INDIA - MC nuns struggle to give babies for adoption
INDIA - MC nuns struggle to give babies for adoption
Published Date: March 5, 2010
Missionaries of Charity nuns and volunteers at a home for ‘unwanted’ children
RAIPUR, India (UCAN) — A bureaucratic tangle is delaying attempts by Missionaries of Charity (MC) nuns to give orphan babies up for adoption.
On Aug. 31, 2009, the Chhattisgarh state government allowed the nuns to give babies up for adoption, listing the nun’s center as a licensed agency for promoting domestic adoption.
“With great difficulty we got permission. But only the process is on now,” said Sister Marie Ananda, superior of the MC nuns in the state capital of Raipur.
The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian people’s party) now rules this central Indian state.
Only government approved agencies can give children up for adoption. Before the state was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, the nun’s center in Indore was a licensed agency.
Even after this division, the nuns in Chhattisgarh used to take abandoned babies of “unwed mothers” to Indore, in Madhya Pradesh, some 720 kilometers to the west, to place them for adoption.
But in September 2009, as the nuns were taking four two-month-old babies by train to Indore, a group of Hindu fanatics pulled them out mid-way.
The application process for the babies, started months ago, was nearing completion in Indore but the fanatics blocked the nuns and took them to a police station, accusing them of “human trafficking” and “converting” the babies to Christianity.
Police brought the nuns and the babies to a nearby convent.
Since the incident, the nuns could not give 43 babies up for adoption, including 10 with physical disabilities. However, “we can’t refuse children since several unwed mothers seek our help,” MC regional superior Sister Mamta told UCA News.
The superior also noted that the nuns have given babies for adoption to mostly childless Hindu couples for more than 50 years.
Sister Ananda said two social welfare centers, supported by some Hindu organizations, work against the nuns and their center. “They want us to close our institution,” she added.
Chhattisgarh’s rules for adoption also make the process lengthy. The norms want foster parents to take babies for three months before actually adopting them through a court order.
The rules also stipulate that the names of foster parents should be published in the government gazette.
“Many adoptive parents will not like their names to be published,” Sister Ananda said.
She said the process has been on for the past three months to give eight babies to foster parents. However, “only after the court order, can they be completely given,” she added.
IC09026/1591 March 5, 2010 43 EM-lines (403 words)
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