Vive research helps to stamp out the government's plans for more adoptions as a social measure, but the report's conclusions lack the necessary reservations and nuances, writes Anette Faye Jacobsen, senior researcher at the Department of Human Rights.

Anette Faye Jacobsen

Ph.d. and senior researcher, Department of Human Rights

This post is merely an expression of the writer's own position. All submissions to the Althing must comply with the rules of press ethics.

A new Vive report fits like a glove for politicians who want to lean on science when the Child's Law is to be presented.

SHAH ALAM: The High Court here has allowed an Algerian man’s application for a paternity test to be conducted on an adopted male child.

The man’s lover had given the child up for adoption, without his knowledge, 12 days after giving birth.

Judge SM Komathy said should the result of the DNA test prove so, the plaintiff will also be declared the biological father.

In her judgment released last week, Komathy said the plaintiff had strong prima facie evidence that he is the biological father as there was compelling evidence that the biological mother and the plaintiff had a sexual relationship.

“The plaintiff has produced adequate corroborative evidence to show that there is a good possibility that he is the birth father, and only a DNA test can confirm conclusively the veracity of his claim,” she said.

Rosanne (41, obstetrician) and Martin (38, has her own company in marketing and strategy), 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 5.5 at the time). Hannah came in April 2020, she was almost 1.5 years old then. 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 so strongly.

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

Repair the damage

Coimbatore: The district child protection unit (DCPU) is looking for parents to adopt a 14-year-old girl.

The girl had lost a parent before the pandemic and the other to Covid-19, district child protection officer M Mathiyalagan said. “She is staying in a government-registered shelter in the district because she did not have any relative,” he told TOI.

“As many as 21 children lost both their parents and 544 lost either father or mother to the Covid-19 infection in the district. Unlike other children who had relatives, this girl, a Class IX student, has none. So, we are searching for suitable parents to adopt her,” the official said.

DCPU is planning to conduct counselling sessions for the girl about the adoption process, Mathiyalagan said. “Even though the girl is free to stay in the shelter until she turns 18, she needs a place for foster care after that.”

“The unit had received applications from seven parents willing to adopt children. Most of them showed interest in adopting babies. We check their background thoroughly before proceeding with the adoption process as we need to ensure that the adopted children are given good care,” he added.

It seems natural to know who your parents or grandparents are. Except for donor children like Jessie Kerkhove.

Today is Genetic Identity Day, the day to reflect on the importance of genetic identity. Many people do not think about it, because it is obvious where you come from. You know your parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents. But not everyone has that privilege. Think of adoptees and donor children (and other target groups whose right to genetic identity is violated).

This is a day to raise awareness. Primarily by the government. Last year we were given a towel for the bleeding and after a lot of work from the target groups and the initiators – for which all due respect – the Flemish Descendancy Center was created. This center provides psychological counseling to donor children, among others, and has set up a DNA database, which currently contains about twenty DNA samples. They also talk to fertility doctors and gynaecologists and give lectures to students.

Although these are certainly also important activities, this does not change anything for the (adult) donor children who are already there. The real changes must come from politics.

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Starting in 2023, Quebec parents who want to adopt a child internationally will be required to take a preparation program developed by the Ministry of Health and Social Services.

The first steps international adoption program was launched Monday morning in Montreal by junior health minister Lionel Carmant.

The preparatory course will be done entirely online through a series of nine episodes, including readings, videos and questionnaires, in order to allow prospective parents to follow the training at their own pace.

The program aims not only to equip parents with the intricacies of international adoption but also to allow them to evaluate themselves about the process.

The nine episodes include the basic motivation to adopt a child, the experiences of children in the adoption context, their social-emotional development and risk and protective factors. The episodes also discuss the child's pre-adoption experience and subsequent search for identity.

With the help of the Donorkind Foundation, donor children found ten fertility doctors in the past five years who used their own sperm without permission to conceive children with women who wanted to have children. Not all those cases have appeared in the media, board member Ester de Lau of the foundation told NU.nl.

Some cases, such as those of well-known sperm doctors such as Jan Karbaat, Jan Wildschut or Jos Beek, have been extensively in the news in recent years. These doctors used their own semen instead of the intended father's to father dozens of children. For example, Karbaat has at least 81 offspring, which increases the risk of love relationships between siblings.

Donorkind Foundation searches for fathers of donor children in commercial DNA databases. Over the past five years, they found a total of 150 to 200 fathers of thousands of children. De Lau finds it "difficult" that especially the donor doctors and their descendants receive a lot of attention in the press. "It is always very much about the abuses, while Monday (the Day of the Donor Child, ed.) is a day to celebrate."

At the same time, the abuses also generate more attention, concludes the board member. "Every time a doctor is in the news, we get a flood of applications from donor children." The attention also ensures that parents start talking to their children.

'Being the doctor is an extra handicap'

Abortion opponents say unwanted pregnancies should end in adoption. What happens when a child is given up? Here's everything you need to know:

Are all unwanted babies adopted?

No, despite a strong demand by couples who can't have children. In a leaked draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision that could enable state abortion bans, Justice Samuel Alito cited a 2002 federal report that the nearly 1 million Americans seeking to adopt far outstripped the "domestic supply of infants." A birth mother, he argued, thus "has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home." Only about 18,000 American infants are relinquished by new mothers each year, so it's true that there is strong competition for most of those babies through private adoptions or agencies. Directly paying for babies is illegal in every state, but adoptive parents and agencies enter into agreements with pregnant women that provide from $15,000 to $45,000 to cover their legal, medical, and other expenses. Still, not every child put up for adoption finds a good home.

What's the problem?

Adoptive parents generally want the youngest, healthiest, least troubled children possible. They also have clear racial preferences: New York University economist Allan Collard-Wexler found in 2010 that on average it was $8,000 more expensive to adopt a white baby than a Black one. Among babies adopted in 2020, according to Statista Research, 29,325 were white, 11,631 were Hispanic, 9,588 were Black, and 5,304 were mixed-race. The racial disparity may partly reflect the fact that Black teens are less likely to put babies up for adoption than white ones, and more likely to have family members raise an unwanted child. But it's also a product of the market pressures within the adoption industry, which is rife with profiteering and exploitation. Pregnant women who sign contracts to turn over their babies have reported being threatened with having to repay all costs if they back out. "Special needs" infants come at a major discount. Children that no one adopts often wind up in foster care. Today, approximately 400,000 children linger in the foster-care system.

(CNN) I've known for my whole life that I was adopted, although I didn't know all the details. Less than 48 hours after my birth, I was placed with the people I'd call my family the rest of my life. All I know about the young woman who gave birth to me decades ago is that she was single and that she felt ill-equipped to raise a child.

Adoption has featured prominently in the national discourse in the weeks since the leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. I suspect that will continue to be the case as we get nearer to the formal Court ruling, which is expected sometime in June.

I was lucky to be adopted as a newborn, because it meant immediately joining my permanent family. As a result, being adopted has just been a quirky fact about me. My family is my family, just like everybody else's. Sometimes though, I still get questions about what it was like being adopted.

One particular question rankles me more than others, and it's one I still get more often than you might think: "Aren't you glad your birth mother carried you to term?" I am often asked, in other words, if I wasn't pleased that the woman who gave birth to me didn't opt to have an abortion instead.

It's a rather odd question: I find that people often look to those who have chosen to adopt children — or to people like myself who have been adopted — when seeking confirmation of their anti-abortion views.

Annie Goodchild, otherwise known as singer I Used To Be Sam, writes for PinkNews about their experience as a transracial adoptee and a queer, non-binary person of colour.

Adoption has a cruel and unique way of f**king up your identity.

Every time I think I’m getting a hold of who I am, I lose my footing and am yet again swept off course. I took one of those DNA tests a few years ago and it changed my life.

I confirmed my birth name was Samantha, not Annie, which I had been called for as long as I can remember. I also got an answer to a question I had been asking myself my whole life: “Does my birth mother want to meet me?”

The answer – a painful and clear no.