New legislation guarantees adopted people the right to obtain their birth certificates

Joan McDermott, who grew up in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, fought for 16 years to track down her firstborn son, to whom she had given birth at the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork when she was just 17.

The two finally met in 2015 when he was 47 years old.

“I will never forget it. Within an hour of meeting him he said: ‘How old am I really?’” McDermott, who now lives in Midleton, told The Irish Times.

Expressing “elation” at the legislation to guarantee adopted people the right to their birth certificates, she said her son had told her that he had spent a decade unsuccessfully trying to track her down.

A woman in Japan is giving up her baby and suing her sperm donor after discovering he lied about his ethnicity and educational background.

The woman, identified as a married 30-year-old from Tokyo, has sued the sperm donor after finding out he was Chinese, not Japanese. She has asked for 330 million yen ($2.86 million) in compensation for emotional distress, VICE reported.

The woman has also alleged that the man lied about his education and had not graduated from Kyoto University, and was married, not single as he claimed, according to Tokyo Shimbun.

The woman had decided to seek out a sperm donor after finding out that her husband carried a hereditary disorder that could be passed on to his offspring.

After hooking up with the donor via social media in March 2019, they had sex 10 times before the woman, who was not identified, successfully got pregnant three months later.

A Japanese woman is giving up her child and suing her sperm donor after she learned he lied about his ethnicity and educational background.

The woman, a Tokyo resident in her 30s, shares a child with her husband and was seeking to have a second child. But after learning her partner had a hereditary disease, the woman decided to find a sperm donor on social media. The donor she chose claimed he was Japanese and a graduate from the prestigious Kyoto University, and they had sex 10 times to get pregnant, Japanese newspaper Tokyo Shimbun reported.

But after getting pregnant in June 2019, the woman discovered that the donor was actually Chinese. He also went to a different university and hid the fact he was married. By the time she knew of his true identity, it was too late to abort the baby, and she has since given up the child for adoption. The woman filed a lawsuit against the sperm donor last month for 330 million yen ($2.86 million) for emotional distress.

In Japan, sperm donations are practically unregulated.

The entire country of 126 million has just one commercial sperm bank, which was only founded in June. Artificial insemination by donor—a procedure that involves inserting sperm into a person’s uterus—is limited to married couples, thereby excluding single women and LGBTQ couples. Even for those eligible, a mere 12 hospitals in the entire country conduct such fertility treatment.

'Can you quickly reform a system that has turned out to be rotten for decades,' asks Renate Van Geel on the eve of the hearings on the theme that will be organized in the Flemish parliament this week. 'Why do the adoptees themselves and the parents from the sending countries have so little to say?'

At the beginning of December, the new decision framework for intercountry adoption, intended to strengthen ties with the sending countries, was approved by the Flemish government. This framework can provide a slightly hopeful starting point for the reform of intercountry adoption. Everything will depend on how this policy framework is further specified and implemented. The success of this policy framework can only be measured by its effects at the micro level, namely in the opportunities it brings for children and their families in the sending countries, in respecting their rights and whether they perceive this reform as an added value. Something to which intercountry adoption has contributed nothing in the past 60 years.

Hearing days are still scheduled for January in the Committee on Welfare, Public Health and Family. So-called stakeholders (and stakeholders?) can share their experience and vision with the committee members. Each group could invite those involved to do so. Although we have read and heard rumbling statements in recent months about the interest of the child and the interest of the adoptee, I note that there are exactly two adoptees who are given speaking space. Adoption services, adoptive parents and candidate adopters do get, as is 'good' custom, a podium in the form of several people to defend their 'interests'. They even looked across the border to give a Dutch adoptive mother the floor.

Intercountry adoption reform: when will the government dare to look into its own pockets?

It would be interesting to ask the young respondents from that study again about their experience in 10 to 20 years' time. What irks me even more, if anything, is the fact that no parent (originally) has even been nominated and there is therefore no one to represent them in an important political forum where input is given on the future of intercountry adoption in Flanders.

The Kerala High Court has recently laid down that the Family Court with the respective territorial jurisdiction is empowered to give a child in adoption

After perusing the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, the 2014 Rules framed

thereunder and the Adoption Regulations 2017, Justice M.R. Anitha observed:

"In the said circumstance, the finding of the learned District Judge that the court

is not a proper forum and they have to approach the Child Welfare Committee is

A couple have received an apology and a "very significant" financial payout from a council over a failed adoption.

Sonny and Sarita Simak spent three years fighting to be reunited with a boy they planned to adopt after he was wrongly removed by Bradford Council.

They were approved by an independent expert and two adoption panels - but the council then told them he wasn't suitable for adoption.

The council said it put the "interests and wellbeing" of children at its core.

The young boy was a toddler when he was first placed with the Simaks. He is now going to school and is likely to now stay in long-term foster care.

FAYETTEVILLE -- The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed the sentencing of an adoption attorney who ran a human trafficking ring in which he paid pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the United States and give up their babies.

Paul Petersen, of Mesa, Ariz., received a prison sentence of six years and two months from U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks in December 2020. Brooks also levied a $100,000 fine on Petersen.

Petersen appealed both the sentence and the fine, arguing Brooks shouldn't have gone above the sentencing guideline ranges. A three-judge panel said both the sentence and fine were reasonable.

Brooks found the guidelines "failed to adequately account for Petersen's role as an attorney and public official, his role as a leader and organizer of the offense, and the duration of his crime," according to the opinion. "The district court did not commit a clear error of judgment."

Peterson was federally indicted in October 2019, accused of running the baby-selling operation in three states: Arkansas, Arizona and Utah.

Under-fire social services being probed over Star Hobson's murder pay out five-figure settlement over botched adoption that left boy with a 'family waiting for him' in long-term foster care

Caring parents Sonny and Sarita Simak spent three years fighting for the boy

They were told he could go back to them but then Bradford Council made U-turn

The Simaks took legal action and the council settled with them a five-figure sum

The council that missed numerous chances to stop tiny Star Hobson being murdered by her evil 'stepmother' have been ordered to make a 'very significant' payout to a couple they wrongly deprived of their child.

LGBTQ+ activists in the country called on the government to extend adoption equality to all same-sex couples

TAIPEI – Weeks after a historic ruling in Taiwan allowing a married gay man to adopt the non-biological child of his husband, LGBTQ+ activists in the country called on the government to extend adoption equality to all same-sex couples.

The family court’s historic Dec. 25 ruling, made public last week, found that it was in the best interest of Wang Chen-wei’s (???) adopted child, nicknamed “Joujou,” for his husband Chen Chun-ju (???) to become a legal guardian, as well.

It marked the first time in Taiwan that a same-sex couple has been allowed to adopt a child that didn’t have a biological relationship with either person.

The couple fought for Chen to be able to adopt Joujou for over two years.

The initiative involves the joint work of the Legal Medical Service, the Judiciary and Civil Society Organizations.

A Pilot Plan that will allow the creation of a methodology that will expedite and facilitate the meeting of families who are victims of irregular and illegal adoption processes in Chile , within the framework of the judicial processes that are underway, was announced on Monday by the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Hernán Larraín; the Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Recabarren; and the National Director of the Legal Medical Service, Gabriel Zamora; together with representatives of the NGO Nos Buscamos and the group “Hijos y Madres del Silencio”. The ceremony was attended by the deputy Ximena Ossandón.

With the objective of determining existing non-forensic procedures according to experience, technical and technological knowledge that can be used to search for possible relatives of people who are victims of irregular adoptions, whether or not reported to the courts (the Judiciary is investigating around 700 cases).

The initiative aims to contribute to two essential aspects: 1) reduce the difficulty that exists today in carrying out all kinds of procedures with a view to finding a family member who is living in another country, making it easier for those who live in remote places and with precarious means of contact to access a possible DNA sample collection; and 2) speed up and collaborate in both the computer and economic processes , since in addition to having zero cost, the Pilot Plan will provide support to victims in the process of searching for kinship.

This Pilot Plan will last for one year, during which time, through the experience of the NGO Nos Buscamos, compiling a database of more than 7 years of study, the traceability of victims' backgrounds, georeferencing information and constant contact with the global DNA bank, it will be an effective work to achieve family reunions.