine entrepreneurial activity
and move into the orbit of real industrial states? One answer may lie
across the Pacific and Japan country bursting with capital and looking for
overseas investment opportunity. Japan has both the resources and
expertise. Mexico needs there's another reason for inviting the Japanese
to help. Simply put there are limits beyond which the United States cannot
go in Mexico limits imposed by a history of repeated military intervention
and Mexican fear of American domination in a sense, we are as divided by
history as we are united by geography. Assuming the Mexicans look to the
Pacific, could the United States really ask Japan to become a major
partner in Mexico? We certainly have the power to do so. Japan is ready to
increase its direct investment in foreign aid. And it seems logical to ask
the Japanese to pick up a role in one area where our very closeness is the
source of many of our problems. A tri polar world on our southern border
might be a very good thing for Mexico for Japan and for the United States.
If you have any comments about Hattie's remarks or would like a
transcript of her commentary, right to Hattie Babbitt channel eight
television 10 p 85287. Last week, we featured local architect and planner
Vernon Swab as a guest commentator, Verne told us why Arizona is such a
unique place to live. In response to those remarks, Viewer from Mesa had
this to say this should be required public reading at every city and
county meeting as an old native. I am most distressed that we not only
rape our desert, we rush hell bent into providing a sameness that will
make us. But another New York City tomorrow on Horizon commentator Janet
Boomers Back will be here with her thoughts on the somewhat low of voter
turnout for the primary election. Thanks for being here on a Monday. I'm
Michael Grant. Have a pleasant one.
If you have comments regarding this evening's Horizon program, send them
to Horizon Channel eight Television, Arizona State University 10 P 85287.