Draft:Adoption in Georgia

Adoption in Georgia deals with the adoption process in the various parts of Georgia, whereby a person assumes or acquires the permanent, legal status of parenthood in relation to a child under the age of 18 in place of the child's birth or biological parents.

Legal framework
Adoption was outlawed by the Bolshevik government on the grounds that it was an economically exploitative system; however, adoption was legalized again in 1926, with adoptive parents given financial incentives. Following World War II, with hundreds of thousands of displaced and orphaned children, the Soviet government strongly promoted adoption as a moral and patriotic duty.

The Georgian framework of adoption is rooted in both the Soviet legal system and the promotion of the child's welfare and well-being.

International adoptions
In Georgia, Articles 44 to 58 of the adoption and foster care law (2012) address international adoptions.

Societal perceptions
The Georgian Orthodox Church, as well as the Georgian National Council on Bioethics, will suggest adoption to childless couples over assisted reproductive technology (ART), such as in vitro fertilisation and especially surrogacy. Ilia II of Georgia, the patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, strongly criticized ART as harmful for both society and the emotional development of the resulting child.

Illegal adoptions
In 2021, the journalist Tamuna Museridze learned that she was adopted and established a Facebook group, Vedzeb, to find her birth family. The group was in part responsible for uncovering a illegal adoption market that operated in Georgia from the early 1950s to 2005 (some estimates suggest it began in the 1980s). Museridze estimated up to 100,000 infants were illegally taken from their birth families, who were often told the infants had died and were buried in the hospital cemetery; Georgian hospitals do not have cemeteries.

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, boys were sold within Georgia for 1,500 maneti, while girls were sold for 1,000 maneti, roughly the equivalent of a year's salary. After 1993, international adoptions became possible and Western families began paying significantly higher prices for Georgian children. Museridze stated the last known case was in 2005, when foreign families were paying around US$20,000 2005 for an illegally adopted infant.