Adam Pertman is the Executive Director of the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute. He recently spoke with Dateline NBC about adoption suggestions and guidelines. One of his main suggestions is pre-adoptive counseling for everyone, including the birth mother.

"Counseling will help a potential birth mother know if adoption is the right decision for her and may help avoid traumatic changes of heart later on. Also, be wary of a potential birth mother who refuses to meet with a counselor or social worker."

Pertman also urges potential adoptive parents to remember that "the woman who's placing her child with you is going to have feelings of grief and loss& She's making an extraordinarily difficult decision for the sake of her child."

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A recent adoption study from Brigham Young University called adoption a "small, but powerful" solution to the growing number of orphans in Africa. Jini Robi, an associate professor of social work at BYU, recently wrote an article for the journal "Social Work" in which she reported that over 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa have lost one or both parents due to civil wars, poverty, and the AIDS epidemic.

"'The growing number of orphans has created a need for Americans to examine and consider intercountry adoption', Roby suggests. In 2005, American families adopted 440 orphans from Ethiopia, compared to 7,906 from China."

Though international adoption is certainly not going to completely solve the crisis facing African orphans, it can be an effective aspect of a multi-faceted solution.

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