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Mexico supreme court upholds gay adoptions MEXICO CITY - Mexico’s Supreme Court voted Monday to uphold a Mexico City law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples, drawing jubilant cheers from gay advocacy groups and angry protests from Roman Catholic Church representatives. The justices voted 9-2 against challenges presented by federal prosecutors and others who had argued the law fails to protect adoptive children against possible ill effects or discrimination, or to guarantee their right to a traditional family. "Today, institutionalized homophobia has been buried," said Jaime Lopez Vela, a leader of the group Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transsexual and Transgender Agenda. "We are happy, because now we have the same rights and responsibilities of any other married couple." Monday's decision followed earlier Supreme Court rulings that same-sex marriages performed in Mexico City are constitutional and that other Mexican states must respect them. Mexico City's groundbreaking same-sex marriage law, enacted in March, extends to wedded gay couples the right to adopt children, to jointly apply for bank loans, to inherit wealth and to be covered by their spouses' insurance policies. Outside the court building, dozens of gay-rights activists erupted in cheers and chanted "Now we've won!", while a similar number of opponents of the Mexico City Law chanted "Man plus woman equals marriage," and "Father, Mother, that's what children need!" Justices voting with the majority argued that once same-sex marriages had been approved, it would be discriminatory to consider those couples less capable of parental duties than heterosexual couples. "There is no reliable evidence that sexual orientation determines, by itself" any other type of behavior, said Justice Arturo Saldivar, adding "the preferences of the parents do not determine (a child's) sexual orientation ... that is a discriminatory argument." But church representatives strongly opposed the ruling. Father Hugo Valdemar, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico, said the court had "treated children as if they were pets, to be adopted by whoever wants one, and that violates their rights." Armando Martinez, the leader of the Catholic Lawyers' Association, said his group will ask for the impeachment of the justices who voted to uphold the Mexico City law, adding "the justices are not God. They make a lot of mistakes." Three hundred and thirty-nine gay and lesbian couples have married under the law, but city officials say none of those couples have yet applied to adopt children. Lopez Vela said his group expects to present the first such application next week, on behalf a lesbian couple. But the already difficult process of adoption in Mexico — it usually involves years of red tape, and orphans here are usually adopted by a relative anyway — make it unlikely that same-sex adoptions of unrelated children will ever be numerous. For example, Lopez Vela said the first application would involve the adoption of a girl by the lesbian partner of the child's biological mother. Justices who sided with the majority stressed that potential adoptive parents, gay or straight, are checked for suitability as part of the adoption process. "It is not a question of sexuality that determines whether a person is qualified or not to adopt," said Justice Margarita Luna. The Roman Catholic Church heatedly opposed the law, and the court voted unanimously Monday to condemn comments by Cardinal Juan Sandoval, the archbishop of Guadalajara, who suggested over the weekend that justices may have been paid off by the Mexico City government to favor the law. Mexico City's law was the first of its type in Latin America when it was enacted. Argentina became the first country in the region to permit gay marriage in July, when President Cristina Fernandez signed legislation declaring that wedded gay and lesbian couples have all the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples, including the right to inheritance and to jointly adopt children.
Adama Coulibaly has got his daughter back now, but he is still determined to find out what happened to her and how she went missing from the streets of Mali's capital, Bamako. According to Mr Coulibaly, his four-year-old daughter Adjaratou was abducted from in front of his house in September last year. Four months later, in January this year, Adjaratou was spotted by a friend. She was with a German couple in central Bamako. The Germans had legally adopted Adjaratou and were due to fly with her to Germany in a couple of days.Mr Coulibaly says he was sick with worry when his daughter went missing and he says he reported the disappearance to the police. There were also appeals in the local press. He says he did not stop there though. "I went around looking for her, there were times if I saw a bag in a gutter, I would jump into the gutter and untie the bag," he recalls. "Sometimes when I opened the bags I would find dead dogs, and once I opened a bag and it was full of chicken parts. The family was very, very scared. We thought she was dead." Some negligence The head of the orphanage Adjaratou was adopted from, Pona Hawa Camara, says the child was brought to her by a woman one evening and she reported the arrival to the police. "The woman said that she'd had the girl for a week and that she'd taken the child from door to door and even to the head of the neighbourhood, and that no-one recognised her." The head of the police department in Mali which deals with such cases, Ami Kane, says, however, that Adjaratou's arrival was never reported to them. Ms Camara said she would give the BBC the date the child arrived at her orphanage and the name of the person who handed her over. She now refuses to do this or to answer any more questions. The German organisation that assisted in organising the adoption, Help A Child, refused to make a statement about the case. In general, Help A Child says they simply went by the documentation they were given by the orphanage and that it is impossible for them to do their own investigation into where a child comes from. The German Ambassador to Mali, Karl Flittner, says he thinks something went wrong either at the orphanage or at the Malian government department that deals with adoption. "Our impression is that there was some degree of negligence on the part of the orphanage or of the Direction National de l'Enfance because the investigation into whether this child was really an orphan was apparently not carried out in the proper manner." Mr Flittner says Germany will be reviewing adoption by Germans in Mali. "From the German side, the co-operation with this Direction National de l'Enfance will be re-examined and we'll be particularly cautious before they give their agreement now to another adoption from Mali." Adjaratou is not the only child to have disappeared from Bamako's streets. Lack of confidence There is no evidence linking these cases to international adoption, but given the publicity around the Coulibaly case, other families are worried. Hawa Camera says her five-year-old daughter, Fatoumata Keita, was taken from in front of her house. "I think that my child might not even be in the country any more. Because if you look at what happened to the Coulibaly child, the aim was to take the child away." Many of the families accuse the police of not taking the cases of missing children seriously. The police deny this and say they investigate fully every case reported to them. Senior Malian lawyer Lamissa Coulibaly, however, says, he does not have much confidence in the police investigations to try to find a child's family. He says the police lack the means to carry out these investigations thoroughly. Mr Coulibaly also says there are also serious flaws in the adoption procedures in Mali. "The children are declared as abandoned, but in fact they are not really abandoned. Sometimes you have some children who are declared abandoned and the natural parents can be found somewhere in the country." Mr Coulibaly says the parties involved in organising an adoption in Mali are often more keen to get all the papers finalised than to check whether the real parents can actually be found. The Malian government department that deals with international adoption says that Adjaratou's Coulibaly's case was a one-off and that they are looking into what happened. Mr Coulibaly and others in Bamako will be very interested to hear the results of this review. For the moment no-one can explain how Adjaratou Coulibaly almost ended up on a plane to Germany.
Happy Day to everyone. I am doing my happy dance because the 2009 immigration numbers were posted by the Office of Immigration Statistics. Children internationally adopted by American families are included in these numbers. I love playing with numbers and statistics. With these numbers, I can look at average age or gender of children adopted from a specific country. I will be doing several different blogs on adoption statistics, but first I will start with 2009. This isn't a big surprise but 47% of the children were adopted from Asia. (39% in 2008 - 42% in 2007.) The children were adopted from:
21% of the children were adopted from Africa. (13% in 2008 - 9% in 2007.)
18% of the children were adopted from European countries. (18% in 2008 - 20% in 2007.) The children are from:
10% of the children are from North America. (27% in 2008 - 27% in 2007.) Immigration counted Central America and the Caribbean as part of North America. The big drop is due to Guatemalan adoptions being closed. There was 4,082 children adopted in 2008, but only 773 in 2009. Families adopted from:
3% of the American families adopted from South America. (3% in 2008 - 2% in 2007.) The children were adopted from:
More of the adopted children were female then male. But if I exclude the China adoption numbers, then the statistics are equal. 50% of the children are boys vs 50% girls.
If you look at the trending for gender, there has always been a large gap between the number of male adopted children and female adopted children. And it has always been due to China. It is easy to see China's influence on female child adoptions over 14 years. But 2009 was an unusual year. There was the least amount of difference between the genders... more gender equality. So next I just looked at which countries adopt the most children from each age category. 94% of the children who were 1 year or younger were only adopted from 10 countries.
93% of the children who were 1- 4 years old were adopted from 10 different countries.
89% of the children who were 5 years or older were adopted from 16 different countries.
91% of the boys were adopted from 15 countries.
92% of the girls were adopted from 14 countries.
Any adult woman in full health may adopt these embryos, including couples and women on the waiting list for adoption of children, couples with children, women without male partners who want a child and couples with fertility problems. The economic crisis in Spain caused a surge in adoptions of frozen embryos last 18 months between Spanish couples with fertility problems because of the lower cost of 'in vitro' fertilization, as explained by the Instituto Marques de Barcelona.
In May 2010, the Kazakhstani Embassy in Washington and Consulate General in New York stopped accepting new intercountry adoption dossiers. The Kazakhstani government said this policy on new adoption cases will remain in effect until the Hague Adoption Convention (the Convention) enters into force for Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan has indicated that it intends to enact its implementing legislation by September 2010. Kazakhstan will then need to issue Convention regulations before the Convention enters into force, so it is unclear when new adoptions will be processed there. The Kazakhstani government has informed the Department of State that it will continue to process any cases for which the Kazakhstani Embassy or Consulate General had sent the prospective adoptive parents’ dossiers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by May 25, 2010. These will be considered transition (“non-Hague” or Form I-600) cases; the policy on new cases will not affect the processing of these adoptions. For more information, you may wish to check the Kazakhstani Embassy’s adoption Web pages. At this time, prospective adoptive parents should not attempt to initiate any new adoptions in Kazakhstan. The Kazakhstani government will not process any new “non-Hague” or Form I-600 cases. Additionally, since the Convention has not entered into force for Kazakhstan, USCIS cannot process a Form I-800A, Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country, where the applicants indicate their intention to adopt a child from Kazakhstan. http://adoption.state.gov/news/kazakhstan.html
China restricts foreign adoptions as demand grows at home
SHANGHAI — During the past decade, China has been the top foreign destination for Americans seeking to adopt children. As China has prospered and government restrictions have increased, however, the number of U.S. couples being allowed to adopt there has dropped sharply, and experts say there's little reason to believe the trend will reverse. Part of the reason for the decline is competition from a growing number of Chinese families that want to adopt. "With the growth of China economically, families without children can afford to adopt and take care of a child, while in the past they were less certain they could," said Xu Anqi, a sociologist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. In 1996, about 19,000 Chinese couples sought to adopt; by 2008, that number had jumped to 42,000. There are, however, restrictions on Chinese families, as well. Chinese couples have to be married, 35 or older, have no other children and be financially stable to be approved by the government, Xu said. In 2007, new regulations for adoptions by foreigners allowed only heterosexual, married couples to adopt. The couples must be between the ages of 30 and 50, married for at least two years and with no history of a divorce by either spouse. They also must prove that they have at least at $80,000 in assets. If one spouse has been divorced, then the couple has to have been married for at least five years, and no more than two divorces are allowed. The new restrictions have begun to show. American families adopted just over 3,000 Chinese children in 2009, down more than 60 percent from 2005, according to the State Department. Andrea Jones, a teacher from Minnesota, has taught since 1994 in places such as Kuwait, Pakistan and South Africa. When she moved to China in 2006, she realized that she finally was ready to add to her family of one. She was almost out of time, however. In 2001, the China Center for Adoption Affairs sharply reduced the number of single parents it would allow to adopt to 5 percent of the total from 30 percent. Finally in 2007, the agency cut off all adoptions by single parents. Jones rushed to get her request in so she could begin the process before the restrictions went into place. It took two years for all the paperwork to be approved and for her to be matched with a baby, Lin Xin Rong. She named the child Ava Lin Xin Rong Jones. Since Jones' adoption, the waiting time has increased to 40 months before a family can take a child home. The reason is a consistent demand for healthy children and a shrinking supply. "The wait is horrible, it is probably the worst part but it was worth every painful day I had to wait," said Jones, a first grade teacher at the Shanghai American School. It's commonly thought that Chinese orphanages are filled with girls as a result of the traditional Chinese preference for boys, combined with population control policies that limit families to one child. However, Yuan Valen, vice director of the Shanghai Children's home, said the split among the 650 abandoned children at his orphanage is surprising. "Nowadays, more boys than girls. Most of them have some problem, mentally or physically," Yuan said. Xu said the problem of abandoned children predates the One Child policy China adopted in 1979. "It is a deep-rooted problem, even before China established itself. It already existed because parents have disabled children, they can't take care of them, so they just send them to the orphanage," Xu said. The adoption agency eases the paperwork, and has a quicker process and fewer restrictions on families that adopt a child with special needs. A family can become a part of the Waiting Child program and within a year can get a match with a special needs child. Along with the increased waiting time, costs for foreigners could rise. U.S. families now must make a mandatory $3,000 donation to the orphanages. Despite the expense, the extended wait and the endless paperwork, the ability to adopt a child makes the effort worthwhile. "People tell me that Ava and I were a perfect personality match for each other. Every day spent with her makes up for every day I waited to get her." Jones said. (Reed, a student at Penn State University, reported this story from Shanghai, China, for a class in international journalism.) Police: Calif couple tried to sell baby at Walmart
SALINAS, Calif. — A California couple faces child endangerment charges after police say they tried to sell their 6-month-old baby for $25 outside a Walmart store. Salinas police spokesman, Officer Lalo Villegas, said Thursday that Patrick Fousek, 38, and Samantha Tomasini, 20, were arrested early Wednesday, hours after Fousek allegedly approached two women outside Walmart and asked if they'd like to purchase his child. The women initially thought Fousek was joking, but when he became persistent, they became suspicious and reported it to police, Villegas said. "They did an outstanding job and gave our officers good information. I don't know if they're mothers but they definitely had that instinct to help," Villegas said. Fousek and Tomasini were arrested at 1 a.m. Wednesday at their home. Officers said the couple appeared high on methamphetamine and the house was in disarray. A police report also claimed that Tomasini told Child Protective Services, who took the baby, that she had breast-fed the infant while under the influence, Villegas said. The couple was also booked on charges of being under the influence of narcotics, and Fousek was also served with an extra charge of violating probation. Villegas did not have details of Fousek's previous brush with the law. The couple was expected to be in court for an arraignment Friday, at which time they would be assigned public defenders. (Assosiated Press)
New adoption agency to bid for clients in coming weeks CAROL COULTER Legal Affairs Editor A NEW adoption mediation agency will seek to engage with the governments of Vietnam, Bulgaria, India and Mexico concerning adoption when the Adoption Bill is passed in the coming weeks. The Bill ratifies the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption, The executive director of Arc Adoption, Shane Downer, former chief executive of the International Adoption Association (IAA), told The Irish Times he hoped the agency would be operational by September. It has already been approved in principle by the Adoption Board. The new agency will be committed to transparency, he said, and will expect to be subject to tight regulation. Arc Adoption is a not-for-profit organisation, and will be a company limited by guarantee. The agency’s board will contain both adoptive parents and people with no connection to adoption, he said. He added it was seeking €900,000 in government funding over the next three years, which would represent 26 per cent of its projected costs. The rest of the money needed would be raised from fund-raising and fees from applicants, which would have to be approved by the Adoption Board. Asked about the “humanitarian aid” fee charged by the Vietnamese authorities at the moment, he said: “Ideally there would not be any humanitarian aid.” He said each applicant would have their own account, with expenditure on items like translation, passports, Vietnamese fees and transport, set out separately, including a component to cover the agency’s costs. “So at the end we will be able to say here’s what we spent and if there is anything left over here it is back,” he said. The Helping Hands Adoption Mediation Agency, which dealt with adoptions from Vietnam until the lapsing of the bilateral agreement with that country last June, will also be seeking to mediate adoptions from Vietnam and other countries when the adoption legislation ratifying the Hague Convention is passed. It is currently under inquiry by the Adoption Board, which last December appointed a firm of accountants, Browne, Murphy and Hughes to examine the disbursement of the $2,100 charged to applicants for facilitating the adoption. A further $9,000 charged in “humanitarian aid” is sent directly by Helping Hands to the Vietnamese authorities. Last week Helping Hands held a press conference to announce that an examination of its accounts by a firm of accountants it had appointed, Grant Thornton, had found no evidence of impropriety with regard to its provision of services. The board of Helping Hands had decided to appoint Grant Thornton in February, following the appointment by the Adoption Board of Browne, Murphy and Hughes. Helping Hands chief executive, Sharon O’Driscoll, told The Irish Times she felt unable to meet the Adoptions Board’s accountants when they sought to meet her in Cork last March because of confidentiality concerns. These concerns also meant she could not hand over to them bank statements, as they contained the names of applicants, she said. Instead she gave all the documentation to Grant Thornton and asked them to deal with Murphy and Browne, she said. She acknowledged that she did not meet the Adoption Board accountants until earlier this month, when she said the “confidentiality concerns” had been sorted out. Asked about the money now held by Helping Hands, she said there was “very little” in an account in Ireland that normally held the “humanitarian aid”. There was something between $10,000 and $20,000 in an account in Vietnam, which was the balance of the $2,100 paid by 20 applicants whose applications were in process when the bilateral agreement lapsed, and who had already incurred costs. Helping Hands has also received €1.9 million from the HSE and the National Lottery since it was set up in 2006.
The Baby Business
U.S. couples adopting from abroad often think they're helping vulnerable children. The reality is more complex and poorly regulated...
Preet Mandir: Bombay HC tells CBI to file report Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Wednesday said the case against Preet Mandir adoption home in Pune was “serious” and sought a status report from the CBI. Investigations made by the CBI, as written in an FIR lodged on May 12, showed that the agency had fraudulently given away children in foreign adoption’s , and had set up a temporary shelter home for distressed women to procure children from unwed mothers. The centre demanded exorbitant amounts from adoptive parents. Jamshed Mistry, advocate for Advait Foundation, an NGO, said, “The court said the adoption centre should be under surveillance till the next date of hearing.” The FIR said that “inquiry revealed that during the period 2005 to 2010, in as many as 70 instances, Preet Mandir received excess money in the form of donations by extortion from Indian parents, amounting to more than Rs50,000”. The court was informed that despite these findings of the CBI, two adoptions have been carried out by the centre. Justices BH Marlapalle and Anoop Mohta will hear the case on June 16. Mayura Janwalkar/DNA Read the world Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care Only half the youths who had turned 18 and “aged out” of foster care were employed by their mid-20s. Six in 10 men had been convicted of a crime, and three in four women, many of them with children of their own, were receiving some form of public assistance. Only six in 100 had completed even a community college degree.The dismal outlook for youths who are thrust into a shaky adulthood from the foster care system — now numbering some 30,000 annually — has been documented with new precision by a long-term study released Wednesday, the largest to follow such children over many years. Researchers studied the outcomes for 602 youths in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, and compared them with their peers who had not been in foster care. Most youths had entered the foster care system in their early teens and then were required to leave it at 18 or, in the case of Illinois, 21. “We took them away from their parents on the assumption that we as a society would do a better job of raising them,” said Mark Courtney a social work researcher at the University of Washington who led the study with colleagues from the Partners for our Children program at Washington and the Chapin Hall center at the University of Chicago. “We’ve invested a lot money and time in their care, and by many measures they’re still doing very poorly.” Over the last decade, the federal government and many states have started to assist former foster care youths with education grants, temporary housing subsidies and, in some places, extra years of state custody and support. The new data showed that just over half of them are doing reasonably well and benefit from such aid. But they throw a spotlight, researchers said, on two groups that need more sweeping and lasting help. About one-fourth of the people in the study, mainly women, are receiving public aid and struggling to raise their own children, usually without a high school degree. Researchers found that one in five in a second group, mainly men, are badly floundering, with multiple criminal convictions, low education and incomes and, often, mental health or substance abuse problems. Once they leave foster care, these most troubled youths often have no reliable adults to advise them or provide emotional support, said Gary Stangler, director of the Jim Casey Youth Oppotunities Initiative a private foundation. “When these kids make a mistake, it’s life altering, they have nothing to fall back on,” Mr. Stangler said. Finding a mentor who provides “that backbone you need” has made all the difference, said Cameron Anderson, 21, of Tampa, Fla., who entered foster care at 15 after he got into trouble with the law, then lived in group homes. Mr. Anderson, who is now in community college and works at a printer cartridge company, receives education and other financial aid that has helped him keep an apartment. But he has made some missteps since moving out on his own, he said, like not paying bills in full so he could buy shoes and hanging out with old friends who were bad influences. Last fall, he was introduced to a mentor, an investor in Tampa, by a Casey program, Connected by 25. The two now speak daily, Mr. Anderson said, discussing “school and life in general, even to the point where he’ll say, ‘Hey, are you using protection?’ ” Had he had such a relationship earlier, Mr. Anderson said, “it would have saved me from a ton of bridges I’ve had to cross.” While younger children are often adopted when their parents’ rights are terminated, fewer prospective parents want to adopt teenagers. Recent research, including the new study, shows that most foster children, even though they have been removed from their homes, maintain ties with a parent or other relative. Some agencies are trying to support such ties or to locate relatives who might adopt the children or provide long-term support. Illinois, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia now allow youths to remain in foster care to age 21, and some states help with transitional housing. Congress in 2008 passed a law providing matching money to states that extend foster care to age 21, something that the authors of the study call for. But in the face of large budget deficits, few states have signed on so far.
May 12th, 2010 12:56 p.m. Love doesn't always conquer all
May 11th, 2010 5:56 p.m. First Chinese Adult Adoptee Worldwide Reunion, 2010 in Hong Kong CAAWR would like to extend an invitation to all Hong Kong and Chinese adopted adults (18+) , for the First Chinese Adult Adoptee Worldwide Reunion, 2010 in Hong Kong from Tuesday September 28th - Saturday October 2nd for 3 days of fun, socializing, networking and support, and 2 days of useful information for adoptees. This will include HK adoption history, orphanage visits and more! For more information please visit: http://www.caawr.com/
May 11th, 2010 5:52 p.m. Russia: Motion to Ban American Adoptions Fails Russia's Parliament on Friday turned down a motion to halt all adoptions of Russian children by Americans, saying that it would not take action while the two countries were negotiating new adoption rules. Some members had called for the suspension in response to the case of a boy who was returned to Russia on his own by his adoptive American mother last month. Russian Foreign Ministry officials reacted to the case by saying that all adoptions by Americans would be stopped, but a senior Russian official said this week that they were continuing.
April 13th, 2010, 8:05 p.m. U.S. to urge Russia to keep adoptions after boy's return
April 12th, 2010, 9:17 p.m. US delegation to visit Moscow to discuss adoptions MOSCOW— A delegation of high-level State Department officials will visit Moscow for consultations after Russia threatened to freeze adoptions for U.S. families, the U.S. Embassy said Monday. Russia threatened Friday to suspend all such adoptions after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a Tennessee woman was sent alone on a flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems. The case has caused outrage in Russia. U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle said in a statement Monday that that the delegation will discuss a possible agreement or bilateral understanding to ensure the well-being of Russian children adopted by families in the United States. "Many thousands of Russian children have been adopted by American families, and we hope that children here who are unable to find a family in Russia to adopt them can continue to have this chance," he said. A freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States, according to the National Council For Adoption, a U.S. adoption advocacy nonprofit group. In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the delegation would be headed by Michael Kirby, a senior diplomat who deals with adoption issues in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. Crowley said the visit had been being arranged even before the latest incident, but he did not have exact dates for the trip. "The arrangements are still being worked out, but clearly, this latest situation will be among those things discussed," he told reporters. Another senior U.S. official, the Obama administration's Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, Melanne Verveer, will also be in Russia in the coming days and Crowley said it was possible that she, too, would discuss the issue. Verveer will be visiting Moscow, St. Petersburg and the southern Siberian city of Barnaul to meet with lawmakers, civil society and women's rights advocates, the State Department said. Placing children inside Russia remains difficult. There are more than 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. AP Associated Press/Published - Apr 12 2010 03:27PM EST
April 9th, 2010, 4:37 p.m. Adoption trends in India look positive Take home a female child, take home emotional security. EVERY YEAR, many couples realize their dream of parenthood through adoption. Just because adoption may be a couple’s second choice, it doesn’t mean that it is second best! While the path to adoption for many couples is often a long one, often including struggles with infertility and many sleepless nights wondering if they will ever be called ‘mom’ or ‘dad’, adoption can be the key to making those dreams of parenthood come true. Delhi may be a worried city burdened with a skewed sex ratio. A city that sees thousands of children abandoned every year. But over the decade, the city has developed a beautiful trend that has given a whole new meaning to adoption. Increasing adoptions and opting for baby girls are part of this emerging trend. Ten years back, all centres for homeless children in the city had a three-year waiting period for a male child. Counsellors at the centres had quite a job trying to convince childless couples to opt for baby girls. Whether it is Hyderabad or Delhi, it is always the male child who is swapped for the female. Couples would rather wait 4-5 years for a boy than get a girl in 2 weeks to three months time. But now the girl child has reasons to feel wanted. At the Society for Indian Children’s Welfare, Kolkata, the waiting list for girls is longer. But, even now, more girls are being abandoned. Children with special needs, however, still struggle to get homes in the city. Every adoption centre tries to locate local homes, so that the child easily blends into the family. But families here are still reluctant to pick up children with disabilities or major illnesses. That’s because majority of foster families are from the middle-class. Rearing special children can be very expensive and there is no insurance cover for adopted children. But hopefully the trend will change. If adopting girls is the latest trend, it’s the right time for single parents also. The city has seen a rising number of single women, and men adopting children. Why we adopt? Nearly 99 per cent couples adopt to fulfil a need. But one per cent couples also adopt children to work out their marriages. It is essential to know that the families are well established to take the responsibility of the child. It should not be done in the sense of charity. Are you the right choice? Adoption agencies and homes spend months on several counselling sessions to estimate just this. Besides financial security and a supportive family background, houses of prospective parents are also essential. Till up to five years after the adoption, regular updates on the child are mandatory. Mostly, professionals and younger couples in nuclear families and foreigners want girls. For them, the sex does not matter. Tania and her husband, a Delhi-based architect couple, have a 4-year-old adopted daughter, “Girls are more fun to bring up,” she says. “Both of us wanted only a girl.” Another reassuring trend is that couples with a girl child wanting to adopt a second child, again opting for girls. There are certain formalities which make this process difficult as second adoptions have to be a child of the opposite sex. In a positive trend that has begun in Gujarat, there is an increased demand for the girl child for adoption, who was once neglected in the State. In the last 12 months, 74 girls were adopted in Gujarat as compared to only 53 boys - a fact highlighted by the state's adoption coordinating agency. Luckily, now many girls who end up at orphanages are going to loving families, when they are three months to six years of age instead of spending their life at the orphanages. Though some of these children are lucky to find a new home, some are still waiting to find their new parents and homes and if this trend continues, soon many orphan girls could find homes for themselves. (merinews.com)
March 07th, 2010, 5:19 p.m. `Forgeries and lies' in Australian adoptions of Ethiopian children A SECRET government investigation uncovered major flaws in Ethiopian adoptions to Australia, with some children falsely represented as being abandoned, not having siblings and being healthy despite having serious illnesses. The program, under which about 450 children have been adopted by Australians over the past 10 years, has been suspended while the federal government negotiates with Ethiopian officials over a push by the African nation for aid to be linked to adoptions. Canberra is concerned the move is "inconsistent with its obligations" under the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry Adoption. The program's representative, Ethiopia-based Ato Lakew Gebeyehu, denied any impropriety in his operations or any knowledge of the report. The investigation was launched after a group of Victorian parents approached the state's Human Services Department to complain in 2005. Investigators reviewed 117 Ethiopian adoption files from 2002 to 2004 and found "issues of concern" in 44 cases. In 10 cases, wrong information about the history and circumstances of abandoned children was allegedly provided to Ethiopia's Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Previously unknown siblings were uncovered in nine cases and previously unknown relatives found in five cases after the adoptive families travelled to Ethiopia to do their own research. The report said such discoveries had left some families questioning "the integrity of the program and the process of children being placed for overseas adoption". It said evidence suggested the relinquishing family or community might have misrepresented the family situation to secure care for a child who could not be looked after for reasons such as extreme poverty. One of the most significant findings was that, in 25 cases, the recorded age of the child was wrong -- more than a year out in 11 cases -- "which had impacted on some children's socialisation and enrolment at school". In eight cases, the child's health problems were not properly recorded in the allocation documents. And limited information had been recorded about the child's overall development. The report recommended the program continue but be further investigated to ensure it complied with the Hague Convention. Mr. Gebeyehu said he was aware a family from Victoria had raised concerns after a child was found to be older than thought but he was unaware of any investigation or negative finding about the program and he said there had been only two or three cases in 20 years where ages were wrong. "We have no birth certificates," he said. He said cases where siblings had been found could occur but some were false claims. Mr Gebeyehu confirmed one of his employees had been using a forged seal but said the documents were replaced and the individual responsible was jailed. He said cases where siblings had been found could occur but some were false claims. Mr Gebeyehu confirmed one of his employees had been using a forged seal but said the documents were replaced and the individual responsible was jailed. (australiennews)
March 03th, 2010, 10:25 a.m. Nepal got suspended from the adoption intermention On February 9th, 2010, representetives from Nepals Diakonisches Werk agency's, children-bridge's and Help a Child together with the central supervisory adoption agency from Mainz and Stuttgart and also the Federal Foreign Office for adoptions, decided in a special conscript conference, on the basic of worrying investigative results and reports from the german embassy in Nepal and the Hague Convention office in Nepal, Nepal to suspend from the adopion intermention. More information here: HAGUE CONFERENCE ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW
February 24th 2010 7:12 p.m. Ethiopia: Shocking Story on Ethiopia Adoption Questions are being raised about the legitimacy of Ethiopian adoptions after a girl claims an agency bought her in Ethiopia and placed her for adoption in the U.S. Armen Keteyian investigates. (CBS) Videotapes showing poor orphans from third world countries melt the hearts of prospective parents every day in this country. Three children, sisters from Ethiopia are shown in a video - ages, you are told, 7, 4 and 6. Their mother is dead, their father dying of AIDS. A life of prostitution is all but assured - if not adopted - saved - by a loving American family. It was just such a pitch that spoke to Katie and Calvin Bradshaw, reports CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian. They adopted all three girls through a U.S. agency, Christian World Adoption. “Aside from the gender of the children, everything else proved to be a complete lie,” said Katie. In the last year adoptions from Ethiopia to the U.S. have skyrocketed - growing faster than any other country in the world. They have risen from 731 in 2006 to more than 2,200 last year. That’s nearly six children per day. Now a CBS News investigation has discovered that growth has turned Ethiopia into fertile ground for child trafficking - a country in which some American agencies and their staff engage in highly questionable conduct. Adoptive families allege that many children brought to the U.S. are not even orphans, that prospective parents are misled about a child’s health and background, that local families are recruited - and sometimes even paid - to give up their kids.
February 15th 2010 2:34 p.m. Embryo adoption is latest trend MUMBAI: When Patricia Bohanon, an American teacher, flies home to Colorado on Sunday, she will carry a precious made-in-India baggage: an embryo. This embryo, which was born in a petri-dish out of anonymous contributions from an Indian sperm donor and an egg donor, was transferred to Bohanon, who will deliver the Indian baby as her own in the first week of December. Welcome to an assisted reproduction technique that is fast gaining popularity in a world where fewer children are available for donation, and adoption norms are getting more stringent. Not surprisingly, this method is called embryo adoption or embryo donation, depending on which side one looks at it from. Dr Anjali Malpani, an infertility specialist who treated Bohanon, now performs about three to four embryo adoptions a month as opposed to the random annual procedure, which was the case until a few years back. Says Dr Malpani, "With availability of better infertility treatment techniques, embryo adoption/donation is becoming popular of late across the world." In the US alone, where embryo adoption is about a decade old, over 1,000 babies have been born using this method. "Adopting an embryo allows a woman, who is infertile, to experience motherhood, complete with labour pains, as against rearing an adopted child," says another infertility expert Dr Indira Hinduja.
February 12th 2010 6:24 p.m. HAPPY END after more then 45 Years "The stolen years", the twins Claus and Thorsten both adopted finally found their mother after 45 Years. As a young woman Ruth and her twins lived in Germany only 5 kilometers apart without knowing. At the end of 1960 Ruth met her later husband an american soldier, based in Germany. A short time later she imigrated with him to Colorado, USA. Many years later Claus and Thorsten orderd a specialized organisation in Germany to start the search to her mother in the United States. TV-Show about this story - 16.02.2010/19:00h/ZDF neo/
February 10th 2010 5:00 p.m. Black Babies, Boys Less Likely to Be Adopted (By Catherine Rampell) Both straight and gay adoptive parents are likely to exhibit racial and sex-based biases when applying to adopt a child, a new study finds. In the research, four economists analyzed detailed data from an online adoption facilitator that mediates between agencies dealing with birth mothers and adoptive parents. The data, collected from June 2004 and August 2009, cover more than 800 children up for adoption. (An ungated, earlier version of the paper is here). The authors found that girls are consistently preferred to boys. For non-African-American babies, for example, the probability that a prospective adoptive parent expresses interest in such a baby is 11.5 percent if the baby is a girl and 7.9 percent if the baby is a boy. Interestingly, in many cultures the preference for biological children runs in the opposite direction, with parents strongly preferring boys instead of girls. The authors suggest that this preference for girls in cases of adoptive children may be because adoptive parents “fear dysfunctional social behavior in adopted children and perceive girls as ‘less risky’ than boys in that respect. ”Additionally, Caucasians and Hispanics are consistently preferred to African-Americans. The probability that a non-African-American baby will attract the interest of an adoptive parent is at least seven times as high as the corresponding probability for an African-American baby. The desire for white babies can be partly, but not fully, explained by the fact that most of the adoptive parents in this data set were white; previous research has found that adoptive parents often want children who look similar to themselves. These preferences against boys and black babies translate into differences in adoption closing costs, which can often be expensive. In other words, people seem willing to overcome their racial or gender biases if they can get a good deal on the babies they’re less interested in. “[T]he increase in desirability of a girl relative to a boy can be compensated by a decrease of approximately $16,000 in adoption finalization costs,” the authors write. “Similarly, the increase in desirability of a non-African-American baby with respect to an African-American baby (both of unknown gender) is equivalent to a decrease of at least $38,000 in adoption finalization cost.” The study also looked at adoptions by same-sex couples. The typical same-sex couple submitted more adoption applications than the typical opposite-sex couple. Gay men and lesbian couples submitted applications for 16.5 percent and 19.3 percent of children available, respectively, while straight couples submitted applications for only 7.2 percent of children. In some ways, though, gay adoptive parents were more “selective.” Somewhat ironically (at least considering the continued social prejudice against their own family structures), same-sex couples and single women appeared to exhibit even stronger prejudice in favor of girls and against African-American babies than their opposite-sex couple counterparts. Foreign adoptive parents, on the other hand, showed weaker gender and racial biases. (nytimes)
Coppyright ã 2010 by Patricia Schmidt - All rights reserved
Monday's decision followed earlier Supreme Court rulings that same-sex marriages performed in Mexico City are constitutional and that other Mexican states must respect them. Mexico City's groundbreaking same-sex marriage law, enacted in March, extends to wedded gay couples the right to adopt children, to jointly apply for bank loans, to inherit wealth and to be covered by their spouses' insurance policies. Outside the court building, dozens of gay-rights activists erupted in cheers and chanted "Now we've won!", while a similar number of opponents of the Mexico City Law chanted "Man plus woman equals marriage," and "Father, Mother, that's what children need!" Justices voting with the majority argued that once same-sex marriages had been approved, it would be discriminatory to consider those couples less capable of parental duties than heterosexual couples. "There is no reliable evidence that sexual orientation determines, by itself" any other type of behavior, said Justice Arturo Saldivar, adding "the preferences of the parents do not determine (a child's) sexual orientation ... that is a discriminatory argument." But church representatives strongly opposed the ruling. Father Hugo Valdemar, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico, said the court had "treated children as if they were pets, to be adopted by whoever wants one, and that violates their rights." Armando Martinez, the leader of the Catholic Lawyers' Association, said his group will ask for the impeachment of the justices who voted to uphold the Mexico City law, adding "the justices are not God. They make a lot of mistakes." Three hundred and thirty-nine gay and lesbian couples have married under the law, but city officials say none of those couples have yet applied to adopt children. Lopez Vela said his group expects to present the first such application next week, on behalf a lesbian couple. But the already difficult process of adoption in Mexico — it usually involves years of red tape, and orphans here are usually adopted by a relative anyway — make it unlikely that same-sex adoptions of unrelated children will ever be numerous. For example, Lopez Vela said the first application would involve the adoption of a girl by the lesbian partner of the child's biological mother. Justices who sided with the majority stressed that potential adoptive parents, gay or straight, are checked for suitability as part of the adoption process. "It is not a question of sexuality that determines whether a person is qualified or not to adopt," said Justice Margarita Luna. The Roman Catholic Church heatedly opposed the law, and the court voted unanimously Monday to condemn comments by Cardinal Juan Sandoval, the archbishop of Guadalajara, who suggested over the weekend that justices may have been paid off by the Mexico City government to favor the law. Mexico City's law was the first of its type in Latin America when it was enacted. Argentina became the first country in the region to permit gay marriage in July, when President Cristina Fernandez signed legislation declaring that wedded gay and lesbian couples have all the same legal rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples, including the right to inheritance and to jointly adopt children.
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