"I always thought my parents abandoned me," says Meilan Stuy, who was born in China's Henan Province but raised by adoptive parents half a world away in the US state of Utah. She says her US parents showered her with love, but the older she got, the more she wanted to know where she really came from. As the story of her background emerged, so too did the cruel circumstances that led many Chinese couples to give up their children.

International adoption is widespread in the US, with China the most common country of origin of the children involved. More than 80,000 adoptees in the US were born in China, where the regulations governing adoption used to be comparatively lax.

"I decided to adopt a child from China because I learned about the terrible situation of an orphanage in Shanghai through a documentary. I simply wanted to provide a home for a child that I thought needed one," says Meilan's adoptive father, Brian Stuy.

Brian and his wife Longlan, who is Chinese by birth, have three adopted daughters from an orphanage in China. The daughters have often inquired about their biological parents, but all the couple knew was what the orphanage had told them: that the girls had been abandoned.

Elusive truth

The High Court has granted approval for the making of an adoption order for a girl without consulting her birth father.

The order was sought by the Adoption Authority of Ireland so the girl, now aged 18, could be adopted by her birth mother’s husband who has cared for her for some 14 years.

In a judgment published this week, Mr Justice John Jordan was satisfied to make an order under Section 30.3 of the Adoption Act approving the proposed adoption without consulting the birth father.

The evidence satisfied him, as a matter of probability, that the birth father has effectively made himself non-contactable, the judge said.

The background circumstances also proved that it was the father, who last saw his daughter in 2009 and appeared to have last spoken to her by phone on her birthday in 2014, who had ceased contact with his daughter and her mother, he said.

Mette Bach has lived with her foster mother since she was three years old. Now she is 27 years old and would like to be adopted, but she can only stay if she is also adopted by her foster mother's boyfriend.

In the kitchen in Korup by Hadsund, Mette Bach and Kirsten Bach sit and look at Mette's childhood pictures. There are holiday photos, confirmation photos, family portraits and the like, and they go back to when Mette was three years old.

You may be in doubt when you see them sitting at the dining table and talking about childhood memories, but Mette and Kirsten are not biologically related. Mette Bach came into the care of Kirsten Bach when she was three years old because her biological parents had substance abuse problems.

- I do not remember that I did not live with Kirsten. She is the one who has been there all the way from start to finish. And she is still here, even now that I am an adult and 27 years old, says Mette Bach.

Therefore, she is no longer in doubt either. She would like to be adopted by Kirsten, and Kirsten would very much like to adopt Mette:

A 31-year-old woman living in Washington has been charged with assault and domestic violence after it was revealed that she allegedly put her adopted six-year-old daughter through 473 “unnecessary” surgeries.

Sophie Hartman, a white woman, adopted two Black daughters in May 2019 from Zambia. On 17 March this year, the two children were taken away from her. Doctors at a hospital where Ms Hartman had taken one daughter, alerted authorities of the suspicious medical history of the child.

Court documents reviewed by Business Insider say that Ms Hartman admitted her six-year-old daughter to the Seattle Children’s Hospital in February for a 16-day stay. However, doctors found the child to be healthy and alerted the state’s department of children, youth and families.

Dr Rebecca Wiester, the director of the Seattle Children's Hospital, in her letter to the authorities said that the child was facing “profound risk” at the hands of her caretaker. She also asked the authorities to dig deeper in investigating Ms Hartman.

Dr Wiester said: “All the available evidence obtained during the course of her admission suggests [the child] is a healthy young six-year-old who would continue to benefit from a de-escalation of medical support and normalisation of her childhood experience.”

Charkhi Dadri district administration monitoring case, says four siblingsa among 13 children who will get financial assistance

A four-year-old boy and his three elder sisters, aged 7, 11 and 16, of Jhoju village in Charkhi Dadri district lost their 40-year-old father, a former army personnel, and their 69-year-old grandfather, also a retired soldier, to Covid-19 in May. Their aunt, a housewife, is now looking after the four children at her in-laws’ house at Kadma village of the district.

Also read: 17 girls among 30 children orphaned due to Covid in Haryana

“My brother retired from the army in 2019 after his wife died of an illness. We lost our mother soon after. My brother and father were bringing up the four children but with both of them succumbing to coronavirus within eight days, there was no one else to look after them. They have no financial support to continue their studies. My eldest niece is a student of Class 12, and the youngest nephew is in kindergarten. I don’t have the heart to give them up for adoption,” said the aunt, breaking down. “My husband and I had also tested positive,” she added.

Charkhi Dadri deputy commissioner Rajesh Jogpal, who was transferred as part of an administrative reshuffle on Friday, said the administration is aware of the four children and they are among the 13 kids who have been orphaned in the district. “They are entitled to the financial assistance announced by the state government and the needful is being done,” he added.

Nina Lopez points to adoptions occurring against the wishes of birth families, while one reader recalls how their sister was forced to give up her baby. And John Peniket says it was the prevailing social attitudes to sex and childbirth that were to blame

Gaby Hinsliff (The UK’s forced adoption scandal was state-sanctioned abuse, 27 May) draws an important parallel between the adoptions forced on single mothers between the 1950s and 1970s, the Rochdale, Windrush and Grenfell scandals, and preventable Covid-19 deaths. She points to “state-sanctioned abuse” of people “dehumanised in the eyes of officialdom”.

But she seems unaware that forced adoptions have not stopped. Of about 3,500 adoptions a year, 90% are against the will of the birth family. They are hidden by a closed family court system that was found to be ridden with sexism, racism and classism by the government’s review of harm in the family courts’ treatment of domestic violence.

One grandmother in our network who lost her grandchild to adoption describes the process: “If you are poor, working class, in need of support, services, housing, or have been in care, it can be used as proof that you are not fit to be a parent. They had all the power. We had only our pain and anger. And our fear for her. She had no choice, no voice, no comprehension.”

We recently celebrated the reunion of a family whose children had been destined for adoption after their single mother, an asylum seeker who spoke hardly any English, was accused of having lied to the authorities. Social workers and the police had been parked outside the hospital waiting for the court order to take the newborn. This time we were able to stop it. The Movement for an Adoption Apology is well aware that the past is in the present – that’s why it is part of our coalition.

Marion grew up in an orphanage in Romania for two years.

The girl was adopted and taken to France by a couple of foreigners.

In time, Marion realized that Romania was a market for adoptions.

Mariuca left an orphanage in Romania, after two French women adopted her. Today her name is Marion and she is the founder of an association that helps offenders find their origins.

Mariuca has pressing memories from the Children's Home in Alba Iulia. She still doesn't forget the screams of the children she heard at night. She stayed there between 1976 and 1980. She was brought by her mother, who was 17 when she gave birth to her.

The Hague, 02 June 2021

Donor children and their mothers who litigate about the disclosure of the identity of their sperm donor are largely in the right by the court in The Hague. The donor data foundation for artificial insemination (SDKB) and the clinic must assess whether the donor's reasons for wishing to remain anonymous are compelling enough. If not, they must disclose the donor's identity to the children. The court therefore does not rule that that identity should already be disclosed.

Donor identity

The children were born after artificial inseminations in the years 1997-2000. During this time, seed donations were usually made anonymously. However, the mothers consciously opted for the sperm of a donor who had agreed with the clinic that his identity would be allowed to be disclosed. Later he was only allowed to refrain from doing so if there were serious reasons for doing so.

Artificial Fertilization Donor Data Act

You’ll never again have to worry about losing your wallet

In emergencies, medical personnel will have easy access to your health data

You’ll be able to automatically control many of your devices

Chips may however make us prime targets for people with bad intentions

We need to think about who really benefits from human microchipping

Between 1994-2001, 26,293 children were adopted, of which 15,112 (57.5%) were adopted internationally

In 2015, Romania still had 4,060 adoptable children

In 2018, Romania had 50,608 children in the special protection system, of which only 3,123 children were adoptable

Marion Le Roy Dagen is 45 years old and has been living in France since she was six, when she was adopted. Since the early 1990s, he has come to Romania several times to help the country's orphans. And since 2014 he has been trying to help those adopted by families abroad.

She co-founded, together with two other women, the Romanian Orphans Association. I receive hundreds of requests, from all over the world, to help adopted children in Romania to find their families of origin. The chances are extremely small.