New York ? Amid high-profile furor over adoptions from Haiti and Russia, about 60 American families are persevering with a two-year struggle to complete adoptions from Kyrgyzstan — an already emotionally draining quest further complicated by recent political upheaval.

The families were formally matched with the children — most suffering from serious medical problems — in 2008 and have grown deeply attached to them after visiting their orphanages and bringing back photographs and videos.

“I feel that’s my daughter, and she’s my responsibility,” said Angela Sharp, a 36-year-old cosmetology instructor from Flint, Mich., who visited for a week in April 2008 with the now 2-year-old orphan she hopes to adopt. A room with a crib and children’s clothes awaits the girl, already given a new name by Sharp — Mia Angelina.

This November 2009 photo provided Thursday by Frances Pardus-Abbadessa shows her hugging a boy named Vladimir, whom she hopes to adopt, on his 2nd birthday at the Kyrgyz orphanage. About 60 American families are persevering with a two-year struggle to complete adoptions of Kyrgyz orphans.

Corruption suspected

The nearly completed adoption proceedings for Sharp and the other families ground to a halt in late 2008 when Kyrgyzstan said it needed to overhaul its adoption system because of suspected corruption. A reform bill was introduced but never finalized, an investigation launched but never finished, and Parliament was dissolved following a bloody revolt this month that ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Meanwhile, one of the waiting children has died and another suffered such severe neurological damage that her prospective mother in Florida — a pediatrician — shifted from trying to adopt to campaigning to help ailing Kyrgyz orphans get better medical care.

“These children in Kyrgyzstan — their level of care is sub-par at best, and they’ve been waiting there now for two years,” said Tom DeFilipo of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services.

Lisa Reickerd of Orange, Calif., the single mother of a girl adopted from Kazakhstan in 2003, is now trying to adopt a 3-year-old girl she met in an orphanage in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, in August 2008. “I knew she was meant to be with me,” said Reickerd, who has served as the waiting families’ main liaison with the State Department, which handles international adoption matters. “I feel no less love or compassion for this little girl than for the daughter I have now.”

However, recent events have compounded the frustrations of the waiting families. They noted that hundreds of pending adoptions of Haitian orphans by Americans were expedited after the earthquake in January, and they felt neglected amid the tumult this month that prompted Russia to freeze U.S. adoptions after a Tennessee woman sent her adopted son back to Moscow alone on a plane.

Families urge action

The families are making two requests — that the State Department draw up a detailed plan to resolve the stalemate and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telephone the new Kyrgyz leader to raise the issue.

The State Department says it empathizes with the families, while noting that the new Kyrgyz leaders are struggling to restore basic government functions and may not consider adoption a high priority for the moment. The department also accepts Kyrgyzstan’s position that its corruption probe must be completed before adoptions resume.

“The Kyrgyz authorities should urgently complete the criminal investigation into alleged adoption fraud and resolve the pending cases so that eligible children can be placed in loving homes,” Michele Bond, the deputy assistant secretary for overseas citizens services, said Friday.

She stressed that many of the waiting children have serious health problems and that the U.S. families, despite the challenges, remain committed to adopting.

The families and their supporters say the Kyrgyz investigation appears to be stalled and are pleading for the pending adoptions to be finalized now.

“There is no legal concern over these pending cases, no concern whatsoever regarding these children’s orphan status or their availability for adoption,” said Chuck Johnson, chief operating officer of the National Council for Adoption.

Both Johnson and Reickerd suggested that U.S. officials have placed the adoption issue on the back burner while they try to make sure the new Kyrgyz leaders will let the U.S. continue using a strategic air base for the war in Afghanistan.

“The air base and oil are on the top of their minds; our children are not,” Reickerd said.

The Kyrgyz group initially numbered 65 families, Bates said, but four have dropped out to pursue adoptions from elsewhere, while Dr. Suzanne Bilyeu of Jacksonville, Fla., shifted to pushing for broader orphan assistance after the severe deterioration of the hydrocephalus-afflicted child she’d been matched with.