Viele Jahre war Gunther Krichbaum Vorsitzender des EU-Ausschusses im Bundestag. Diese einflussreiche Funktion muss der CDU-Abgeordnete aus Pforzheim nun an Anton Hofreiter von den Grünen abgeben. Um einen weiteren europapolitischen Posten wird in der Union noch gerungen.

Birth parent Sue cringes in pain any time she hears a baby cry at her work in a Sydney shop. She chose her child’s family in an open adoption at nine months. It didn’t have the secrets of closed adoptions, but it has been the “most traumatic experience of her life”.

As the Christmas trees go up, the heartache spikes for anyone affected by adoption, even those raised in the happiest of adoptive families, say counsellors from the Benevolent Society.

Whether those adopted as children are now 71, like Ken Doyle of Orange, or 22 years old like Claudia from Gymea in Sydney, big family celebrations make them wonder about what could have been.

They also feel guilty for having these thoughts because of how much they love their adoptive families - and don’t want to hurt their feelings.

“Especially coming up to Christmas, big events, birthdays, you do tend to think about it more, wondering what life may have been like if I hadn’t been adopted, but then I feel guilty because I am so fortunate to have such loving family,” said Claudia, who asked for her surname to be withheld.

On Wednesday 24 November, the court ruled on two cases concerning intercountry adoption. A woman adopted from Bangladesh and a man illegally adopted from Brazil have both filed lawsuits over their adoption. The court in The Hague rejected the woman's claims on the basis of prescription and a substantive assessment. In the case of illegal adoption from Brazil, the court partially allowed the claims. According to Defense for Children, both cases show how complicated it is for intercountry adoptees to recover parentage information, restore identity and seek justice when fundamental rights have been violated.

Case 1: adoption from Bangladesh

In 1976, the then four-year-old woman and her brother were adopted from Bangladesh in the Netherlands. Following an episode of Nieuwsuur in November 2017, the woman realized that her biological mother did not abandon her children, but gave them up under false pretenses and then searched for them for years.

The woman has filed a lawsuit against Terre des Hommes (whose country director at the time had a double function and was also a representative of an adoption organization), adoption organization Wereldkinderen (then BIA) and the State. Its position is that the accused parties contributed to the adoption that allegedly took place under false pretenses. According to the woman, the accused parties also failed to properly investigate abuses in intercountry adoptions from Bangladesh and to inform those involved about this.

Terre des Hommes and Wereldkinderen invoked the fact that the woman was adopted more than twenty years ago and that her claims are therefore time-barred. The court ruled in favor of the organizations in this regard. The court also states that Terre des Hommes was not involved in this adoption at the time. The State initially also invoked statute of limitations, but withdrew it following a report that the Commission Investigating Intercountry Adoption (COIA) issued in February 2021 about abuses in intercountry adoptions and the role that the government plays in this. After substantive treatment, the court considers the woman's claim that her adoption in 1976 from Bangladesh was unlawfully established.

J&KARA Constituted After Media Reports Claimed Covid Orphans ‘On Sale’

Srinagar- The Jammu and Kashmir administration has constituted a new adoption resource agency for the erstwhile state to ensure “Care, Welfare & Protection” of the children who were orphaned by the ongoing pandemic, amidst the sensational media reports alleging that “Covid orphans” were being put up for sale by traffickers.

The agency has been set up in order to deal with the process of adopting orphans legally—especially those who lost their parents during Covid—under the guidance of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA) that was constituted in terms of the Juvenile Justice which deals with the 2015’s Care and Protection of Children Act.

Mission Director, ICPS (Integrated Child Protection Scheme) Shabnam Kamili told Kashmir Observer that formation of the new adoption resource agency will fortify the steps taken by the government for protection of orphan children especially those rendered by ongoing pandemic.

“Earlier, J&K wasn’t registered under CARA as there was no State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA) for J&K which would have ensured a better protection of orphans in the Valley.” Shabnam said.

Family and friends are ecstatic, the reactions on social media are sometimes frightening. Ryan Ramharak (29), trans and non-binary, is pregnant with his partner David (31). “I hope the people after us are treated better.”

David initially had no desire to have children. "When I came out, I thought that having children would be complicated." He himself was adopted from Brazil. “I am very happy with my adoption and my parents, but I don't want to be a father that way. It can be very complicated not to know who your biological parents are. I had written off becoming a father for myself. I'll be a nice uncle, I always thought.”

Ryan went on testosterone for a long time, which gave him beard growth, a lower voice and an angular face, but kept the uterus

Everything changed when he met Ryan over three years ago, through Tinder. He had transitioned at the age of 23. Ryan: ,,My sister had her first child at a time when I had to think about my own fertility. In the hospital I held her baby – super special, of course. Then I found out that I did want children. I wanted to grow up, not a mother.”

Ryan went on testosterone for a long time, which gave him beard growth, a lower voice and an angular face, but kept the uterus. Which for David meant that he might still be able to become a father through a biological route. And Ryan also saw it, he temporarily stopped with hormones.

Adoptees of color with White

parents struggle to talk with

their families about race

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Growing up, Angela Tucker felt like a racial impostor. She may have looked Black, but she didn’t feel that way.

The thousands of Greek orphans who were taken abroad from 1821 through the 1960’s were the topic of a recent seminar hosted by the Eastern Mediterranean Business Culture Alliance (EMBCA), which brought together experts from around the world to discuss the triumphs and tragedies of the past.

Tens of thousands of ethnically-Greek orphans — or, more often, children who were simply without fathers, due to war or other causes — were taken abroad to be adopted or put into orphanages in Turkey and Greece after the war killed so many family breadwinners and disrupted normal life in the country.

But it wasn’t only the War; it was the Ottoman Turks’ genocide of the Greeks that happened afterward, during the 30 year period from 1894-1924, that caused so many Greek children to be spirited away to other lands, most of them never to return. Much later, during the Cold War, Americans and Europeans also adopted thousands of Greek youngsters — many of them becoming completely assimilated at such a young age that they had no connection to their roots whatsoever.

Greek Orphans Event

The panel was moderated by Lou Katsos, the president of the EMBCA. Dr. Gonda Van Steen, the Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College; Historian and Author Dr. Constantine Hatzidimitriou, and Dr. Theodosios Kyriakidis, the Chair of Pontic Studies in the School of History and Archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki were the presenters.

The Flemish government is to tighten its rules on adoptions from other countries, Wouter Beke (CD&V), minister for the family announced.

The decision comes following a devastating report issued in September alleging widespread human trafficking being carried out under the cover of intercountry adoption. The report was written by a panel of independent experts who had been working on the question since 2019.

“This is something that all parties involved have been saying for many years we have to tackle,” Beke said at the time. And he sketched out the basic principles of the “ambitious reform” needed to intercountry adoption, including multi-parenthood, strengthening partnerships with countries of origin, building bridges between foster care and adoption, and focusing on aftercare and counselling.

Beke also suggested a two-year hiatus for all international adoptions to allow the necessary reforms to be passed. However that proposal was shot down by N-VA, arguing that while reform was needed, a revolution was going too far.

Today, Beke presented his new proposal to parliament: a set of six strict selection criteria designed to weed out bad adoption prospects. Countries that do not apply the criteria will simply be scrapped from the list of acceptable candidates.

For more than two years, Raquel Rueda Pinilla has spent almost all of her time searching for the biological mothers and fathers of Colombians given up for adoption at home and abroad, without receiving anything in return. Together with a colleague in the United States, they have solved more than 90 cases and have more than 100 pending.

“Good morning, my name is Raquel Rueda Pinilla and I do social work. I help people given up for adoption to find their biological families ... Are you ...? There is a person who wants to know about you ”, is what Raquel always says.

The person on the other end of the line may say “no, she is wrong” or “yes, my name is that, but I have not given up adoption” or there may simply be a silence of several seconds, even minutes, that makes Raquel feel that this time it can be.

After endless calls, days or months of investigation and sleepless nights, because she does not take cases lightly but feels them more her own than if they were, the possibility of finally having hit the mark returns "that something" that he loses when he cannot find the way.

At 63 years old, who wears gracefully and proudly just as she wears her reddish freckles, she works more than many in her 30s and rests less than those her age. All day, every day for two and a half years, she has dedicated herself to helping people find their origin, their beginning, their roots, without trying to profit from it.

While this was inspired by the abortion debate engulfing our country again, it’s actually about love; more so than I realized when I started writing.

The Supreme Court’s been hearing arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health and the pro-choice crowd is predictably losing it’s collective mind. The same faulty arguments about abortions becoming illegal if Roe falls, misrepresentations of the public’s support for “abortion rights” and falsehoods about pro-life positions only being held by the religious and/or those on the right are being trotted out again. That’s nothing new, but now there’s a new approach that’s incredibly dangerous and needs to be called out before it can gain traction.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is actively pro-life and has two adopted children. This renders the standard (but false) line about how pro-life people only care about babies until birth but not after as moot in her case, so they’ve taken a worse approach to press the attack on her. They’re claiming that people like Barrett (but not people like Buttigieg for some reason) are monsters for advocating for adoption.

The argument: Adoption is hard, painful and leaves people feeling broken with a sense of loss; that it creates a level of human suffering. That is true, but, even though she’s being painted that way, Justice Barrett has never argued that relinquishing custody of a child was simple or painless. She just doesn’t advocate terminating a life as a rational solution to avoiding future pain. Yes, adoption can be traumatic for both mother and child, but that doesn’t justify the narrative that adoption is a problem while abortion is a solution.

It’s actually the natural progression of the “compassionate” pro-abortion argument that an unwanted child is better off being aborted because, if a child isn’t wanted, their life will be hard and not worth living. They use prettier words, but the sentiment is just as harsh, no matter how you say it. Human life is precious, no matter the circumstances of its creation, but this argument creates the false concept that “wantedness” equals worth.