Adoptees of color with White

parents struggle to talk with

their families about race

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Growing up, Angela Tucker felt like a racial impostor. She may have looked Black, but she didn’t feel that way.

Well-educated, resourceful family of children, who got involved locally, have got a discriminating fuckfinger and give up.

Stevns : Imagine this thought experiment:

Scenario 1: You walk down Algade in the town hall town of Store Heddinge, with a stroller and minor children, and out of the blue a man comes by and gives you a fuckfinger.

Scenario 2: You have picked up your children in the day care institution, are on their way home, and a man on a bicycle is passing by, while he shouts something about the Ku Klux Klan probably taking care of you.

Fantasy? No, rather a nightmare for a young child who moved to Stevns in September 2020, but who has now put his home and wish house up for sale, and is fleeing racist abuse.

The Calcutta High Court has recently refused to grant custody of a four and a half years

old girl child to her biological father and instead permitted the child to be in the care and

protection of a family friend of her deceased mother.

However, the Court has granted visitation rights to the biological father after observing

that the bond between the child and her natural father ought to be encouraged from a

MUMBAI: A 16-year-old Swedish girl who befriended a 19-year-old on

social media and flew to Mumbai to live with him without her parents'

knowledge, was found in Cheeta Camp, Trombay, by the city crime branch

and handed over to her parents on Friday.

Her father, who took her custody from Dongri's Children Welfare Home,

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should make his stance clear in the adoption row, said social activist Medha Patkar. Speaking to the media after meeting Anupama Chandran and Ajith here on Saturday, she demanded to know the stand of women’s organisations in the issue.“The bad experiences faced by Anupama cannot be justified. She’ll continue her fight on the issue. The women’s organisations in the state should take a firm stance in the matter,’” said Medha.

She met Anupama at the YMCA hall along with social workers and solidarity committee members. Terming the developments unfortunate, Medha said government agencies should function as per the law.

“Government agencies are bound to act as per the law and Constitution. Protecting the rights of the mother and child are also part of the same. However, that didn’t happen in this case,” she said.

Medha Patkar offered her support to Anupama and asked her to go ahead without fear. J Devika explained the controversy and the stand taken by the government and the child welfare committee in the issue. Dr Asad, C R Neelakandan and S Mini also spoke on the occasion.

While this was inspired by the abortion debate engulfing our country again, it’s actually about love; more so than I realized when I started writing.

The Supreme Court’s been hearing arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and the pro-choice crowd is predictably losing it’s collective mind. The same faulty arguments about abortions becoming illegal if Roe falls, misrepresentations of the public’s support for “abortion rights” and falsehoods about pro-life positions only being held by the religious and/or those on the right are being trotted out again. That’s nothing new, but now there’s a new approach that’s incredibly dangerous and needs to be called out before it can gain traction.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is actively pro-life and has two adopted children. This renders the standard (but false) line about how pro-life people only care about babies until birth but not after as moot in her case, so they’ve taken a worse approach to press the attack on her. They’re claiming that people like Barrett (but not people like Buttigieg for some reason) are monsters for advocating for adoption.

The argument: Adoption is hard, painful and leaves people feeling broken with a sense of loss; that it creates a level of human suffering. That is true, but, even though she’s being painted that way, Justice Barrett has never argued that relinquishing custody of a child was simple or painless. She just doesn’t advocate terminating a life as a rational solution to avoiding future pain. Yes, adoption can be traumatic for both mother and child, but that doesn’t justify the narrative that adoption is a problem while abortion is a solution.

It’s actually the natural progression of the “compassionate” pro-abortion argument that an unwanted child is better off being aborted because, if a child isn’t wanted, their life will be hard and not worth living. They use prettier words, but the sentiment is just as harsh, no matter how you say it. Human life is precious, no matter the circumstances of its creation, but this argument creates the false concept that “wantedness” equals worth.

Birth parent Sue cringes in pain any time she hears a baby cry at her work in a Sydney shop. She chose her child’s family in an open adoption at nine months. It didn’t have the secrets of closed adoptions, but it has been the “most traumatic experience of her life”.

As the Christmas trees go up, the heartache spikes for anyone affected by adoption, even those raised in the happiest of adoptive families, say counsellors from the Benevolent Society.

Whether those adopted as children are now 71, like Ken Doyle of Orange, or 22 years old like Claudia from Gymea in Sydney, big family celebrations make them wonder about what could have been.

They also feel guilty for having these thoughts because of how much they love their adoptive families - and don’t want to hurt their feelings.

“Especially coming up to Christmas, big events, birthdays, you do tend to think about it more, wondering what life may have been like if I hadn’t been adopted, but then I feel guilty because I am so fortunate to have such loving family,” said Claudia, who asked for her surname to be withheld.

The Flemish government is to tighten its rules on adoptions from other countries, Wouter Beke (CD&V), minister for the family announced.

The decision comes following a devastating report issued in September alleging widespread human trafficking being carried out under the cover of intercountry adoption. The report was written by a panel of independent experts who had been working on the question since 2019.

“This is something that all parties involved have been saying for many years we have to tackle,” Beke said at the time. And he sketched out the basic principles of the “ambitious reform” needed to intercountry adoption, including multi-parenthood, strengthening partnerships with countries of origin, building bridges between foster care and adoption, and focusing on aftercare and counselling.

Beke also suggested a two-year hiatus for all international adoptions to allow the necessary reforms to be passed. However that proposal was shot down by N-VA, arguing that while reform was needed, a revolution was going too far.

Today, Beke presented his new proposal to parliament: a set of six strict selection criteria designed to weed out bad adoption prospects. Countries that do not apply the criteria will simply be scrapped from the list of acceptable candidates.

It seemed like a fairy tale ending: a poor Chinese couple who spent 14 years searching for their lost son are finally reunited with the boy as his kidnappers face justice. But it’s not that simple. As Sun Zhuo is reunited with his birth family in Shenzhen, he’s faced with the prospect of the family he knew as his own being sent to prison.

In 2007, then 4-year-old Sun Zhuo was abducted from the southern city of Shenzhen, setting his biological parents on a desperate search that would last 14 years. Sun Haiyang, his father, offered a 200,000 yuan reward for clues and changed the name of his steamed bun shop to advertise it. His story won national attention, and was adapted into a 2014 movie called “Dearest.” He has become an iconic figure in the field of anti-trafficking, and his account on microblogging service Weibo, named “Sun Haiyang Looking for Son,” has over 116,000 followers.

Meanwhile, Sun Zhuo was growing up with two older sisters in Shandong province, about 1,800 kilometers from Shenzhen, unaware that the couple raising him were not his birth parents.

Chinese police identified Sun, now 18, during a crackdown on child trafficking. The police arrested a total of nine suspects involved in abducting three children, including Sun Zhuo. His identity was later confirmed by DNA testing.

On Monday, Sun Haiyang finally met his son after 14 years, while the second family is facing potential criminal charges.

After a damning report about fraud in intercountry adoption, Flanders wants to check more closely with which countries it still cooperates. A risk analysis will be carried out for each country based on six criteria. Countries that do not meet this requirement will be removed from the list. Especially African countries with corrupt governments are targeted. "It is our absolute priority to exclude child trafficking and trauma."

At the beginning of September, the bomb exploded in adoption country. After a voluminous and damning report on human trafficking and fraud in intercountry adoption, Flemish Minister of Family Wouter Beke (CD&V) wanted to go through with it. Following the example of the Netherlands, he himself proposed an adoption break of two years. Ultimately, Beke was called back by coalition partner N-VA. A reform was allowed, a revolution was not.

Today, Beke put a new plan on the table: six strict selection criteria, so that the bad apples are thrown out of the basket. Countries that do not meet these criteria will be removed from the list. It is expected that a large number, read: especially African countries, will no longer qualify.

Traceability

The main requirement is traceability. Flanders must be able to trace through which steps it has been decided in the country of origin to proceed with intercountry adoption. “What we do not want is a process in which a home can decide for itself to take in a certain child and then indicate after a while that the child is eligible for adoption, without having followed a process within youth care”, says Beke. “Traceability is also important for adoptees looking for the story behind their adoption, and for prospective parents who want to make sure that the best interests of the child have been carefully considered.”