The FOX 13 Investigates team has obtained a video of Utah County Attorney David Leavitt discussing his "strategy” to adopt a Native American baby, allegedly taking advantage of his political influence to overcome a federal law designed to protect Native American children from being adopted by non-Native families.

The video was recorded by a documentarian in 2020. It has since been submitted to Homeland Security Investigations as part of a criminal human trafficking investigation.

The 17-minute clip first shows Leavitt expressing his struggle with the decision whether to pursue the adoption.

Leavitt went on to explain how he tried to broker a deal with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana, offering them the ability to export buffalo to Ukraine.

Although he is not blood-related to the child, the little girl was considered Leavitt’s step-foster-great niece.

A High Court judge has refused to approve the adoption of a 17-year-old girl in a case in which he said the Child and Family Agency (CFA) “completely failed” to support a relationship between the child and her natural mother.

In his ruling on Monday, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the girl’s natural mother had proven herself to be a “demonstrably competent” parent for her other children and was “literally begging” for a relationship with her daughter, referred to as Miss B.

Had the CFA “just done its job” and acted upon the woman’s plea six years ago for greater access and information about Miss B, “who knows” what type of progress towards family reunification could have occurred, he said.

The judge listed a litany of “manifold and serious failings” on the part of the CFA, including that it had failed to support appropriate access visits and to support the relationship between Miss B and her natural mother, who had objected to the adoption application.

Mr Justice Barrett noted the girl’s foster mother has done a “remarkable job” caring for the girl since she was just months old. There is a huge amount of mutual love between the pair, he added.

ALLOUEZ, Wis. — Tara DeGrave has been working for the past 16 years to help people choose the right parenting plan for them.

That includes adoption.

What You Need To Know

Catholic Charities Of The Diocese Of Green Bay offers pregnancy support and adoption services

Staff anticipate more people will seek those services

More than 100 privately run children’s homes in England with serious failings have been branded inadequate by inspectors, with several found to have links to private equity firms, an Observer investigation has found.

Poorly trained staff, chaotic management and a series of incidents that left children’s safety in danger were cited in official reports by Ofsted, which inspects children’s homes, as it concluded they were providing inadequate care. Several have closed since inspectors raised concerns.

The Observer examined the most recent Ofsted inspection of private children’s care homes. It found that 114 homes were given the lowest “inadequate” rating, which triggers further investigations. Of those, about 20 were run by providers with links to private equity. It comes amid continued frustration with the “broken” provision of children’s care homes.

Private firms now play a large role in providing care, with more than three-quarters of homes in England run by the sector in 2021. Local government figures have also pointed to the growing role of private equity, warning that the pursuit of profits and debt that can follow is not a sound basis upon which to run care homes.

Anntoinette Bramble, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, said: “The Competition and Markets Authority has confirmed our own findings that private equity providers are making extremely high profits and carrying concerning levels of debt that risks the stability of homes for children in care, which is paramount if they are to thrive.”

‘I’ve been putting the pieces together. Of our adoptions, our lives, and your death.’: Adoptee reflects on trauma of adoption in open letter to late sister

“Dear Lark,

I miss you. Over the years, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about you, our family, adoption, and have even taken an interest in the historical context of how our very unique lives came to be. It’s more than just dates, names, and events—and I have come to appreciate the stories more as I piece them together. It now makes sense why you were so good at doing puzzles. I remember how you’d have these large scraps of cardboard with the piles of puzzle pieces separated by color. These were puzzles with thousands of pieces so small it seemed you could fit them together in whatever way you wanted. Yet you would always piece them together.

I also remember the time our family dog, Mary, came bounding into the room and destroyed a puzzle you were working on. What a mess! You were definitely frustrated, but simply started again, and successfully solved it, as you always did. I only wish solving the puzzle of your pain during your time with us had been easy.

So much has happened since you left us in 2008, and I’ve been putting the pieces together around the circumstances of our adoptions, our lives, and your death. I’ve learned to stop asking why and instead I’m asking how. Asking why this happened to you has been more about me dealing with my pain over losing you. Being stuck in the realm of my own imagination and disbelief, blame, and guilt. Perhaps this letter is speaking to that, but I believe it’s also questioning how this happened and wanting to understand more deeply.

Roe v Wade has been the law of the land in America and at the heart of that nation's political debate for almost 50 years.

That debate continues even now that the law – which in 1973 established the right of a woman to have an abortion until the point of viability, or later if required to protect her health or life – has been overturned.

But at the centre of the very public legal drama, somehow hidden was not just one woman – pseudonymously known as Jane Roe – but two: Norma McCorvey, the real Jane Roe, and the daughter she gave birth to while her abortion rights case was working its way to the top of the US legal system.

Journalist Joshua Prager tells ABC RN's Sunday Extra that for most of his life he'd assumed "the woman who won the legal right to have an abortion, had one".

When he learnt that McCorvey gave birth to a daughter – the legal ruling was handed down after she gave birth – who was adopted by another family, he became intrigued by the question of who this person was.

Brilliant Beginnings has championed LGBT+ inclusion for many years, and supports trans men, trans women and non-binary people building families through surrogacy. Trans parents who need the help of a surrogate include trans women (assigned male at birth) who do not have a uterus, and trans men (assigned female at birth) for whom, even if they have a uterus, carrying a pregnancy is not possible or counterintuitive.

This page covers some specific issues which arise for transgender and gender diverse intended parents, but please also see our information for different-sex parents, male same-sex parents, female same-sex parents, single dads and single mums depending on your personal circumstances. Please note that we have used ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’ to describe relationship status to be consistent with common usage and legal terminology.

Fertility preservation and options for conception

If you stored eggs or sperm before transition to preserve your fertility, you may have eggs, sperm or embryos in storage available for you to use in a surrogacy process. Alternatively you may be able to provide eggs or sperm now to create embryos to conceive a child (and if this means you will need to adjust any hormone treatments you are on it is important to seek expert medical advice).

You may need to think about finding an egg or sperm donor (or both) to help you conceive. If you are not able to use your own genetic material (or eggs/sperm from your partner) then conceiving through surrogacy will be complicated from a UK legal perspective. We would recommend seeking early legal advice and our sister organisation NGA Law can help you.

Families who have adopted Maltese children have had their car or front door burnt in a clear sign of retribution, instilling fear in many other prospective parents when they make plans to adopt a child.

This pushes many of them to not want to adopt Maltese children, preferring to take a longer, more arduous and more expensive route to adopting children born in other countries.

Maltese families are scared to adopt Maltese children, lawyer Josette Sultana, one of the founders of Adoption Opportunities, said. “We have heard stories where birth parents have gone after people who have adopted their children and burnt their car or front door,” she told The Malta Independent on Sunday in an interview.

Dr Sultana was approached by this newspaper after information from Parliament revealed that only 27 Maltese children have been adopted over the last decade.

She said that this happens because birth parents would be going through a circle of negativity and many times they would not want to let their child go. Added to this, Malta’s small size makes it much easier to locate somebody and so the majority of approved prospective parents prefer to spend thousands of euros in searching for their future adopted child overseas.

ADOPTION is a personal decision for prospective parents. To be valid, one should follow the procedures set by our laws.

The Supreme Court discussed the legal implication of adoption in the case of Renato Lazatin vs. Judge Campos, G.R. No. L-43955-56, 30 July 1979, to wit:

“Adoption is a juridical act, a proceeding in rem which creates between two persons a relationship similar to that which results from legitimate paternity and filiation. Only an adoption made through the court, or in pursuance with the procedure laid down under Rule 99 of the Rules of Court is valid in this jurisdiction. It is not of natural law at all, but is wholly and entirely artificial. To establish the relation, the statutory requirements must be strictly carried out, otherwise, the adoption is an absolute nullity. The fact of adoption is never presumed, but must be affirmatively proved by the person claiming its existence. xxx”

This means that adoption must be through court processes. Otherwise, the adoption cannot be considered valid, insofar as the laws are concerned.

However, in 2022, Republic Act No. 11642, otherwise known as the Domestic Administrative Adoption Act, was signed into law. The purpose is to provide a more efficient process under the attached agency of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, to be known as the National Authority for Child Care (NACC) with quasi-judicial powers to approve and grant all types of adoption.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court while dealing with a case of adoption of an unborn

child, held that no such provision as to give effect to adoption of an unborn child is

envisaged under the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956.

The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 does not envisage an agreement

to adopt a child, who is not yet born.