Former President Bill Clinton on Haiti, Orphans, & Adoption

The following is a transcript of Fox News’ Major Garrett’s interview with former President William Clinton:

GARRETT: Speaking of children who survived, what do you make of the orphan situation involving the folks here in the United States. There was confusion — is that a way for Americans to help? Is that something that you advise? What’s you take on that whole situation, because it obviously touched the hearts of a lot of Americans?

CLINTON: Well, first of all, I think there’s still a great need for adopting Haitian children who are unquestionably orphans. Keep in mind, before the earthquake hit, there were more than 300,000 orphans in Haiti.

And what happened in the highly publicized case was that these kids, apparently most of them, did have close relatives who didn’t feel they could support them. Apparently, the woman in question did not pay for the children, apparently there was no commerce involved, so far. But the Haitian government, understandably, doesn’t want Haiti because it’s poor to come up a haven for child trafficking, so they’re super-sensitive to it.

It looks like the judge made the right decision releasing 10 of those people who seem to be completely innocent and were actually over there on a church mission doing what they thought was right. And the others may or may not be released; they’re just asking them questions.

But I don’t want people to be discouraged because I think that within a fairly short time, the speeded-up approval process, which was in place before this incident, will be reinstated because there are — a lot of these orphanages were badly damaged, weren’t in great shape before the earthquake. So I — my sense would be, if you care about this and you’re willing to adopt a child, don’t give up on it and just — we’re working with the Haitian government, we’ll try to get this thing up and going again. There are lots of people who need a permanent home, little kids, and this incident should not be allowed to cloud what is that fact for, you know, 99 percent of the other kids.

Read the full transcript here.