Nightlight was the first agency beginning in 1995 to organize a tour of the United States by group of orphaned Russian children.
[3] Nightlight was founded in 1959[4] by a group of evangelical Christian churches with the purpose of addressing the needs of women in unplanned pregnancy.
[7] The organization has successfully helped over 1000 families adopt children from countries overseas, with the largest number coming from Russia.
The agency helped Maldonado to arrange for Matt and Melanie Capobianco of South Carolina to adopt her child.
Maldonado's attorneys later argued that she did know he was a Native American and that he had never invited her to take part in tribal customs, events, or food.
[22] According to a survey by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 54% of fertility patients want to preserve their remaining embryos for future use.
"[24] As of May 2012, there were about 600,000 frozen embryos stored in laboratories and fertility clinics,[18] costing the donor families about $72 million annually for storage fees.
[32] The U.S. Health and Human Services agency has given grants to Nightlights's Snowflakes program and others to promote "embryo adoption."
[24] The Obama administration removed funding for the embryo donation awareness program from its budget in 2013 due to "limited interest" from a "very small pool of applicants, many of whom are repeat recipients.
[38] It was one of several organizations[25] that received funding from the Health and Human Services to increase awareness of the opportunity to adopt frozen embryos.
Nightlight received a $500,000 grant that it used to produce promotional videos targeting strongly religious, middle-class couples.
[40] Most embryos have been received by Christian families who pledged to raise the child born in a "constructive, wholesome and spiritual home environment.
"[41] Stoddart has worked to publicize the issue of frozen embryos in storage, believing it would increase the number of donations.
[44] Asked why a three-day-old blastocyst should be subject to the same adoptive process as a baby, Nightlight Executive Director Daniel Nehrbass said, "We have learnt over the past 100 years that every child not raised by its biological parents will eventually start looking for them, Now we're repeating the mistake with assisted reproduction because we're creating a new set of anonymous parents through sperm and now embryo donation.
[47] Three years later, on March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama reversed that decision and issued Executive Order 13505 allowing the research to go forward.
[51] On August 23, 2010, Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction against the Federal government conducting stem cell research.
[54] The scientific community reacted positively, stating that this would allow potentially critical, life-saving research to proceed.
[59] It has organized tours of orphaned youth to the United States where they can meet with prospective adoptive parents.
[38] They have conducted the tours annually in partnership with Detsky Dom Partners, later renamed Every Child Has a Name,[60] bringing over 500 children from Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Taiwan to the United States.
[3] As of January 2014, Nightlight had received an average 3.7 star rating (out of 5) by one website that offers individual reviews of adoption agencies.
The negative reviews in some cases referred to the controversial adoptions previously described, to badly prepared paperwork, and to the sometimes difficult work of placing children from foreign countries with families in the United States.
[63] The Better Business Bureau of Colorado and Wyoming in January 2014 had no record of complaints against the company and had insufficient information to provide a rating,[64] while the BBB serving San Diego, Orange and Imperial Counties showed only a single, closed issue with "Problems with Product/Service" during the prior three years.