The great sadness of against you wants to have to give up your child, because of the 'shame'.

Becoming a mother without being married was often considered a sin in the 50s, 60s and 70s. That is why thousands of women at that time had to give up their babies for adoption immediately after birth, against their will.

One of those 'remote mothers' is Trudy Scheele-Gertsen (75), who, together with women's rights organization Bureau Clara Wichmann, filed a lawsuit against the Dutch State because of these abuses.

“There are women who have had to give birth blindfolded with washcloths or a sheet over their eyes or even with a pillowcase over their heads, after which they had to give up their child.”

The story of distance mother Trudy

Romania’s minister of family Gabriela Firea announced the Government’s intention to close all orphanages and move children to family-style homes, a project that is almost two decades in the making.

“Closing all placement centers, the so-called orphanages, in the country is our primordial interest, so that children left in the care of the state will have a better, warmer, friendlier life in [the care of] foundations or in family-style homes,” said Gabriela Firea, Romania’s minister of family, youth and equal opportunities. She added that there are currently nearly 47,000 children in orphanages throughout the country, out of which six thousand are up for adoption.

Romania has a dark past when it comes to orphanages. In the aftermath of the 1989 revolution that toppled the communist dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu, a series of pictures came out showing the squalid conditions in orphanages. Subsequent investigations estimated that between 1966 and 1989 there were up to 20,000 unnecessary deaths of children left in the care of the state. The vast majority of those who died were disabled.

“Roughly 70% of the registered deaths were from pneumonia. They were dying of external causes that were preventable and treatable,” said Florin Soare, an investigator, quoted by The Guardian.

Firea’s recently announced intention, however, has been part of the Government’s commitments for years.

Throw us into jail, but repatriate our child to India,” says Bhavesh Shah. “In any case, without her home is like a jail,” he adds. Bhavesh, a software developer, arrived in Germany in 2018 on a work visa. His wife Dhara delivered a baby girl in February 2021 in Berlin. When the baby was seven months old, she suffered an injury.

What happened thereafter might seem fairly uncomplicated, but in a foreign context, it assumed nightmarish proportions.

On September 23, 2021, the child protection agency made the Shahs sign a document whose contents were in German and, took the baby away. The translator was Urdu-speaking and knew no Gujarati. The Gujarati-speaking Shahs don’t know Urdu. They know Hindi, though not enough to understand legalese.

The incident has since become a legal battle. It transpired that the visiting paternal grandmother had inadvertently caused the injury but was too embarrassed to speak up. The criminal case against the Shahs was closed post-investigation, but the civil custody case is on. In the meantime, somewhere in an undisclosed location, in foster care, their baby has started to walk.

The Shahs have their own set of complaints beginning with the removal of a breastfeeding baby from its mother; of language as a hurdle in communication at every step with every institutional set-up; of decreased frequency of permitted visitations and cultural obdurateness — their request to let the baby be raised on a vegan/vegetarian diet has been ignored.

Rosanne and Martin have three adopted children: 'In an ideal world they would not have been adopted'

Rosanne (41, midwife) and Martin (38, owns their own marketing and strategy business), 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 then 5.5). Hannah came in April 2020, she was almost 1.5 at the time. 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 very strongly.

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

On April 30, 2009 Micha Kat revealed on Argusoog Radio that Juliana was made pregnant by her father Prince Hendrik at the age of 17 or eighteen.

The name of the illegitimate - but not 'out-of-wedlock' daughter is Maria or MarieClaire Rovers (or Roovers).

Ro(o)vers was given access to her adoption file by the Supreme Court in a 1994 judgment, but the archives nevertheless remained closed to her. This bizarre 'stalemate' was broken when an HR counselor gave her a letter revealing her parents' identities. This letter went with her to her grave. Ro(o)vers was born in 1927 and died between 1996 and 1998.

The 'Roovers case' is described in an article on the site of The Guardian. In a few places in the public sources the possibility has already been suggested that Juliana gave birth to a daughter at the age of 18 and 'dumped' her in Huize Moederheil (later Valkenhorst) in Tilburg, namely on Mokum TV from 8 to 17 February 1999. (broadcast 164)

nl - Around 1926/1927 Juliana took private (home) lessons for several months.

Kolkata: A steep rise in preference for adopting girls has also been noticed. In 2019-’20, the total number of girl adoptions was 122, with 86 boy adoptions. While the whole country has seen a decrease in the total girl adoption rate, Bengal saw a 9.2% increase in girl adoptions, compared with before the pandemic.

Behala Resident Ritayan Pal, 36, and his wife had applied for adoption three years back and finally completed the process to adopt a two-month-old girl during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021. “Amid the gloom of Covid, she has brought light and joy to our family,” said Pal.

The ratio of girls adopted in Bengal in respect to the entire country was 5.5% before the pandemic. This touched 6.6% during the pandemic.

Shashi Panja, Bengal’s minister of women and child development and social welfare, said adoption was a regular, ongoing and transparent process.

“The pandemic has not affected the adoption rate. As it is a process that takes 3-4 years, we did not stop the process because of the pandemic,” she said. She added that the app ‘Sneho Chaya’, which was developed by the Bengal government to track orphans, their problems and needs during Covid, had helped adoptions as well.

The Delhi High Court has sought for the presence of CEO of Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) over the authority's failure to file a timely response in a bunch of petitions concerning inter-country adoptions.

The development came after Justice Pratibha M Singh in February this year sought response of CARA on the framework for facilitating adoptions in case of children who have been orphaned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Court has been dealing with three cases relating to international adoption of Indian children.

In all three cases, the children, as also their biological parents were in India but the adoptive parents have settled abroad. The adoptions were carried out under the provisions of HAMA. However, certain challenges were faced in movement of the children abroad, including in obtaining passports and visas. The adoptive parents were required to obtain a NOC from CARA.

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Irish EU Commission chief is market-oriented and not environment-friendly

Catherine Day is the current Secretary-General of the European Commission. She followed another Irish person, David Sullivan, into the role, to the chagrin of some of our European friends. Day has been in that position since 2005 during the whole of the Barroso Commission, having previously been the Director General for the Environment.

Catherine Day was born in Dublin in 1954, brought up in Mount Merrion and educated at Mount Anville private convent-school. She has a BA in economics and an MA in International Trade and Economic Integration from University College Dublin and went on to be the loan officer at the Investment Bank of Ireland in 1974. The following year she became EC Information Officer at the Confederation of Irish Industry. Much of her ethos seems to have been forged by this time. She joined the European Commission in 1979 and the cabinet of Ireland’s Richard Burke in 1982 at the age of 28, staying for a term with his Irish successor, Peter Sutherland, competition commissioner. She then transferred to the cabinet of the UK’s Leon Brittan, a Tory, for two terms, when he was responsible for external economic affairs and trade policy. She returned to work for him in 1996 as director for relations with third-world countries. Day became deputy director in Chris Patten’s external relations where she was deeply involved with the enlargement of the Union from 15 countries to today’s 27.

After this, Catherine Day (not to be confused with Estonia’s national holiday, ‘Catherine’s Day’) was part of a reshuffle among the Commission which promoted liberal economic reformers. She had become notable in the Commission for taking on French state-aid policy. Before becoming head civil servant she served as head of the Environment DG.

Apart from her short fuse, colleagues speak well of Day.

Dads and Dads

The Indian daddy of my dreams,

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PIKE COUNTY, Mo. (KMOV) -- A Missouri family trying to adopt a little boy in what’s become an international adoption nightmare is suing the federal government and seeing their case get traction in court.

Adam and Jill Trower’s struggle to adopt now 4-year-old Luke from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been going on for years.

The Pike County family started working with an international adoption agency, and in 2018 they were connected with Luke. At the time, Luke was a couple of months old, the Trowers SAID he was found abandoned in a trash pile on a busy road.

“We have tried to do everything correct and it doesn’t matter,” Jill Trower cried.

The Trowers claim the U.S. government wrongly blocked Luke’s adoption. A recent News 4 Investigation looked at how the Trowers are suing the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security along with an agency under them, and the U.S. embassy in the DRC. The Trowers told News 4 what happened during their adoption process doesn’t add up.