A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih noted that a matter related to the Surrogacy Act is already pending in the top court.

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the response of the Centre on a petition challenging the bar under the Surrogacy Act that prevents married couples who already have a child from having a second child through surrogacy.

Issuing notice on a petition filed by a married couple, a bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih noted that a matter related to the Surrogacy Act is already pending in the top court in a petition filed by IVF specialist Arun Muthuvel in which the amendments to the law barring single unmarried woman and homosexual couples are under challenge. The bench directed the matter to be heard on May 3.

Advocate Mohini Priya, who filed the latest petition, told the court that it challenges the constitutional validity of Section 4(iii)(C)(ii) of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, which makes an intending couple ineligible to avail of surrogacy if they have any healthy surviving child biologically or through adoption or surrogacy, thus excluding married couples suffering from secondary infertility.

“The choice of reproduction has been held to be a part of the right to life under Article 21 by the Supreme Court, and the said choices also fall within the right to privacy and that the Act severely regulates these rights, so much so, that the fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 21 stand defeated,” the petition said.

objection to Woo request for intercountry adoption from Indonesia

The hidden history of the Cold War adoption complex.

In 1986, when David Whelan was just a baby, his mother Joan had her first psychotic break. Throughout David’s childhood, Joan spent time in institutions and eventually was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. David always wondered whether something in her past had triggered it; all he knew was that his mother had been adopted from Greece when she was young, and that something tragic had happened to her parents.

As a kid, David never dared to broach the subject. But in 2013, when he was 26 and back home visiting from grad school, he worked up the nerve to talk to his father. “Did something happen to mom when she was young?”

“She said it’s OK for me to tell you,” his dad finally explained one evening after David had been asking for months. “Her father was executed in Greece by firing squad. He was something political.”

A few days later, David’s father passed him copies of his mother’s birth parents’ death certificates. David typed his grandfather’s name, Elias Argyriadis, into Google. He read that Joan’s father had been a communist leader who had been accused of espionage and sentenced to death in Athens in 1952.

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Victims who were matched to the wrong biological parents in Spoorloos , want to be heard under oath in court by the makers of the KRO-NCRV program and the departing presenter Derk Bolt. The mismatches were in the news about two years ago and according to the victims, the bottom stone in the case has still not been found.

'For clients, the book Spoorloos is not closed', their lawyers Annemiek van Spanje and Royce de Vries tell this site after reporting by RTL Boulevard . 'Not only because they still have to live with the consequences of the mismatches, but also because they have not reached a suitable solution with KRO-NCRV. A month ago, KRO-NCRV therefore announced that the court would be requested to hold a preliminary witness hearing, in which clients want to hear Derk Bolt as a witness, among others.'

Such an interrogation is a preliminary stage of a civil procedure, in which the victims may claim compensation. But first it must be clear who exactly was to blame for the course of events. According to the victims, the news about the departure of presenter Bolt came shortly after the lawyers had informed the makers that they wanted to hear him under oath. 'Clients do not know whether this upcoming legal process was the reason for Derk Bolt's departure. They do find the timing remarkable', according to Van Spanje and De Vries.

'Incorrect and unfortunate'

Mariela Neagu’s Voices from the Silent Cradles: Life Histories of Romania’s Looked-After Children was first published by Policy Press in the UK. 

Neagu, a research associate at the University of Oxford, describes her book as follows: 

“In 1990, disturbing television footage emerged showing the inhumane conditions in which children in Romanian institutions were living, and viewers were surprised that the babies were silent. The so-called ‘Romanian orphans’ became subjects of several international research studies. In parallel, Romania had to reform its child protection system in order to become a member of the European Union.

This book sheds light on the lived experiences of these children, who had become adults by the time the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those who were adopted, both in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.”

Now, Neagu’s book has been translated into Romanian and published with Cluj University Press. She says this was very important to her given that most of the forty people she interviewed were Romanian speakers, and therefore one of her most important target audiences will now be able to read the book in their native language. 

Minister Lahbib refers to the Hague Adoption Convention, not the UNCRC

The Family and Social Services Ministry has reported that the number of children under state protection is 14,761, while 9,981 children are in foster care and 19,689 children have been adopted as of February 2024.

The ministry has revealed that children make up 26 percent of the nation's population, with recent figures from 2023 indicating a gender-balanced composition of 10.8 million girls and 11.3 million boys.

Highlighting their commitment to child welfare, the ministry informed that 14,761 children are under their care, with 9,981 in foster care and 1,689 successfully adopted. Emphasizing the importance of family-oriented support, the ministry prioritizes services aimed at fostering psychological and social well-being among children, striving to cultivate self-confidence and self-sufficiency.

"Children in need of protection are primarily evaluated within the scope of Family Oriented Services. Foster Family and Adoption Services are carried out for children who are not supported by their families to live in a family environment," the ministry said in the written statement.

Efforts to provide children with stable family environments extend to offering social and economic support to families in need. In February, the ministry disbursed 1.7 billion Turkish Liras ($52.5 million) in support payments to these families, along with an allocation of 186 million liras ($5.7 million) to foster families responsible for children under the ministry's guardianship.

Flor and Jazmin were among many children separated from their parents during El Salvador's civil war, and put up for adoption in the US and Europe. Now, nearly 40 years later, they and many others are searching for their birth families. But has anyone been searching for them?

Flor Wolman has a small scar the size of a quarter dollar coin on the left side of her stomach. Some of the girls at her school in the US used to tease her that it looked like a second belly button.

It's actually a gunshot wound she received when she was a little girl, and it still hurts, says Flor. It's also a constant and painful reminder of her harrowing family history.

"I just want to know what happened, why was I separated from my parents," the 42-year-old says. "And what the scar had to do with my adoption".

She was born Flor de Luz Acosta in 1979 in San Francisco Lempa, a tiny settlement of adobe houses and infertile hillsides in northern El Salvador. It was at the start of the country's bloody civil war. The rugged mountainous region where her family lived was the scene of fierce fighting between Marxist rebels and the US-backed military. Civilians caught in the middle were often regarded as rebel supporters.

When everything else had been tried and failed, my wife said: Why don't we adopt? This was the beginning of a complicated process full of bureaucratic hurdles and years of waiting that continues to this day. The desire for a child became a never-ending story.

By Jochen-Martin Gutsch • 12.04.2024, 13:00 • from DER SPIEGEL 16/2024

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• In short: Damning claims by an SA government whistleblower have been levelled against the way child protection authorities are removing newborns from their mothers at public hospitals.
• SA's Department for Child Protection removed more than 100 babies aged under one month in the last financial year.
• What's next? A review of SA Health policy is due to be handed down by the end of the year.

After hours in labour, a new mother finally hears a high-pitched wail.

She's overcome with joy, exhaustion and relief, as a midwife hands her a tiny newborn, healthy and crying.

But in a scene described by a South Australian government whistleblower, what happens next is anything but joyous.

As the new mum holds her seconds-old baby to her chest, police officers and security guards stand at the hospital's delivery-room door.