We originally had thought international as well. My family is from Sri Lanka, and I thought that we could easily give a Sri Lankan child a sense of his culture and context. But the more I looked into it, I just started getting really uneasy. Sri Lanka is actually in the minority of countries where baby-trafficking doesn't SEEM to be a huge problem, but I started feeling really squicky about international adoption in general and being a part of a system that is so fraught with horrific abuses. And then we found Abrazo, and felt much better about Abrazo's commitment to ethical, transparent adoptions.
Add to that the financial risks of international adoption, the fact that any country could close without warning, and that you don't get the adoption tax credit for international unless the adoption actually goes through, and it just seemed insane to gamble away tens of thousands of dollars. We have friends who have been waiting to adopt from Ethiopia since 2011. Every six months, they are told that their wait for a referral has been extended another six months. Adoptions from Ethiopia are slowing way down, for very good reasons, as the Ethiopian gov't tries to put a stop to the kidnappings and child trafficking. They might never adopt from Ethiopia. They are middle class folks who really don't have a ton of money to burn on an adoption that might never happen.
We had to tell them about our match, and it was hard. We all know what it's like to get pregnancy announcements from ecstatic friends, which shouldn't make us sad...but they do. I never knew what it was like to be on the other side, sharing good news with people who have been waiting much longer than we have been for their own good news.