Summer evening conversation Habtamu de Hoop (PvdA), a Frisian farmer's son born in Addis Ababa, is the youngest member of parliament. Kees van der Staaij (SGP), who adopted his two children from Colombia, the longest serving. "I thought your maiden speech was the best of this class."

SGP'er Kees van der Staaij gave a speech about the book Van Strange Smetten Vrij at secondary school in Amersfoort in the early eighties.about the Center Party. He still remembers the sentence with which he ended: "The Center Party will rise, shine and sink." He had grabbed a stack of party flyers and tossed them in the trash. His teacher was not impressed. He thought it was "populist". Habtamu de Hoop of the PvdA took part in a debate competition in the fourth grade of the havo and it was his last turn to choose a political party. Only the PVV was left. “I put on a white wig and made the most provocative statements.” He won. After that, when he had "ghosted" a paper on Nietzsche for civics and nearly sat down, his teacher only wanted to help him with a good enough grade if he joined the debating club.

You might become a politician by accident, is the message of Habtamu de Hoop's story, with the ravioli with ricotta and lemon in the Potterhuis in The Hague. Kees van der Staaij says that he still takes "attributes" with him to attract attention – if an important debate in the House of Representatives takes a long time and he and his small party only get the floor when one of the last gets the floor. “At school, I once came into the classroom on crutches to give a talk about the disabled.”

At the end of the afternoon Kees van der Staaij was the first to enter the seventeenth-century Potterhuis, on the Dunne Bierkade in The Hague. This is where Paulus Potter painted his Bull, Jan Steen lived there with his family. Snacks are available in the library, but Van der Staaij only has eyes for the books. “Abraham Kuyper! It's insane what that man wrote!"

He also pulls out Gentlemen of Tea from Hella Haasse. That novel taught him a lesson, he says. “People can get sour without realizing it. Dissatisfaction can just creep into your life, being happy is not automatic. You have to keep weeding your garden.”

Octogenarian and child of five among adopted children or parents applying for unrestricted access to early years data

An 81-year-old, adopted as a child, and a 74-year-old mother who gave up her baby for adoption, are among 900 people who have registered to trace their parents or children after landmark legislation was passed in Ireland.

The public response to the new laws, which came into force on 1 July, is opening decades-old wounds for children and parents who were separated at birth, some sent to the UK or the US, during the past 100 years.

The data, released on Thursday by the Adoption Authority of Ireland, indicate many have lived to late adulthood without knowing who their birth parents are.

Of the 891 who have registered the AAI said the oldest person to request their data was 81, and the mean age of applicants (both parent and child) was 50. The youngest was a five-year-old whose adoptive parents had registered on their behalf.

The aftermath of transnational

illegal adoptions: Redressing

human rights violations in the

intercountry adoption system

with instruments of

Three men thought they were the only one donating sperm to a lesbian couple, but were horrified to find out on TikTok they had mixed their samples together in a 'semen cocktail'

Sperm donors have slammed a lesbian couple for mixing samples and creating a semen "cocktail" to conceive in a process that has been compared to a three-man "orgy".

Three men thought they were the only one donating to the couple and that the baby would be their's.

However, the woman actually drove across Sydney, Australia during lockdown in 2021 - when travel was prohibited - to collect samples from different men.

The men only found out what had really happened when they stumbled across a TikTok video, in which the women revealed they had been rotating between the men.

More than 200,000 Ukrainian children have been reported missing. Some have ended up in Russia, where they are put up for adoption.

Tatiana Tolstokorova, 56, was sure she recognized Nastya, her missing 3-year-old granddaughter, in a video posted on July 14 on social media by the presidential commissioner for children's rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova. The video showed a large group of little children getting off of buses and being greeted by their new adoptive parents. Tolstokorova hadn’t seen Nastya since their hometown of Mariupol, in eastern Ukraine, was bombed four months ago.

“Thirteen little peas, in identical suits, were waiting for us at the porch of the foster home to go to Russia to be with foster moms and dads,” stated the caption on the video, posted on VKontakte, known as “the Russian Facebook.” “By the end of the week, 108 orphans from Donbass who received Russian citizenship will have parents.”

Tolstokorova was in shock.

“Dear Maria, my granddaughter is there, I recognized her,” Tolstokorova commented on the post. “For the love of all that is holy, give me my star!”

Rosanne and Martin have three adopted children: 'In an ideal world they would not have been adopted'

Rosanne (41, midwife) and Martin (38, owns their own marketing and strategy business), have three adopted children: Shawn (12), Josiah (9) and Hannah (3). All three children are from South Africa. First came Josiah (when he was 11 months), then Shawn (who was then 5.5). Hannah came in April 2020, she was almost 1.5 at the time. The family lives in Veenendaal.

No need to be pregnant

Rosanne: 'I don't recognize the need to carry a child. Not even to give birth. As a midwife I am often asked that, logically. I think it's fantastic to experience, but for myself I don't feel that need very strongly.

Now that I'm a mother, I can miss that feeling that you know from scratch where your child is and what it is going through. I sometimes feel sad about that. That I couldn't be there for them from day one. I was able to save them from that difficult and sometimes damaging start they had.

At least 30 babies born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers have reportedly been illegally sold in the Czech Republic since 2019. Six employees of a fertility clinic are suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

Vienna, Prague, Kyiv – At least 30 babies are said to have been illegally sold to foreigners in the Czech Republic since 2019 after the babies were born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers in Prague. According to Kathpress, the Vienna Institute for Medical Anthropology and Bioethics (IMABE) reported this on Monday with reference to the Czech media portal Seznam Zprávy . IMABE Managing Director Susanne Kummer has criticized surrogacy as a "deeply unethical practice at the expense of women and children".

The focus of the Czech investigation is therefore the Ukrainian agency Feskov-Human Reproduction Group with locations in Kharkiv, Kyiv and Prague. Clinic operator Alexander Feskov has been accused of human trafficking in Ukraine since last year, according to IMABE. In the meantime, six employees of the fertility clinic are also suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

The Feskov Clinic advertises a "remote guarantee program": customers or contract parents do not have to travel to Ukraine for a child via surrogacy. Both the "reproductive program" and confinement could take place depending on the country of choice. This would make it possible to circumvent stricter national laws. Because: According to Ukrainian law, only infertile and married couples are allowed for surrogacy. However, single men who wish to have children and homosexual couples from all over the world were also among Feskov's customers.

60,000 to 70,000 euros per child "ready for collection".

The Delhi High Court has sought for the presence of CEO of Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) over the authority's failure to file a timely response in a bunch of petitions concerning inter-country adoptions.

The development came after Justice Pratibha M Singh in February this year sought response of CARA on the framework for facilitating adoptions in case of children who have been orphaned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Court has been dealing with three cases relating to international adoption of Indian children.

In all three cases, the children, as also their biological parents were in India but the adoptive parents have settled abroad. The adoptions were carried out under the provisions of HAMA. However, certain challenges were faced in movement of the children abroad, including in obtaining passports and visas. The adoptive parents were required to obtain a NOC from CARA.

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Kolkata: A steep rise in preference for adopting girls has also been noticed. In 2019-’20, the total number of girl adoptions was 122, with 86 boy adoptions. While the whole country has seen a decrease in the total girl adoption rate, Bengal saw a 9.2% increase in girl adoptions, compared with before the pandemic.

Behala Resident Ritayan Pal, 36, and his wife had applied for adoption three years back and finally completed the process to adopt a two-month-old girl during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021. “Amid the gloom of Covid, she has brought light and joy to our family,” said Pal.

The ratio of girls adopted in Bengal in respect to the entire country was 5.5% before the pandemic. This touched 6.6% during the pandemic.

Shashi Panja, Bengal’s minister of women and child development and social welfare, said adoption was a regular, ongoing and transparent process.

“The pandemic has not affected the adoption rate. As it is a process that takes 3-4 years, we did not stop the process because of the pandemic,” she said. She added that the app ‘Sneho Chaya’, which was developed by the Bengal government to track orphans, their problems and needs during Covid, had helped adoptions as well.

The Juvenile Justice Committee (JJC) of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday enquired about the alleged child trafficking and surrogacy racket in Eluru district.

The JJC, which took suo moto notice of the alleged sale of an infant in Pedavegi mandal in Eluru district, asked officials about the details of the case.

Principal Secretaries of the concerned departments, Eluru Deputy Superintendent of Police G.V.V.S. Pydeswara Rao and Two Town CI D.V. Ramana appeared before the JJC.

The JJC, while expressing concern over the alleged sale of babies, directed the officers to take steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents.