A man who spent the first two weeks of his life in a mother and baby home is planning a legal challenge against the State for excluding people who lived less than six months in an institution from its redress scheme.

The man, who wants to be known by his birth name, Paul, has put Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman on notice of judicial review proceedings.

He lived in a mother and baby home until he was two weeks old, after which he was taken for adoption.

The man was reunited with his birth mother, Maria Arbuckle, a campaigner for survivors of mother and baby homes, for the first time this year.

Ms Arbuckle was among the survivors who protested against the long-awaited redress scheme announced last month by the Government.

Nearly a week after the Kalyan police arrested a doctor for allegedly running an adoption racket and rescued 71 kids, the cops have reunited 14 babies with their parents. The alleged crime came to light after a couple filed a complaint against Dr Ketan Soni accusing him of taking away their baby for Rs 1 lakh. The police are trying to trace the parents of the other rescued children.

As per a complaint filed by one Priya Ahire, she gave birth to a child on November 10 and she and her husband Santosh sold the baby to Dr Soni for Rs 1 lakh. However, after a few days the couple decided to take back their infant. When they approached Dr Soni with the money, he allegedly refused to hand them over the baby.

The Ahire couple alerted child care authorities and filed a complaint against Dr Soni at Ram Nagar police station in Dombivli. While the police then raided the premises of Nandadeep Foundation, Dr Soni could not produce any documents to back the alleged adoptions done through his shelter. The police also said that the foundation did not have the permission to facilitate the adoption of children.

The police sent all the 71 kids at the centre to ‘Balvikas’ facilities at Dombvli and Ulhasnagar.

“The doctor brought kids from poor parents across Maharashtra. He paid them some money promising to take care of the baby at his shelter. It is suspected that he sold the kids to childless couples for lakhs. Whenever the original parents came to meet their kids, he would tell them that the baby had been adopted.”

By holding the man liable for the upbringing of his offspring, begat through non-marital sex, the judge has created a more level playing field for single mothers, and relief for children. 

The woman, whose lover had fathered two children but refused to pay child support, must have felt vindicated when Justice C.S. Karnan ordered him to pay maintenance, in the Madras High Court.

By holding the man liable for the upbringing of his offspring, begat through non-marital sex, the judge has created a more level playing field for single mothers, and relief for children. After all, sex and reproduction is between two people and both should be held responsible for its consequences, regardless of the legal status of their relationship.

Many of us have grown up watching Amitabh Bachchan films in which the eternal mother Nirupa Roy was discarded by husband or lover. In one, she had to bring up two children, one who became a criminal and the other a police officer, both seeking justice from a society which gave so much power to a man, that he could produce children but play no part in their upbringing.

These films narrated the plight of many unwed mothers in India who became second class citizens simply because they had sex without marriage, with or without their consent, were loving and responsible enough not to abandon their children. They ended up economically and socially marginalised.

Adoption in Australia has dropped to its lowest level in three decades as services say pandemic family court delays and border closures have resulted in a backlog of cases amid a general downward trend.

There were 264 adoptions finalised in Australia in 2020–21, the fewest since national reporting began in 1990–91.

Adoptions from overseas in 2019-20 and 2020-21 were the lowest on record, although these have been in decline since the late 2000s.

In its report, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare said COVID-19 travel restrictions and the pandemic’s impact on visa applications likely contributed to the low number of inter-country adoptions finalised in the past two years, and noted they may appear in next year’s data.

Renée Carter, chief executive of Adopt Change, said the drop in numbers was “concerning”.

Partners

. INTRAS Foundation

http://www.intras.es

ARSIS - Thessaloniki

http://arsis.gr/en/home/

Useful links

Adoptees' organizations

Adopted People United

Organization in Limburg for adoptees

Adoptiepedia

Racine

Over the past 20 years a significant number of intercountry adoptions have taken place from abroad to France. The adoptees of the early 2000s are now major or in the process of becoming so. Also, more and more of them feel the legitimate need to search for their origins. Because this research is a complex and not without risk, being able to support them is today the great challenge to be taken up for the central authorities and all the actors of the adoption.

In order to offer comprehensive, free and quality support to adoptees wishing to reconnect with their origins, the ISS France launched on September 29, 2021, during a webinar, the RACINE project (Search for origins, Support, Cooperation, Identification of partners, Narration, Listening).

Supported financially by the International Adoption Mission of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Central Authority responsible for intercountry adoption) in its pilot phase, this project will focus on three countries chosen due to the large number of 'adoptions that have been carried out there and / or the large number of requests currently received by the French central authority:

Ethiopia (4,303 adoptions to France between 2001 and 2020)

A day after news of the illegal 'sale of Covid-19 orphans' surfaced in Kashmir valley, Police along with the Civil Administration Thursday sealed an office of an NGO in Pampore in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district for allegedly being involved in the sale of COVID orphans.

According to reports, Global Welfare Charitable Trust in Samboora Pampore was sealed after a team of police and Tehsil administration raided the office and seized some important documents.

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On Wednesday 24 November, the court ruled on two cases concerning intercountry adoption. A woman adopted from Bangladesh and a man illegally adopted from Brazil have both filed lawsuits over their adoption. The court in The Hague rejected the woman's claims on the basis of prescription and a substantive assessment. In the case of illegal adoption from Brazil, the court partially allowed the claims. According to Defense for Children, both cases show how complicated it is for intercountry adoptees to recover parentage information, restore identity and seek justice when fundamental rights have been violated.

Case 1: adoption from Bangladesh

In 1976, the then four-year-old woman and her brother were adopted from Bangladesh in the Netherlands. Following an episode of Nieuwsuur in November 2017, the woman realized that her biological mother did not abandon her children, but gave them up under false pretenses and then searched for them for years.

The woman has filed a lawsuit against Terre des Hommes (whose country director at the time had a double function and was also a representative of an adoption organization), adoption organization Wereldkinderen (then BIA) and the State. Its position is that the accused parties contributed to the adoption that allegedly took place under false pretenses. According to the woman, the accused parties also failed to properly investigate abuses in intercountry adoptions from Bangladesh and to inform those involved about this.

Terre des Hommes and Wereldkinderen invoked the fact that the woman was adopted more than twenty years ago and that her claims are therefore time-barred. The court ruled in favor of the organizations in this regard. The court also states that Terre des Hommes was not involved in this adoption at the time. The State initially also invoked statute of limitations, but withdrew it following a report that the Commission Investigating Intercountry Adoption (COIA) issued in February 2021 about abuses in intercountry adoptions and the role that the government plays in this. After substantive treatment, the court considers the woman's claim that her adoption in 1976 from Bangladesh was unlawfully established.

Opposition members in Lok Sabha Wednesday attacked the government for excluding live-in couples, single men and the LGBTQ community from the ambit of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2021, attacking the legislation as “discriminatory” and “patriarchal”.

Congress member Karti P Chidambaram, who opened the debate on the Bill, said: “This law is not a Hindu law, it is actually a Victorian law.”

He invoked the Mahabharata and the Puranas several times, saying: “Our epics have so many instances of unconventional births.”

“This law has not come from the Hindu liberal traditions. This law has come from the completely regressive, Victorian, and colonial mindset. I will tell you why. This law excludes many people, rather than it includes. When I have given you so many instances of unconventional births and unconventional unions in our Hindu epics, this law only allows married people to have access to this technology. It does not allow LGBTQ people to have access to this technology. It does not allow single men to have access to this technology,” Karti Chidambaram said adding that the bill is “discriminatory”.

Karti said: “This law does not take into account the new realities of India. Of course, these new realities are not new realities. These were there in our ancient scriptures. Those unions which were always there, were suppressed by the colonial mentality. These unions must also be given access to this technology. The LGBTQ population, live-in couples, and single men must also have access to this technology if they want so.”