[BadCookie]

Adopting a healthy infant is difficult and expensive because there is more demand for these babies than supply. We don’t need more adoptive families for heathy infants. Adopting an older child is a different situation entirely. It sounds like you are describing a family who was pursuing a healthy infant exclusively.

[spaetzleesser]

That could be. I think they adopted a 2 year old. But in any case the process should not be made difficult or especially expensive (why?). It turns away a lot of well intended people.

I have seen the same with animal rescues. Some are very difficult to deal with (mostly because of bad prior experiences) so people go to breeders. In one way it's understandable but when you think about it it's unproductive and self-defeating to punish people for misbehavior of others (people also do this in relationships).