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Before Haiti's devastating earthquake, the United Nations said the country had 380,000 orphans. Senator Mary Landrieu (Louisiana) says that now, there probably are two-to-three times more orphans in Haiti.

Senator Christopher Bond (Missouri) suggests that orphaned children in Haiti cannot afford to wait until government offices there are rebuilt and re-staffed. "It is clear that the relief and rebuild efforts to help our friends in Haiti put the pieces of their lives back together will take years," Bond said. "But the littlest and most vulnerable victims of the tragedy in Haiti are orphan children, and they cannot wait for help."

Several senators are supporting the Families for Orphans Act, and are trying to get it onto the Senate floor quickly. The bill would establish a separate office in the State Department to handle adoption issues.

Groups including Save the Children and World Vision have called for a suspension of new adoptions from Haiti until every child has been given the chance to be reunited with his or her family.

Lawmakers agree that the first priority should be to reunite children with their families in Haiti and those children should be protected from human traffickers.

But Landrieu strongly disagrees with appeals to suspend the adoptions.

"We need to be accelerating the process of child protection and adoption, even if it is temporary, with extraordinary measures, not stopping it," Landrieu said. "And I am going to challenge those organizations every step of the way. This is the time to step up and say, 'I want to adopt.' This is the time to try to save the lives of children."

Landrieu agrees that appropriate legal safeguards should be in place to identify orphans. But she adds that orphans belong in families as soon as possible, not in institutions or left alone on Haiti's devastated streets.

(Published in VOA News)