It’s been over five years since a case was filed against independent journalist Neha Dixit for criminal defamation and promoting “disharmony, enmity, hatred or ill-will” through a five-part series she wrote for Outlook magazine in 2016.

Since then, the case has been listed approximately 40 times in the Gauhati High Court. Dixit has spent over Rs 3 lakh on legal and travel fees, has appeared in the high court five times, and, she said, has received no support from Outlook in the process.

“The process is the punishment,” Dixit told Newslaundry, “because it is harassment in a way.”

The series in question was Outlook’s cover story in its July 29, 2016 edition. Titled “Operation #BetiUthao”, it uncovered how the Sangh Parivar “flouted every Indian and international law on child right to traffic 31 young tribal girls from Assam to Punjab and Gujarat to ‘Hinduise’ them”.

Days later, on August 6 that year, then assistant solicitor general SC Koyal and BJP spokesperson Bijon Mahajan filed a criminal complaint against Dixit under sections 153A (promoting disharmony, enmity, etc) and 499 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code.

Will lengthening adoption wait and new surrogacy-artificial reproductive assistance laws push couples closer to black market adoption?

On a flight from Mumbai to Delhi last week, this writer happened to sit next to a young couple who became parents for the first time in the pandemic. During the small-talk that followed, they revealed that the baby wasn’t their biological offspring. After unsuccessfully trying to conceive for six years, they got “lucky” when their friend’s sister-in-law, who couldn’t afford to raise her third child, sought a home for her son. “After much consideration, we took her baby boy,” the mother shared. The couple hadn’t even given adoption or surrogacy a thought, because of how “tedious the process has become”.

With adoption in India being routed by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the government recently notifying new laws to regulate surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology, several Indian couples are deferring their dreams to become parents. Experts, however, fear that many desperate couples might go the illegal way.

Infertility is at the heart of the problem. According to research conducted by Inito, a Bengaluru-based medical technology company, around 27.5 million couples who want to conceive, currently suffer from infertility. The World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision report estimated that the fertility rate of Indians (measured as the number of children born to a woman), had plummeted by more than half in the short span of 40 years—from 4.97 per cent during 1975-80 to 2.3 per cent in 2015-20. By 2025-30, the report projects that the rate would have nosedived further to 2.1. A fertility rate of about 2.2 is generally considered the replacement level—the rate at which the population would hold steady. When the fertility rate dips below this number, the population is expected to decline.

With lowering fertility, adoption and surrogacy seem to be the next best options for couples. But recent protocol and laws have complicated the state of affairs.

Will lengthening adoption wait and new surrogacy-artificial reproductive assistance laws push couples closer to black market adoption?

On a flight from Mumbai to Delhi last week, this writer happened to sit next to a young couple who became parents for the first time in the pandemic. During the small-talk that followed, they revealed that the baby wasn*t their biological offspring. After unsuccessfully trying to conceive for six years, they got "lucky" when their friend*s sister-in-law, who couldn*t afford to raise her third child, sought a home for her son. "After much consideration, we took her baby boy," the mother shared. The couple hadn*t even given adoption or surrogacy a thought, because of how "tedious the process has become".

With adoption in India being routed by the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the government recently notifying new laws to regulate surrogacy and assisted reproductive technology, several Indian couples are deferring their dreams to become parents. Experts, however, fear that many desperate couples might go the illegal way.

Infertility is at the heart of the problem. According to research conducted by Inito, a Bengaluru-based medical technology company, around 27.5 million couples who want to conceive, currently suffer from infertility. The World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision report estimated that the fertility rate of Indians (measured as the number of children born to a woman), had plummeted by more than half in the short span of 40 years - from 4.97 per cent during 1975-80 to 2.3 per cent in 2015-20. By 2025-30, the report projects that the rate would have nosedived further to 2.1. A fertility rate of about 2.2 is generally considered the replacement level - the rate at which the population would hold steady. When the fertility rate dips below this number, the population is expected to decline.

With lowering fertility, adoption and surrogacy seem to be the next best options for couples. But recent protocol and laws have complicated the state of affairs.

In the absence of legal clarity, the Delhi high court has sought responses from the Union and Delhi governments in the matter, after a hospital in the national capital refused to return the frozen semen sample of a deceased cancer patient to his family.

The parents of the deceased had moved the high court in December last year after authorities of Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital refused to give them the frozen semen sample of their son, which they may use to continue the family line.

There is no law, policy or legal procedure in our country to decide as to who should be handed over the semen sample of an unmarried deceased man, the hospital told the high court while opposing a plea to handover the sperm samples to the family of a 30-year-old cancer patient who died in September 2020.

The hospital has said that the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Act, ICMR guidelines, Surrogacy Bill/Act are “silent” about the legal heirs of the unmarried deceased man to whom the frozen semen sample is to be released.

The hospital has said that in absence of any guidelines, regulation and direction on this issue of disposal and utilisation of semen samples of an unmarried person, they are unable to make final disposal of the frozen semen sample of the deceased. It sought that the court may pass appropriate orders considering the current scenario.

As an adoptive parent, I’m backing a new petition: Make self-employed people eligible for statutory adoption pay.

The petition says: “Ensuring statutory adoption pay is available to a self-employed parent in the same way that ­maternity allowance is available for self-employed new mums would promote an equal and fair society inclusive of all routes to parenthood.

“A parent taking statutory leave regardless of it being adoption or ­maternity should be both recognised and supported fairly.

“Expecting self-employed parents to take unpaid adoption leave whilst supporting their child during a critical transitional period is unfair. This current policy is not inclusive of adoptive families and to many, reads as an act of discrimination.”

The petition urges the ­Government to introduce an adoption allowance comparable with the maternity ­allowance for the self-employed.

KUMAMOTO – In a nationwide first, a hospital in Kumamoto said Friday that it plans to submit a birth notification of a baby who was born under a confidentiality agreement in December without including the mother’s name.

The mother, who is under 20 years old, gave birth to the baby at Jikei Hospital but declined to publicly disclose her identity.

The woman, who had been unable to tell her family about her pregnancy, left the hospital a month ago saying that she cannot raise the baby by herself, hospital officials said.

She continues to seek a family that can adopt her baby, the officials said. She believes that the baby will be better off if cared for by adoptive parents who pass strict screenings, they said.

The woman wishes for her identity to be disclosed to the baby when the child becomes an adult, the hospital officials said. Earlier this month, the baby was transferred from the hospital to a nursery.

The former executive director of an Ohio-based international adoption agency pleaded guilty today in the Northern District of Ohio to defrauding the U.S. and Polish authorities in connection with the adoption of a Polish child.

According to court documents, Margaret Cole, 74, of Strongsville, Ohio, admitted to conspiring with Debra Parris and others to deceive authorities regarding the adoption of a child from Poland. When Cole learned that clients of the adoption agency determined they could not care for one of the two Polish children they were set to adopt, Cole and her co-conspirators took steps to transfer the Polish child to Parris’s relatives, who were not eligible for intercountry adoption.

Cole, Parris and others agreed to defraud U.S. authorities to conceal their improper transfer of the Polish child. Following the adoption, the child was injured and hospitalized while living with Parris’s relatives. Thereafter, Cole made a false statement to the Polish authority responsible for intercountry adoptions about the transfer of the child that, among other things, concealed the role of Cole and others in arranging the transfer of the child to Parris’s relatives.

Cole pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and making a false statement to a Polish authority. She is scheduled to be sentenced on May 27. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Co-defendant Debra Parris previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the Poland scheme, as well as conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and to commit visa fraud in connection with a scheme to corruptly and fraudulently procure adoptions of children from Uganda through bribes paid to Ugandan officials. Robin Longoria also previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the FCPA and to commit visa fraud and wire fraud in connection with the Ugandan scheme. Co-defendant Dorah Mirembe, who is charged in connection with the Ugandan scheme, remains at large.

KUMAMOTO – In a nationwide first, a hospital in Kumamoto said Friday that it plans to submit a birth notification of a baby who was born under a confidentiality agreement in December without including the mother’s name.

The mother, who is under 20 years old, gave birth to the baby at Jikei Hospital but declined to publicly disclose her identity.

The woman, who had been unable to tell her family about her pregnancy, left the hospital a month ago saying that she cannot raise the baby by herself, hospital officials said.

She continues to seek a family that can adopt her baby, the officials said. She believes that the baby will be better off if cared for by adoptive parents who pass strict screenings, they said.

The woman wishes for her identity to be disclosed to the baby when the child becomes an adult, the hospital officials said. Earlier this month, the baby was transferred from the hospital to a nursery.

There is a need for more people to adopt Danish children, and new rules must do something about this.

From Tuesday, those who want to adopt a child can therefore both sign up for a list with children from abroad and one with children here from Denmark.

This has not been the case so far, where you could only sign up for one of the lists. The hope is that the change will make more people sign up to adopt Danish children.

In recent years, the number of applicants to adopt a Danish child has decreased, at the same time as there has been an increase in the number of children released for adoption in Denmark.

The lack of adoptive parents for Danish children has become a challenge, says chairman of the Adoption Board Thomas Lohse.

Why did we choose this campaign?

We launched our Safe, Secure and Thriving Campaign to highlight the need for more robust post-placement support for children placed with carers overseas. Currently, we do not know the total number of children being placed overseas, which countries they are being placed in, what orders are being used or how many are successful or eventually breakdown.

There is a huge lack of large scale data about the outcomes of children placed overseas. Without it, we don’t know if support for overseas kinship placements is on par with what a child would experience in the UK. Location, borders or nationality should never be a barrier to adequate post-placement support.

Without proper governmental monitoring and guidance in place, children who are already vulnerable can be put at further risk of neglect, abuse, exploitation, or forced to take dangerous journeys back to the UK. Even in these cases, a local authority can refuse responsibility for a child because of the cross-border nature of their placement.

This campaign is calling for more accountability and transparency within the care system. We are working with the Department for Education, encouraging them to publish and analyse the numbers of children being placed across borders and ensure post-placement planning and support. At a local government level, CFAB are offering our services and raising awareness of their statutory duties to children placed across borders. International placements are hugely positive, often resulting in family reunification and preventing a child going into foster care – but the right support systems must be in place to prevent a placement breakdown that can leave a child even more vulnerable. We want to ensure that no child is put at risk, either here in the UK or overseas.