The Weekend Australian recently featured on its front page a story about the journey Canberra couple Emma and Alex Micallef have undergone to commission a baby in Ukraine. It detailed the obstacles they have experienced along the way, including the logistics of managing such an arrangement in the midst of the country’s ongoing invasion at the hands of Russia (“Miracle of life delivered in a war-torn land far away”).

However, what is interesting to note about the story (and not mentioned in the newspaper article) is that entering into an overseas commercial surrogacy arrangement is illegal in the Australian Capital Territory, the jurisdiction where the couple currently reside. According to the Australian government’s smart traveller website:

“It is illegal for residents of the ACT, NSW and QLD to enter into commercial surrogacy arrangements overseas. Doing so could lead to arrest and jail in Australia.”

The process as described in the news article indicates that the Micallefs, with the assistance of non-profit organisation Growing Families, have entered into a commercial surrogacy arrangement overseas:

“The commercialisation of the process – very different from the altruistic approach in Australia – meant the baby would be legally the Micallefs’ from birth and they would not have to go through bureaucratic processes to adopt their daughter. There is no court decree, no adoption procedure, and the gestational mother, who is paid about €15,000 to €20,000 ($22,200 to $29,640), which is many times the Ukrainian minimum wage, has no legal right.”

The Czech capital Prague is becoming increasingly popular for commercial surrogacy. Officially it is forbidden, but in practice a lot is possible. Gay couples and single men can also pick up a child here.

Czech authorities concluded a three-year investigation into human trafficking in early June. They investigated cases in which Ukrainian women in the Czech Republic gave birth to a child destined for presumably single non-Czech people.

The investigation centered on a private clinic in Kharkiv, Ukraine, that offers people the opportunity to 'order' a child. Research by the Czech news site Seznam Zpravy shows that interested parties from all over the world can choose skin color, gender and hair color via a catalog. The clinic then selects a suitable egg donor, after which a surrogate mother is fertilized.

Single men or gay couples cannot pick up their children in Ukraine; only a heterosexual couple can engage a surrogate mother. That is why there is Prague for other target groups. The surrogate mother gives birth in the Czech capital and then gives the client custody of the child. The man can then simply leave the Czech Republic with the child, without it being known whether he is capable of raising the child and what the motives behind his wish to have children are…

Thing

NEW DELHI: In an important judgment relating to partition of property among Hindus, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that an illegitimate child of a couple cohabiting for long without marriage would be entitled to a share in the family property.

Reversing a Kerala HC judgment that disallowed property share claim of an alleged illegitimate son of a couple who did not marry, a bench of Justices S ABdul Nazeer and Vikram Nath said the couple in question had cohabited for a very long time to make their relationship as good as a married couple and hence, their son would be entitled to appropriate share in the ancestral property.

Settling a 40 year-old dispute that oscillated between the trial court, High Court and the SC, the bench said, "We have also perused the evidence of the defendants. We are of the view that the defendants have failed to rebut the presumption in favour of a marriage between Damodaran and Chiruthakutty on account of their long cohabitation." The SC restored the trial court judgment which had decreed the suit in favour of partitioning the ancestral property with appropriate share to the son of the couple.

The SC said the documents produced by the so-called illegitimate son were much prior to the controversy arising between parties. The other side, children of the brother of the so-called illegitimate son's father.

The bench said, "These documents, coupled with the evidence of a witness, would show the long duration of cohabitation between Damodaran and Chiruthakutty as husband and wife. The first plaintiff joined military service in 1963 and retired in 1979. Thereafter he has taken the steps to file a suit for partition of the suit schedule property."

This is a summary of the research report Health and social living conditions of internationally adopted adults , a report from CHESS and Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with the Department of Social Work at Stockholm University on behalf of the Swedish Agency for Family Law and Parental Support (MFoF). The report in its entirety can be downloaded hereLink to another website.. Behind the report are Anders Hjern, Department of Medicine Solna, Karolinska Institutet and CHESS, Stockholm University / Karolinska Institutet, and Bo Vinnerljung, Department of Social Work, Stockholm University.

There are about 60,000 internationally adopted in Sweden today. 20 years ago, register studies from the National Board of Health and Welfare showed that the internationally adopted had a significantly increased risk of psychiatric care and suicide during adolescence and young adulthood. This new report examined whether the high psychiatric morbidity of internationally adopted patients persists into adulthood. The report also focuses on social living conditions in adulthood in the form of family formation, childbirth and work, where the follow-up time in previous studies has been too short to allow any definite conclusions.

Study population and data

The study was based on anonymised data from national registers provided by Statistics Sweden and the National Board of Health and Welfare. The study population consisted of internationally adopted and refugees originating in Asia, Latin America and Africa who arrived in Sweden before the age of eight and native Swedes with a Swedish background. The analyzes of psychiatric morbidity were based on longitudinal data on 1.6 million individuals born 1973-1986 who were followed from the age of 18 until 2017 (31-45 years), of which just over 18,000 were internationally adopted and 22,000 refugees. The analyzes of social living conditions were based on people born in 1972-1983, and this also included a group of more than 900 Swedish adoptees, adoptees who were born in Sweden and had been adopted in early childhood.

Doubled risk for inpatient psychiatric care

Rob Marrevee (60), adoptive father of sons Zenebe (25) and Jarra (22), in his book Vaderland puts an end to the 'fairytale' that a child from a poor country can be 'saved' with enough love. His sons support him. "My mission is to break something open."

"And where are you originally from?"

"From Ethiopia."

'Oh, you speak Dutch very well.'

'Yes, that's right, I grew up here. I've been adopted.'

Giving has been an integral part of India’s culture. Many of us experience it quite early on when we celebrate our birthdays or other special occasions at orphanages or child care institutions (CCIs). While giving to orphanages has been the traditional and one of the oldest ways of engaging in philanthropy, we need to shift our focus towards supporting systems and approaches that address the root causes of child vulnerability,spearhead a movement to shift care reform priorities to prevent separation from family and subsequent institutionalization of children, and invest in research and innovative interventions that build upon the existing efforts by the government and civil society.

According to the Indian National Policy for Children 2013, “All children have the right to grow in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love, and understanding.” There is a global and national consensus that children can achieve holistic development and mental well-being only in a family and related setup. Research on the institutionalization of children claims that 80% of institutionalized children are below the mean on relevant indicators relating to the delayed brain and cognitive development, 57% of institutionalized children exhibit greater psychological issues, as opposed to only 15% otherwise and staff members often resort to dangerous measures that put the child at a higher risk of future criminal activity according to Lumos Global Research.

A ray of hope

To act on the root causes of child vulnerability in India, there is a need for programs that work as a collective, with on-ground interventions covering rural as well as urban locations, coupled with interventions that strengthen the ecosystem with data, evidence, narrative change, and advocacy. State-based models focused on systems strengthening, that lead to replicable solutions need to involve allied sectors, keeping the child at the center, and leverage resources and structures available or mandated by policy. The philanthropic community can have a multi-fold impact by supporting such collective initiatives, and championing the cause to wider networks.

The work is complex and we have a long way to go in overcoming execution challenges. We need to disproportionately focus on enabling families and communities to provide nurturing environments for their children and building the capacities of child protection actors to undertake all efforts necessary to provide family-based care for children entering the system based on the five priorities for action:

The following extract by Mary Harney comes from the essay “Testimony,” which opens the collection REDRESS: Ireland’s Institutions and Transitional Justice edited by Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke and James M. Smith and recently published by University College Dublin Press.

How will Ireland redress its legacy of institutional abuse and forced adoption? What constitutes justice? How might democracy evolve if the survivors’ experiences and expertise were allowed to lead the response to a century of gender and family separation-based abuses?

In addition to asking such questions, the essays in REDRESS focus on the structures which perpetuated widespread and systematic abuses in the past and consider how political arrangements continue to exert power over survivors, adopted people and generations of relatives, as well as controlling the remains and memorialisation of the dead.

With diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives, they consider how a Transitional Justice-based, survivor-centred, approach might assist those personally affected, policymakers, the public, and academics to evaluate the complex ways in which both the Republic and Northern Ireland have responded to their histories of institutionalisation and forced family separation. Importantly, the essays seek to offer avenues by which to redress this legacy of continuing harms.

Mary Harney is a Maine resident, civil-rights activist, painter and educator; she completed her Master’s Degree in Irish Studies (2013) and Masters in International Human Rights Law (2020) at NUI-Galway.

In a mix-up, the hospital handed over the living baby to another woman instead of the actual mother, Nazma Khanam, due to the similarity in their names.

Three years after a hospital switched a woman's newborn in Assam’s Barpeta district, she was finally able to unite with her son following a court directive.

Three years back, two pregnant women were admitted to a government-run hospital in Assam’s Barpeta district where they gave birth to two babies, but one of the infants was stillborn.

In a mix-up, the hospital handed over the living baby to another woman instead of the actual mother, Nazma Khanam, due to the similarity in their names. Following the court’s directive, as per the DNA report, the original mother has been able to get her baby after three years.

Advocate Abdul Mannan said that the family members of Nazma Khanam’s claimed that she gave birth to a healthy baby and the baby couldn’t die.

For years, evangelical Christians were enthusiastic supporters of adoption by sponsoring conferences, targeting adoption-friendly Sundays and staging adoption fairs in parish halls.

Thousands of overseas children got new homes. Leading the way were evangelical luminaries such as recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman (three daughters from China) and then-Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore (two sons from Russia). Enthusiastic parents took up the challenge, traveling overseas for one or more children, even adopting special needs kids whose home countries were not interested in their care.

More than a decade after this movement peaked, many families who went overseas are in crisis mode: respite weekends are booked through 2023, there is an annual Christian conference devoted to burned-out parents, and a new documentary has been released on desperate families who have extremely ill children. Parents now say that the churches that encouraged them to adopt in the first place aren't there for them now.

Few statistics exist on the number of adoptions gone wrong, other than a 10-year-old study by the US Department of Health and Human Services reporting "adoption disruptions" ranging from 10-25 percent. This little-known statistic points to a meltdown in the industry and a sign that adoption and foster care have become a landmine for many families who believed God had called them to help these children.

No one told them there could be an aftermath. Here are some of their stories.

It is estimated that between 10-15% of couples struggle with infertility. After trying to conceive and failing, these couples often seek methods like in vitro fertilization, (IVF) or look into adoption.

A local couple used a different option.

Megan Ivery and her identical twin sister grew up in Sidney with parents who shared their home with foster children. Ivery remembers many children moving in and out over the years and it fueled her desire for a large family.

“When I got married, I knew right away I wanted to start a family,” Ivery, who lives in Harrison Township, said. “We were attending a church in Kettering and there were a lot of folks fostering there.”

Ivery and her husband, Shimar, met with their pastor about fostering. At the same time, they were also trying to get pregnant. The pastor recommended they work on their biological family first, but after a year of trying, Ivery still wasn’t pregnant. The couple signed up to foster and within a couple of months, they got their first placement of a little boy who needed a place to live after a family tragedy. But he only stayed with them for four days before he went back home.