10-06-02

Kansas fertility clinic ends services to single women (Baltimore Sun)
Single women and lesbian couples seeking to get pregnant with help from modern science now have fewer options in the Kansas City area. Citing conflicts with its religious views, Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Overland Park recently stopped offering assisted reproduction services to single women. The hospital joins the growing ranks of private fertility clinics in Kansas and Missouri that for varying ethical and legal reasons have excluded single women from their practice.

Grandparents raising grandchildren (Huntsville Times)
G randparents have raised their grandchildren for generations. Within the last 25 years or so, though, the numbers have risen dramatically, according to national organizations that advocate for seniors. U.S. Census figures show a 53 percent increase between 1990 and 1998 in the number of grandparent-headed households that had neither parent present. As of the 2000 Census count, about 6 million children in the United States lived in households with their grandparents or with relatives other than their parents. Of those children, 2.1 million were being raised solely by grandparents. The 2000 Census was the first to document this trend. It asked if grandparents lived with their grandchildren and if so, if they were responsible for more than half their grandchildren's care.

10-03-02

Florida gets it right (Palm Beach Post)
Under the new rules, which the Florida Supreme Court approved in an Aug. 29 ruling and which took effect Tuesday, "every judges has a duty to expedite priority cases to the extent reasonably possible... Particular attention shall be given to all juvenile dependency and termination of parental rights cases, and to cases involving families and children in need of services." When there are conflicts on a judge's calendar, "juvenile dependency and termination of parental rights cases are generally to be given preference over other cases, except for speedy trial and capital cases."

Long-Term 'Pill' Users Just as Fertile as Others (Reuters)
Women who take birth control pills for at least 5 years are able to conceive just as easily as non-users when trying to get pregnant, new study findings suggest. In fact, former long-term birth control pill users were less likely to experience a delay in conceiving than others, suggesting that this form of contraception may even boost a woman's fertility. Whether or not the Pill increases fertility, users can at least be reassured that their ability to get pregnant will not suffer as a result.

10-02-02

California Governor Vetoes Pro-Homosexual Foster Care Bill (Cybercast News Service)
Conservative family groups are celebrating what one calls "a major victory on behalf of children" - the veto of a California bill that would have injected pro-homosexual policies into the state's foster care system. Calif. Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, quietly vetoed a bill (AB 2651) that would have "encouraged" all foster parents to attend "sensitivity training," to better help them deal with the sexual preferences of the children in their care. Foster parents would have been required to accept and support the homosexuality, bisexuality, or transsexuality of children coming into their homes.

S.A. agency denies that it buys babies (San Antonio Express-News)
As state inspectors reviewed files Tuesday during a surprise office visit, the operators of AAA-Alamo Adoption Agency denied buying babies or targeting pregnant women in Mexico. "We do not buy babies from anyone. We do not solicit clients from Mexico. We cannot work with clients who are not in this country," said Juanita Gray, an agency worker and daughter of co-owner Eleanor Gray.

10-01-02

Florida to stop offering homes to foster children at age 18 (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
A new law enacted by the Florida Legislature, which takes effect today, ends foster care for teenagers on their 18th birthday. Officials at the Department of Children & Families say the young adults will still receive state money, counseling, access to scholarships and mental health and medical services.

Nearly 500 'lost' from LA foster homes (Arizona Republic)
Nearly 500 foster children have disappeared from Los Angeles County's troubled child-welfare system, most of them believed to have been abducted by relatives or guardians, officials disclosed Tuesday. An unprecedented internal study by the Department of Children and Family Services found the nation's largest foster care system -- with some 50,000 youngsters -- was unable to locate 488 of them as of Aug. 30.

09-30-02

20-somethings infertile, too (Arizona Republic)
It's no secret that many women are postponing pregnancy until their 30s and 40s, even though fertility decreases with age. But some women in their 20s would do almost anything to get pregnant - even spend $20,000 at a fertility clinic. Dr. Jay Nemiro, a reproductive endocrinologist who heads the Arizona Center for Fertility Studies in Scottsdale, a top Valley fertility clinic, estimates that 5 to 6 percent of his patients are in their 20s. They come for the reasons some young women have always sought fertility help: They just want to get pregnant.

Disputed Genetic Testing Hits Marker (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
(AP) Scientists gathered Monday to mark a medical milestone - an estimated 1,000 babies born worldwide through a prenatal testing technique that screens eggs even before they are implanted in the womb. It has been used to test eggs and early embryos for genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis or Down syndrome, and discarding defective ones. But it is increasingly being used to boost chances of successful pregnancies in women in their late 30s who might otherwise never have children, said Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson of Baylor College of Medicine.

09-29-02

Searching for birth families through the click of a button (Seattle Times)
Add adoption searches to the list of things that the Internet has changed. Internet registries, support groups and search engines have sprung up all over the Web, giving a new sense of hope to thousands of adopted Americans searching for their biological families. While people used to hire private investigators or pay publications to post listings, adoptees now have a powerful resource at their fingertips. And it's free.

A 'scarlet letter' is the law in Florida (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Can a woman be compelled by law to publish details of her sex life in the newspaper, including the names of the men she has been intimate with? In Florida she can, if she is offering her child for adoption. The law, intended to give biological fathers a greater say in adoptions, has stirred controversy nationwide. Opponents call it a latter-day "scarlet letter" meant to shame promiscuous women. Even the state senator who championed the measure concedes that it has had unintended results.

09-28-02

Law reforms help boost adoptions by 45 percent (Beacon Journal)
Adoptions have increased 45 percent in Ohio in the years since the state and federal governments started making changes to pair children and parents more quickly. Ohio finalized 2,032 adoptions in 2001, compared with 1,777 the previous year, 1,605 in 1999 and 1,400 in 1998.

Adoption judges gain more say (Sacramento Bee)
A state appellate court has given juvenile judges and referees broad discretion to ignore state approved private adoptions if they determine such a move would not be in the child's best interests. The ruling this week stems from a biological mother's attempt to give up her child to a specific set of adoptive parents, Doug and Kassy Clifford, who had provided foster care to the boy for the first two months of his life. Though the court ruled Sacramento County had no authority to revoke the Cliffords' private adoption, which was approved by the state, it said removing the boy now from his current foster home could be harmful.

09-27-02

Charges Dropped in Baby-Selling Case (Newsday)
(AP) -- Federal prosecutors dropped charges against a woman who allegedly operated a baby-buying business, yielding the investigation to the state. "The U.S. moved to dismiss these charges given that the state is pursuing its charges on the same conduct," Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Herrera said Thursday.

09-26-02

Pill may boost fertility (BBC)
Taking the Pill for a long period may actually improve women's subsequent fertility and not reduce it as had been feared, researchers suggest. The findings from the Children of the 90s study can be seen as reassuring for long-term Pill users, say the researchers.

09-25-02

Boosting adoptions pays off (Washington Times)
The federal government yesterday awarded $17.5 million in bonuses to states that increased their adoptions of children in foster care. Maryland got the second-highest bonus, with $1.5 million. Virginia received the ninth-highest, with $922,000, and the District did not qualify for one. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson praised the 23 bonus-winning states and Puerto Rico for their efforts to increase their foster care adoptions in 2001 over 2000.

Baby-buy warning isn't new (San-Antiono Express-News)
Concerned that San Antonio adoption agencies might be buying babies from Mexican mothers, the governor of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, sounded the alarm to Texas officials more than five years ago.

6 Adoption Petitions Withdrawn (Ann Arbor News)
The six remaining adoption petitions by same-sex couples have been withdrawn for consideration by Washtenaw County Chief Circuit Judge Archie Brown. The move comes a week after Wayne County Circuit Co-Chief Judge Timothy Kenny ruled that he would not disqualify Brown from hearing second-parent adoption cases.

The gift of a lifetime: Infertile couples aided by donated embryos (Seattle Times)
In the past year, embryo donation has become a contentious issue at the crossroads of revolutionary research and abortion politics. Most recently it gained momentum with a $1 million federal program to promote the practice. Opponents of abortion rights have touted embryo donation as a better use of embryos than embryonic stem-cell research, in which embryos are destroyed. President Bush cited the babies born through such donations last year when he set limits on funding of embryonic stem-cell work.

09-24-02

Finding Answers Close to Home (Newsday)
Institutional foster care costs have spiraled upward at an alarming rate over the past few years, particularly in Suffolk, where the costs are expected to top $50 million next year. The problem prompted the county in January to convene a task force of social service and probation officials, Family Court and county budget officers. It has made recommendations, which are expected to be made public at the end of the month. At the core is developing community-based services to keep children out of institutions.

Calif. Adopts Family Leave (Washington Post)
Gov. Gray Davis (D) today signed broad family leave legislation into law, making California the first state in the nation to require paid time off for workers who want to stay home with a new child or care for a sick relative. Nearly 13 million of the state's 16 million workers will be eligible for the leave, which allows employees to be away from work for six weeks at about half-salary. The program will be funded entirely by employee payroll deductions averaging $27 a year.

Updating 'the talk' (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
New fertility techniques and embryo adoption complicate the age-old discussion of the birds and the bees.

09-23-02

Infertility linked to mercury in seafood (BBC)
Raised levels of mercury in the blood, from high seafood consumption, are linked to infertility, researchers have found. The study was carried out in Hong Kong, where people eat a large amount of seafood, and where seas have high levels of pollution.

Aids orphans 'to double' (BBC)
The number of children orphaned by Aids will almost double to 25m by the end of the decade, experts predict. A report compiled by aid agencies, presented to the International Aids Conference in Barcelona, said extended families often fail to cope, and many children are forced to live on the street.

09-19-02

Federal Audit: DCF Failing (Hartford Courant)
A federal audit of Connecticut's child-protection system shows the state still lags far behind national standards in finding permanent homes for children in foster care despite some recent successes. Connecticut's failure to finalize adoptions or pursue other placement options for abused and neglected children was the most significant concern raised by auditors with the U.S. Administration for Children and Families who visited the state last April.

09-18-02

More Evidence That Smoking Harms Men's Fertility (Reuters)
Men with fertility problems who smoke should kick the habit if they want to become dads, according to researchers. Researchers found that infertile men who smoked had signs of oxidative damage in their semen, which is known to reduce fertility.

Momma vs. Mommy in court (Rocky Mountain News)
Does a woman who raised a child with another woman deserve equal custody rights when the lesbian couple breaks up? That's the question at the heart of a parental-rights battle pending before the Colorado Court of Appeals - a Momma vs. Mommy case. Depending on how the appellate court rules, it could set in place how the rights of "psychological parents" and legal parents are determined.

Judge to hear adoption cases (Ann Arbor News)
Washtenaw County Chief Circuit Judge Archie Brown will continue to hear cases involving adoption by same-sex couples now that a Wayne County judge denied a request Tuesday to disqualify Brown. TImothy M. Kenny, co-chief judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan's claims that Brown was biased against second-parent adoptions were without merit.

Study finds DCF lacks plan to get kids out of crisis (Miami Herald)
For four out of five children in Florida's troubled child-welfare system, the Department of Children & Families has lurched from crisis to crisis, failing to develop a long-term plan for providing a safe, stable and permanent home, a recent study suggests. The study, conducted by Paul Vincent, the former chief of Alabama's child-welfare department and head of the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group, evaluated child safety and system performance in eight of the state's 15 DCF districts, including Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

09-17-02

'Adoption' of frozen embryos a loaded term (CNN)
The estimates are striking: over 200,000 embryos are left over from in vitro fertilization (IVF) attempts to help couples have children. The unused embryos are frozen in labs all over the United States, waiting for a decision about what will be done with them.

Texas adoption agency accused of running baby ring (Arizona Republic)
A South Texas adoption agency is under investigation and one of its workers is behind bars in what authorities described as an international baby-selling scheme that preyed on perhaps hundreds of pregnant young women from Mexico.

Vietnam adoption nightmares (St. Petersburg Times)
The Times interviewed 10 families who had bad experiences adopting in Vietnam, as well as 10 who had positive experiences with Tedi Bear Adoptions. The troubled adoptions all involve Mai-Ly LaTrace, a 29-year old Vietnamese-American woman who is a "facilitator," arranging adoptions in Vietnam.

Grandparents sacrifice golden years to again raise kids
Grandparents like Smith raised their own children and now face giving up a relaxed retirement to raise yet another generation. They fulfill the role of parents, providing food, clothing and shelter. Some have to work longer to cover the bills, some use public assistance, and others dip into their retirement funds.

09-12-02

Infertile Indians Favor IVF Over Adoption, Despite Huge Population
Infertile Indian couples are being urged to consider adoption rather than expensive in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment, but the appeal faces an uphill struggle in the face of social and religious pressures.

09-10-02

South Africa Allows Gay Adoption (Newsday)
(AP) Gay couples have the right to adopt children and laws that prevent them from doing so violate their constitutional rights, South Africa's highest court ruled Tuesday. The Constitutional Court found that people in permanent same-sex partnerships could provide children with the stability, support and affection they needed.

B.C. has failed aboriginal kids: premier (Vancouver Sun)
British Columbia has systematically failed aboriginal children, Premier Gordon Campbell said Monday as he announced "a historic plan" to reduce the number of native youths in foster care. "Over the last 200 years, in so many cases, so many times, we have failed aboriginal children in B.C.," Campbell said. "The old system simply did not work. It didn't provide for the support, for the love, for the sense of community that was so critical to any young person."

09-09-02

Mothers scammed by Web impostor (Chicago Tribune)
"How could anyone be so cruel?" That question torments a dozen women from Arizona to New Jersey--and maybe many more. Each was using the Internet to search for a daughter she reluctantly gave up for adoption years ago. Each received e-mails from a woman posing as her long-lost daughter. And each was hurt when she opened her heart to the mystery woman. The "daughter" who called them Mom, e-mailed photographs showing a family resemblance, and had such a sweet voice began to manipulate them with tales of woe, playing on their deepest maternal regrets, guilt and fears--and then vanished into cyberspace.

09-08-02

She rode the orphan train into history (Chicago Daily Herald)
In 1915, Macior, then a 2-year-old with a brown pageboy haircut and clad in a white smock, was sent to Illinois on a train filled with orphans -- each of them tagged with their name, their age and the address of their future parents. The train that brought Macior to Chicago was one of the so-called "orphan trains" -- an ambitious rescue effort organized in the mid-1800s by Charles Loring Brace, an idealistic young minister whose attempt to find healthy homes for New York City's street children was a precursor to today's foster care system.

Feds, state face off over foster care (Contra Costa Times)
More than $100 million designated for relatives who care for California's foster children is in danger of being withheld during the next year while California's Department of Social Services and a federal regulatory agency wage a fierce battle over standards. At issue is a 2-year-old federal requirement that relatives caring for foster children be screened and approved using the same criteria as is used to license nonrelative foster homes.

Grandparents find parent role tough (Contra Costa Times)
More than 50,000 grandparents in the Bay Area are raising their grandchildren, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's first count of a crucial but overlooked group of the nation's caregivers. Across California, almost 1 million grandparents are living with their grandchildren in either extended-family households or alone. Of those, about one in three are primarily responsible for the children's care.

09-07-02

Court Weighs Custody Tangle (Salt Lake Tribune)
Do Utah juvenile court judges have the right to sever the rights of parents in another state whose children have been abandoned here, as is the case with E.W, who has been separated from his parents since 1995 when they went to prison. In two hours of arguments before the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys raised many other questions dealing with rights of the birth parents vs. rights of the boy and which state, if any, has jurisdiction to sever the parents' rights.

Settlement near in foster care suit (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
A nearly 10-year-old lawsuit that accuses the foster care system in Milwaukee County of routinely failing to protect children in its care would be settled under a proposed deal disclosed Friday.

09-05-02

Researchers Study Healthy Sperm (Newsday)
(AP) Researchers have determined the genetic fingerprint of healthy human sperm -- an advance that could be a major step forward in understanding male infertility. The discovery could also lead to new types of male contraceptives.

09-04-02

Relative child-care program runs low on funds (Delaware News Journal)
A new state program to help grandparents and other people raising their relatives' children could run out of money by early next year, a state official said. The Kinship Care Program has handed out $14,000 in vouchers for cribs, high chairs, baby carriers and other child-care items since June, leaving $36,000 to cover the next nine months, said Jan Rheingold, director of the state Division of State Service Centers.

Romania Plans to Close Orphanages (Newsday)
(AP) More than 30 of Romania's state-run orphanages, which gripped the world with images of squalor and misery in the 1990s, will be closed or restructured by year's end. Gabriela Coman, head of Romania's office for child welfare, said Wednesday the government plans to close or restructure 34 large orphanages, part of a wider reform of the system. Children in those homes will be put in foster homes and other family-style homes.

09-03-02

Children In Peril (Washington Post)
The failure of child protection has become a national scandal. In Florida, the director of the Department of Children and Families resigned after months of institutional embarrassment initiated by a missing 5-year-old foster child who has yet to be located. Not only were Florida child welfare workers found derelict in their duties but three children have died under agency supervision during the past four months.

09-02-02

DCF sees more stability in state child care (Newsday)
The number of children in state care has dropped 18 percent in the last three years and the percentage of children "bounced" between homes was cut by two-thirds in that time, the state Department of Children and Families reported. A recent DCF report states that two main factors are responsible for the drop: the number of children leaving state care for adoption or guardianship has risen sharply; and the number of children found to have been abused or neglected has fallen 45.8 percent in the last five years.

09-01-02

Focus falls on Native kids (Anchorage Daily News)
A growing problem of high numbers of Alaska Native children taken from their parents because of abuse or neglect is drawing new attention and new solutions. Alaska Native children are more than five times as likely as white children to be taken from their parents because of concerns about dangerous home situations, according to a new analysis by Casey Family Programs, a national child welfare organization.

08-30-02

State loses track of 302 abused or neglected kids (Detroit Free Press)
Prentiss is just one of 189 abused and neglected children from Wayne County -- and a total of 302 statewide -- whom the state has lost track of, according to the Michigan Family Independence Agency.

Tennessee children's welfare flunks HHS test (Go Memphis)
Tennessee's Children's Services system - like those of all 27 states evaluated by federal officials - still doesn't do enough to protect children from abuse and neglect, reunite families or find stable, permanent homes for troubled kids, a federal report concluded Thursday.

08-29-02

Court: Mother gives up rights to children after adoption (Chicago Tribune)
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a mother's attempts to get her parental rights restored ended when her children were adopted by someone else.

Orphans a tiny hint of Africa's AIDS apocalypse (Chicago Tribune)
One in 4 South Africans is infected with the AIDS virus, and 1 in 9 has developed AIDS. The disease has created nearly 11 million orphans across the continent, and the United Nations estimates that a quarter of Africa's workforce will die of AIDS by 2020. Life expectancy has plunged to just over 40 years in a growing number of southern African countries, poverty is deepening, and places such as Ingwavuma find themselves fighting not for sustainable development but for preventing wholesale social and economic collapse.

Study: More in vitro fertilization done in states requiring insurance coverage (Newsday)
Infertile couples in states where health insurers must cover in vitro fertilization were nearly three times more likely to try the costly, complex procedure than those in states with no such law, researchers found. States where IVF coverage is required also had slightly lower rates of risky multiple births, a common result of fertility treatments that can endanger the mother and babies and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just for initial medical care.

08-27-02

Officials Weigh law change to help find kids (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Anxious to use every tool available to find missing children, state legislators say they will propose a law to allow Florida’s child welfare agency to publicize youths missing from state care.

'Small' risk from fertility technique (BBC)
Scientists say a popular method of overcoming male infertility carries a higher chance of birth defects. However, a major analysis of research into the safety of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI)has found that the risk is small.

Embryo gene test 'cuts miscarriages' (BBC)
Women who suffer repeated unexplained miscarriages can be helped to have babies by the use of genetic analysis, say experts. Researchers say the problem could be addressed by simply analysing the genetic make-up of embryos before they are placed in the womb - a technique known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

08-26-02

Missed conception (Arizona Republic)
Technology can create life in a petri dish, allow postmenopausal women to experience birth and give parents the ability to select the sex of their child. All amazing feats, yet science still can't do one thing: It can't make a woman's eggs young again. So when recent news stories issued warnings about declining fertility rates to women in their 30s following a study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Robin Roberts was relieved to see attention shifting from technological feats to biological reality.

Private agencies find troubled kids homes (Beacon Journal)
The teen boys accused of beating a 4-year-old girl to death earlier this month were placed in their Akron foster home by one of Ohio's largest private organizations. Summit and Cuyahoga counties' children services agencies paid Ohio Youth Advocate Program to find homes for 13-year-old Diarice Fitzgerald and 14-year-old Jai Chandler.

08-25-02

AIDS Scourge in Rural China Leaves Villages of Orphans (NY Times)
AIDS is creating an explosion of destitute orphans here in China's rural heartland and is driving large numbers of families into such dire poverty that they can no longer afford to feed or clothe, much less educate, their children.

DNA damage in infertile men's sperm (BBC)
The sperm of infertile men may look and behave normally, but have hidden genetic damage that could stop them producing a child. Approximately half of all infertility is thought to be due to problems on the man's side.

08-24-02

Access to welfare files is elusive goal (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
After millions spent, Georgia no closer to building computer system to help track abused and neglected children.

Pennsylvania court allows same-sex adoptions (CNN)
In a 6-0 decision Tuesday with one justice abstaining, the court found that one partner in a gay or lesbian relationship can adopt a child without forcing the other partner to give up parental rights. Previously, the parent would have had to give up rights to the child in order for the adoption to proceed. The decision means children in gay and lesbian families could now qualify for health insurance, inheritances and other benefits from the adoptive parent.

08-23-02

Foster parents won't see cuts (San Antonio Express-News)
The Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services will not change the state's payments to foster parents, its board decided Thursday. The agency will keep looking for outside funding to balance a projected $69 million budget shortfall in the state's foster care system.

08-22-02

We need some breakthroughs in caring for children (Boston Globe)
When presidential commissions, congressional committees, and journalists elicit information from experts about the implications of wondrous new ways by which we might create children, they should also include experts on foster care in the conversation, so Americans can gain a full understanding of the context in which we - as individuals and as a nation - plot our future.

A Tale of Two Families (ABC)
After Bob and Susanne Gray had one child with the help of fertility drugs and then twins by in vitro fertilization, they were amazed when Susanne became pregnant with a fourth child - by an old-fashioned accident.

Dads deserve to know (Washington Times)
A new Florida statute requires that mothers who seek to put their children up for adoption must first make a substantial effort to notify their children's fathers. To those who believe that fathers should have the right to be an integral part of their children's lives, this is a reasonable law. Yet to the National Organization for Women (NOW) it is an "outrage." And to Jeanne Tate, executive vice president of the Florida Association of Adoption Professionals (FAAP), the statute's requirements are "horrible," "degrading" and "reminiscent of 'The Scarlet Letter.' "

Review finds Florida-style lapses in Maryland child care (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
The Maryland state agency responsible for 12,000 orphaned, abused and neglected children has lost track of some children for months, failed to ensure proper health care and in one case, entrusted a foster child to a sexual offender, a comprehensive review by the state's Office of Legislative Audits has concluded. The review reported "significant concerns" about Maryland's Social Services Administration and found numerous instances of neglect on the part of the state's social workers. In almost half of 163 cases randomly chosen for inspection, caseworkers' files showed that they had lost contact with the children and their caregivers for anywhere from two to 16 months.

State cuts private foster care funds (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Private agencies that monitor the well-being of about 1,600 foster children in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas were informed Wednesday that their funding will be cut by a fourth this fall because of state budget cuts. Critics of the plan say it will mean many foster children will once again be served by overworked state employees, who have less time to check on the quality of foster homes and help kids find adoptive families.

Questions surround tragic adoption (Boston Globe)
When a 2-year-old boy died last week of a blow to the head and his adoptive mother was charged in his death, the North Carolina adoption center that brought the Russian child to the United States insisted that both parents had been subject to extensive background checks. But, despite numerous calls from reporters over the past week, the agency has not explained how a restraining order filed by Natalia Higier in 1995 to protect herself from her husband Louis apparently was overlooked during baby Zachary's 2001 adoption process.

08-21-02

Freeze Now, Conceive Later (CBS)
In an effort to increase their chances of getting pregnant later in life, some women are planning on freezing their eggs now and putting them in the country's first commercial egg bank.

Transplanted Mouse Womb Bears Fruit, Swedes Say (Reuters)
Mice with transplanted wombs have successfully carried pregnancies to term and produced healthy offspring, Swedish scientists reported on Wednesday. The research raises hopes that women who have had a hysterectomy or other uterus problems could one day carry their own child in a transplanted womb, although experts cautioned there were hurdles to overcome before that became a reality.

Adoptee's journey is bittersweet (Chicago Tribune)
When Katy Robinson was 7 years old, her mother and grandmother took her to the airport in Seoul and put her on a plane bound for America. The only piece of evidence Robinson had to remember her family was a Polaroid snapshot taken of the three of them together at the airport--a single square picture. This photo graces the cover of Robinson's new memoir, "A Single Square Picture" (Berkley Books, $14). Her book is the story of Robinson's childhood in Salt Lake City and, after she becomes an adult, her journey back to Korea to find her birth family.

Ovary tissue breakthrough (BBC)
A 29-year-old US woman has had her ovarian tissue removed and reimplanted in what is claimed to be the first operation in the world of its kind. If successful, the surgery could help thousands of women whose fertility is threatened by chemotherapy.

08-15-02

Adoption advocates want applicants' `morals' considered (Newsday)
New Jersey's largest adoption advocacy group wants state lawmakers to toughen the regulation of adoption agencies. State Sen. Joseph Palaia, R-Monmouth, said he plans to introduce legislation that would require licensing officials to consider the moral character of applicants who want to operate adoption agencies. Palaia cited reports last week by The Star-Ledger of Newark that DYFS repeatedly licensed a Somerset County adoption agency whose founder, David Bentley, had spent the previous three years operating hard-core pornographic Internet sites.

No Easy Fix for Florida's Troubled Child Welfare System (Washington Post)
The outsize problem of fixing Florida's sprawling and deeply troubled child welfare system persists and, according to many child advocates, is growing by the day, making it a touchstone issue in the governor's election this fall. The depth of the system's problems were highlighted this week by the resignation of Kathleen A. Kearney, a former judge whom Bush had selected to head Florida's Department of Children and Families.

08-14-02

Police seek possible victims of alleged adoption scam (Asbury Park Press)
A Lacey woman was arrested yesterday and charged with two counts of theft by deception in a what police called a plan to string along two couples. Police would like to hear from any childless couples who may have answered a classified advertisement for a baby up for adoption -- and may have been duped by the child's natural mother.

Virginia allows lesbian to adopt in D.C. (Planet Out)
The state of Virginia has agreed to let an Arlington lesbian adopt a child from the Washington, D.C., foster care system, and to clarify its policies on out-of-state adoptions. The agreement, announced on Wednesday, settles a lawsuit filed on behalf of Linda Kaufman by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Surrogates for Sperm (Arizona Central)
In a first with implications for infertile men, scientists have grafted testicles from three different mammals onto mice, then fertilized rodent eggs with the resulting sperm. The feat, reported in this week's Nature, should apply to all mammals, the researchers say. As a result, it could one day help young men reproduce even after they've been rendered infertile by cancer or other causes. It also has implications for the preservation of endangered species and prized livestock, the study points out.

Forgetting children we've already created (Baltimore Sun)
When presidential commissions, congressional committees and journalists elicit information from experts about the implications of wondrous new ways by which we may create children, for example, they should also include experts on foster care in the conversation so that Americans can gain a full understanding of the context in which we -- as individuals and as a nation -- plot our future.

Foster care, adoption stats grim (Clarion-Ledger)
Because of grim statistics showing African-American children are the most abused and neglected, and because in Mississippi they represent a majority of those in foster care and seeking adoption, legislation must be crafted to address a community of children in crisis, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said Tuesday.

Embattled DCF chief resigns (Orlando Sentinel)
Gov. Jeb Bush, gearing up his re-election campaign, has jettisoned a political liability with Kathleen Kearney's sudden resignation Tuesday as secretary of Florida's embattled Department of Children & Families.

Infertile Men May Have Damaged Sperm, Study Shows (Reuters)
Infertile men who have normal-looking sperm may in fact have unseen DNA damage that can not only interfere with their attempts to conceive a child but could affect the child's future health, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

08-13-02

Critics Target Florida Adoption Law (Newsday)
"There's no comparable law in any other state and it's really hard to imagine how a legislature could pass such a law if they thought about it," said Bob Tuke, president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. "It treats women like chattel."

Requirements of Florida Adoption Law (Newsday)
(AP) Here are some requirements of the Florida law that aims to prevent complications in adoptions:

Caucus eyes African-American representation in child welfare (Clarion-Ledger)
The Congressional Black Caucus will hold one of five national hearings in Greenwood today to determine why African-American children are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. What prompted the hearings, 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said, are 1999 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statistics showing African-American children represent 26 percent of abuse victims, 39 percent of those in foster care and 42 percent of those waiting to be adopted.

08-12-02

US baby smugglers jailed (BBC)
Three people have been sentenced to prison in New York City for operating a baby-smuggling ring which involved charging would-be parents ten of thousands of dollars for adoptions. The three smuggled at least 23 Mexican babies into the United States over the course of several years. They received prison terms of up to two and a half years.

Revise adoption law, Senate sponsor says (Miami Herald)
Besieged by complaints from Florida and around the country, state Sen. Walter ''Skip'' Campbell, D-Tamarac, is asking for a revision to a law -- one that he sponsored -- that requires women who put a child up for adoption to take out an ad stating the names of all persons who could be the father.

Try and Try Again (Los Angeles Times)
More couples are refusing to give up on protracted fertility treatments despite slim chances of success

08-08-02

Slow but Steady Progress on Adoption (The Wall Street Journal)
Commentary on recent Adoption Attitudes Survey.

Foreign Adoptees Have Higher Mental Risk -Study (Reuters)
Children adopted from foreign countries have a higher risk of suffering mental health problems in adolescence and early adulthood, Swedish researchers said on Friday.

State tells adoption agency to close (Star-Ledger)
New Jersey regulators yesterday ordered a controversial Somerset County adoption agency to close, finding that the one-time Internet pornographer who founded the agency was unqualified to arrange adoptions.

08-07-02

Women who put babies up for adoption required to publish sexual pasts (Sun-Sentinel)
One is a woman who was slipped a date-rape drug. Another is a teenage girl who had sex with numerous classmates. A third traded her body for drugs. All three women want to put their babies up for adoption and don't know who the fathers are. But each is hesitant to go through adoption proceedings for the same reason: They fear a new law will require them to detail their sexual pasts in local newspapers.

Women Challenge Fla. Adoption Law (Newsday)
(AP) A handful of women are challenging a Florida law that requires mothers who don't know who fathered their children to detail their sexual past in newspaper notices before they can put the children up for adoption.

08-06-02

Web site eases adoptions (Arizona Central)
(USA Today) The nation's largest Internet adoption site - www.adoptuskids.org - was launched recently with photos and descriptions of about 3,000 children who desperately need parents. The children on the site, awaiting adoption through public agencies, are not much-desired healthy infants. Most are school-age and have disabilities, physical, emotional or intellectual. Some are part of sibling groups to be adopted together. Many are ethnic or racial minorities.

08-05-02

New test shows promise in weeding out bad sperm (Houston Chronicle)
(AP) A new method that allows fertility doctors to select genetically healthy sperm raises the possibility that they will soon be able to routinely pick good sperm, giving them a better chance of success in creating test-tube babies. Chromosome defects in sperm are more common in infertile men, but are hard to identify. Most fertility clinics select which sperm to inject into the egg by checking their shape and the way they move.

Artificial Insemination Can Work in Older Women (Reuters)
Although more likely to be successful in younger women, artificial insemination is less pricey than other fertility treatments and can work for some women over 40, according to researchers. Their study found that a similar percentage of women 40 to 42 years old became pregnant and delivered babies after undergoing intrauterine insemination (IUI), compared with women in their late 30s.

Donor sperm quality varies within, between banks (Reuters Health)
Despite guidelines for screening donors and freezing samples, the quality of sperm within a single sperm bank can vary substantially, researchers report. The findings suggest that a large proportion of donor sperm may be of poor quality and thus undermine a woman's attempts to get pregnant.

08-04-02

Freezing ova offers fertility options (Contra Costa Times)
Infertility experts have helped a woman become pregnant through a new way of freezing human eggs, avoiding the ethical baggage that goes with freezing and banking embryos. The new technique could offer an option to couples who, for religious or moral reasons, won't do in vitro fertilization because they don't want to risk creating excess embryos.

From 'perverted' Web sites to child adoption (Star-Ledger)
David Bentley was 23, single and living with his mother in Somerset County when he asked New Jersey for permission to start an international adoption agency two years ago. Bentley had no related education or training, and his primary business experience came in a field far removed from the world of hopeful parents and needy orphans: He designed, maintained and hosted hard-core pornographic Web sites.

Adopt, Then Adapt (Los Angeles Times)
Trans-racial families face unique challenges of prejudice and identity. In 2001, about 30% of an estimated 50,000 adoptions from foster care involved at least one parent whose race is different from that of the child, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Trans-racial adoption has increased steadily in the last five years, largely as a result of federal legislation to get children out of foster care, but it remains a hot-button issue. This is particularly true when the parents are white and the children are black, reflecting, perhaps, lingering racial tensions in American society at large.

08-02-02

8 get prison terms for child-selling in Vietnam (Orange County Register)
A court handed down prison sentences of as many as 12 years for eight people convicted of selling children to foreigners for adoption, official media reported Thursday. The police investigation said the ring acquired 39 children from 1996-98 from unwed mothers and poor families.

08-01-02

Adoption doctor found guilty (Budapest Sun)
Prominent Hungarian geneticist Dr Endre Czeizel was found guilty in Budapest Metropolitan Court last week of four counts of being an accessory in a trans-Atlantic infant adoption scheme in violation of Hungary's Family Act.

07-31-02

Canada's troubled native children (BBC)
The case of the prime minister's son . . . illustrates many of the long-standing troubles of Canada's native population, sometimes called first nations. But, native activists say, it also illustrates the problems Canada's federal and provincial governments have created with some of their efforts to help. In the 1960s and 70s, child welfare agencies were quick to remove native children and place them with white, middle-class families, sometimes far from native communities.

Scientists grow mice eggs outside the body (Arizona Central)
(Reuters) In an achievement that may one day help young cancer patients become mothers, Japanese scientists have grown immature mice eggs in the laboratory and used them to create healthy animals. If the results can be duplicated in larger animals and humans, which is still a long way off, ovaries from young girls diagnosed with cancer could be removed before they undergo cancer treatment to preserve their fertility and create babies through in-vitro fertilization.

Sperm and eggs: the legal background (BBC)
Following a ruling which allows women to use their frozen eggs for IVF, BBC News Online examines exactly what you can and cannot do under the law.

Frozen egg ban lifted (BBC)
A decision to lift the ban on using frozen human eggs could help thousands of women - including those delaying motherhood for career reasons. The clinic which has won the right to thaw and use the eggs for IVF already holds eggs from 10 women who have chosen to freeze them for "social" purposes. However, most of those likely to benefit immediately have stored eggs before undergoing cancer treatment likely to make them sterile.

July 30, 2002

Foreign adoption can be hazardous (USA Today)
Adoption is never easy, but with international adoption, parents also tiptoe outside the U.S. legal system. Agencies may charge exorbitant rates and are largely unaccountable for complications.

July 29, 2002

Jalisco gov't accused of supporting illegal adoptions (The News Mexico)
An advocacy group announced over the weekend it began the process of filing a complaint against the federal government and the state of Jalisco before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for permitting illegal adoptions. The president of the Stolen and Disappeared Children of Mexico Foundation, Juan Manuel Estrada, said over the last five years, more than 80 minors were handed over by Jalisco officials to foreign families in adoptions plagued by irregularities. Estrada claims in many cases, children were stolen from poor families to be given in adoption.

July 27, 2002

Milwaukee fertility experts may expand options for childbearing (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
Milwaukee infertility experts have helped a woman become pregnant through a new way of freezing human eggs, avoiding the ethical baggage that goes with freezing and banking embryos. The new technique could offer an option to couples who, for religious or moral reasons, won't do in vitro fertilization because they don't want to risk creating excess embryos. Freezing eggs allows a couple to thaw and fertilize only what they need for each pregnancy attempt.

July 26, 2002

UK Children Of Sperm Donors Win Court Victory (Cybercast News Service)
The children of sperm donors have the right to obtain more information about their fathers, Britain's High Court ruled Friday. Although the court did not overturn a law that forbids revealing the name of sperm donors to offspring without the father's consent, the case could mark the end of completely anonymous sperm donation in Britain. Currently, British offspring of sperm donors can only receive limited physical information about their fathers - such as height, hair colour and race - and can only access such information after turning 18.

A Loving Home (ABC News)
Adoptions Are on the Rise, But African and African-American Children Still Desperately Seek a U.S. Home

July 25, 2002

Raising children - again (Kalamazoo Gazette)
Number of grandparents raising grandkids in region exceeds state, national average

Woman carries human clone, group says (Boston Globe)
A fringe religious movement's South Korea-based scientific team yesterday said they had implanted a cloned human embryo in a woman, the latest of a string of similar uncomfirmed experiments to emerge from the underground field of human cloning.

July 23, 2002

Life by life, an orphanage reassembled (Providence Journal)
At least a dozen former residents of the old State Home and School for Children return as part of a research project.

White House Launches Adoption Push (CBS News)
(AP) Actor Bruce Willis and the White House are teaming up to recruit more people to adopt the tens of thousands of often older, emotionally bruised children languishing in foster care.

July 22, 2002

Police target Malaysia baby snatchers (BBC)
Malaysian and Indonesian police are discussing ways to tackle the trade in babies sold on the black market. Poor Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia are often the target for what the authorities say is a growing problem. The trade has fallen into the clutches of gangs who lure pregnant women into selling their babies to childless Malaysian couples who find the black market easier and faster than formal adoption.

Vietnam Tightens Adoption Controls (The Guardian Unlimited)
(AP) Vietnam has introduced a new decree which tightens controls over foreign adoptions of Vietnamese children in an attempt to halt fraud and child trafficking, an official said Monday. Under the new decree, which takes effect from January 2, all adoptions must be approved by a special foreign adoption agency in the Ministry of Justice, the ministry official said. Children may be adopted only by foreigners from countries that have bilateral adoption agreements with Vietnam, she said.

July 19, 2002

2.4 million grandparents reported raising grandkids (Houston Chronicle)
(AP) With Michael's parents out of his life, the 59-year-old Owens has joined the more than 2.4 million grandparents found by the 2000 census to be primary caregivers to a grandchild. The closest the census had come in the past to addressing this issue was to estimate the percentage of children under 18 living in a grandparent-headed home. That was 6.3 percent in 2000, compared with 5.5 percent in 1990, 3.6 percent in 1980 and 3.2 percent in 1970.

July 18, 2002

A Foster-Care Tragedy Worthy of Dickens (LA Times)
Los Angeles has a foster-care system driven by what is available, not what is needed. Children receive too few services too late. Thousands are shuttled to ineffective and expensive institutional care. They are poorly monitored, with no consistent, individualized care. Not surprisingly, many deteriorate in county care, populating our jails, homeless shelters and mental wards after they "age out" of a failed system. Many never overcome the effects of the abuse or neglect they have suffered. This is not a problem that can be solved simply by changing the person at the top, as L.A. County has done twice in recent years. It requires a philosophical change at all levels--from a system based on what services are available to a system based on earlier intervention and individualized needs.

Parents sue after discovering adopted children had been abused (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
When they adopted the three boys in July 1998 — four months after first meeting them — the couple said they were given a packet of information and told by the Department of Children & Families that the children had mild to moderate behavioral problems stemming from physical and sexual abuse. But the abuse was downplayed and they never mentioned what happened at the Rosa foster home. The couple, who filed suit against the department on Wednesday in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, eventually learned the boys were severely sexually and physically abused by the biological family, were known to act out sexually against each other and other children; and were bounced from foster home to foster home — one where punishment included being caged in a chicken coop.

July 17, 2002

To tell or not to tell (Chicago Tribune)
When kids are conceived through donation, do they need to know? More parents are having to answer the question.

July 15, 2002

ADOPTION (The Oregonian)
Comprehensive national data are difficult to compile because adoption is not reliably documented. Following are widely used estimates: More than 120,000 children are adopted each year in the United States.

Is Florida Bad for Kids? (Time)
Another tragedy — the killing of a 2-year-old — stokes the furor over the state's broken child-welfare system

Foster parents' dilemma (Orlando Sentinel)
Among the biggest problems is that a disproportionate number of foster children suffer from severe health and emotional problems, but DCF does little to prepare most foster parents to deal with them, according to two studies by the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Mothers and Babies at the University of South Florida.

July 14, 2002

DCF's 'take-the-kids-and-run' policy is at the heart of the problem (Orlando Sentinel)
What these cases have in common is the fact that there are a wide variety of proven programs that can keep these children in their own homes and do it with a far better track record for safety than foster care. But as we see it, DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney's answer to every child welfare problem comes down to "take the child and run."

Court Rules That Ontario Must Recognize Same-Sex Marriages (NY Times)
A provincial court has ruled that the Ontario government is obliged to recognize the right of gays and lesbians to marry people of their own gender, a decision that was hailed by gay rights advocates as a major legal victory that would have national consequences. The 3-to-0 ruling by the Superior Court on Friday came in response to a lawsuit filed by a lesbian couple and a gay male couple to compel the provincial government to register their marriage ceremonies as legally binding.

For 'Women Who Waited,' writers ask: Why not adopt? (Seattle Times)
"Women Who Waited" featured essays by seven women who delayed starting a family. The essays were written after we asked readers to respond to the national conversation about having babies after 35 and an awareness campaign reminding women that their fertility declines as they age. We heard from a first-time mother at 46, a woman who was at peace with her infertility, etc.

July 11, 2002

The future of fertility (BBC)
Experts have gathered to debate the latest advances in reproductive medicine at the annual conference of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology.

By 2010, AIDS May Leave 20 Million African Orphans (NY Times)
AIDS will leave 20 million children in Africa without one or both parents by 2010, the 14th International AIDS Conference was told here today. That is nearly double the current number, 11 million. The report, which assumes that treatment will not be made widely available soon, also said that by 2010, AIDS will have orphaned five million children elsewhere in the world.

July 9, 2002

21 legislators defend ban on gay adoption (Orlando Sentinel)
A group of Florida legislators defends the state's ban on gay adoptions as "the best interest of children" in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday with a federal appeals court. The 25-year-old law "is not unconstitutional merely because self-styled 'child welfare experts' think it is not a good idea," says the brief filed on behalf of 21 Florida House members.

July 8, 2002

Doing it again: Raising grandkids (Associated Press)
Pat Owens smiled and nodded approvingly. With Michael's parents out of his life, the 59-year-old Owens has joined the more than 2.4 million grandparents found by the 2000 census to be primary caregivers to a grandchild. It was the first time the once-a-decade count tracked such living arrangements.

Grand jury raises adoptions concern (Post-Enterprise)
Child welfare officials must do a better job battling a rumor that social workers receive extra pay for rushing children into adoption, the Riverside County Grand Jury concluded. The grand jury said it found that through interviews and media and Internet articles, some people think the law creates a bounty on new adoptions and a disincentive to keep troubled families intact. The grand jury recommends better informing social workers of the laws and regulations so they can better communicate with clients who hold this view.

July 6, 2002

Grandparent caregivers seek help from rest of the 'village' (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
A new state study shows that kinship caregivers -- relatives caring for kids in place of drug-addicted, incarcerated, abusive, neglectful or in some cases deceased parents -- are far from alone. There are more relatives caring for children without involvement in the foster care or child welfare system than policymakers realized.

July 5, 2002

Adoption (The Oregonian)
Comprehensive national data are difficult to compile because adoption is not reliably documented. Following are widely used estimates: More than 120,000 children are adopted each year in the United States. The number of children adopted from other nations rose from 8,102 in 1989 to 16,369 in 1999. In 1999, the majority of international adoptions were of Russian children, followed by Chinese and South Korean. At least 6 million American children and adults, or 2 percent of the population, are adopted. In Oregon, 1,071 adoptions were finalized in 2001 through the state child-welfare system. Of those, adoptions annually of children 14 and older reached a record 48.

July 1, 2002

Children smuggled into U.S. for adoption, prostitution (The News Mexico)
Authorities say Mexican infants and children are being smuggled into the United States to be given in illicit adoptions or, in some cases, handed over to prostitution rings. Unscrupulous attorneys forge adoption papers for childless U.S. couples for hefty fees, according to Mike Smith of the FBI field office in Phoenix.

Sperm bank clients hear clock ticking (Beacon Journal)
More than two-thirds of single women who choose to have a baby using donated sperm do so because they fear they are running out of time to find a man they would want to have a child with, new research found.

June 30, 2002

Shoddy records called threat to kids (Miami Herald)
A yearlong investigation by a group charged by the governor with overseeing the Department of Children & Families has concluded that abysmal record keeping constitutes a ``threat to the health, safety and welfare of the children placed in foster care.''

Black babies from U.S. highly sought in Canada (Chicago Sun-Times)
Over the last decade, hundreds of African-American children have been adopted by Canadian couples who have given up on finding a healthy baby through their own country's system. But increasingly, critics charge that Canadian couples are buying into the most insidious form of racism since the abolition of slavery--the "pricing" of American babies according to the color of their skin. A black baby goes for about a third the cost of a white child.

Egg Freezing Becoming an Option for Women (Reuters)
As more women delay motherhood, some fertility doctors are offering them an alternative before age-related deterioration sets in: the option to "bank" eggs, a method long used to preserve sperm. But critics say that freezing, or cryopreservation, of delicate single-cell eggs is still in the experimental stages, and success rates do not warrant its promotion as a viable choice for healthy women.

June 27, 2002

Many Grandparents Take On An Additional Role: Parent (Washington Post)
At age 71, Gwen Lightfoot is parenting again. This time, she's raising her 12-year-old grandson, Alton Moses. Seven years ago, she took custody of him after realizing her own daughter wasn't able to care for the boy. In Howard County, Lightfoot is one of 1,220 grandparents who are primary caretakers for their grandchildren, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Figures released recently show that more than 50,000 grandparents in Maryland and roughly 2.5 million nationwide bear the same responsibility.

June 26, 2002

Call to end sperm donor anonymity (BBC)
The public is in favour of giving the children of sperm donors more information about their biological parents, according to a survey. More than three-quarters of people questioned in a MORI poll thought children born using donated sperm or eggs should have a right to know their genetic history at 18. And 83% of the 1,000 surveyed believed children over 18 should have access to their biological parents' health and medical histories.

Embryo screening can tell whether an aging woman's fetus will be normal -- sometimes. (Orange County Register)
Genetic screening is still a new, controversial science, fraught with ethical land mines: What does it means to "discard" embryos that are prone to Tay-Sachs disease, Alzheimer's disease, sickle cell anemia? Will such screening lead to gender selection, the selection of physical traits? But an increasing number of women over age 38 are choosing to screen their embryos to find out why repeated attempts at pregnancy have failed. They want to know whether they can carry their genetic children or whether so many of their embryos are chromosomally abnormal that they should probably stop trying.

June 25, 2002

Family ties (Baltimore Sun)
The state's foster care program often places brothers and sisters in different homes. For one week each summer, Camp Connect brings them together again.

June 24, 2002

Agency succeeds in finding homes for 'unadoptable' (San Diego Union-Tribune)
Kidsave International brings orphans between the ages of 5 and 13 here for a six-week summer camp called Summer Miracles. The program has operated here for three years. The goal is to find permanent homes for the children in the United States. This year, the nonprofit, nationwide program wants to place 300 children with families. Johnson said 95 percent of kids in the program end up being adopted.

June 23, 2002

A worthy gift, a difficult task (Boston Globe)
Carla and Marc Duffy traveled a long, difficult road to parenthood that included in vitro fertilization. The process left them with eight frozen embryos and a difficult decision: what to do with the extra embryos. After considerable soul searching, they decided to donate the embryos to medical research. They had no idea how challenging that would be.

June 21, 2002

Helping foster kids get ahead (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
For America's foster children, a college degree or even a high school diploma are as rare as lofty expectations for their futures. Studies show that 37 percent to 80 percent of children leaving foster care have not completed high school, compared with 16 percent of those not in foster care. In addition, a 1998 study by the University of Wisconsin found that only 1 percent of youths exiting foster care would attain a four-year degree.

June 20, 2002

Public warms to adoption (The Washington Times)
Americans' view of adoption is growing more favorable as more people experience it among their families and friends, said a survey released yesterday by two adoption groups.

June 19, 2002

Poll: Race, age aren't big issues in adoptions (USA Today)
Nearly 40% of Americans have considered adoption, but many, particularly white adults, back off because they fear adopted kids will have behavioral or medical problems, suggests a poll out today.

June 18, 2002

ABC Comedy Angers Adoptive Parents (San Antonio Express-News)
(AP) The mother of twin toddlers adopted from China, Nancy Kennon was excited when she heard that an ABC comedy, "My Adventures in Television," was going to feature a Chinese adoption. What she saw earlier this month appalled her. Character Lindsay Urich adopts because a therapist says she has a lot of love to give, then gives the baby away after finding motherhood inconvenient. A fictional TV executive begs her to give the baby as a gift to a vain star. Urich tells a friend who holds the baby, "you break her, you bought her." And when one woman muses that the baby looks cute enough to eat, a man says he doesn't eat Chinese babies "because a half hour later I'm hungry and have to eat another."

June 17, 2002

When parents fail, grandparents step in (The Journal-News)
This is the first time the Census Bureau has tracked the number of parenting grandparents in the United States. Although the arrangement still represents a small segment of the types of families found in the county and across the nation, experts say the grandparent-as-parent is becoming more common.

June 16, 2002

Where Do Babies Come From? (NY Times Magazine)
16 Cambodian orphanages that work with American adoption agencies, have become the focus of a U.S. investigation of adoption practices in Cambodia, one that questions whether adoption has morphed from an altruistic pursuit into a highly lucrative industry.

June 15, 2002

Couples, ACLU mobilize after adoptions blocked (Ann Arbor News)
Last week, Washtenaw County Chief Trial Court Judge Archie Brown ordered an end to the nearly 7-year-old process that allowed unmarried couples, whether gay or heterosexual, to adopt children. On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which opposes Brown's decision, filed eight motions in the juvenile division of Washtenaw County's Family Court, where adoptions are heard.

June 14, 2002

Foster care advocates fear scaled-back group home visits (The Mercury News)
With California's budget deficit at $23.6 billion, advocates worry the state will stop funding the monthly visits that ensure safety and protection for some 10,400 troubled youth.

June 13, 2002

Australian woman charged over Net baby sale (CNN)
An Australian woman who tried to sell her unborn baby over the Internet for $5,600 (Aust. $10,000) is facing two charges over the incident.

Black families heed call to adopt (Orlando Sentinel)
Although blacks make up 12 percent of the population in Central Florida, they account for a much higher proportion of the region's foster children. The program One Church, One Child premiered in Florida in 1989 and has been responsible for about 6,000 adoptions.

June 11, 2002

Court tightens rules for foster children (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Washington's Court of Appeals has ordered the state to stop the "unsafe" practice of housing foster children overnight in office buildings when emergency homes can't be found.

Foster care overused, say critics of agency (Orlando Sentinel)
As Florida's social-services agency officials seek to improve a troubled child-protection system, some children's advocates say that any reforms should start with the goal of keeping families intact and making foster care obsolete.

June 9, 2002

The colors of love (Sacramento Bee)
Adoptive parents who cross racial lines start by opening their hearts. They must open minds.

Children lost despite pacts among states (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Across the nation, public officials have made formal agreements to send foster children across state lines to live in treatment centers or with relatives. Like good neighbors, the states promise to watch over each other's children, to see that they are not harmed. But the compact has serious flaws. It can take months for the paperwork to be completed. Sometimes, states ship children away without signing documents, which means no one is legally bound to check on the children.

June 6, 2002

Lawsuit: Foster care system imperils Georgia kids (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Two child advocacy groups sued Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, the state and Atlanta foster care officials Thursday, saying that the area's child protection system is out of control, overburdened and putting thousands of children at risk.

June 5, 2002

Help here for grandchild adoption (The Press-Enterprise)
HEMET: A group informs about funds and services available to get past legal blocks.

June 4, 2002

1,237 foster children not accounted for by state workers (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
More than 1,200 children living under state supervision did not receive a visit from a Department of Children & Families worker in May, despite the governor's order that every child be seen.

June 3, 2002

18,000 Kansas grandparents raising children (Wichita Eagle)
Almost 18,000 Kansas grandparents are the sole providers for their grandchildren, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures released recently. That means they're not only buying shoes, clothes and food for their grandkids, but they're turning their lives around to raise children at a time when many of their friends are nearing or already enjoying retirement.

Two states have led way in reforming child-welfare agencies (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Illinois has been there. The state suffered through the shame of gruesome child deaths, wrestled with class-action suits and court-ordered decrees, staggered under the weight of massive child welfare caseloads and struggled to find places for the scores of children taken into state care.

Giving life (Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
Infertile couples helped by women who sell their eggs.

June 2, 2002

Governor vows to reform DCF (St. Petersburg Times)
He backs some ideas proposed by the panel he formed in light of the Rilya Wilson case, but rejects its call for a special session.

Older kids face uphill battle on road to adoption (Jackson Citizen Patriot)
Age is one of many special needs that can make adoption more challenging.

As the Need Grows, Foster Homes Dwindle (Los Angeles Times)
Ventura County has mounted a campaign to recruit parents, especially Spanish speakers, to meet the demand.

May 31, 2002

State's foster care system may come under court oversight (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
A Whatcom County judge intends to issue an order within a week that could mark the first time in the nation that a state's foster-care system has come under the direct supervision of a court.

Adopting abroad (Washington Times)
More and more Americans are trying to adopt overseas. International adoptions totaled 19,237 in the United States last year and show no signs of abating. The drama of personal adoption stories is the focus of a new cable-TV series. However, several trends are shaping would-be parents' decisions, such as China's decision not to allow homosexuals to adopt.

Houston couple, donor in power struggle over frozen embryos (Houston Chronicle)
A Harris County lawsuit may require a judge of King Solomon's wisdom with the knowledge of modern genetics to resolve who is entitled to four remaining frozen human embryos.

May 30, 2002

Message of 'Hope' (Contra costa Times)
Woman's documentary focuses on various aspects of Korean adoption, with an emphasis on the positive.

Cancer, childbirth no longer mutually exclusive (TwinCities.com)
In the first report on reproductive issues from the University of Minnesota Medical School, 25-center study, soon to be published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the researchers found that while higher rates of miscarriage and lower birth weights were observed among the offspring of former cancer patients, "there are a large number of live births, births of healthy children, a lack of congenital abnormalities and very low cancer rates."

May 29, 2002

Same-sex custody ruling overturned in landmark case (The Journal News - Westchester)
A state appeals court has overturned a landmark custody ruling in which a Westchester woman became the first person in New York to win child visitation rights in a same-sex partnership. The unanimous decision by the Appellate Division, Second Department, reverses the right of Janis to visit two children she helped raise with her former live-in lover, Christine.

Adoption settlement gets OK'd (Cincinnati Enquirer)
A federal magistrate on Tuesday approved a landmark settlement that will change the way children are placed with adoptive parents in Hamilton County. The lawsuit, pending since 1999, claimed widespread use of race in the county's adoption practices. The suit alleged those practices were illegal and caused African-American children to linger in foster care and have their adoptive placements delayed longer than white children.

May 28, 2002

Condo rule could force grandmother to give children up to foster care (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
To a condominium association in the retirement community of Century Village East, little Matthew is at best an intruder — a 2-foot-tall, walking violation of condo rules — and at worst a nuisance who needs to go. Not after a year, not after a month, but by June 10, or they’ll fine his grandmother $25 a day.

Supreme Court agrees to consider system for taking foster children's benefits (Newsday)
(Associated Press) The Supreme Court said Tuesday it would decide if states can control the federal benefits of orphaned and abused children. Justices will review Washington state's practice of applying for benefits on behalf of foster children, then using the money to reimburse foster parents for things like food and clothing.

Gene Therapy Corrects Male Infertility in Mice (Reuters)
Researchers have used gene therapy to correct a type of male infertility--in mice. After treatments with the gene, mice that had previously made no sperm were able to produce healthy offspring with some high-tech help, according to a report published in the May 28th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Advocates take a 'village' to task (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
A long-awaited "village" for children in foster care in Milwaukee County has come under attack by various child advocacy groups who say that if the project ever becomes a reality, it would likely harm the children it is designed to serve.

May 27, 2002

Census 2000: Grandparents step up to raise children (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
As their own children struggle with divorce, debt, early death of a spouse or addictions, grandparents of all ages are increasingly likely to take in the youngest and most vulnerable in their families. In some cases, parents and kids move in together with the grandparents; in others, the parents just visit or are completely absent.

Florida panel: More children may be at risk (CNN)
(Associated Press) A review panel looking into the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl found that despite the attention given to the child's case, flaws in Florida's child welfare agency still exist and more children could be at risk.

Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Child Protection (CNN)
On April 25, 2002, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) revealed that one of its Miami wards, 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, had disappeared 15 months earlier from her custodial home and had not been seen since. This revelation, and others subsequently, engulfed DCF in scandal.

Adopted Fears Can Take On a Life of Their Own (Washington Post)
A Stray Kitten Leads One Family Down A Long-Obscured Path

Foster care up despite high adoption rate (The Oklahoman)
Oklahomans are adopting state-custody children at twice the rate as a few years ago, but the number of those in foster care continues to increase. Child advocates blame an overburdened system and an ever-increasing number of children removed from homes because of drug abuse, physical abuse and neglect.

Adoptive parents often face many challenges (The Oklahoman)
So how different is adopting a child through the state from adopting privately? Much depends on the child, but one thing is clear: Nearly all of these children come with problems. They have endured abuse and neglect, or worse, and are usually old enough to show the scars.

May 26, 2002

Parents denied custody of twins (Phildelphia Inquirer)
(Associated Press) The parents of twin girls caught in an international adoption dispute last year will not be granted custody and the toddlers will remain under state care, a judge ruled Friday.Two years ago, a California couple, Richard and Vickie Allen, said they paid an Internet broker $6,000 to adopt the twins. The twins were subsequently adopted by a Welsh couple, Judith and Alan Kilshaw, who said they paid the same broker $12,000.

May 24, 2002

A Foster Care Nightmare (ABC News)
The story of five brothers and their sister who stuck together in the face of what is described as almost perverse cruelty, without an adult in sight to save them. The story describes life in the home of Jacqueline Lynch, who collected $150,000 as a foster mother, even though one of her own children had previously been taken away from her by the state of Florida because of allegations of physical and sexual abuse in her home.

Records Released on Missing Girl (Washington Post)
An appeals court Friday released the remaining documents from the case file of a 5-year-old girl whose disappearance went unnoticed by the state's child welfare agency for 15 months. More than 700 pages of documents made public late Friday detail the Department of Children & Families work in Rilya's case, including that of caseworker Deborah Muskelly.

Agency reports 21 kids missing in Miami-Dade (South Floriday Sun-Sentinel)
Since child welfare officials admitted they lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson last month, caseworkers have reported at least 21 other Miami-Dade County children under state care as missing, some for as long as seven years.

May 22, 2002

Plea from sperm donor children (BBC News)
Children conceived with donated sperm have a right to know about their biological fathers, the High Court has been told.

May 23, 2002

INS wants to start trial program for international adoptions (Houston Chronicle)
Americans who want to adopt a child abroad could get government confirmation that the child is an orphan under a program the top immigration official wants to begin in July.

May 21, 2002

Keep foster-care siblings together, experts maintain (Orlando-Sentinel)
Caseworkers told Salter the separation was the best way to ensure a permanent home for the little brother, he said. The two were separated, but Salter's brother wasn't adopted. He ended up institutionalized at a center for kids with behavioral problems, angry at what he perceived as a selfish move by Salter to look out for his own interests.

Once-Invisible Sperm Donors Get to Meet the Family (The New York Times)
Bob's experience - reversing his status as an anonymous donor - is unusual but it is becoming more common. Though most of the country's 150 sperm banks offer only anonymous donors, increasing numbers are coming up with ways, sometimes highly creative, to assure that children born with donated sperm can meet the men who fathered them. Other sperm banks are at least considering the option.

May 20, 2002

Gay adoption a step closer (BBC News)
Gay couples have moved a step closer to being allowed to adopt children with the defeat of a last Commons move to block the change.

May 19, 2002

Reform eludes troubled system (Sun-Sentinel)
Floridians have known for years about foul-ups in the state's child welfare and foster care system. Yet the public never quite musters up enough outrage over the morale and money woes, flashes of bureaucratic incompetence and dangerously high caseloads to demand radical change.

May 16, 2002

DCF shift to private agencies under fire (Sun-Sentinel)
Florida's child advocates are calling on Gov. Jeb Bush to slow down or halt the privatization of child protection services following the disappearance of a 5-year-old Miami girl who was in foster care.

Do not rush to hand kids at risk to private system, critics urge Bush (Orlando Sentinel)
Florida's child advocates are calling on Gov. Jeb Bush to slow down or halt the privatization of the state's child-protection services after the disappearance of a 5-year-old Miami girl while in foster care. The state's privatization experiment is the largest of its kind in the country. And no one knows for sure whether kids will be any safer.

Law: DCF workers must not fake records (Orlando Sentinel)
Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill Wednesday making it a felony to doctor child-welfare records, but critics say the new law ignores conditions that can drive overwhelmed workers to lie.

Adoption shake-up debated by MPs (BBC)
A debate on whether unmarried couples, including gay couples, should be able to adopt children is taking place in theHouse of Commons.

Parental rights of gays bolstered (Indianapolis Star)
Custody or visitation can't be denied solely because gay parent lives with partner, court rules.

A Prison of Shame (Hartford Advocate)
Pressured to give up their babies, women recall the St. Agnes Home for Unwed Mothers

May 15, 2002

And Baby Makes Three (Newsday)
The Moriches couple say the ceremony on May 2 in which Cambodian authorities officially gave them custody of the little girl they've named Gloria was grueling but exhilirating. But for three other Long Island families and scores across the nation, the battle is not over. While the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has partially lifted a suspension on adoptions in Cambodia for some families, many who were in the process of adopting in the Southeast Asian nation are still stranded.

Child-welfare workers say state agency plagued by deceit (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Some current and former state child-welfare workers say their colleagues lied about visiting foster homes, covered up mistakes and worked amid a culture that reward overburdened employees for leaving children in dangerous situations.

Method may aid in vitro success (Chicago Tribune)
British scientists have developed a new technique that could improve the chances of having a baby for thousands of couples undergoing fertility treatment.

May 14, 2002

Call to end sperm donor anonymity (BBC)
Children conceived with donor sperm may be able to trace their biological fathers, if a change in the law proposed by leading fertility expert Baroness Warnock comes about.

Technique Helps Repair Damaged Frozen Embryos (Reuters)
Italian scientists have developed a technique to improve the implantation rate of frozen embryos, giving new hope to couples undergoing in vitro fertilization.

Panel chief scrutinizes guardian plan (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
The head of a blue-ribbon investigative panel focused Monday on the program that provides volunteers to look out for children's welfare in the court system, seeking answers on whether the program's effectiveness can be improved. The guardian system uses non-lawyers to act as children's representatives in court proceedings. The adversarial relationship between DCF attorneys and guardians ad litem often gets in the way of helping children, Goodman told the panel.

US Studies Foster Parent Attrition (Newsday - Associated Press)
Burned-out foster parents have little voice in decisions about kids they care for, are forced to spend hundreds of dollars on unexpected costs and too often are stung by false accusations of child abuse, government auditors say. The report helps explain why the number of foster families has fallen even as the need rises.

Bishop joins critics of gay adoption plan (Daily Telegraph)
A PROPOSAL to allow homosexual couples to adopt children has been criticised by a leading contender to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Sperm donors could lose their right to anonymity (Daily Telegraph)
MINISTERS are willing to change the law to enable children conceived with donor sperm to trace their biological fathers.

May 13, 2002

Cutbacks hobble child services (Des Moines Register)
A worsening state budget crisis has meant the emergency service and 17 other child-welfare programs in the area will lose roughly $200,000 during the state's next fiscal year. At least 30 other programs in the community can expect to help fewer youths, as other pools of state money for intervention and prevention programs dry up.

Politicians' solution to child-welfare crisis: Create study panels (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
During the last two decades -- and again this month after the disappearance of a 5-year-old foster child in Miami -- governors and legislative leaders have reacted to highly publicized cases of child abuse and neglect in much the same way: They form commissions, task forces, blue-ribbon panels and study groups. Task force conclusions have a familiar theme: Caseloads of investigators and foster workers are too high; abuse prevention and early childhood development efforts are too scarce.

Child Advocates See Many Floridas (Tampa Tribune)
Florida's system for safeguarding children - the same system that lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson 16 months ago - is among the nation's most expensive, overburdened and neglectful, child welfare experts and advocates say.

Foster Mom Says DCF Failed Before (Tampa Tribune)
Nancy Younger figured the father of a young boy temporarily placed in her home by child welfare workers should know that the state had taken custody of his son. Caseworkers failed to notify John Greiner, who had been making regular child support payments and by state rules should have been contacted. So she informed the boy's father herself, then complained to the Department of Children and Families that caseworkers were ignoring the rules.

May 12, 2002

Growing together: Mother's Day takes on special meaning for transracial adoption family (Boston Herald)
Dymski and her husband, David Boyce, are part of a growing movement toward transracial adoption, according to the Massachusetts Adoption Resource Exchange. About 15 percent of the 36,000 adoptions of foster children nationwide in 1998 were transracial or transcultural adoptions, according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, compared with 8 percent in 1987, according to the National Health Interview Survey.

Losing baby K. (Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
Foster parents blame adoption policies for an infant's death and worry that other ill or disabled children may be at risk

Irvington program to aid adoptive families of older children (Journal News)
For adoptive families, particularly those who take on children who are older or come from foster care, the challenges can be unique. A new pilot program being run from Irvington is helping families work through some of those challenges.

Deciding to be mom: three tales of adoption (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Motherhood is a destination reached by many roads. Every Friday afternoon, handfuls of women stream down one that leads to a tiny Hennepin County courtroom. Each woman stands before a judge and vows to take care of somebody else's child, a child they promise to love a lifetime as their own. Perhaps the pain of infertility brought them to this place, or maybe it was duty as much as love. And on rare occasions it's as if the child himself sought out that particular woman to be the one he calls, "Mama." This is an afternoon in adoption court. These are three women who answered maternity's call.

Filling a Void (Newsday)
She barely survived the child welfare system, a blond-haired, green-eyed slip of a girl who essentially raised herself on the West Coast. Over the course of 18 years, she was shuffled through 22 foster homes in four states, carrying her possessions in a plastic bag. She often traded one abusive home for another, running away when things got really bad. So that is exactly why Loni Stedjan, who now lives in Huntington, became a foster parent.

Missing Fla. girl's tale a twisted one (Associated Press)
When Rilya Wilson was born Sept. 29, 1996, the name she got was an acronym made up by her mother and some friends. R-I-L-Y-A: "Remember I love you always." And yet by the time her disappearance was discovered last month, she was under state supervision and had had three "mothers" in as many years.

May 11, 2002

Birth moms share a lingering regret (San Antonio Star)
Today, women from across Texas will celebrate their roles in bringing children into the world - and mourn their lost opportunities to raise them. Birth Mother's Day was created 10 years ago by a support group in Seattle whose members wanted to acknowledge the feelings they experience on Mother's Day.

May 10, 2002

DCF's computer savior has bad tracking record (Orlando Sentinel)
Gov. Jeb Bush is touting a new computer system being developed to track abused and neglected children as the savior of the much-criticized state agency entrusted to care for them. But after nearly a decade of trying, the multimillion-dollar HomeSafeNet computer system, which might have helped the state detect that 5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami was missing, is $200 million over budget, years behind schedule and far from finished.

Unmarried couple allowed to adopt child they raised (Newsday)
A state appeals court has ruled that a Bronx couple's unmarried status does not bar them from adopting a 14-year-old boy they have raised since he was 17 months old.

Abandoned baby bill on its way to governor (Kansas City Star)
Missouri soon could join numerous states allowing desperate parents to legally abandon their newborn babies at hospitals or with other authorities. The legislation applies to cases where babies less than 30 days old are left with hospital or health care workers, law officers, firefighters or emergency medical technicians. The prosecution-free pass would not apply if the baby had been abused.

May 9, 2002

Gay adoption: Judgment reserved (News 24)
The Constitutional Court has reserved judgment on whether the Pretoria High Court was right to declare certain sections of legislation on adoption "unconstitutional and invalid".

'Another potential bombshell' lurks in state foster-care system (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Florida's child-welfare system may be sitting on "another potential bombshell" like the Rilya Wilson case, says the Republican chairwoman of a legislative panel investigating troubles at the Department of Children & Families. The concerns come after admissions Thursday by top DCF officials and statements by legislative auditors that the administrative breakdown surrounding the disappearance of the 5-year-old foster child could be widespread.

May 8, 2002

British Government Will Vote On Unmarried Adoption Law (Cybercast News Service)
The British government has made an about-face on a law that would allow unmarried couples to adopt children, angering Christian organizations but winning the support of homosexual groups and the country's leading association of adoption agencies. May 6, 2002

For the Young, Scars of Sept. 11 (NY Times)
Letters to the editor re: continuing trauma for young affected by events of 9/11.

May 5, 2002

Egg bank offers women chance to save while awaiting Mr. Right (Fresno Bee)
Starting in December when its new lab is finished, the CHA Fertility Clinic on Wilshire Boulevard near Beverly Hills will open an on-demand egg-banking service, giving women a chance to freeze and store their eggs while they await Mr. Right.

Found dead in trash, baby was full-term (Boston Globe)
Authorities investigating the death of a baby found in a trash bin in a University of Massachusetts-Amherst dormitory are awaiting results of an autopsy before deciding if his 19-year-old mother should face criminal charges, officials said yesterday.

May 4, 2002

SJC: Foreign nationals' parental rights can be ended (Boston Globe)
The Supreme Judicial Court, in the first ruling of its kind, said yesterday that Massachusetts has the right to strip foreign nationals of their parental rights once a juvenile court judge concludes they are not properly caring for their children.

Editorial: Orphanage scrap/Sticking with a silly story (Star Tribune)
Why are Copeland and her allies so stuck on their silly -- and dangerous -- story about what kids need? And why does the Target Foundation think building a white-elephant orphanage counts as a commendable community service?

Fla. Missing Girl Latest Blunder (Newsday)
The bungled case of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, whose disappearance more than a year ago wasn't noticed by state officials until last month, is the latest example of a child lost in the bureaucratic maze of Florida's child welfare system

Frustsration extends to another family agency (St. Petersburg Times)
The Family Continuity Program was supposed to relieve the Department of Children and Families, but it has drawn complaints.

Altering records could be a felony (Orlando Sentinel)
State lawmakers moved quickly to stiffen criminal penalties for falsifying records in child-welfare cases Friday, as the governor ordered Florida's top child-welfare official to Miami to aid in the investigation of a missing girl whose disappearance went undetected for more than a year.

May 3, 2002

Baby dies despite warnings of abuse (Orlando Sentinel)
In the four months of Bryna Bratchell Jr.'s life, child-abuse caseworkers received five hotline complaints claiming the baby was in danger, and an investigator warned Jan. 8 that his home was "high risk."

Case of Lost Miami Girl Puts Focus on an Agency (NY Times)
The disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson while in state custody is just an extreme example of an overburdened agency's struggle to keep up with the demands of caring for an increasing number of vulnerable children, state officials and child advocates say.

Case brings urgency to repair DCF problems (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
As a special House committee began an investigation into how well the Department of Children & Families is doing its job, critics said the disappearance of a 5-year-old Miami girl under state care highlights deep-rooted problems in the state's handling of neglected children.

May 2, 2002

Gene Tied to Female Infertility Found (Arizona Central)
Federal scientists have discovered a gene that may make some women infertile.

A family divided (Orlando Sentinel)
Story of middle-aged, adopted sisters search and reunion.

Tragic Tale of Two Little Girls (CBS News)
Child welfare officials in Florida acknowledge that a 5-year-old Miami girl whose relatives thought she was in state care had actually vanished more than a year ago. No one noticed until last week.

Heartbreaking--and all too typical (Orlando Sentinel)
This is the story of a little boy. He was removed from the care of his parents by the Department of Children & Families in August 1999 after several complaints of neglect and abuse. He was placed in foster care at that time, and in foster care he remains to this day, almost three years later.....

Mourning Goes Undercover(Wall Street Journal)
Psychologists say that kids who don't show their grief are also having tough time.

Fostering Hope (Mother Jones)
Foster kids rarely get the chance to grow roots in a community. But in an Illinois neighborhood known as Hope Meadows, they are finding loving families, supportive social sercies, and an irreplaceable network of 'grandparents.'

May 1, 2002

Fertility's last frontier helps men with HIV be fathers (Contra Costa Times)
Even as they give men a chance at fatherhood without infecting babies or partners, techniques push ethical boundaries

Girl Vanishes in Fla. Welfare System (Newsday)
Child welfare officials acknowledged Wednesday that a 5-year-old girl whose relatives thought she was in state care vanished more than a year ago and no one noticed until last week.

April 30, 2002

Infertile Ground - Study: Fertility Chances Drop Sooner Than Expected (ABC News)
Women in their 20s who are debating how to balance personal and profession aspirations received some unsettling news - fertility appears to decrease at a younger age than believed.

Surrogate mom still mourning loss after 16 years (Orange County Register)
Mary Beth Whitehead Gould, once at the center of the Baby M controversy, speaks out against surrogacy.

April 25, 2002

Gay couple sparks controversy with adoption (Daily Illini)
Same-sex adoption and foster care rights have sparked controversy across the country...the American Academy of Pediatrics...estimates nearly 9 million children in the United States have at least one gay parent.

Rock-A-Baby Bye-Bye (Houston Press)
A state program was supposed to give moms a safe place to drop off unwanted newborns. Then wy are so many babies still ending up in the trash?

Baby Fold arranges historic adoption (Pantagraph.com)
The Baby Fold is cheering its role in the life of the first baby ever received for adoption under Illinois' Abandoned Newborn Infant Protection Act.

Baby Fold arranges historic adoption (Pantagraph.com)
The Baby Fold is cheering its role in the life of the first baby ever received for adoption under Illinois' Abandoned Newborn Infant Protection Act.

April 24, 2002

Minority foster parents sought (Pantagraph)
A faith-based organization that leads Illinois in recruiting black foster parents and adoptive families is now tackling a shortage of placements for minority children in McLean County.

April 22, 2002

You Get Past the Tears (ABC)
Tells the story of Hydeia Broadbent, a teenager who was born with AIDS. It is a first-person account of a mother and daughter trying to keep life as normal as possible.

Kids staying with relatives pose win-win situation (Michigan Citizen-Patriot)
Child advocates say millions of dollars are saved every year when a child living with a relative ends up on welfare rolls and not in Michigan's foster care system.

Fixing foster care (Buffalo News)
Hundreds of children who were in foster care before changes in the system were implemented are either back with their birth parents or a relative, adopted or in the process of being adopted.

April 21, 2002

Adopting a search (Washington Times)
Among the nation's 5 million to 6 million adoptees of all ages, thousands search for and find their birth parents every year.

April 16, 2002

Woman Says Tale of Afghan Orphans False (LA Times)
A Culver City woman who claimed hundreds of Afghan women and children are on their way to the United States now admits they don't exist

CBS to air woman's Orphan Train story (Lincoln Journal Star)
Their stories are two among thousands of New York children who were placed by state orphanages onto trains and shipped to foster homes and families out of state.

April 15, 2002

South Africans open hearts, homes to babies (The Star, South Africa)
Couples, desperate to have babies but who can't, are reaching out to newborns abandoned by their mothers

Adoption Love (Newsday)
Ninth grade boy talks about adoptive parent's love.

We are family: Gay parents and their children work toward acceptance (Boston Herald)
Gay families have become increasingly public, especially after a recent American Academy of Pediatrics statement endorsing adoption by gay couples.

April 14, 2002

What should be bundles of joy make sad ads (The Star, South Africa)
More and more babies are being found abandoned. One welfare organisation has used The Star's Classifieds to draw attention to the plight of babies being abandoned weekly.

Adoption Secrets (Hartford Courant)
When Nine Babies From The Same Family Were Scattered To New Homes, Who Could Predict They Would Reunite As Best Friends And Lovers?

Cambodian adoptions remain in limbo after baby-selling allegations (Aberdeen News)
Along with more than 400 other American families, the Christians have been stuck in anxious limbo ever since the Immigration and Naturalization Service stopped Cambodian adoptions during the late fall. The INS acted after a Cambodian human-rights group alleged that babies were being bought or stolen.

For children, neglect can hurt as much as abuse (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Sherrif recalls cases of child neglect and inadequacy of current laws to protect them.

Neglect's insidious effects can be arrested, even reversed through intervention (Seattlel Post-Itelligencer)
Cost of intervention by public health officials more than offset by savings vs. cost to society at large without intervention.

April 13, 2002

N. Carolina Father Challenges Utah Adoption in Court (Salt Lake Tribune)
A North Carolina man is challenging Utah's adoption laws in a federal lawsuit, claiming out-of-state biological fathers are forced to fight for the children in Utah courts, rather than in their home states.

April 12, 2002

Minister's plan to increase adoption: Make them free
A former pro football player turned evangelical minister is trying to change the face of adoption in a radical way. He wants to make all adoptions free -- a proposal causing a major stir in the adoption industry.

Newfoundland: Gays win adoption rights (Planet Out)
Gay and lesbian couples have been given the right to adopt in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Cloning debate putting nation on edge (Buffalo News)
Intense national debate from all sides of political/idological spectrum over benefits and dangers of human cloning.

Children in care failing to 'make the grade' (BBC)
Young people who are in care in Northern Ireland are failing in school, according to the latest figures.

Celebrating Adoptions (Indianopolis Star)
Adoptive parents are inventing rituals to welcome a child to the family.

A team effort (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Thrashers' announcer gets assist from Turner bosses in couple's adoption of daughter in China

April 11, 2002

Child abuse reports not investigated (Daily News - LA)
Los Angeles County child abuse investigators have a backlog of hundreds of cases as much as 3 years old, heightening concern that the system fails to protect children from repeated abuse, according to interviews and an audit obtained Wednesday

Gay parents win in Senate (Denver Post)
Gay couples will be able to keep their names on Colorado birth certificates after a measure to prohibit same-sex birth certificates was killed be a Senate committee Wednesday.

Where are the girls? (Des Moines Register)
A year after Ruth Harbor opened as a home to welcome single, pregnant teens, none are occupying the house at the corner of 42nd Street and Ingersoll Avenue.

April 10, 2002

10 mn children orphaned by AIDS (Times of India)
As many as 2.3 million people under the age of 15 lost either their mother or both parents to AIDS in 2000, Unicef said in a statement, following the publication of statistics this week.

April 9, 2002

Immersed in 2 Worlds, New and Old
Thousands of parents here and elsewhere in the country are enrolling children adopted from abroad in programs where they can learn the languages they would have spoken. In many cases, the parents are also sending their adoptive children to summer cultural camps with others of their ethnicity, or taking them to visit their birthplaces.

Simplifying the earned income credit (CBS MarketWatch)
Child care issues often trip up taxpayers
(Bankrate.com) The eanred income tax credit can be a great benefit. This tax break returns to qualified individuals a portion of the taxes they paid. In cases where a texpayer's bill is small, the credit can even produce a tax refund.

April 8, 2002

Birthmarks (International Herald Tribune - Korea)
After discovering her own adoption history, adoptee starts Internet community, http://cafe.daum.net/loveadoption, for fellow adoptees. "I know there are adopted children out there," she says. "If they've found out and want to maintain secrecy, but also find support, they can go online."

Landmark Co-Parenting Decision (Gay.com)
A Scottish lesbian couple has been given full parental rights. The groundbreaking ruling by an Edinburgh court means that women and their children are considered a family unit by the law.

Adoption Case Headed For U.S. Supreme Court (Midwest News)
Birth father's lawyer misfiled his petition for paternity and child was adopted. Birth father wants Supreme Court to award him custody.

Deaf designer baby - the issues (BBC News)
A lesbian US couple, both of whom are deaf, deliberately chose to try to have a deaf child. They were successful, and now have two deaf children. BBC News Online looks at the issues this 'designer baby' case has raised.

DON'T EXPECT PREGNANCY AT 40: STUDY (New York Post)
Late motherhood among celebrities may make headlines but, for most women, waiting until 40 to have babies is too late, according to new research.

April 7, 2002

Company helps find new foster parents (St. Petersburg Times)
A private, nonprofit company called Open Door is joining the Department of Children and Families in recruiting and developing new foster homes.

FOSTER CHILDREN FACE FRIGHTFUL DEADLINE-MANY TEENS SEE ADOPTION AS SAVIOR FROM THE STREETS (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)Payment required for article
For Jamal Whitaker, a foster child for nine years now living in a residential foster care facility, the desire to be adopted has a special urgency. When Whitaker turns 18 two years from now, he could find himself out on the street because he will be too old to remain in the foster care system.

Fostering justice for all in juvenile court (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Equal justice -- one of the highest values of our legal system -- is now being infused into child abuse and neglect cases in two juvenile courts. It is making a world of difference for everyone involved.

Afghan-Americans rally to adopt Afghan orphans (San Diego Union-Tribune)
A rumor of Afghan orphans coming to the United States has triggered an enthusiastic response from local Afghan-Americans who wish to adopt them.

Adoptive mom helps with baby steps (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
Consultant guides couples along legal, emotional path toward instant parenthood

April 6, 2002

Abandoned tot's mom still sought (Miami Herald)
Child welfare officials will spend about three months searching for the mother of ''Baby Sunshine'' before they seek to place her in a home through adoption.

Man cut off from son at birth must pay support (National Post)
Full amount owed even though stepfather also pays, Ontario court orders

Chinese perform first complete ovary transplant (The Times Online)
A complete ovary transplant has been performed for the first time, in a procedure that promises to restore the fertility of cancer patients and even to reverse the menopause.

April 5, 2002

After nine-month separation, Chinese twins are reunited (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Separated from each other for nine months, the identical twins -- who had been living in a foster home in Zhanjiang, China -- are together again because of a photograph. Otherwise, they might have lived their entire lives not knowing each other.

County improves treatment of kids (Oakland Tribune)
Social Services Agency wins praise from state

Romania's unwanted babies threaten its Nato bid (Financial Times)
It has emerged that US diplomats have warned that Congress could hamper Romania's bid if it continues with a ban on international adoptions.

Mediator will help settle adoption dispute (AP in Orlando Sentinel)
Alabama Supreme Court justices appointed a mediator in the case of a Largo couple fighting to keep custody of a 3-year-old adopted boy.

April 4, 2002

Children may get right to learn identity of biological parents (Japan Today)
Children who were conceived through the use of donated eggs or sperm in Japan may be given the right to information about the identity of their biological parents, government sources said Thursday.

Mother must relinquish son to get help for him (STL Today)
Cost of psychiatric treatment more than parent's monthly income. Custody of 13-year-old son relinquished to state.

Locke signs bill offering newborns 'safe haven' (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)
A bill that allows frantic parents to drop off newborn babies at hospitals or staffed firehouses without fear of prosecution was signed into law yesterday by Gov. Gary Locke.

MINNESOTA CHILD WELFARE: Black kids more likely to be taken from homes (Pioneer Press)
Black children in Minnesota are more than 16 times as likely as white children to be removed from their homes because of neglect or abuse, according to a report released today to the state legislature.

Fostering doubt: State must track children's welfare (The Daytona Beach News-Journal)
Florida leaders don't want to admit it but the state's foster-care system is in real trouble.

A Victim of It's Success - Less-visible INS under adoptee law (Newsday)
A new law aimed at streamlining international adoption procedures may end up eliminating one of the few programs that produces good press for one of the most beleaguered agencies in the U.S. government.

April 3, 2002

Couple take in 6 grandkids but lose home (Orlando Sentinel)
Fred and Louise Burgess are among the estimated 15,000 grandparents in metropolitan Orlando raising their grandchildren. Nationwide, 2.3 million grandparents are responsible for rearing their grandchildren, according to the latest U.S. Census estimates.

April 2, 2002

More Americans Support Gay Adoption-The Educated and Young Show the Most Support (ABC News)
Public support for allowing gay couples to adopt children has risen to a slim plurality in the latest ABCNEWS.com poll.

Empty cribs (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
As U.S. and Cambodian officials try to untangle allegations of baby-buying and adoption corruption, hundreds of families remain in legal and emotional limbo.

'Baby Grace' Gets Credit: Desperate moms may get a break (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Supporters credit the story of 'Baby Grace' for the state Senate's approval Monday of the "Safe Place For Newborns Act".

Pennsylvania co-parent ban goes to court (Planetout.com)
Two Pennsylvania couples -- one gay, the other lesbian -- are taking the state's ban on co-parenting to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

State locks foster kids in mental ward (Orlando Sentinel)
Foster children as young as 3 are being held for months in a locked crisis unit for the mentally ill in Orange County, often because

April 1, 2002

State's change to foster care rules works to help ages 18-23 (Naples Daily News)
Foster kids will have an easier time adjusting to independence after they turn 18 as a result of legislation that expands services in the foster system run by the state Department of Children and Families.

March 31, 2002

Adoption process proves difficult for gay couples (Courier)
Adoption for gay or lesbian couples has become a national hot topic as two Florida men fight for the right to adopt one of their foster children against the laws of the state.

Adoption bill (The Clarion-Ledger)
A bill pending Gov. Ronnie Musgrove's signature would give the father of an unborn child born out of wedlock 30 days to pursue his claim of paternity.

Poverty and family breakdown leave Russia's youngest generation unable to cope AP in The Napa Valley Regester)
Lurching from uncaring homes to underfunded orphanages to alleys haunted by drug dealers and pimps, street children -- estimated to number up to 3 million -- are making up an increasing share of Russia's shrinking population.

40 U.S. families allowed to adopt Cambodian kids (USA Today)
Forty American families are making preparations this week to travel to Cambodia to finalize adoptions there, the first invited by the U.S. government to do so since an orphanage-by-orphanage probe of baby trafficking began in late February.

Model Pupil In A Model Program (The Hartford Courant)
Richard Vega, Eastern Connecticut State University basketball star, is a state foster child, one of more than 200 youths the Department of Children and Families sponsors in colleges and universities across the country

US parents adopt Chinese products for their children (Reuters in The Times of India)
NEW YORK: When Yue-Sai Kan, a Chinese television personality, launched the first Asian doll line in the United States last year, she was surprised by the amount of feedback she received from American parents with adopted Asian children.

March 30, 2002

Gays, lesbians cheer law extending rights (The Press-Enterprise)
A same-sex partner can make medical and financial decisions for the other during illness.

Despairing for children's mental health, some parents give up custody (AP in St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Unable to afford mental health care for their children, some desperate parents are relinquishing custody to the state to ensure they receive treatment, advocates and state officials say.

March 29, 2002

Judge dismisses 'doctrinaire' case against adoption (The Guardian)
A high court judge yesterday overruled "inflexible and doctrinaire" objections to a Jewish couple's adoption of a child born to secular parents with a Jewish, Muslim and Catholic background.

Afghan adoption plea unravels (The Examiner)
With the addition of two prominent Afghan officials Thursday to the growing evidence that a mass e-mail soliciting families to adopt Afghan orphans is a ploy, it seems the only people claiming it is not a hoax are the couple that perpetuated the tragic story.

March 27, 2002

Study: State foster care program not meeting federal standards (AP in Naples Daily News)
Florida's foster care programs are not meeting federal goals for the protection of children nor are they providing adequate health and educational services, a draft report issued Tuesday shows.

Federal Embryo Adoption (Reason)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is about to get into the embryo adoption business.

Adoption gets top billing here (The Washington Times)
The National Building Museum was the setting for Sunday's Oscar Night America, a fund-raiser for First Star, the nonprofit organization supporting laws protecting children, and the bipartisan Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Last year, the group's bashes in 37 cities raised more than $1.5 million. Sunday's $500-per-person event here raised $180,000.

March 26, 2002

Many would-be parents hiring doctors to evaluate children before adopting (The Macon Telegraph)
As more Americans adopt foreign children, many are turning to medical experts to help them select healthy babies.

House tentatively approves banning same-sex birth certificates (AP in Rocky Mountain News)
Gay couples have sought court approval to put both their names on birth certificates in an attempt to bypass the Legislature, supporters of a bill to ban the practice argued Tuesday.

Children on the doorstep (Chicago Tribune)
U.S. immigration authorities are ill-equipped to handle the responsibilities of foster parenting or figuring out what's best for abandoned international children. At no time do the multiple and conflicting personalities of INS become more glaring than when it tries to function as protector, judge and prosecutor of children who arrive alone and illegally in this country.

National Briefing: Midwest (The New York Times)
MICHIGAN: GAYS AND ADOPTION Supporters and opponents of gays' adopting children say the state law needs to be clarified.

Bounced to foster homes, boy withdraws (Milwaukee Joural Sentinel)
Years on the move give 10-year-old a disorder that bodes ill for his future

March 25, 2002

States Should Let Lesbians and Gays Adopt (Newsday)
The common thread among all the states that prohibit or impede adoption by gays and lesbians is their stated desire to provide the best possible homes for children. The legal arguments presented however, to prevent homosexuals from adopting, are ill-informed and disingenuous nonsense.

OPSEU strike delays long-awaited adoptions (The Toronto Star)
International adoptions are just one of many services affected by the Ontario Public Services Employees Union strike, which started March 13.

March 24, 2002

Adopting a better policy/In family friendly atmosphere, companies offering more benefits to help employees become parents (Houston Chronicle - Archives)(must pay to search archives)
Ten years ago, corporate adoption benefits didn't exist. But today, largely because of the efforts of Wendy's International founder Dave Thomas, who championed adoption benefits, more and more companies are offering adoption benefits and increasing existing ones. The reason? Adoption benefits make good business sense.

March 23, 2002

O'Donnell brings more attention to adoptions (The Indianapolis Star)
Both advocates and foes of allowing gays and lesbians to adopt are reacting vocally to Rosie's activist stance.

Shift to private children's services under way (St. Petersburg Times)
State officials want to privatize adoption and child welfare duties. Now they have to find people to take the jobs.

Danang Round Trip, Sad All the Way (The New York Times)
Heidi Bub is the protagonist of "Daughter From Danang," a documentary that is part of the New Films/New Directors series at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1975, as a 7-year-old, the Amerasian Heidi was brought from Danang as part of Operation Babylift, run by the United States government, which found adoptive parents for Vietnamese orphans because of concern about their fate amid the racism and poverty likely to be rampant after the war.

March 22, 2002

A Cold War on Embryo Adoptions (Los Angales Times)
Transfers that help infertile couples have kids likely are the next flash point in the abortion debate. Rights advocates are in a tough position.

Birth-certificate rule passes House panel (The Denver Post)
Same-sex couples: Bill will harm kids

State making progress in foster-care settlement (The Tennessean)
State officials under a court settlement order to place Tennessee foster children near their homes have hired about two-thirds of the 370 new case managers and supervisors needed to help comply with the agreement.

Agencies see baby's death as a chance to reach out (The Virginia-Pilot)
On March 15, a baby was found dead in the women's restroom at First Colonial High School. A 15-year-old sophomore at the school has been identified as the mother. People who work with expectant mothers -- adoption agency directors, crisis pregnancy counselors, prenatal home visitors -- are struggling with the question, "What can be done to keep another infant from being left to die?"

POLL RESULTS (The Virginia-Pilot)
Should Virginia pass a law allowing mothers to abandon newborns in safe havens?

Va. has twice rejected safe havens to leave unwanted newborns (The Virginia-Pilot)
Virginia lawmakers debate safe-haven legeslation, allowing mothers to abandon newborns in safe havens, such as hospitals, without fear of prosecution. Proponents say safe haven legislation can prevent tragedies. But opponents say such measures are fraught with problems.

March 21, 2002

Nation divided on gay parents (The Washington Times)
A review of recent court decisions shows the nation is broadly divided about homosexual family rights - and states are not budging from their liberal or conservative stances on the issue.

Couple fly to Cambodia to foster adoption effort (The Indiana Star)
Jamestown couple Dirk and Cathy Caldwell traveled more than 10,000 miles to meet the Cambodian twins they are calling their own for the first time.

Pondering the power of science (International Herald Tribune)
President George W. Bush has appointed Leon Kass chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics. As a professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Chicago since 1976, Kass has long believed that science could threaten the human human condition, both by undermining human self-esteem and by generating tools that might be misused, particularly by genetically reshaping the human mind and body.

Rosie Urges Florida to Repeal Gay Adoption Ban (AP/Fox News Channel)
Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell bought full page ads in several Florida newspapers Thursday urging the Legislature to repeal a law that bans gays from adopting children.

Uganda dancers all about joy
Touring children's troupe offers universal message of hope (San Francisco Chronicle)
Death brought them together, but the joy of dance keeps them going. Directed and choreographed by Frank Katoola and based in Kampala's Orphanage of the Daughters of Charity, the troupe is made up entirely of children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

March 20, 2002

Call To Ban Human Cloning (AP - CBS News)
(AP) A coalition including advocates for reproductive rights and the disabled sent a letter Tuesday to Congress and the president calling for a moratorium or ban on all forms of human cloning.

Foster parents speak up for bill (Lawrence Journal-World)
A foster parent for the past 16 years, Lori Oden testified Tuesday before the House Federal and State Affairs Committee in support of a bill designed to protect foster parents from hostile social workers and false allegations of abuse.

French Presidential Candidates Oppose Gay Adoption (Rainbow Network)
Both of the main presidential candidates in France have stated their opposition to marriage and adoption rights for lesbians and gay men.

Woman's 25-Year Hunt for Son Ends Happily (iWon News)
For more than 25 years, Uruguayan Sara Mendez searched for her infant son, who had been snatched away in the night by a group of soldiers. Her hunt ended on Tuesday when a DNA test confirmed that a man raised by an adoptive family in Argentina was the son of Mendez and Mauricio Gatti, both accused leftists who had fled to neighboring Argentina to escape Uruguay's brutal 1973-85 dictatorship.

Schools struggle to balance sex education (Hampton Roads)
Stephanie Goehring doesn't think a frank talk about contraception and condom use would have prevented the death of a newborn left in a toilet at First Colonial High School last week. But such a discussion, the Kempsville High School senior said, is still worth having -- and one school divisions across South Hampton Roads ought to promote as part of their abstinence-based sex education programs.

March 19, 2002

Slain newborn's death prompts hard questions (The Halifax Herald Limited)
Toronto - It's the kind of case that leaves anyone with a conscience reeling in dismay: a terrified teenager cuts short a brand new life after secretly giving birth in the family bathroom.

March 18, 2002

ACLU will not push gay adoption case (AP in The Grand Island Independent)
The American Civil Liberties Union said Monday it will not challenge a court ruling that thwarted an attempt by two lesbians to adopt a child.

Battle Brings Soldier Closer to His Ethnic Roots (The Washington Post)
First there was an American in the Taliban. Now it turns out that one of the commanders of an Army unit that fought in last week's big battle at Shahikot is half-Afghan.

Report: Liza, New Husband to Adopt (iWon News)
Liza Minnelli and producer David Gest are wasting no time in starting a family. After marrying on Saturday, they're already planning to adopt four children, a British newspaper reported Monday.

March 17, 2002

Pakistan gang buys, sells children (The Seattle Times)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Preying on this nation's pervasive poverty, a kidnapping gang, including three nurses, has been buying children from desperately poor parents and smuggling them to Malta where they are resold at a substantial profit, police said yesterday.

Adoption, even if registered, can be challenged: SC (The Times of India)
NEW DELHI: In an important ruling concerning adoption by Hindus, the Supreme Court has held that though a document registering adoption should be treated as final proof of adoption, the same could still be challenged in a court of law if evidence to the contrary could be put forth.

Child safeguards still weak (The Orlando Sentinel)
Florida's Department of Children & Families, the agency responsible for looking after the state's abused and neglected children, has made little progress a year after being blasted for serious shortcomings, a new report concludes.

Adopting a foreign baby, with a doctor's advice (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
As more Americans adopt children from other countries, many are turning to medical experts to help them select healthy babies.

Family reunion (The Sun Herald)
Irish-born adopted Cajun finds the best of both worlds

Lesbian to pay child support (AP in Dayton Daily News)
Delaware has joined a handful of states breaking legal ground in child support with a court ruling that two women should both be considered parents of a 4-year-old boy to whom one gave birth after in-vitro fertilization.

March 16, 2002

Adoption reformer `oversimplifies': Local agencies deny they charge by a child's race (Eastside Journal)
A Redmond church leader has launched a national campaign to reform state adoption laws, but officials with local adoption agencies say his effort is misplaced and his message is misleading.

Russians despair as more bodies of new-born babies discovered (The Scotsman - UK)
RUSSIA’S chronic social problems hit rock bottom this week with the discovery in Moscow of the bodies of two new-born babies, apparently killed by their mothers.

Agape denies expelling mothers (The Commercial Appeal)
Agape Child & Family Services on Friday denied allegations that it has sought to turn a federally funded program for homeless women into a maternity home to gain infants for adoption.

Woman to be tried on charges she left an infant in the trash (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Liem Swat Nio is to be arraigned April 5 on charges of and relating to attempted murder, aggravated assault, and endangering the welfare of a child. Nio is in jail with bail set at $250,000.

March 15, 2002

Foster-care agencies sue to say they aren't subject to audits (AP in The Repository)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Private foster-care agencies have asked a federal court to declare that they are not subject to review by state Auditor Jim Petro, who has released a series of audits that, in some cases, have found significant instances of misspending.

Groups Fight Florida's Ban on Gay Adoptions (New York Times)
As Florida officials seek to remove a 10-year-old boy from the home of the same-sex foster parents who have raised him since infancy, gay and civil rights agencies and children's advocates have organized to challenge a state law prohibiting gays from adopting.

Florida urged to lift gay adoption ban (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Miami --- Touting support from talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell and thousands of Floridians, opponents of the state's ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians called on Gov. Jeb Bush and lawmakers Thursday to repeal the law.

Red tape can't deter parents-to-be (The Indianapolis Star)
Hoosier couple travel to Cambodia to throw a birthday party for twins caught up in adoption ban.

Father pleads guilty in sale of baby (The Detroit Free Press)
A Chesterfield Township man charged with trying to sell his 10-month-old daughter in 2000 pleaded guilty Thursday to child abandonment and agreed to drop his appeals case.

Nebraska Supreme Court will revisit gay adoptions (Omaha World-Herald)
A week after rejecting a gay woman's attempt to adopt her partner's child, the Nebraska Supreme Court is getting ready to consider another adoption case involving two women.

"Abandoned baby" bill wins initial OK (Post-Dispatch Jefferson City Bureau)
Leaving a newborn child with someone at a hospital could give parents legal protections under a bill given initial approval Thursday by the Missouri Senate

With Rosie's Support, Gay Adoption Campaign Begins (MSNBC)
Activists hoping to repeal Florida's law barring gays from adopting children got a major boost from a celebrity admission on Thursday.

'IT'S EASIER IF YOU'RE A CELEBRITY' (Western Daily Press)
The number of celebrities adopting children is growing, with Angelina Jolie and husband Billy Bob Thornton adopting a baby from Cambodia, according to Jolie's father Jon Voight.

Adoption hope for gay couples (Guardian Unlimited)
Ministers in favour of giving unmarried and same-sex couples the right to adopt appear poised to win the argument. A final decision will be taken after MPs return from their Easter break, but last night there was renewed optimism that all barriers to adoption would be removed.

Bill offers foster children more help (Sun Tallahassee Bureau)
TALLAHASSEE - Foster children who have reached adolescence and are seeking to start life on their own would be eligible for scholarships and other aid under far-reaching legislation now headed to the desk of Gov. Jeb Bush.

Gay adoption move gains momentum (United Press International)
Although momentum and public opinion against the Florida ban on gay adoptions appeared to build this week, chances of abolishing the law soon still don't look good.

'Grandma' Holt named to Women's Hall of Fame (The Oregonian)
The Creswell woman hundreds of children from around the world called "Grandma" because of the efforts she took to find them a home has been chosen for induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

March 14, 2002

Human clone likely in 10 years (The Sun Press)
Ronald M. Green, one of the world's leading authorities on biomedical ethics, answered questions on the ethics of cloning in his talk, Should We Clone? Ethics and the New Science, March 1 at The Temple-Tifereth Israel.

Man finds abandoned girl on back steps (North Jersey News)
When Kevin O'Hara looked out the kitchen window of his Hackensack home, he spotted two tiny legs wiggling beneath a bloody shirt. Rushing outside, he found a newborn girl lying on his granite back steps. Hackensack police are searching for the mother, who they said must have abandoned the child within hours of giving birth.

Rosie’s Story O’Donnell Talks About Being a Gay Mom (ABC News)
Rosie O'Donnell doesn't care whether the world knows that she's gay. But she does want everyone to know that she is a gay mother.

Rosie talks adoption in coming-out interview (USA Today)
Gay parent Rosie O'Donnell says that President Bush is "wrong" in his adoption beliefs.

Opponents launch e-mail blitz against Florida law banning adoptions by gays (Sun-Sentinel)
In only three days, Gov. Jeb Bush and the head of the state Department of Children & Families were inundated with more than 63,000 e-mails from people opposed to a Florida law that prevents gay people from adopting, according to the ACLU.

Analyst: Courts to drive gay adoption policy (CNN)
The sensitive issue of adoption by gay and lesbian parents will continue to gain political acceptance, albeit slowly, predicts one legal analyst.

Race out as an adoption factor - Hamilton County approves consent decree
Hamilton County commissioners approved a landmark agreement Wednesday that guarantees a child's race will no longer be a factor in adoptions.

Dead girl's kin sue adoption agency (The Fresno Bee)
Siblings of 5-year-old Springville girl allege they suffered abuse.

Outdated adoption - Ministers are being too pusillanimous (Guardian Unlimited)
Government whips meet ministers to decide the fate of the adoption and children bill which returns to the Commons next week for its report stage.

Agency Closes 'Respite Centers' for Abused Children (The Washington Post)
District child protection officials have abruptly closed three short-term "respite centers" established two years ago to shelter children removed from their homes following abuse or neglect complaints. Instead, efforts have been expanded to place those children directly in foster care or other stable arrangements.

Children's benefits can be spent on foster care (AP in The Seattle Times)
The U.S. Supreme Court extended an order yesterday that temporarily allowed Washington state to continue taking Social Security benefits from about 1,000 orphans and disabled children to pay for their foster care.

WASHINGTON COUNTY AND WISCONSIN: Completing the circle (Pioneer Press)
Linda Stage, born in Bogotá, Colombia, was one of its first infants to be adopted from FANA, an organization that cares for Colombia's abandoned babies. In 1999, Linda became the first FANA adoptee to have adopted a child from FANA.

Activists press war on Florida’s gay adoption ban with meeting, TV show (Sun-Sentinel)
The two sides weighing in on Florida’s ban on gay adoption agree on one thing: It’s about family values and children.

Oregon family at vortex of ban on gay adoption (The Oregonian)
The story is of an Oregon couple, formerly of Florida, who may lose the fifth-grade boy they've raised since infancy because of a Florida law banning gay adoption.

Not Wanted: Gay Parents
Three States Ban Gays or Same-Sex Couples From Adopting Children
A generation ago, former beauty queen Anita Bryant put the national spotlight on Florida and gay rights.

March 13, 2002

Adoption interrupted: Jolie, Thornton in limbo (USA Today)
Academy Award winners Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton cannot bring their newly adopted Cambodian son into the USA for now because of a suspension placed on issuing visas to orphaned children of that country.

U.S. to Approve Jolie Baby (AP in iWon News)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - The U.S. Embassy hasn't approved Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton's adoption of a Cambodian baby, which means the Hollywood couple can't take the infant to the United States immediately.

Supervisors seek waiver of every-month foster-kid visits (Daily News)
Los Angeles County supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to appeal an appellate court ruling that requires social workers to visit foster children once a month, unless a court-ordered waiver is granted.

March 12, 2002

'Buying and Selling'- Preacher Calls Adoption Fees Discriminatory (ABC News)
When a couple seeking to adopt a white baby is charged $35,000 and a couple seeking a black baby is charged $4,000, the image that comes to the Rev. Ken Hutcherson's mind is of a practice that was outlawed in America nearly 150 years ago - the buying and selling of human beings.

CLOSE TO HOME - California adoptees fight for access to birth records (Los Angales Times)
Susan Castagnetto said she believes that her civil rights are being violated. As a child raised by adoptive parents, Castagnetto has no right to see her original birth certificate, which lists the names of her biological parents and other true information about her birth.

Rhetoric and Reports Don't Help Foster Kids (Los Angales Times)
An audit, released last week by state Controller Kathleen Connell, demonstrates that Los Angales County's foster care system--the nation's largest, with 53,000 children under its control--is doing an inadequate job of protecting kids.

Trial in adoption case delayed again (The Russia Journal)
MOSCOW - A Russian court on Tuesday delayed the trial of an Italian woman charged with bribing officials to arrange adoptions of Russian children by foreigners, after defense lawyers appealed for more time to review the 16-volume case file.

For U.S. prospective parents, it is to Russia with love (The Post-Crescent)
Alexander “Sasha” Balskus was adopted on his third birthday, Oct. 16, 2001, with the help of Diane and Andrei Volkov, Lutheran Social Services adoption directors for Buryatia and the country of Mongolia. Sasha is one of 90 Buryatia children placed with Wisconsin families.

Jolie 'grateful' for adopted son (BBC News)
Hollywood couple Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton have yet to get official US approval for their adoption of a Cambodian boy.

China allows Hong Kong adoption for 800 children [Last item on page] (The Seattle Times)
Eight hundred adopted Chinese children have been given permission to live with their families in Hong Kong after a bitter struggle.

Bill seeks jury trials in custody decisions (The Arizona Republic)
A bill before the Legislature would allow parents faced with losing their children to request a jury trial in Superior Court, putting the decision in the hands of 12 people and making the proceedings public.

Paid parental leave pushed for U.S. workers (Herald Tribune)
Three House members have agreed to make another attempt at getting the government to offer paid parental leave to federal employees.

Tackling AIDS in Africa (The Seattle Times)
Last week, two of our country's leading citizens boarded a plane to call attention to another crisis, one that has already killed 22 million people and threatens to orphan 40 million children by the end of the decade.

March 11, 2002

Alabama couple gets custody of `Baby Sam' (AP in The Florida Times-Union)
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - A lengthy custody fight over a boy known as "Baby Sam" ended Monday with the adoptive parents getting to keep the child under an agreement with his biological father.

Federal judge grants class-action status to lawsuit against DYFS (AP in Newsday)
TRENTON, N.J. -- A federal judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit claiming New Jersey's child welfare agency failed to protect children entrusted to its care.

Researcher unites people with ties to orphan trains (DeMoines Register)
Also called baby trains or mercy trains, they brought thousands of children to Iowa. From 1854 to 1929, families in 316 Iowa towns took in 8,000 to 10,000 children who came from orphanages in New York City and Boston.

March 10, 2002

Baby's journey ends happily Left at a bus station (South Bend Tribune)
Left at a bus station in China, a little girl finds a home thanks to a Plymouth family.

March 9, 2002

CLOSE TO HOME Birth family quest strengthens bonds (Los Angales Times)
As a woman who was raised by adoptive parents, the Claremont author and mother of two has strong feelings about adoption rights and wrote the book "Birthright" (Penguin Press, 1994) to help people locate their birth families.

Ruling leaves gay-adoption question open (Omaha World-Herald)
LINCOLN - The question of whether a gay couple can adopt a child is not settled, despite a ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court.

AIDS orphans a sad reality in South Africa (The Times of India)
JOHANNESBURG: Each time 11-year-old Nkosi Johnson goes onstage and declares, "I am HIV positive," he hammers home the grim reality -- millions of children like him have either been affected or infected by the deadly HIV/AIDS virus.

Agape pressured moms to give upkids, HUD told (The Commercial Appeal)
A complaint by Memphis Area Legal Services alleges that a Christian social services agency appears to be operating a program for homeless pregnant women as a maternity home in order to gain babies for adoption.

March 8, 2002

Ex-lawmakers decry gay-adoption ban (Orlando Sentinel)
Florida's ban on gay adoption, already under scrutiny in federal court, now is being criticized by some of the politicians who made it law.

L.A.'s 'legal orphans' (LA Daily News)
A state audit released Thursday accused Los Angeles County of creating a generation of "legal orphans" by failing to quickly find safe homes for foster children, reunite them with their families or find couples to adopt them.

Afghans trade sons for wheat (International Herald Tribune)
Haunted by want, depleted from hunger, Akhtar Mohammed did something that has become ruefully unremarkable in this desperate country. He took two of his 10 children to the bazaar of the nearest city and traded them for bags of wheat.

Court rejects attempt by lesbians to adopt child (AP in The Grand Island Independant)
LINCOLN -- The state Supreme Court rejected an attempt Friday by two lesbians to adopt a child, but dodged the question of whether gay couples have the right to adopt children in Nebraska.

March 7, 2002

Abandoned Baby Legislation Mulled (Newsday)
A man believed to be from Connecticut thought he was doing the right thing when he dropped his unwanted newborn daughter off at a hospital.

Ex-lawmakers reverse on adoption ban (PlanetOut)
Saying "we were wrong," nine former Florida state legislators who voted 25 years ago for a ban on gay adoptions pledged to support a repeal of the controversial law.

Studies show risks in test-tube babies (AP in The Beacon Journal)
Test-tube babies have double the usual risk of being underweight or having major birth defects, researchers say. But they say the findings should not necessarily discourage infertile couples from trying to conceive this way.

Pregnancy at an older age - Risks are often manageable (News Observer)
In the past, women over 30 having babies was more unusual than it is now: The rates have been increasing steadily since the 1970s, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

New crisis for HIV children (The International Herald Tribune)
In a cover article in February in The American Journal of Public Health, two Harlem pediatricians point to a high percentage of older children who were born with HIV who are suffering from severe behavioral problems and mental illness.

Editorial: Orphanages / It matters whether they're wise (Star Tribune)
Why won't Minnesota lawmakers declare a moratorium on building big foster-care institutions while child-welfare folks think the matter through?

March 6, 2002

It's the courier, with an embryo (Bell Globemedia Interactive )
To the child's searching question, "Mom? Dad? Where did I come from?", the science of reproductive technologies has made possible some very untraditional answers.

L.A. County foster care gets black eye (Daily Bulletin)
LOS ANGELES -- Shocked by the rising number of children killed in foster care, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors condemned Tuesday the failure to do a better job of protecting children in the nation's largest foster care system.

Saudi medical team reports first uterus transplant (AP in The Arizona Republic)
Doctors in Saudi Arabia have performed the first human uterus transplant, which produced two menstrual periods before it failed and had to be removed.

Board blasts foster-care failures (The Daily News)
Shocked by the rising number of children killed in foster care, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday condemned the failure to do a better job of protecting children in the nation's largest foster care system.

Keep cause and effect straight (The Denver Post)
The rights of same-sex couples to be certified as "natural" parents of a child is the subject of a bill sponsored by Rep. Pam Rhodes, R-Thornton.

March 5, 2002

No deal in decades-old kidnapping case, lawyers say (AP in Newsday)
The case against a couple charged with the decades-old kidnapping of a toddler appeared to be moving toward a trial as lawyers agreed Tuesday there is no settlement in sight.

Yes, America: You do know a mother who is gay (USA Today)
After more than a year of careful planning, Rosie O'Donnell has come out. The impact of her decision cannot be overestimated.

Vigil of hope (The Press-Enterprise)
Pomona hospital waits for its first newborn since starting its surrender program

March 4, 2002

Canada Bans Human Embryo Cloning (AP in Newsday)
Canada issued new guidelines for stem-cell research Monday, banning human embryo cloning but permitting government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.

Adoption law needs to move at speed of love (The Chicago Tribune)
Here's one case that needs to be expedited. Here's one little boy whose name needs to be deleted from the foster-care rolls so that he and his family can get on with their lives.

New INS Ban Ties Up Hundreds of Cambodian Adoptions (New York Newsday)
When Bernadette Bruno of Moriches won approval to adopt an infant girl from Cambodia in October, she felt like she'd given birth herself.

Empty cribs will be filled with Cambodian adoptions (USA Today)
Dozens of prospective American parents learned Monday that their long-stalled adoptions from Cambodia could be final by April.

African Boys Languishing in Custody of the I.N.S. (The New York Times)
Last July, four teenagers from Tanzania who apparently hoped to stay in the United States to attend school wandered away from a Boy Scout jamboree in Virginia.

Family law should not be redefined (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
The stealth revolution in family law that is radically redefining the family in one state after another to include rights for gay and lesbian couples has recently come to Pennsylvania.

Ruling in the child's best interests (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Subverting the family? Culture war? Legal approbation for homosexual conduct?

That little extra push (Ha'aretz, English Edition)
Surrogate motherhood and the adoption of children from abroad are only two categories on a long and varied list of needs and circumstances that qualify for interest-free loans through the Center for Surrogate Parenthood.

March 3, 2002

Adoption often offers hope to 'desperate' birth mothers (Midland Reporter-Telegram)
In a desperate realm, the guiding principle behind the Baby Moses Law in a child abandonment case is that two lives, that of the birth mother and the child, can be saved and honored and nurtured.

Dying to Have a Family (Time)
Genetic screening guaranteed a healthy baby. Did Mom make the right choice?

Adoption often offers hope to 'desperate' birth mothers (Midland Reporter-Telegram)
In a desperate realm, the guiding principle behind the Baby Moses Law in a child abandonment case is that two lives, that of the birth mother and the child, can be saved and honored and nurtured.

Risk-Free Babies (MSNBC)
The mother is destined for early Alzheimer's. Gene tests brought her a child who is not. What's next?

Multiple births prompt review of fertility clinics (Omaha World-Herald)
Every in-vitro fertilization procedure presents fertility specialists and their patients with a critical choice.

Adoptive parents have hope (The Beacon Journal)
They must wait out weekend to hear from INS about their infant daughter stuck in Cambodia

Sweden set to enshrine liberal gay adoption practices in law (The Miami Herald)
Lawmakers are now debating a bill that would give gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt children in Sweden and abroad, and it is expected easily to win approval in June when parliament votes on the measure.

Front-line staff increase should strengthen DHS (Portland Press-Herald)
The Department of Human Services request for an additional $4 million signals a new willingness to confront the agency's failures.

Carabello: Adult adoptees deserve access to personal birth information (Athens Banner-Herald)
Editorial in support of new legeslation that would allow adopted persons who are 21 or older to obtain a copy of their original birth certificates.

Fashioning a family (Seattle Times)
Orphaned Ethiopian youngsters 'come home' to their adoptive parents in Washington

How do you like your kids? Please select from the menu (The Beacon Journal)
Mother with Alzheimer's disease uses geneticist to screen her eggs for a healthy child.

Genes, Embryos and Ethics (The New York Times)
A report last week about one woman's effort to have a healthy child has provoked sharp questions about how far embryo screening should go, who should have children and who should decide.

2 homes for youths to close: Jefferson and Hardin sites called outdated (The Courier-Journal)
Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children has decided to phase out and perhaps sell its residential campuses in Jefferson and Hardin counties, replacing them with treatment centers for children with serious emotional needs.

For struggling young parents, a place to call home (The Buffalo News)
Natasha Williams, 20, mother of 2 1/2 year old Ja'Saun has the chance to get her life together at HomeSpace, a place for young parents.

March 2, 2002

Adoption ruling stings family (St. Petersburg Times)
A Largo couple prepares for a final effort to try to keep the child's biological father from taking him back.

Foster-care reform urged after school attack (The Journal News)
The convoluted foster care system needs a major overhaul to properly treat the growing number of disturbed and violent children in residential centers, caregivers and advocates told state Sen. Nicholas Spano during a public hearing yesterday.

Centers for Troubled Foster Children Need More Money, Administrator Says (The New York Times)
Testifying in a state lawmaker's investigation into institutions for troubled foster children, administrators and advocates called on the state government today to increase funding so that more and better qualified staff could be hired.

Lawyer: Russians caused boy's death (Courier Post)
The attorney for a Franklin mother charged with murdering her 5-year-old adopted Russian son said Friday the boy likely suffered his fatal injury "in the hands of the Russian people."

March 1, 2002

New judge to hear immigrant dad's custody case (The Chicago Tribune)
A Mexican man who has fought for years to gain custody of his two young daughters will now argue his case in front of a new judge.

Plea leads to second career -- as a mom (The Idaho Statesman)
A few dozen of the thousands of children available for adoption in Vietnam begged Lori Carpenter, a Reno executive, with their words and smiles to give them a new life in the United States.

But Will She Baby-sit? Mother Carries Her Daughter's Twins (ABC News)
After Marie LaPlant learned her daughter could not bear children, she offered to carry a baby to term for her, as a surrogate mom.

Students rally for foster children awaiting adoption (The Kansas City Star)
The 500 or so students from 16 Catholic elementary schools stomped their feet and pleaded with Missouri elected officials to fully fund the Adoption Awareness Law to promote adoptions of foster children.

African-Americans can help future: young people (The State)
As director of the South Carolina Guardian ad Litem Program, I am dedicated to providing a volunteer advocate for every abused and neglected child in the foster care system.

February 28, 2002

Good education for foster children sought (Post-Gazette Education Writer)
New rules promoted in state special report

Alternative Families (Daily Herald)
Mixed response to AAP support of co-parent or second-parent adoptions for children of gay couples.

Kids struggle to survive on post-Soviet Moscow streets (The Detriot Free Press)
For first time, Russia's homeless without a net

Designer Baby or Problem Child? (Wired News)
While politicians and religious leaders argue over human cloning, bioethicists say a more immediate problem is overshadowed: the potential for designer babies.

U.s. Marines Give Toys To Orphans (AP in Guardian Unlimited - UK)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Marines handed out teddy bears, candy, wool hats and gloves to children at Kabul's largest orphanage, where youngsters sleep two to a bed in unheated rooms but where smiles replaced tears for a few moments Thursday afternoon.

Medina family's adopted baby stranded on other side of world (The Beacon Journal)
U.S. rule won't let little girl go home

Australia Ponders Ban on Research That Destroys IVF Embryos (CNS News.com)
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Australia's federal government is actively considering recommendations to ban destructive experimentation on human embryos left over from fertility treatment.

Medina family's adopted baby stranded on other side of world (The Beacon Journal)
U.S. rule won't let little girl go home

Australia Ponders Ban on Research That Destroys IVF Embryos (CNS News.com)
Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Australia's federal government is actively considering recommendations to ban destructive experimentation on human embryos left over from fertility treatment.

February 27, 2002

Britain OKs Embryo Cloning (Reuters - CBS News)
(REUTERS) Britain's scientists won a green light Wednesday to pioneer the cloning of human embryos for research and set up the world's first embryo cell bank.

Another chance at parenthood (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
Couples who've had surgery to prevent pregnancy have non-surgical alternatives

UK backs human embryo cloning (CNN.com)
LONDON, England -- Britain's scientists have been given permission to pioneer the cloning of human embryos for research, and set up the world's first embryo cell bank.

Gene test spares baby from defect (The Chicago Tribune)
Inherited disease avoided, but birth fuels ethics debate

Prolific Sperm Donor's Bad Gene (Reuters in Wired News)
AMSTERDAM -- A Dutch sperm donor who fathered 18 children is suffering from a rare hereditary degenerative brain disorder, a hospital said on Wednesday.

February 26, 2002

Court: France Didn't Discriminate
Europe Human Rights Court Finds No Discrimination in France's Refusal to Allow Gay Man to Adopt

On February 26, 1859, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about New York Almshouse orphans. "New York as a Nursing-Mother to her Foundlings"
This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Frank Bellew condemns the neglectful and abusive treatment of orphaned infants under the auspices of the New York City Almshouse.

Couples find joy in Romanian orphanages (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Sheboygan agency helps Wisconsinites fill homes, hearts with children

February 25, 2002

Swedes plan to legalize gay-adoption practices (The Charlotte Observer)
Lawmakers are now debating a bill that would give gay and lesbian couples the right to adopt children in Sweden and abroad, and it is expected to easily win approval in June when parliament votes on the measure.

Quebec Opens Doors To Gay Adoption (Gay.com UK)
Paul Begin, Quebec's Justice Minister, has recommended that same-sex couples be given full rights as parents and the same consideration as heterosexual couples when it comes to adopting a child.

Transgender Battle (ABC News)
Dad Who Had Sex Change Fights for Custody of Two Kids

Adoption assistance benefits (The Star-Ledger)
When Jolene and Anthony Watkins decided to adopt a baby girl from China, they had some help from their employers.

Adoptive parents, kids languish in Cambodian limbo (USA Today)
Now 7 months old, Benjamin Sarin and Abigail Saron remain in their impoverished Southeast Asian homeland, unable to receive visas to come to the USA - stuck in limbo along with dozens of orphans poised to be adopted by eager American parents.

Almost babies: Dolls so lifelike, their purchase is staged as adoption (Plano Star Courier)
The Plano-based specialty shop, Nooks 'n' Krannies, is one of three Texas stores to contain a nursery of the lifelike, adoptable dolls created by Lee Middleton.

Adopting special-needs kids presents challenges (The Gainsville Sun)
About 1,800 children are up for adoption statewide through the Department of Children and Families. Most of them are not babies and all of them have been through some kind of trauma, including neglect, medical problems and sometimes horrific abuse.

Lost in translation (The Boston Globe)
Layoffs fall heavily on DSS's bilingual social workers

February 24, 2002

Adoptions left in limbo (The Boston Globe)
INS blocks Cambodian orphans

'Designer Baby' Couple Deny Playing God (ABC News)
LONDON (Reuters) - The British couple at the center of a "designer baby" controversy have denied accusations that they are "playing god" by creating a child to save the life of their terminally ill son.

ABANDONED BX. BABY TOUCHES APPLE'S HEART (New York Post)
Several big-hearted New Yorkers yesterday offered to adopt the newborn girl abandoned at a Bronx medical clinic by a mom who left an anguished note saying she couldn't "afford" the child.

In Afghanistan, trying to save a lost generation (The Dallas Morning News)
Groups struggle to heal minds, bodies of war-hardened young

Fostering a climate of care and support (The Honolulu Advertiser)
The state needs caregivers for medically fragile children whose parents don't have the skills to care for them.

Troubled families hit by DSS cuts (The Boston Globe)
Social workers fear larger caseloads add to risks for all

Mom, son share precious gift (The Chicago Tribune)
After taking in a young boy with special needs, Joyce Fields watches him beat the odds--with a little help from social agencies and a lot of love.

A new day for birth mothers (The Boston Globe)
Travail eased by counseling, open adoption

February 23, 2002

Gay parents gather for conference, support adoption (Star Tribune)
Legal details are a focus of the seventh annual Rainbow Families conference, which begins today in Minneapolis for gay and lesbian parents and their children.

Mom gave up kids just steps from help (The Albuquerque Tribune)
The mysterious mother who abandoned her five children at an Albuquerque homeless shelter was just inches away from the help she said she had desperately sought for her struggling family.

Editorial: Help for aged-out youth (DesMoines Register)
A $600,000 federal grant allows 10 social-services agencies across the state to provide additional resources for foster kids who have aged out of the system.

DCF handing off foster-care cases to private agency (Orlando Sentinel)
DAYTONA BEACH -- Foster kids in Volusia and Flagler counties could spend less time in the system and get better treatment while they're in it, now that a private agency is sharing the workload.

Foster Care Is Targeted (The Los Angeles Times)
State Controller Kathleen Connell has formed an advocacy group to lobby legislators and others on behalf of foster children.

February 22, 2002

Pro-Life Groups Outraged By Designer Baby Ruling (CNS News - London)
A couple seeking to use genetic testing to create a child that would help their diseased son had their application approved Friday by Britain's fertility authority.

Landrieu, adoptive families bring issue to lawmakers (The Advocate)
Shelia and Timothy Buckley of Baton Rouge joined Senator Mary Landrieu at the State Capitol to help raise awareness about adoption.

Foreign adoptions offer hope (Daily Comet)
Mia and Ian are among hundreds of children adopted out of foster care by Louisiana parents each year, a practice U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu hopes will become more popular as parents realize adopted children are no longer taboo.

More city couples open their doors to adoption (The Times of Idia)
MUMBAI: There may be homes and hearts for the city's aban-doned children, after all. The num-ber of Indian couples adopting childen in Mumbai jumped 26 per cent in 2001, the first increase in two years.

February 21, 2002

Children's groups criticize Florida's ban on gay adoptions (Sun-Sentinel)
Several of the nation's most respected children's advocacy groups told a federal appeals court Wednesday that Florida's ban on gay adoption hurts kids.

Fewer abuse cases missed
But audit finds response to mistreatment still lags (The Florida Tines-Union)
The number of Florida children mistreated in foster care is less than state officials initially thought but continues to exceed state and national goals, according to a draft of a legislative audit obtained yesterday by the Times-Union.

Law would tell foster parents of sex activity
Bill requires agencies to inform prospective, current and former foster parents of child's sexual abuse history.

February 20, 2002

Ban sought on inter-country adoptions (The Times of India)
YDERABAD: Gramya Resource Centre for Women has called for an immediate ban on inter-country adoptions and complete stoppage of children being sent abroad.

Thousands of missing children go unnoticed by Mexican government (The News Mexico)
According to the National Foundation for the Investigation of Child Theft and Missing Children (IAP), 130,000 children have disappeared in the last five years in Mexico, or more than 20,000 annually.

New state task force targets foster kids (The Seattle Times)
In a bid to come up with better treatment and housing solutions for hard to place foster children, the state today will announce a task force of experienced judges, law-enforcement personnel, social workers and others involved in serving children and families.

Foster kids' future often bleak (Daily News)
After gaining their legal rights as adults at age 18, about half of Los Angeles County foster children end up homeless and large numbers wind up in prison, on welfare and addicted to drugs or alcohol, a report released Tuesday says.

Metro Briefing - MANHATTAN: ADOPTION WEB SITE STARTED (The New York Times - NY Region)
(second item)
New York City is taking its search for adoptive parents online.

A couple's dream of adoption comes true a world way (Daily Herald)
In just three weeks, Connor and Lauren Day have adjusted from life in a Bulgarian orphanage to the routine of naps, meals and play in the Winfield home of Chuck and Jan Day.

February 19, 2002

NGLTF Condemns Remarks by Alabama Chief Justice; Recalls Third Anniversary of Brutal Hate Crime in State (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Communications Dept.)
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) today condemned remarks made by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore as part of a 9-0 decision that took custody of three children away from their lesbian mother.

Babies on hold (The Boston Globe - Editorial)
For hundreds of families waiting to adopt abandoned children from Cambodia, the suspension of action by the Immigration and Naturalization Service is a cruel interruption of the journey to parenthood

Hunt is on for child abuse solutions (San Antonio Express-News)
With few exceptions, it is the city's poor who end up in Bexar County's only court devoted to child abuse and neglect.

February 18, 2002

Sex Change Complicates Battle Over Child Custody (New York Times)
Ms. Kantaras contends that, even though she knew of Mr. Kantaras's sex change before becoming involved with him, he was never a man and therefore their marriage and his adoption of the children are invalid.

Faces of adoption in the Bay Area - Forming families
>From a gay couple raising a daughter, to a Kenyan-born child who now calls Oakland home, every adoption has its story.

February 17, 2002

HEARTS ON HOLD (Detroit Free Press)
Couple longing to adopt a child may face disappointment -- again.

His job is to balance scales of justice (San Antonio Express-News)
As the sole Bexar County judge assigned exclusively to cases of child abuse and neglect, Associate Judge Peter Sakai is the central player in an ongoing drama quite unlike those in other courtrooms.

Rookies left to handle agency's cases (San Antonio Express-News)
For two years straight, state workers in San Antonio each handled more cases on average than in any other region in Texas, far higher than national standards recommend.

Kids' deaths bring foster care review (Daily News)
With deaths of children in foster care rising sharply, Los Angeles County officials have braced for a federal probe of the programs responsible for the well-being of the county's 60,000 foster kids.

February 16, 2002

Gretchen E. Traylor: Closed records leave those who were adopted at risk (Star Tribune)
It is time for Minnesota to stop discriminating against adult adopted persons, and give us access to our own identities. It may be a matter of life and death.

Kentucky justices hear arguments in adoption fight (AP in the Columbus Dispatch)
An adoption dispute pitting a 4year-old's birth parents in Kentucky against an Ohio couple who have raised him reached the Kentucky Supreme Court yesterday.

Birth parents' legal advice a key issue in adoption fight (The Plain Dealer)
A two-state custody war over a 4-year-old boy hinges on whether his Kentucky birth parents got proper legal advice before giving him up to an Ohio couple.

Couple's foreign adoption lands family in legal limbo (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Mark and Janice Corkery, an Atlanta couple in their early 30s, were on track to adopt twin boys and bring them home when the United States abruptly halted adoptions from Cambodia two months ago.

Fertility Society Choosing Embryos Just for Sex Selection (The New York Times)
The ethics committee of the nation's fertility society has revised a controversial opinion on sex selection. In its new, more restrictive, opinion, the committee says that couples should be discouraged from creating embryos, selecting some and discarding others, solely because they have a child of one sex and want one of another.

February 15, 2002

Clone panel closes with an impasse on embryos (The Chicago Tribune)
The President's Council on Bioethics has abandoned hope of consensus on the ethics of human cloning for the purpose of medical research and treatments, as members remain deeply divided over the moral status of a human embryo.

What makes a parent? (The Chicago Tribune)
The AAP is urging its members to "advocate for initiatives that establish permanency through coparent or second-parent adoption for children of same-sex partners."

Bangladesh street children face bleak future (BBC News)
There has been an alarming rise in the number of street children in the major cities of Bangladesh.

Slow road to China leads to parenthood (Buffalo News)
Former Buffalo Bandits coach Ted Sawicki and wife Lisa Sawicki adopted a 101/2-month-old Chinese girl in December who only a few months earlier had been abandoned in a cardboard box, found wrapped in a red blanket on the steps of a government civil affairs building half a world away.

Foster parents call adoption rules cruel (The Orlando Sentinel)
For years, Mishael has been fighting to change the way the law and the Legislature view the rights of foster children. He says children taken from their parents permanently because of abuse or neglect have a constitutional right to remain with the people they have come to regard as family -- even if they are not related by blood.

ACLU files appeal to reverse ban on gay adoption (Sun-Sentinel)
The American Civil Liberties Union wants a federal appeals court to do what a U.S. District Court Judge in Miami would not: overturn Florida's law that bans gay people from adopting.

February 14, 2002

Campaign targets conscience to find adoptive parents (Orlando Sentinel)
Local social-service officials used advertisements with real-life foster parents and bubbly kid models to coax people to adopt a child last year.

February 13, 2002

Orphans wait for a chance (The Boston Globe)
Pediatrician Dr. Nancy Hendrie has chosen to spend her retirement shuttling between the coast of Maine and the fields of Cambodia to provide for children so much needier than those she treated all those years in suburban Concord.

After years, Justin adoption case could be near conclusion (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
More than 20 lawyers in two states have fought over his future. Psychologists who don't know him debate his best interest. And four adults are battling to raise this boy called Justin Asente in Ohio and Justin Moore in Kentucky.

Board asks for more leeway in foster care (Daily News)
Los Angeles County officials are poised to appeal a judge's ruling that orders social workers to visit the foster care children under their supervision at least once a month.

Advisers Oppose Reproductive Cloning (AP in New York Newsday)
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's bioethics advisers do not want cloning done for baby-making, but they are struggling with all the reasons why.

Lesbian Deemed Parent in Child Case (AP in New York Newsday)
WILMINGTON, Del. -- A lesbian being sued by her former partner for child support should be considered a parent even though she and the boy have no biological connection, a court commissioner has ruled.

Hearing ordered in adoption (The Oklahoman)
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered a hearing Tuesday in a controversial custody battle between a 3-year-old girl's birth parents and an Ohio couple wanting to adopt her.

France's lost children fight back (BBC News)
France's government tried to re-populate its emptying countryside in the 1960s by a policy of forced adoptions from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, a court in the southern city of Montpellier is due to be told.

Yemenite community backs DNA bank to solve mystery (The Jerusalem Post)
A DNA bank would be established to help solve the mystery of Yemenite infants who disappeared during the early years of the state, under legislation submitted recently to the Knesset.

February 12, 2002

Infant found abandoned at medical center (Lake City Reporter)
A baby, only hours old, was found in a bathroom at Lake City Medical Center after the staff received a phone call from an unidentified man saying that he had left the baby there.

Germans Giving Orphanage a New Perspective (The Moscow Times)
Hampel is one of six German volunteers who arrived in St. Petersburg in September to work at the St. Petersburg Orphanage for the Mentally Disabled in an assistance program set up by the German charity Perspektives.

A try to clone human being is set to start (The Boston Globe)
A controversial Kentucky-based fertility specialist said yesterday he plans to begin efforts next month to clone a human being.

British social workers called to cut adoption waiting lists (The Irish Independent)
BRITISH social workers have been invited to assist the health boards here to deal with the massive delays in assessing couples on waiting lists for foreign adoptions.

February 11, 2002

Cloned Mice Die Young (The Arizona Republic)
A study of cloned mice by scientists at Tokyo's National Institute of Infectious Diseases found cloned mice had a significantly shorter life span than animals bred naturally.

Foster Kids' Crying Needs (Los Angeles Times)
Children in the county's gargantuan foster care maze won a victory last week when a court ordered social workers to check in on them at least once a month.

Adoption rate at a record low (The Advertiser)
There were only 514 adoptions in Australia last year, a 9 per cent drop on the previous year and an all-time low compared to the 10,000 adoptions in 1971.

'Outside' offers riveting insider look at adoption (Boston Herald)
"Who am I?" It's a question we all ask ourselves at one time or another. And while self-examination often conjures more questions than answers, for black children raised by white parents, it can open a Pandora's box of alienation and self-loathing.

February 10, 2002

Egg donation option on the rise for older moms (The Oakland Tribune)
Middle-aged women birthing at highest rate in 30 years

The next generation (The Orange County Register)
More grandparents are taking over parenting duties from their own children

Grandparents raising grandchildren have several legal options (The Orange County Register)
As the number of grandchildren living in a grandparent-headed household soars, custody battles and health insurance finances continue to be problems, said Donna Bashaw, Laguna Hills elder law attorney.

Baby's Abandonment Raises Questions (The Hartford Courant)
Advocates of "safe haven" laws - which allow parents to leave an unwanted baby in a safe place without the threat of prosecution - commend a man for leaving a newborn at a local hospital, saying he probably saved the baby's life.

Juvenile Court Journal: Teens often left behind (Post-Gazette)
Melody Carter was abandoned when she was one month shy of 11. Her mother left her at the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families.

Carnleys will join adoption protest (The Daily Advertiser)
Francine and Stevan Carnley, Lafayette, will join at least 30 families embroiled in a controversy over the adoption of Cambodian children at a protest Thursday in Washington, D.C.

State considers options for dealing with youths whose problems make adoption unlikely (Lawrence Journal-World)
Until now, they were the children no one wanted to talk about. They're the ones with so many problems no one is likely to adopt them, ever.

INS fees rise next week (Omaha World-Herald)
Nationwide fee increases will take effect Feb. 19 for most INS applications, petitions and fingerprint services.

Family's story sparks interest in adoptions (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
The Detra McCollum family was featured in a story Nov. 19 on adopting special needs children.

Adoptees, parents greet the Chinese New Year (Seatle Times)
About 600 people from the Puget Sound area came to Meany Middle School in Seattle yesterday for an early celebration of the Year of the Horse, in an annual event sponsored by Families with Children from China - Northwest.

February 8, 2002

Adoption campaign pays off (The Orange County Register)
Difficult-to-place children get homes after publicity effort.

Iowa Indians push child welfare act (DesMoines Register)
Representatives of Indian tribes met with social workers and a handful of lawmakers to urge enactment of a state law dealing with the placement of Indian children in foster or adoptive homes.

Iowa moves to recognize adoptions from abroad (The Iowa Afghan)
When Marvin and Pat Morris of Granger adopted 5-year-old Josie Magdala Morris from Haiti last August, they had no idea that Iowa is one of the few states in the nation that does not legally recognize international adoptions.

February 7, 2002

CDC: Fertility Procedures on Rise (AP in New York Newsday)
ATLANTA -- Fertility procedures in the United States jumped by 27 percent in just two years, according to government researchers who said they are worried about the risks for mothers and children.

Kilshaws in court over second couple's internet adoption ( icWales )
The couple at the centre of the internet adoption wrangle are due to appear in court tomorrow in an attempt to prevent them talking about what they claim is a similar controversial adoption.

Parental Rights Under Microscope as Accusations of Child Abuse Mount (Fox News)
The Massachusetts Department of Social Services yanked the Moores' eight-year-old daughter out of school and sent her to an undisclosed foster home.

February 6, 2002

Newborns Abandoned Despite Safe Haven Law (The LA Times)
The discovery this week of a newborn boy abandoned in the parking lot of a Canoga Park hospital has heightened concern that laws in California and other states designed to encourage mothers to hand off unwanted infants safely are ineffective and too little known.

Newborn boy left outside hospital (Daily News)
WEST HILLS -- Callers deluged officials Tuesday with offers to adopt a healthy newborn boy who was found abandoned in the north parking lot of West Hills Hospital and Medical Center.

February 5, 2002

Gay couples' right to adopt a good move (The Toledo Blade)
The American Academy of Pediatrics' announcement yesterday supporting so-called second-parent adoption for gay and lesbian couples got plenty of attention.

Hallmark Entertainment Presents Original, One-Hour, Non-Scripted Reality Series Based on Triumphs and Trials of 'Adoption,' Produced Exclusively for Hallmark Channel U.S. (Hallmark Channel)
Hallmark Entertainment has begun production on an original, one-hour, non-scripted reality series portraying real-life experiences of people involved in the adoption process.

Untangling children's lives (The Chicago Tribune)
Eight years ago, the Illinois Supreme Court, in one of its most contentious cases, awarded custody of 3 1/2-year-old "Baby Richard" to his biological father after the boy had lived happily with his adoptive family for virtually his entire life.

Sweden proposes adoption rights for gay couples (MSNBC)
STOCKHOLM, Feb. 5 - Sweden's government on Tuesday presented a draft parliamentary bill aimed at giving gay couples the right to adopt children.

Never Underestimate the Power of Denial (The LA Times)
By the time campus officials found Karen Marie Hubbard, a 19-year-old college freshman, her newborn baby was struggling to live and Karen had bled to death on the bathroom floor.

Ontario couple won't pay surrogate mom after baby born with heart defect (The Toronto Globe and Mail)
TORONTO -- An Ontario couple has refused to pay a surrogate mother in full, after one of the twins she produced was born with a serious, congenital heart defect.

Gay adoption is unlikely session issue (The Orlando Sentinel)
TALLAHASSEE -- Despite a ringing endorsement from the nation's pediatricians that adoption by gay parents doesn't harm kids, Florida is unlikely to change its stringent law against it anytime soon.

Adoption plan stirs controversy (The Denver Post)
While gays are delighted that the American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed adoptions by gay couples, Focus on the Family on Monday denounced the move saying decades of research shows that children "desperately need the balance of a mother and father."

Adoption numbers slump (The West Australian)
ADOPTION has slumped to an historic low as more Australian women eschew motherhood and single parenthood gains greater social acceptability, a report has found.

February 4, 2002

Bringing Home Baby After Delay (New York Newsday)
With INS woes solved, families return from Vietnam with tots.

Large number of grandparents are primary caregivers for children in N.H. (AP in The Citizen)
MANCHESTER (AP) - Many grandparents in New Hampshire are getting a second chance at being parents.

Shriners to help family treat baby (El Paso Times)
Couple adopts child burned in orphanage

Group Backs Gays Who Seek to Adopt a Partner's Child (New York Times)
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which offers guidance to parents on child-rearing issues from spanking to nutrition, is announcing its support today for the right of gay men and lesbians to adopt their partners' children.

February 3, 2002

Report: SoCal teen arrested for dumping newborn was raped (AP in Fresno Bee)
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - A lawyer for a 16-year-old accused of abandoning her newborn in a trash bin said the girl became pregnant during a rape.

Grandparents: Parenting the second time around (The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News)
The 2000 Census found there were 17,779 New Hampshire grandparents living in households with their grandchildren - and one-third of them were the children's primary caregivers.

The Lost Children (CBS News)
In the two decades after World War II, 10,000 English children were sent to Australia. Many were mistreated and abused. All were lied to.

February 2, 2002

Surrogate moms: 'It's damned good money' and Canada's lack of laws help them along (The Toronto Globe and Mail)
The absence of a surrogacy law in Canada has created a fertile underground market for baby-making services.

A New Direction for 4 Orphaned Brothers, Sisters (LA Times)
Family: The siblings feared they would be separated after their mother died. However, friends and counselors help them stay together.

Lawmaker hopes to refine abandoned-baby law (AP in The Denver Post)
A problem in a 2-year-old law that was designed to provide a safe and legal alternative to parents who choose to abandon an infant could deter some from using the law, a lawmaker said Friday.

February 1, 2002

Adopted baby can come home (Poughkeepsie Journal)
The Rev. Wayne Hanrattie and his wife, the Rev. Sharon Williams, were informed Friday morning the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, after weeks of delay, has approved the necessary paperwork that will allow Kaelin Rose-Tuyet Hanrattie to come to the United States with her parents.

Visa on Way for Vietnamese Baby (New York Newsday)
INS finds no fault with LI adoption

World: U.S., Mexican authorities differ on extent of alleged child smuggling ring (AP)
MEXICO CITY - A child-smuggling ring uncovered in Mexico may have involved as many as 100 children, enticing some of them with promises of life in the United States with relatives. Others may have been kidnapped, police said Thursday.

Adoption by manatee baffles, pleases Seaquarium experts (The Miami Herald)
Partially paralyzed from a boating accident, she can't have calves of her own. But so strong is her maternal instinct that Phoenix, the Miami Seaquarium sea cow, has adopted an orphan.

Babies stolen for sale on Chinese black market (The Times)
Between June 2000 and April last year, according to local police, 22 babies were stolen in Handan, all of them snatched by a gang that struck between midnight and 3am.

Kabul's unwanted children (BBC)
Orphanages in Afghanistan were a direct product of Sovietisation during the 1980s. Before 1981 no such institution existed but, with decades of war in Afghanistan, an abundance of genuine orphans has been created.

January 31, 2002

Mexico Busts Child-Smuggling Ring (AP article in New York Newsday)
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican authorities say they've busted a child-trafficking ring that smuggled at least a dozen youngsters from Central America -- including six intercepted in Los Angeles.

Long Islander gets OK to return from Vietnam with newly adopted son (AP in NY Newsday)
NEW YORK -- A Long Island man was flying home from Vietnam with his newly adopted son ending a seven-week ordeal while a Poughkeepsie woman remained behind awaiting INS approval to return with her daughter, Sen. Charles Schumer said Thursday.

Mexican police bust child-smuggling ring; a dozen children rescued (The Arizona Republic)
MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities say they've busted a child-trafficking ring that smuggled at least a dozen youngsters from Central America - including six intercepted in Los Angeles.

Widow of Trade Center victim dies of cancer; 2 young boys orphaned (AP in Arizona Republic)
NEW YORK - The widow of a carpenter killed in the World Trade Center collapse has died of breast cancer, orphaning the couple's two young sons.

Cambodian Government Suspends Adoptions (Info Update - US Dept. of States)
On January 25, 2002 the Cambodian Foreign Ministry verbally notified the U.S. State Department that it will suspend the issuance of adoption documentation to American families in acknowledgement of trafficking concerns and other problems in the adoption process in Cambodia.

Court Rules Sperm Donor Legal Dad (AP in The New York Newsday)
A court ruled Thursday a 35-year-old Swedish man who privately donated his sperm to a lesbian couple is the legal father of the three children and must support them financially.

Sri Lanka's orphans bear scars of war (BBC)
Sri Lanka's two-decade long civil war has left thousands of children on all sides orphaned - facing a bleak future.

Adoption scandal shows govt inaction (The Times of India)
About three years ago, when the outside world came to know that Lambada families in the backward districts of Telangana were selling their girl children to greedy child adoption centres, the government talked about curbing the menace with an iron hand.

'Safe Haven' for newborns (The Toledo Blade)
Ohio's new Safe Haven for Newborns law, which went into effect last April, allows a parent to relinquish the infant to law enforcement or medical personnel, at any time during the first 72 hours of its life, and simply walk away. No questions asked. No mandatory forms to fill out. Anonymity assured.

January 30, 2002

Big adoption issue goes to high court; Same-sex families to be affected (San Francisco Chronicle)
In a case that could affect thousands of same-sex parents and their children, the state Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide the validity of a widely used adoption procedure that a lower court declared illegal last fall.

A new era: Woman to meet her father - a sperm donor (Associated Press in Arizona Republic)
SAN JOSE, Calif. - In 1983, the Sperm Bank of California became the first in the nation to ask donors whether they would be willing to be contacted by their offspring after the children reached adulthood.

W.Va. grandparents lose battle (AP in the Charleston Gazette)
A Barbour County family court judge has refused to force a Pennsylvania boy to visit his biological paternal grandparents in West Virginia.

Court reforms reduce kids' time in foster care, study says (The Arizona Republic)
Children are spending 40 percent less time in foster care and going home to Mom or Dad more often as part of Juvenile Court reforms since 1997.

Despite law, abandoned babies in legal limbo (The Detroit Free Press)
Half of the infants abandoned in Michigan [under protection of new legislation]remain in legal limbo as courts grapple with unforeseen constitutional snares.

Cynthia Sjodin: Orphanage would hurt kids trying to fit in (The Star Tribune)
There is a simple solution to all these adults arguing over whether Mary Jo Copeland's orphanage should be built. Why not ask the ones who would actually live there -- the children?

January 29, 2002

Hoping Love Can Bridge a Great Divide (Los Angeles Times)
Follow up to story about murder of two suburban teens by a classmate. The convicted killer, Michael Demirdjian, 16, was adopted as an infant.

Court agrees to hear case overturning gay adoptions (AP in the San Diego Union Tribune)
SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to review a lower court's ruling that said same-sex couples can not lawfully adopt children.

Baby drop box called 'bizarre' (Toledo Blade)
Toledoans dismiss a German idea for saving unwanted infants

Lawmakers Honor Wendy's Founder (US Government - AP Congress)
WASHINGTON - The House on Tuesday honored Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy's hamburger chain, for his advocacy of adoption and devotion to children. Thomas died of liver cancer on Jan. 8. He was 69.

Gran's Grand Reward (News.com)
A MANSFIELD boy with a passion for whip cracking will go to school for the first time, thanks in part to a grandma he almost never knew.

January 27, 2002

Looking back on the flow and ebb of children's homes (Star Tribune)
John Cuningham has a dream. He sees the abandoned officers' quarters at Fort Snelling State Park being converted into a 500-bed boarding school for poor and neglected children.

Little love and a lot of discipline (Star Tribune)
Arlend (Buzz) Wilson will never forget Jan. 18, 1934. That was the day he and his three sisters were taken from their mother and driven weeping to the state orphanage in Owatonna.

Who Gets the Kids? (New York Newsday)
For children already grieving a sudden loss, the disputes extend the trauma, promising months or years of uncertainty.

January 26, 2002

'Don't give abandoned baby to parents', orphanage boss says (Ananova)
The boss of a Portuguese orphanage doesn't want the abandoned British baby's parents to get him back.

Infant abandonment law used in Forsyth case (Herald Sun)
Winston-Salem, N.C. -- A new state law that allows a woman to give up her newborn baby without fear of prosecution apparently has been used for the first time in a Forsyth County birth.

Infant, mother safe with new law (News Observer)
Forsyth case tests abandonment act

January 25, 2002

Abandoned baby pram lead widens (BBC News)
Gwent police are widening their search beyond the Newport area to find the mother of a three month old abandoned in a south Wales housing estate.

Memories haunt India's quake orphans (Reuters)
Vikhubhai is one of several hundred children orphaned by the huge quake which measured 6.9 on the Richter scale. Millions were left homeless in Gujarat, India's second-most industrialised state.

China, Hong Kong adoption battle becomes long, hard road (CNN.com)
When Man Yuet-kwai first held the month-old baby in her arms in a desolate farm hut, she wasn't thinking of high policy or Hong Kong's relationship with the Chinese motherland. All she knew was, she had at last found a child to adopt.

Ying Ying's journey (San Francisco Chronicle)
Mom helps her adopted daughter document her trip to find her roots in China

SoCal 16-year-old arrested for dumping her baby in trash (Fresno Bee)
MONROVIA, Calif. (AP) - Police on Friday arrested a 16-year-old girl for allegedly placing her newborn son in a plastic bag, then throwing him into a trash bin to die.

January 24, 2002

INS stymies families who adopted Vietnamese children (Sun-Sentinel)
De La Garza, a single mom of an adopted 5-year-old son, is one of several families entangled by a U.S. government investigation into potential baby selling in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Hot jobs: Social workers specializing in adoptions find families for children (The Kansas City Star)
As director of Adoption Advocates, a Kansas City adoption agency, Sarachek connects families with children they can call their own while ensuring that birth mothers feel comfortable with the life-changing decisions they face.

Kids struggle to survive Moscow streets (SunSpot.net)
Many youths prefer homelessness to cruel treatment in shelters

January 23, 2002

New Adoption Web Site Created Gives Children Awaiting Adoption a Reason to Think About a Brighter Tomorrow (Canada News Wire)
Newly Launched Site in Texas, Offers Clues for Improving Canada's Adoption Services.

January 20, 2002

Families frustrated by rules stalling overseas adoptions (The Miami Herald)
LOVE VS. BUREACRACY
American adoptive parent to Vietnamese child blocked in the adoption process by beaurocratic limitations.

Adopted dreams (The Morning Call)
Friendship develops between two women who decide to adopt girls from China.

Adoption fulfilling, but costly (Dallas Morning News)
Adoption is a serious step that shouldn't be taken without a great deal of thought, especially for the costs that go along with it.

January 19, 2002

Hoosier couple, 2 babies caught in political storm (The Indianapolis Star)
Cadin and Cambria, infant twins from Cambodia, were supposed to be Hoosiers by Christmas, adopted by Dirk and Cathy Caldwell of Jamestown. Instead, the children -- who turned 10 months old Friday -- remain in a Cambodian orphanage, caught in a political tempest that has left the Caldwells and at least 130 other U.S. families without the children they call their own.

Other nations still open for adoptions, expert says (The Indianapolis Star)
Suspicions of baby trafficking that led the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to suspend all adoptions from Cambodia last month should not cast a pall on other international adoptions, an Indiana expert says.

January 18, 2002

Abused quads turn 4
Tiny victims flourish with adoptive families (The Arizona Republic)
Together with their brother Brandon, they were born as quadruplets to an Avondale couple in January 1998. They were legally adopted a year ago by the foster families who had cared for them since they were taken from their birth parents.

Mother of Internet Twins Sentenced (Las Vegas Sun)
ST. LOUIS (AP) - The mother of twin girls who were adopted over the Internet was sentenced Friday to three years of probation for lying to get rent subsidies, food stamps, and unemployment benefits.

Panel: Cloning Humans is Unsafe (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Cloning human beings for the purpose of reproduction is medically unsafe and should be banned but cloning for disease research should be allowed, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences concluded Friday.

January 17, 2002

Natasha Walter: It is not always easy being a decent parent (The Independent, UK)
As well as being an unforgiveable b*tch, Penny may be a confused and desperate woman in need of some support.

The plight of Ethiopia's street children (Africa Online)
Currently there are around 60 000 street kids living a desperate existence in the Ethiopian capital. Some say there could be twice that number. Yet all agree that the number of street children, too often seen begging at the sides of expensive cars, is set to soar as the number of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia tops one million, according to the health ministry.

President Jiang Meets US CCAI Delegation (People's Daily)
Chinese President Jiang Zemin met Wednesday with a delegation from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) of the United States led by Senator Mary Landrieu and Congresswoman Anne Northup in Beijing.

January 16, 2002

Power to the People (ABC News)
State News:
British Panel Tackles Sticky Issues of Human Fertility Adoption joy, heartache: A tale of two families (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)
Pres. Bush granted "humanitarian pardons" to the 12 children in the news story allowing their adoptive parents to bring them to the US. At least 67 other adopted children wait for immigration officials to ensure that they are not being stolen from their families or sold by their birth parents.

The legacy of the internet babies row (BBC News)
The controversy that surrounded internet adoption of twins by Judith and Alan Kilshaw 12 months ago has led to the closing of loopholes and tough new procedures.

Kolkata opens its heart to girls (The Times of India)
When rest of the country is alarmed over rising cases of female foeticide and reduction in the sex ratio, adoption agencies in the city are finding it difficult to cope with the demand for baby girls.

Alumni of Hebrew orphans home celebrate special bond (The South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
For the approximately 2,000 boys who passed through the Hebrew National Orphan Home's doors between 1912 and the late 1940s, there was always that unshakable feeling of otherness.

Couple quizzed over abandoned baby (BBC NEWS)
A British couple are expected to face further questions on Wednesday in connection with a baby found abandoned near Faro airport in Portugal.

President Sets Sights on Street Children (The Moscow Times)
President Vladimir Putin told Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko on Tuesday that the government has failed to effectively deal with homeless and runaway children.

Group seeks to publicize Florida's baby-surrender law (The South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Florida has allowed mothers to anonymously give up their newborns for adoption since July 2000, but that law was used only once in 2001, a figure dwarfed by at least 12 illegal abandonments the same year, a nonprofit group said.

January 15, 2002

Teen mom, ex-boyfriend will not pick girl's parents (Toledo Blade)
A Sylvania teenager accused of dumping her newborn baby in a trash bin will not get to choose the couple she wants to adopt her daughter, a Lucas County Juvenile Court judge ruled yesterday.

Longville condemns civil union opponents (The Los Angeles Times)
The sponsor of a bill that would have offered gay and lesbian couples many of the same rights as married people withdrew it Monday as critics organized news conferences across the state assailing the legislation.

Abandoned baby couple come forward (I-TV)
A woman and a man have walked into a police station in Bournemouth and are now talking to officers about a baby abandoned in Portugal, according to Dorset Police.

Medical funds ready for special-needs adoptees (The Charlotte Observer)
State hopes extra aid will put more children into permanent homes.

THE Unvarnished TRUTH (Newsday)
For people seeking their roots, even bad news about a parent is better than nothing.

A Defender of Children, but Never Defensive (The New York Times)
THE mea culpa does not come naturally to this chubby- faced city official, a Brooklyn minister in his weekend life and a "barefoot boy from Mississippi" in his early life, now on invisible tenterhooks amid unpacked boxes in the prime corner office at 150 Williams Street. "I take this work personally, but I cannot afford to become defensive," says William C. Bell, New York City's new commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services, the agency whose mandatory makeover is, according to its critics, just halfway home after the 1999 settlement of a federal class- action suit.

January 14, 2002

Deciding if a Child Is Safe (The Los Angeles Times)
When a woman is being abused, should her child be removed from the home? Agencies are trying strategies to deal with the question.

January 13, 2002

Let adult adoptees access their records (The Buffalo News)
Home for the Holidays" was a wonderful program showing how people have opened their hearts to help children in need of a home. However, the negative aspects of adoption are rarely brought to the attention of the public. When these children grow up, they will find out the following truths: They will not be allowed to have a copy of their original birth certificate, or any medical records compiled prior to the adoption. They will not be allowed to have any paperwork concerning the process through which they were adopted. And they will not be allowed to know their biological lineage or parentage.

A Frozen Sperm Riddle (The New York Times)
IN the ethical quagmire of assisted reproduction, many of the toughest questions eventually land in court: Who has the right to frozen embryos, frozen eggs, frozen sperm? Whose name should appear on the birth certificate, the genetic mother, who provided the egg, or the carrier, in whose womb the baby grew?

January 12, 2002

Adoption hits INS roadblock (The Miami Herald)
Godby keeps in touch with his wife through e-mails as they try to untangle the bureaucratic maze and plead their case before the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other governmental agencies to bring their daughter home.

Adoption restrictions prompt Northup trip (The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY)
China limits number of babies going to other countries.

New baby inspires Nkosi 'mother' (BBC NEWS)
Gail Johnson is 54 and by her own admission she should be retiring - not bringing up a one-year-old boy. Nevertheless, adopt him she will. Thabo was handed to her when he was only four days old, as his mother died of the Aids virus.

Teen mom wants to pick adoptive parents (The Toledo Blade)
A Sylvania teenager accused of dumping her newborn daughter into a trash bin now wants to determine who adopts the child.

"Dave": A man, a chain, and a cause (The National Review)
Dave Thomas - although we all know him less formally as Dave - died on January 7 at age 69 of liver cancer. He will be remembered by most Americans as the founder of Wendy's and its easily recognized spokesman - that guy from the commercials. But to many others - indeed, for most of his life, to himself - he was much more than a successful burger king.

January 11, 2002

State panel backs cloning for research, but not babies (The San Francisco Gate)
A state-appointed advisory panel is expected to urge California lawmakers to permit the cloning of human embryonic stem cells for medical research but to permanently ban cloning to make babies.

New Egg-Freezing Process Could Preserve Fertility (I-Won Health)
Injecting a sugar solution into human eggs before preserving them in liquid nitrogen could dramatically increase the odds that they will survive the freezing process, new research has found.

Disrupted childhood echoes later in life (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
The effects of childhood family disruptions, such as parental divorce, long-term separation from biological parents, parental abandonment and foster care, can reverberate into later life, a Cornell University sociologist says.

Child specialists take up street-children's cause (The Times of India)
PUNE: Leading paediatricians in the city have drawn up a master plan to help transform the lives of an estimated 30,000 neglected and underprivileged street-children.

January 10, 2002

State abortion total goes up, reversing 9-year trend (The PA, Post-Gazette)
The number of abortions performed in Pennsylvania increased 3.3 percent in 2000, reversing a nine-year downward trend, the state Health Department reported.

Sentiment for Thomas draws throng to his viewing (The Columbus Dispatch)
The thousand of visitors included employees, business associates and customers of the Wendy's founder.

Fresh trouble over child adoption in Andhra (The Times of India)
HYDERABAD: The child adoption racket, which rocked Andhra Pradesh last year, came to the fore again with National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issuing a notice to the state government seeking an explanation for clearing 72 infants for intra-country adoption.

Left Orphaned by War: The City and Its Children (The New York Times)
SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Jan. 9 - Pressed hard against a cliff at the dead end of a twisting road in the old city here, a cluster of squat red buildings houses the lingering misery of Kashmir. It is an orphanage for boys, a great many of whom were left fatherless and destitute by the bloody 12-year guerrilla war in this Himalayan valley.

January 9, 2002

France to Revamp Adoption System (Newsday)
The French government is in the final stages of overhauling the country's adoption rules to make it easier for families to adopt foreign babies and reduce waiting periods that often last several years.

DiFrancesco brightens state's 'sunshine law' (The Star-Ledger)
Capping his 26-year legislative career and a decade-long effort to shed sunlight on government's workings, DiFrancesco signed a bill that gives the public the right to see most government records other than legislative files. The bill overhauls New Jersey's 1963 Right to Know Act, widely considered the weakest and most secretive government records law in the nation, by broadening its scope, giving it teeth and dragging it into the computer age.

Culture, laws thwart Americans' quest to adopt (The Boston Globe)
In what would appear to be a perfect match, orphanages here are overwhelmed with requests to take in children at the same time US adoption agencies are besieged with calls from parents wanting to adopt Afghan children.

Vietnam plan to end baby trafficking (BBC NEWS)
Vietnam is planning to amend its adoption laws in an effort to stop the trafficking of babies through overseas adoption agencies.

January 8, 2002

Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy's, Dies at 69 (The New York Times)
Dave Thomas, the portly pitchman whose homespun ads built Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers into one of the world's most successful fast-food enterprises, has died. He was 69.

When Grandparents Become Parents Again (The Washington Post)
A new support group in Gaithersburg aims to help people who are raising their grandchildren deal with parenting all over again.

January 7, 2002

Orphans ask Karzai for food, clothes (The Boston Globe)
For more than 800 orphans at the orphanage in Kabul--whose dire need has tugged at hearts around the world--the promises the Afghanisan minister made of meeting their basic needs will, most likely, save many lives.

How many parents can a baby have? (The Christian Science Monitor)
Cases of posthumous dads and surrogate moms stretch judges.

Attorney: Teen naive about law (The Toledo Blade)
If 16-year-old Natalie Nirdlinger had known about Ohio's "Safe Haven for Newborns" law, she would not be looking at the possibility of going to prison for 10 years, her defense attorney insists.

A tax credit for adoption expenses (CBS MarketWatch)
If you are childless -- and not by choice -- and want to adopt a child, the government has substantially expanded the tax credit for adoption expenses. The credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the actual tax payable to the government.

Poor Afghan Parents Give Children Up as Orphans (The Los Angeles Times) Desperately poor widows and their children are one of the enduring legacies of the wars that have raked Afghanistan over more than two decades.

January 6, 2002

Someone to watch over (The Guardian Unlimited)
Being single is no longer a bar to adopting a child, and with more people opting to live alone, agencies are busy recruiting unmarrieds with parental instincts. All you need is love - and fishfingers in the freezer

The U.S. Adoption Snake Pit (The Los Angeles Times)
A bureaucrat's stinging words lead to a bigger issue.

January 5, 2002

Mom gave up baby to save marriage (Rocky Mountain News)
A woman who left her day-old daughter with firefighters Thursday was desperately trying to save her marriage when she took advantage of Colorado's abandoned baby law.

January 4, 2002

Newborn left at fire station (Rocky Mountain News)
A Denver woman left her 2-day-old daughter at an Aurora fire station Thursday, making her the second person to take advantage of Colorado's abandoned baby law.

January 2, 2002

Rishon couple charged in Romanian adoption scam (HA'ARETZ DAILY)
A couple from Rishon Lezion were arrested yesterday on suspicion of usury and fraud in connection with the adoption of babies from Romania.

January 1, 2002

What Women Must Know About Fertility (The New York Times)
Childbearing has changed a lot in recent decades. As more career opportunities have opened for women, more women have chosen to delay starting a family, often waiting until ages when fertility is naturally in sharp decline.

December 31, 2001

A Family Tale (The New York Times)
Two men, best friends since the mid-1970s, find out they are brothers.

December 26, 2001

Cambodia adoption saga takes joyful turn (The Chicago Tribune)
Three Chicago-area parents dropped their Christmas plans and boarded a plane for Cambodia Tuesday after U.S. officials said they could bring home newly adopted children who had previously been denied entry to the country.

Lifelong Best Friends Discover They're Brothers (Fox News)
Gary Klahr and Steven Barbin met decades ago and became close friends - so close that Klahr was best man at Barbin's wedding and once signed a photograph: "You are truly my brother."

December 25, 2001

Angel emerges amid Ukraine's orphan crisis (The Bergen Record)
The idea of Bondareva, a 32-year-old with a negligible income, adopting 15 children is impractical. But in Ukraine and Russia, the children she chose -- mostly disabled or well beyond toddler age -- had little other chance to be adopted.

Tiny baby touched 3 lives in a big way (Deseret News)
A nurse remembers back to a Christmas when she was on duty and observed a young woman giving up her infant son for adoption.

Newlyweds met on trip to Vietnamese homeland (The Virginian-Pilot)
Jennifer Arias and Todd Adamson fell in love on a trip sponsored by the adoption agency that brought them to America.

December 23, 2001

Immigration fees to rise in February (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced Friday that it would raise application fees for benefits, including naturalization, on Feb. 19.

Fertility panel rejects use of eggs, sperm from third parties (The Japan Times)
A health ministry panel deliberating over a fertility treatment has agreed to prohibit use of an egg fertilized with sperm provided separately by a third person when both members of a couple are sterile.

December 21, 2001

Fighting for change to adoption laws (The Toronto Star)
Bill 77 would have ended discrimination against adult adoptees by giving them the right of access to their own information

An Adopting Kind Of Town (CBS NEWS)
Donna Martin says that God told her to begin adopting children.

Fertility donors 'could be revealed' (BBC NEWS)
Children created using donated eggs, sperm or embryos could get the chance to find out more about their parents.

December 20, 2001

Romania probes Israeli adoption agency link in organ trafficking (HA'ARETZ--English Edition)
Romanian authorities are looking into possible links between Israeli adoption agencies and an illegal global conspiracy to sell organs for transplants.

Strohmeyer's parents try to revive suit (The Las Vegas Review-Journal)
A lawyer for the adoptive parents of murderer Jeremy Strohmeyer asked an appeals court Wednesday to reinstate their lawsuit alleging that Los Angeles County hid the mental illness of his birth mother.

Families the best guardians (The Budapest Sun)
Today in Hungary it is very difficult to adopt a child. There is an acceptable and a less acceptable reason for this.

Empty Arms: Adoptions Gone Wrong in Cambodia (ABC NEWS)
For months, Jeff and Karen Fleming had been dreaming about the little girl in a Cambodian orphanage who they planned to adopt as their own. They went to Cambodia in early October to pick her up, and they thought they'd be home in Altoona, Pa. within a week.

December 18, 2001

Tengku Mahkota: Orphans need proper education (Star Publications--The Star Online)
KUANTAN, MALAYSIA--The Tengku Mahkota of Pahang Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah yesterday stressed the need for orphans in orphanages, including the Tengku Ampuan Fatimah Orphanage here, to be given proper education.

December 17, 2002

Fight shaping up on DSHS reforms (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Agency says it will appeal jury verdict rather than negotiate changes in foster care

Reflecting on the lives of Vietnam adoptees (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
About 2,000 Vietnamese children were adopted in the United States and 1,500 were taken in in Britain and Canada in the spring of 1975.

Sept. 11 also taking a toll on foster children (The Baltimore Sun)
But more than a half-million devastated Americans have received no attention to date, no words of compassion, no offers of help, because they are mute and invisible. They are the children who live in foster care, and I worry what will happen to them if we don't soon realize they, too, are becoming casualties of the madness that started Sept. 11.

December 16-17, 2001

Baby peddling ring uncovered in Cyprus (Greece, KATHIMERINI)
Cypriot police are probing a lucrative Cyprus-Romania illegal adoption network where babies are allegedly sold to desperate couples for around $19,000, a Nicosia court heard yesterday.

December 14, 2001

Dad vows to fight on for custody (The Chicago Tribune)
An emotional Jose Zapata vowed Thursday to continue fighting for custody of his two small daughters despite a Kane County judge's ruling that the children should stay with their foster parents.

December 13, 2001

Australia Passes Gay Law Reform Bill (Gay.com)
The lower house of the West Australian government has passed a gay law reform bill after much debate.

December 12, 2001

Foster children kicked out at 18 with very little aid, report says (The Bergen Record)
With their troubled childhoods still close behind, many foster children are ill-prepared to strike out on their own once they turn 18 and "age out" of the system, according to a report released Tuesday.

U.S. Hopes to Crack Down on Global Adoption Abuses (Reuters News Service)
As the United States tightens immigration procedures after the Sept. 11 attacks, it is also trying to clamp down on abuses in international adoptions, which have turned into a lucrative and corrupt global trade in babies.

December 11, 2001

New Tenn. efforts finding foster kids permanent homes (Go Memphis.com)
At 55, Alice Wright is at the age when most people start to think about retirement. Instead, she recently adopted two foster children who have been in her care for more than five years.

Panel calls for recorded interviews (The Maine Press Herald)
State caseworkers should tape-record their interviews with children, parents and others in child-protective cases to guarantee accuracy. And parents should be allowed to make recordings of their own when they are being interviewed in such cases. Those two recommendations come from a committee that has been studying the child-protective system since August. The proposals are contained in a draft report that the Committee to Review the Child Protective System will submit to the Legislature this month, after the panel signs off on the document.

In Cloning, Failure Far Exceeds Success (The New York Times)
Researchers who have occasional success cloning one species, like cows, are meeting failure with others, like dogs. For them - even for the scientists who made Dolly - cloning success is the exception, not the rule. A vast majority of efforts fail, even in species that have at one time or another been cloned.

Foster parents, children offer ideas for child welfare agency (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
The Legislature this year let Washoe and Clark counties take control of their child welfare system within three years. Foster care and adoption services have been provided by the state, which will continue to run the system in rural counties. Clark County currently provides child protective services and investigations into claims of child abuse and neglect.

December 10, 2001

Child Welfare Undertakes `Dramatic Reform' (The Tampa Tribune)
From a half-empty office downtown, Chris Card is directing an experiment in how to help the roughly 4,300 abused and at-risk children in Hillsborough County. Card, 46, will guide a new nonprofit organization, Hillsborough Kids Inc., as it takes over an assortment of child welfare services - foster care, adoption, crisis response - from the Florida Department of Children and Families during the next 11 months. What happens will be watched closely statewide. In 1998, the Legislature ordered the state to privatize child welfare services by 2003.

Manitoba to permit gay adoptions (Canadian Press)
Manitoba will change its laws to permit gay and lesbian couples to adopt but exactly how remains uncertain, Justice Minister Gord Mackintosh said Monday.

State snag puts foster families on hold (Missouri--Springfield News-Leader)
Complex contracts, poor communication delay training for dozens in Ozarks who want to help children.

December 9, 2001

Open Sperm Donation (The New York Times)
In the early days of assisted reproduction, sperm donors were always anonymous and the need to keep them that way was supposed to trump any curiosity or confusion their future offspring might feel about them. Men would never donate sperm, the thinking went, if they knew that children might grow up and search them out - and couples using donor insemination would want to keep it a secret, if only to protect a husband sensitive about his infertility. Over the last few years, though, donor offspring have begun arguing that they, like adoptees before them, have a compelling right to information about their biological parents. Fueled by renewed faith in the importance of genes and by the victories of open-adoption advocates, the so-called identity-release movement is now leading sperm banks across the country to change the way they do business.

Sperm Donor Must Pay Child Support - Report (Reuters News)
A court in Sweden has ruled that a man who donated sperm for artificial insemination, enabling a lesbian couple to have three children, must pay child support after the two women separated, a Swedish newspaper reported on Sunday.

Time to open adoption records (The Toronto Star, Canada)
Attitudes toward adoption have changed enormously in a generation. Secrecy and shame have given way to acceptance and openness. Unfortunately, the law hasn't caught up. In Ontario today, adoptees have no legal right to know the circumstances of their birth. Nor are they entitled to family medical records.

December 7, 2001

Romania resumes allowing adoptions (The Boston Globe)
BUCHAREST, Romania - Under pressure from the United States and other countries, the Romanian government yesterday allowed 49 orphaned children to be adopted by foreign families. The international adoptions were granted despite a ban imposed in October at the request of the European Union. The EU, which Romania hopes to join by 2007, criticized rampant corruption and Romania's treatment of the orphans. December 6, 2001

Gay Woman Sues Va. to Allow Adoption (Washington Post)
An Episcopal priest asked an Arlington court yesterday to force Virginia to allow her to adopt a foster child from the District, contending that the state is stalling on her application because she is a lesbian.

More steps to speed up adoption process (10 Downing Street)
More steps have been taken to ensure the UK's adoption process delivers the best possible standards for children.

Romania Allows Int'l. Adoptions (New York Times)
Under pressure from the United States and other countries, the Romanian government on Thursday allowed 49 orphaned children to be adopted by foreign families.

December 5, 2001

Changes in abandoned baby law eyed (Rocky Mountain News)
An Aurora mother seeking to reclaim the baby she left at a hospital last week would have more time to get the child back if she had left her somewhere else.

Disabled man tries to keep children (Baltimore Sun)
In a case that is angering advocates for the disabled across the state, a mentally impaired man stands to lose his children to adoption when, his lawyer says, he should have been given proper help to learn how to take care of them.

December 3, 2001

Group may suggest end of anonymity for sperm donors (The National Post)
OTTAWA - As the all-party House of Commons health committee sits down today to begin hammering out proposals for legislation to govern cloning, surrogacy and other forms of assisted human reproduction and related research, there are signs it will recommend ending anonymity for sperm donors. One source said there was near unanimity on the issue.

Adoptive Parents File Suit To Keep Birth Father Away (The Salt Lake Tribune)
Scott, who went to law school in the East and now lives in California, says he has been tormented since he recently learned that the adoptive father was convicted of a sex crime involving a 14-year-old female relative less than one year after the adoption. But when Scott wrote to Garth and Suzanne, threatening to move into their Sandy neighborhood to watch over the boy, they filed a lawsuit aimed at barring him from any contact with their family.

Internet eases road for those weighing adoption (The Houston Chronicle)
The Internet, adoption officials say, has made it easier for interested families to pursue the initial phases of adoption, such as researching the steps involved and the children available. Much of that information is accessible at any time.

December 2, 2001

Michael Rogers Lost His Mom on September 11. And Found He Still Had Faith (Washington Post)
Michael Rogers sleeps now in the same queen-size bed as his cousin Joe Caballero, watched over by his mother from a 4-by-6-inch burgundy picture frame. Rosanne Patricia Lang hovers on the nightstand, a brown-eyed blonde holding a fluted glass of red wine in her left hand, a cigar in her right and wearing a trademark grin that stretches across her face. Even if Michael could forget that day in September when terrorists killed her at the World Trade Center, Rosanne won't let... Families Opt for Adoptions That Embrace Birth Mom (The Albuquerque Journal)
About 300 children are adopted each year in New Mexico, say Children, Youth and Families Department officials. Records aren't kept on how many of those adoptions are open, but over the years the practice has grown from extremely rare to quite common.

Desperate plight of Afghan orphans (BBC NEWS)
A child standing on the steps of Khairkhana orphanage on the northern fringes of Kabul sings a song in his high, thin voice, a patriotic song about Mujahideen glory in the war against the Soviet Red Army. More than a million Afghans died in that conflict, and hundreds of thousands more have been killed in the fighting since the Russians left.

December 1, 2001

Growing number of older Americans adopting (Houston Chronicle)
At 60, Don McAdams might well be counting the years to blissful retirement, savoring the prospect of travel, unlimited time to read and endless hours on the golf course or at the fishing hole. But he's not. Instead, he's calculating how to beat the morning rush hour to his daughters' schools, fretting about their coming teen-age years and making sure there's enough money for college educations.

November 30, 2001

Groups look to keep children with relatives, not the system (The Charleston Gazette)
To prevent children from ending up in foster care or adoption programs, two West Virginia groups will try to create a support network for grandparents and other relatives caring for children who are not their own.

Adopting a new attitude: Newton author says millions of Americans have adopted children (The Daily News Tribune)
According to Adam Pertman, award-winning author, America is experiencing an "adoption revolution." Between 80 million and 100 million Americans have an adopted person in their immediate families, no longer making it a taboo topic. Pertman said states have begun to unseal adopted children's birth certificates (every state used to seal the birth certificates and most still do) and birth mothers can now select their child's adopters.

Brits OK Ban on Creating Human Clones (The New York Times)
British lawmakers have approved an emergency bill barring scientists from using cloning techniques to produce babies, and Queen Elizabeth II is expected to approve the measure next week.

November 29, 2001

Child poverty grips ex-Soviet bloc (BBC NEWS)
A new report by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has found that 18 million children in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are living in conditions of extreme poverty.

Members Adopting More Than Policy (C-SPAN)
Delahunt was serving as Boston's metropolitan district attorney at the time when he and his wife - who already had one biological daughter - decided to adopt Kara [ . . . ] In Congress more than a dozen other lawmakers have experienced the joy that Delahunt described by becoming adoptive parents.

November 28, 2001

Braddock: State has improved foster care (The Seattle Times)
Washington's foster-care system is not trouble-free, but steps have been taken to improve the condition of some 4,300 kids, the head of the state's social-service agency told a Bellingham courtroom yesterday.

Agency hears skeptics on new system (The Florida Times-Union)
Officials with the state Department of Children and Families spent about 90 minutes yesterday explaining their new computer system -- and a decade of delays in implementing it -- to the House Child and Family Security Committee. The $210 million system called HomeSafenet is designed to keep better track of abused and neglected children the department is monitoring. The system has been in the works since 1990, and lawmakers have been critical of both the cost and time it has taken to implement it.

A Newborn in the Trash, on the Mind (The New York Times)
Yeah, it's kind of a miracle," Detective Joe Lamparelli was saying into the phone to the man from the state prosecutor's office. On normal days in this quiet suburb, the detective might work a bad-check case or a burglary. But since Friday, he's been going nonstop on the case of the abandoned newborn boy, found alive after spending the first five hours of life in a restroom garbage can at the Red Colony Diner.

November 25, 2001

REUNION BRINGS LIBERIAN KIDS TOGETHER AGAIN (The Columbian)
She can wear a shirt that reads "princess" as proudly as any 14-year-old, but Gbenie Rinta has seen far more than the glossy world offered to most American teens. Gbenie, pronounced with a silent "G," spent her first nine years in Liberia. She was living in an orphanage in the war-torn African country when her father, Gary Rinta, picked her up and took her to a world filled with marvels, including water fountains, TVs and hand blowers in restrooms.

November 23, 2001

State court clarifies ruling on gay adoptions (North County Times, CA)
A state appellate court in San Diego has clarified some of its language from a ruling last month that suggested gay adoptions by a second parent were illegal. The 2-to-1 Oct. 25 ruling by the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego found no legal authority for second-parent adoptions that allow unmarried partners to legally gain equal status as a parent. Gay-rights organizations had estimated the ruling could affect 10,000 to 20,000 adoptions over the past 15 years.

Adoptive families face fight with INS (Chicago Tribune)
Families recently denied visas by the United States for their newly adopted Cambodian infants say they are unwilling to stop fighting and plan to appeal the decision, with at least one contemplating a move to Southeast Asia.

November 22, 2001

CAMBODIA: NO VISAS FOR ADOPTED BABIES (The New York Times)
The United States Embassy announced that it would not issue visas to any of the 11 Cambodian babies adopted by Americans who have been stranded there because of questions over the backgrounds of the children.

November 21, 2001

Adopted Cambodian baby was bought or stolen, offical says (Maine, Press Herald)
Sorya Sferes, the 7-month-old Cambodian girl adopted by a Westbrook couple last month, was either bought or stolen from her biological parents, the U.S. government said Tuesday.

Children missing in Guatemalan civil war reunited with parents (CNN)
Two Indian children snatched by paramilitary patrols at the height of Guatemala's bitter civil war in 1982 have finally been found and reunited with their families, activists announced Monday.

November 15, 2001

Child refugees 'failed' by UK system (BBC NEWS)
Afghan children who fled to Britain to escape joining the Taleban army are being overlooked and left to fend for themselves, according to a new report.

New Families Share Their Joy (Washington Post)
Parents celebrate adoption; nearly 1,000 D.C. children still need homes.

November 12, 2001

Discounted adoption fares available (St. Petersburg Times)
Parents adopting children overseas shell out thousands of dollars in fees, so naturally when it's time to make travel arrangements they hope to catch a break in air fare costs. They might find them at Delta and Northwest, two major U.S. airlines that joined a handful of international companies in offering discount rates last year after learning about that need from travel and adoption agencies.

Overseas adoptions give pause (St. Petersburg Times)
Some are continuing with plans, but others have postponed a commitment or lost interest since the attacks.

Childhood interrupted: Pedro Pan exodus remembered (The Synapse)
Imagine receiving a telegram declaring that you were to be among a group of children that was leaving your country, Cuba, for the freedom of the United States. Imagine that you had to make this voyage without your parents. The feelings of sadness and fear would be overwhelming as you sat in the airport waiting for your airplane to depart. Everything that you had ever known and loved would be left behind. Imagine landing in a country that you had only seen on a school map. Everything said would be incomprehensible because you do not know the language.

Donor dads step out of the shadows (The Sidney Morning Herald)
Children conceived from donor sperm, eggs or embryos would be allowed to gain information about their biological parents from a new donor register, under legislation to be put to State Cabinet.

November 11, 2001

US curbs Cambodian baby trade (The Sunday Times, UK)
THE American embassy in Phnom Penh has refused to grant visas for Cambodian babies adopted by seven American families, saying it fears that the infants may have been bought or kidnapped by local gangsters.

November 8, 2001

Transvestite blocked in adoption attempt (The Budapest Sun)
A ministerial investigation has been launched into an attempt by a Hungarian transvestite performer to adopt a child. investigation has been launched into an attempt by a Hungarian transvestite performer to adopt a child.

A U.S. Crackdown Strands American Adoptive Parents (The International Herald Tribune)
PHNOM PENH It was, of course, love at first sight. Still jet-lagged from their long flight across the Pacific, the American families embraced their adopted babies and pronounced them, in one voice, adorable.

New program offers hope for relative caregivers (The Tennessean)
They're the lone providers for an estimated 85,000 of the state's children, and yet not their parents. They aren't foster parents, either, so for years they have had no financial support from the state.

Eight American couples to head home with adopted Vietnamese children (The Star Tribune)
Eight American couples who have faced weeks of delays in getting visas for their adopted Vietnamese children were granted approval to return home with their new family members, a U.S. official said Thursday.

November 7, 2001

Adoption ruling worries lesbians (The Sacramento Bee)
The 'second-parent' practice isn't legal, says an appeals court.

New adoptive age sought (The Irish Times)
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, is to be asked by the South Eastern Health Board to clarify and to extend the age limit for adoptive parents.

Mainers' adoption ordeal an aberration, experts say (The Maine Press Herald)
They took to each other right away - Greg and Kim Sferes and little Sorya, the baby the Westbrook couple had flown all the way to Cambodia to adopt.

November 6, 2001

ANDREY CHERKASOV: WOMAN INVOLVED IN SELLING RUSSIAN CHILDREN TO ITALY RELEASED (Pravda)
Former female crane operator from the town of Volzhsky, who organized the illegal business in the Volgograd region selling Russian children to Italy, was released from the custody on bail of the sum of 10 thousand dollars and was given written orders not to leave town. The woman's name is Nadezhda Fratti; she was released with the help of an Italian delegation, which arrived in Volzhsky especially for that purpose. The foreign delegation consisted of deputies from the Italian parliament, the new parents of some of the sold children, and other people. The prosecutor of the Volgograd region listened to the pleadings from the Italians and released Fratti.

Children in foster care being hurt more (Gainesville Sun)
Florida's rate of abuse in foster care - about one in every 11 children - is three times the state goal and 15 times higher than the national standard, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Adoption inquiry strands Westbrook couple in Cambodia (The Portland Press Herald)
Greg and Kim Sferes were so happy. After years of trying to have a child, the word came from Cambodia that they could adopt. A 7-month-old girl named Sorya was waiting. So on Oct. 3, the couple from Westbrook headed to Southeast Asia to pick up their daughter. They haven't returned. Haven't been able to - at least, not with Sorya.

Families stuck in Vietnam coming home: Milwaukee couple among those stranded with adopted babies (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Eight American families stranded in Ho Chi Minh City with their adopted Vietnamese babies have been told their travel visas have been approved, paving the way for them to return home to the United States.

Maliseets say children shouldn't be placed in non-Indian homes (Boston Globe)
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) Indian leaders accused the Maine Department of Human Services of violating federal law by placing Maliseet children in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes.

November 5, 2001

Panel: Yemenite babies were not stolen (The Jerusalem Post)
Almost all of the mostly Yemenite babies allegedly handed over for adoption in secret by the government to Ashkenazi families in the early days of the state died of illness and were buried without their families being notified, a judicial commission of inquiry concluded yesterday.

Presidential Proclamation On National Adoption Month, 2001 (US Newswire)
A PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

U.S. Interrupts Cambodian Adoptions (The New York Times)
Few people doubt that babies are bought and sold in Cambodia, bringing huge profits to a chain of corrupt officials and middlemen. Now for the first time, the embassy said it had concrete evidence of trafficking, and it acted quickly. Midstream, the adoptions were put on hold while the embassy began to investigate. Cambodia - which had been the ninth-largest source of foreign babies adopted by Americans, with nearly 100 a month - was out of the adoption business.

November 4, 2001

Making a world of difference: Adopting two girls from China, Jenny Bowen of Berkeley and other parents are working to help the ones they left behind (San Francisco Chronicle)
Like thousands of parents who adopt children from China every year, Jenny Bowen left the country haunted -- thinking about all the young girls left behind in the overcrowded orphanages.

November 3, 2001

For two dads, a dream realized (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Adopting a son brings joy to gay Milwaukee couple, amid increasing acceptance.

Foster-Care Adoptions Rise Sharply In Md., Va. (The Washington Post)
Maryland and Virginia officials yesterday announced substantial increases in the number of children who have been adopted from foster care over the last five years.

Regular birth certs for adopted children approved (Star Publications, Malaysia)
BIRTH certificates of adopted children in the state will no longer contain the word "adopted" to spare them the stigma.

Overseas turmoil also hurting overseas adoptions (The Philadelphia Enquirer)
A hard process has become even more complicated. Some agencies report a sharp drop in inquiries from would-be parents.

November 2, 2001

Hard numbers may aid students in foster care ( The Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Advocates have long known that children in foster care don't do as well in school as other students. Now, though, they have some hard numbers.

In Vietnam, family seeks a way home: Milwaukeeans have a family but not a country (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
More than 18 months after Jeff and Jane Browne began the long and costly process of adopting two Vietnamese boys, they now find themselves stalled in international limbo, stuck with their new sons in a hotel thousands of miles from their Milwaukee home.

November 1, 2001

Older children still await adoption (Southwest Florida, News-Press)
'Calling out' ceremony Friday highlights need.

More Single Parents Overcome Obstacles Of Adoption Process (The Tampa Tribune)
No law in Florida prohibits single people from adopting, but they can face obstacles that couples don't, say single parents who have done it.

DYFS gets $12M for hiring, raises (The Asbury Park Press)
Abused and neglected children under the state's care will have more caseworkers to watch over them under a law signed by acting Gov. DiFrancesco yesterday.

October 31, 2001

For Vietnam War orphans, a bittersweet return home (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Get out your handkerchiefs and warm up the VCR. At 5 p.m. Sunday, WHYY-TV (Channel 12) will show Precious Cargo, a one-hour documentary for PBS about Vietnamese adoptees returning to their homeland on the 25th anniversary of the April 1975 fall of Saigon.

Romania lifts lid on babies for sale racket (The Guardian Unlimited)
Investigation reveals scandal of infants stolen from mothers at birth to line pockets of international traffickers

INS barrier delays Vietnamese adoptions (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Lea Ann and Keith Kaplan see them nearly every day outside major hotels in Ho Chi Minh City: American couples like themselves, with Vietnamese babies in their arms.

October 30, 2001

Migden to offer gay-adoption bill: Court decision inspired legislation to protect second parents (San Francisco Chronicle)
In response to a court ruling that cast doubt over the legitimacy of adoptions of thousands of children by gay and lesbian couples in California, Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, announced yesterday that she will introduce legislation to protect existing second-parent adoptions.

Kilshaws prompt adoption overhaul (BBC News)
Britons who adopt children from overseas without getting proper clearance could face a up to a year in jail under a proposed revision of the adoption system.

Kashmir's orphaned generation (BBC News)
It is estimated there are now 10-15,000 orphans in Indian-administered Kashmir as a result of more than a decade of conflict between militants and the security forces.

International Adoption - Country Updates (Adoption.com)
Updates on International Adoption policies by country.

Stigma stalks women whose babies are adopted (The Irish Times)
Adoption legislation makes no provision for the needs of birth mothers, a study by the UCC Social Studies Department has found. Published yesterday, the study involved 18 natural mothers aged 27 to 67, from all parts of Ireland. who responded to the survey.

Czech Republic: Case Raises Issue Of Direct Adoptions (Radio Free Europe)
A Ukrainian woman and a Czech nurse are being accused by police of child trafficking.

October 29, 2001

Couples who flout adoption laws face a year in prison (Independent Digital, UK)
Couples who adopt children abroad without first gaining approval in Britain face even stiffer penalties under measures to be unveiled in the House of Commons today.

State Appeals Court Strikes Down Gay Adoption Procedure (The Sacramento Bee)
A state appeals court has struck down an administrative procedure used by gays to adopt the children of their partners.

October 28, 2001

Adoption exec leaves legacy of complaints (The San Antonio Express)
A San Antonio adoption agency has handled hundreds of foreign adoptions since the Iron Curtain fell a decade ago, saving children who were abandoned in decrepit orphanages and helping families adopt children in Eastern Europe.

Baby box controversy at mothers' charity (CNN)
Antwerp, Belgium--The three-month-old baby was crying, hungry and grubby. A volunteer at a Flemish charitable parenting foundation gave the baby a bath, dressed it in new clothes and handed it back to its family, along with a new pram and blankets and other supplies that would make this particular baby's life a little more comfortable.

October 27, 2001

Unmarried couples should have right to adopt, says agency (Independent Digital, UK)
Couples who live together in stable relationships should be given the same rights to adopt children jointly as married couples have, an adoption group said.

Adoption subsidies grow as state budget shrinks (The Des Moines Register)
Subsidies for parents who adopt children from the state have almost doubled in the past five years in Iowa as child-welfare officials have tried to prevent more children from languishing in the foster-care system.

DHS too slow to aid children, says new study: Cases of repeated neglect, abuse found to be common in Maine (Bangor Maine News)
The Department of Human Services doesn't remove children from bad homes soon enough, according to a federal study released Friday.

October 26, 2001

Lesbians sue Mississippi over birth record (Planet Out Today)
Mississippi is refusing to issue a birth certificate to a 4-year-old boy because he has been adopted by a lesbian couple. The refusal means that the child has no legal document to prove his name, the names of his parents, and his date and place of birth.

Thousands of orphans? An urban myth. (The New York Times)
An op-ed piece downplaying the estimates of orphans from the September 11th tragedies.

October 25, 2001

Cuts stall 'Cadillac' plan for foster kids' drugs: Psychotropic drugs targeted (The Miami Herald)
Child welfare administrators began designing what they called the "Cadillac" of mental health programs for foster children last summer, hoping the model would curb the widespread practice of prescribing mind-altering drugs to kids under state care.

October 24, 2001

Foster care can work if state has the will to do it (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Lawyers defending Washington's foster-care system are using an argument I've heard before: Judges don't have the authority to decide the fate of the state's 10,000 foster children.

DHS shelves plan to open child hearings (Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel)
State bureaucrats have shelved a plan to open some child-protection hearings to the public on a trial basis, saying they don't want to interfere with a state task force studying how to deal with confidentiality issues.

America rediscovers orphans sent west (Wichita Eagle)
About 5,000 parentless children came to Kansas from the East on "orphan trains." Now, their stories are being told.

October 22, 2001

An agonizing road for kids of Sept. 11. Thousands of children lost a parent in the attacks; the toll on them is only beginning to be assessed (USA Today)
These children are the youngest casualties of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Psychologists and child-welfare officials say the youngsters have been thrust into a situation that is uniquely tragic, their grief compounded by the suddenness

October 21, 2001

How Adoption in America Grew Secret (The Washington Post)
Birth records weren't closed for the reasons you might think.

Adoption services swamped trying to meet federal deadline (MSNBC)
A federal requirement to place foster children in a permanent home within a year is swamping Florida adoption counselors.

October 19, 2001

New Adoption Bill published (10 Downing Street Newsroom [UK])
The new Adoption and Children Bill presents the biggest overhaul of adoption law in over 25 years and aims to improve the futures of hundreds of vulnerable children.

Bill would let adoptive parents get more information (The Associated Press--WKYC-TV)
Prospective adoptive parents would be entitled to information on the backgrounds of troubled children they might adopt under a bill passed by the Ohio House yesterday.

October 17, 2001

Music strengthens adoptees' ties to Korea (Bergen County, The Record)
Over the years, the Uri Sori Korean American Drummers have won many contests for the way they use drums in story-telling, reminiscent of ancient Korean tradition. The 12-member troupe, made up mostly of Korean-born youngsters adopted by American families, is part of a cultural program designed to help them develop a fuller appreciation of their heritage.

October 15, 2001

Foster homes for teens are hard to find (The Miami Herald)
In Miami-Dade County, kids older than 13 account for more than half of the children in state care. Yet finding a home for them, whether it's temporary or permanent, poses one of the biggest challenges for child welfare workers.

Proposed changes to PA law would allow gay adoption (The Observer-Report)
Pennsylvania adoption law needs an overhaul that includes giving adoptees greater access to birth records and allowing third-party adoption by non-spouses, homosexual partners among them, an advisory panel told state lawmakers Monday.

California Governor Signs Gay Rights Bill (The New York Times)
Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation Sunday providing about a dozen rights enjoyed by married couples to more than 16,000 registered, gay, lesbian and domestic partners in California.

HHS Awards First-Ever Grants To Promote Adoption Awareness (U.S. Newswire)
HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced the release of $8.6 million in grants to start a new program to raise awareness about adoption as an option for pregnant women.

October 14, 2001

Mass. court gives rights to parents in surrogate birth (The Chicago Sun-Times)
In a ruling aimed at bringing the law in line with advances in science, Massachusetts' highest court unanimously declared Friday that a couple whose twins were born to a surrogate mother were the children's legal parents from the moment of birth.

October 13, 2001

Supreme Court: Surrogacy no bar to genetic parents' rights (The Seattle Times)
In a ruling aimed at bringing the law in line with advances in science, Massachusetts' highest court unanimously declared yesterday that a couple whose twins were born to a surrogate mother were the children's legal parents from birth.

October 12, 2001

Court outlaws seizure of foster kids' benefits (The Record)
In a decision that could force the state to pay back millions of dollars to orphans and disabled children, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state cannot seize the Social Security benefits of foster children to pay for their care.

Siegelman raises government subsidy for foster families (The Anniston Star)
Alabama--Gov. Don Siegelman raised the daily government subsidy to foster families from $8 to $14 per child Thursday, a dramatic increase that officials hope will entice thousands to join the ranks of foster parents throughout the state.

October 10, 2001

'I had my eyes shut. It was too much to see my baby after so long' (The Guardian Unlimited)
Everyone agrees the adoption process needs streamlining. But, asks Julie Wheelwright, does the new fast track risk repeating past mistakes?

October 9, 2001

Group brushes off losses in suit against DYFS (New Jersey, The Record)
Despite losing nearly every skirmish waged so far in a federal court battle, a child advocacy group plans to continue its struggle to prove the state Division of Youth and Family Services is failing to safeguard foster children.

October 8, 2001

High court considers adoption (The Lincoln Journal Star)
Does Nebraska law allow unmarried couples, gay or straight, to adopt children? That was the question presented to the state Supreme Court on Friday in a case involving a Lincoln woman who wants her lesbian companion to jointly adopt the woman's 3-year-old son.

Home at last: After an unforgettable journey, the Carter family brings a new daughter home from Kazakhstan (The Sacramento Bee)
Olesya Belle Carter, very probably 2 years old, had never seen such strange people and strange fanfare. Not once, in her six months in a Kazakhstan orphanage, had she ever been applauded for walking through a doorway. Now, the simple act of rounding a corner at San Francisco's airport, holding gingerly to her mother's finger, was enough to spark wild cheering.

October 7, 2001

Microsoft maverick's cafe brings new hope to Russian orphans (The Observer)
Bill Gates's ex-troubleshooter helps keep children off highway to crime.

Viet adoptees discuss their new lives, mysteries surrounding past (The Seattle Times)
Brown was among the several dozen people who met at Seattle Center this weekend for a small reunion of Vietnamese-born adoptees, organized by the Vietnamese Adoptee Network.

October 5, 2001

Lesbians' adoption case goes to court (The Lincoln Journal Star)
The Nebraska Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments today in an adoption case that observers say could redefine "family" and children's rights in the state for years to come.

Utah Court: Dads Have Say in Adoptions (The Salt Lake Tribune)
Unwed Utah mothers cannot put their newborns up for adoption without the father's consent if, among other duties, he has agreed to assume responsibility for pregnancy- and birth-related expenses, the Utah Court of Appeals ruled Thursday.

October 4, 2001

Davis rejects plan to promote baby drop-off program law created to save unwanted children from abandonment (The San Francisco Chronicle)
In an unexpected decision yesterday, Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a $1 million public relations campaign to inform mothers and fathers that they can leave unwanted babies at hospitals without facing criminal penalties.

October 3, 2001

Romania: Government To Push For Maintaining Adoption Ban (Radio Free Europe)
An appeals court in Romania has overturned a government ban on international adoptions of Romanian babies, following an appeal lodged by a non-governmental organization. Romanian authorities in June decided to ban the adoptions in response to accusations by international officials that the country was doing little to stop child trafficking. Now, the government is vowing to fight the court's decision and to maintain the ban.

Advocate for kids returns to court (The Miami Herald)
Talenfeld, a Fort Lauderdale attorney and children's advocate, is suing the Florida Department of Children & Families, Betancourt's former employer, arguing that conditions in Broward foster care are so shameful they violate children's constitutional rights.

October 2, 2001

B.C. leads adoption challenge
While improvements in Ontario remain stalled, adoption in B.C. is moving ahead with new standards, new money, and new services.

Life skills for young orphans (The Christian Science Monitor)
African groups are teaching AIDS orphans how to keep families intact.

Court refuses to hear Utah appeal of child services case (The Utah StandardNet)
WASHINGTON -- Utah failed to persuade the Supreme Court to get involved in a dispute over the state"s care of its poor children.

Medical foster parents take in children in need of special care (The Florida News Herald)
Annette and Ralph Fox, medical foster and adoptive parents, were on hand at Children's Medical Services Monday to help mark National Child Health Day, an annual event focused this year on children with special health-care needs.

Lawsuit over foster care in Florida opens in courtroom
The revival of a federal foster care case against Florida child-welfare officials got off to a slow start Monday, with both sides discussing points of law for more than four hours before giving opening statements and getting to the first witness.

Suggestion: Public defenders to help parents in DHS cases (The Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel)
Augusta, Maine --Maine needs a new arm of publicly funded lawyers who will specialize in defending parents who face issues with the state Department of Human Services in child custody cases.

Abandoned baby first protected under new law (The Natchez Democrat)
A baby left at Natchez Community Hospital's emergency room Aug. 21 was the first to be abandoned under a new law that protects newborns.

Long way home: End of adoption journey in sight for Davis family (The Sacramento Bee)
From San Francisco to London to Moscow to Almaty, Kazakhstan, they had come, they and 10-year-old son Dakota. During the 19 hours they'd been in the air, President Bush had warned the U.S. military to prepare for war, the ruling Taliban government in Afghanistan had been told to hand over accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, and thousands of Afghans had begun to flee their country for fear of an impending U.S. military strike. The Carters had come for their daughter, Olesya. She would turn 2 years old in a matter of days. The Carters had never met her.

Foster kids back to living in offices: State can't always find homes quickly (The Miami Herald)
After the Florida Department of Children & Families came under persistent fire for allowing children to live in office buildings, officials devised a plan for the children whom nobody wanted: Like a grown-up game of musical beds, the kids were moved from foster home to foster home -- sometimes every night.

October 1, 2001

Mercy is save haven (The Clinton Herald)
CLINTON - Mercy Medical Center facilities will serve as safe havens for abandoned infants as a result of the state's Newborn Safe Haven Act.

Adoptee's disease sparks suit (The Globe and Mail)
Obligation for adoption agencies to share medical facts with children at issue after woman learns years of hereditary disorder

The Uncloned States of America? (Scientific American)
Even opponents of cloning probably agree that the Weldon bill passed in July by the U.S. House of Representatives is extreme. It not only bans federal support for human cloning but criminalizes the activity and prohibits traffic in any products or services arising from it. It deliberately makes no distinction between reproductive cloning (aimed at producing new people) and therapeutic cloning (aimed at creating cell lines for medical treatments). The bill sends a message: "No human cloning, ever."

September 30, 2001

State's safe-baby law expands (The Dallas Morning News)
Infants up to 60 days old can be abandoned at designated sites.

Chaotic system discourages adoption: Would-be parents give up on Ontario (The Toronto Star)
Thousands of Ontarians have gone abroad to adopt over the past decade, while children in their own province grow up as wards of the state. It's estimated that more than 20,000 kids across Canada are in the same plight

September 29, 2001

Gay-Rights Laws Win Support in 2 Nations (The New York Times)
Johannesburg, A South African court ruled today that gay and lesbian couples could adopt children, a judgment hailed by gay rights groups as a victory for equality.

State settles part of foster-care suit (The Seattle Times)
Thirteen foster children who were shuttled from foster home to foster home a total of 208 times will be awarded cash damages in a negotiated settlement reached yesterday between their attorneys and the state Department of Social and Health Services.

September 28, 2001

Court victory for lesbian judges (South Africa News 24)
Pretoria - The Pretoria High Court on Friday ruled in favour of two lesbian judges who sought to amend legislation pertaining to the joint adoption of children and access for same-sex life partners to the benefits afforded to married judges' spouses.

Adoption's Not a Secret, but Why Harp on It? Parents Ask (The L.A. Times)
They say that identifying children as 'adopted' subtly relegates a huge group of people to second-class status.

Group files brief in adoption case (The Nebraska Lincoln Journal Star)
Family First, a statewide conservative advocacy group, on Thursday became the most recent organization to file a friend-of-the-court brief in a controversial adoption case to be heard by the state Supreme Court Oct. 5. David Bydalek, attorney for the organization, said the brief urges the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court in denying a lesbian couple's attempt to adopt a child, known as Luke in court proceedings.

September 26, 2001

Helping the Youngest Victims (The New York Times)
The city and state must undertake a complete follow-through to help children and surviving parents after emergency conditions have subsided.

Couples Looking to Adopt Find a Shifting Spotlight (The New York Times)
In searching for a second baby to adopt, Carol Veihmeyer and Doug Cecil of Atlanta spent six months writing letters and making contacts before they turned to the Internet. In that time, Ms. Vehmeyer said, they also became smart about the Web and overcame an ambivalence about making their lives public.

September 25, 2001

Writer tells of journey to Chinese daughter's birthplace (CNN)
Several years ago, New York novelist and humor columnist Emily Prager heard the question a parent dreads: "Mama, where did I come from?" And since Prager's daughter, LuLu, had been adopted from China when she was about 7 months old, a full answer was probably more than a 4-year-old could have handled. For potential scariness, the birds and the bees have nothing on Chinese population control policies and child abandonment.

September 23, 2001

Sperm donor children may have fatal gene (The Sunday Times)
A SPERM donor carrying a genetic defect may have passed a life-threatening abnormality to 43 babies he fathered at a London clinic. The parents of one affected child are trying to find the man, who they believe has returned to his native Australia.

Girl's Adoption From Photo Project a Happy Development (The Albuquerque Journal)
Jeff Grundmann was at the dentist's office in March when he saw his daughter for the very first time. In the newspaper. What Grundmann saw was a luminous 14-year-old named Danielle staring out from the front page in a portrait by New York photographer Joyce Tenneson. Danielle was a foster child, a longtime ward of the state who had spent 11 years waiting for a home.

Adoptive parents help children find birth families (The Chicago Tribune)
Adoptive parents today are increasingly being faced with the prospect of their children reuniting with their birth families, as open adoption has become more common and Internet searches more viable. Yet not all adoptive parents worry-free about this process; for many, the idea of a birth parent entering the picture raises a disquieting swirl of emotions, including fear that they will lose their place in their child's heart, as well as confusion over what their role in the search and reunion should be.

September 22, 2001

Nation's shame: Starving Orissa family sells children (The Hindustani Times)
Nothing in the world had prepared me for this. I had gone to Badagamada in Balangir as a curious journalist, but I came back as the owner of two children. Yes, reprehensible as the word is, owner. For, a starving Oriya family had begged me to buy Paree, 4, and his two-year-old sister Jemati so that the two children also wouldn't die of hunger.

September 21, 2001

Hospital opens special baby receptacle for unwanted infants (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
On Thursday the hospital unveiled what is believed to be the only receptacle in the United States built as a safe haven for abandoned newborns.

September 20, 2001

More staff and funding needed to meet adoption targets (Community Care)
Achieving government adoption targets will require more frontline staff and extra funding, delegates at a national conference were told, writes Jonathan Pearce.

September 19, 2001

Cruelest meth-lab toll: kids (The Seattle Times)
Amid the usual disarray of toxic chemicals, dangerous drugs and filth, police are routinely finding something else in clandestine methamphetamine labs: neglected young children.

Homeless and Helpless in Romania (The New York Times)
Movie review of "Children Underground."

Mom leaves newborn with firefighters under Safe Baby law (Tallahassee Democratic)
MIAMI - A 3-hour-old girl has become the first infant in the state's largest county to be left with firefighters under the Safe Baby law passed last year.

Audit: Monitor Certain Caseworkers (The Salt Lake Tribune)
A legislative audit of Utah's Division of Child and Family Services released Monday says the agency should more closely monitor caseworkers with especially high or low rates of removing children from their homes.

September 17, 2001

State promises better services for 45,000 kids in state care (The Florida Times-Union)
MIAMI - An 11-year-old class-action suit seeking better mental health services for foster children and juvenile offenders should end in two years if the state sticks to its promises, children's advocates say.

Misery still stalks millions of kids (The Seattle Times)
More than a decade after 1990's World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children, many are toasting Latin America as one of the success stories . . . [however] there is still a clear gap between legislative efforts and results, especially for the poorest children.

Officials await new era in teen foster care (The Union-Tribune)
The county will open San Pasqual Academy Sept. 28. Similar to a boarding school, it will accept foster teens, ages 14 to 18, for whom adoption has been ruled out.

September 16, 2001

Family's adoption back on track (The Holland Sentinel)
The adoption by a Holland family of a 5-month-old Korean girl was interrupted by Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., when her plane was diverted to Hawaii while enroute to California.

September 14, 2001

Audit: State's foster care system inefficient (The Telegraph--New Hampshire)
CONCORD - The state's foster care system is inefficient and lacks proper oversight to ensure that children are safely and appropriately placed, according to a 121-page legislative audit released this week.

September 13, 2001

Ethiopian orphans to sue charity (BBC News)
A group of orphaned Ethiopian boys is demanding a formal apology and compensation from a Swiss children's agency under whose care they have been living.

Children Adopted From Abroad at Risk of Diseases (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children adopted from foreign countries had a one in three chance of carrying an infectious disease such as latent tuberculosis, hepatitis B or an intestinal parasite, a team of researchers reports.

Charities to help children orphaned during terrorism (The Star Tribune)
Tuesday's acts of terrorism might have created a whole new group of disaster orphans.

Few using safe-haven laws when abandoning babies (The Chicago Tribune)
While 35 states have adopted safe haven laws in the last two years, sometimes with considerable efforts to promote them, there is little evidence that they are having the desired effect.

Adopted Babies Stranded After Attacks (Reuters)
HONG KONG (Reuters) - U.S. parents and their newly adopted Chinese babies were among hundreds of travelers stranded at Hong Kong airport on Thursday after this week's terror attacks in New York and Washington.

September 11, 2001

State Senate OKs milestone domestic partners bill, Supporters call it best in nation, critics say it undermines marriage (The San Francisco Chronicle)
Domestic-partner rights Rights that would be extended to registered unmarried couples under AB25, written by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco . . .

September 10, 2001

A Foster Girl Is Sent Away And Dies Alone (The Washington Post)
Child protection agency failed to watch her in Delaware facility.

Nation: Adoption parties recruit families for hard-to-place children (The Nando Times)
Different sides on the issue of adoption recruitment parties.

Abandoned Newborn is Found in Central Park (The New York Times)
A newborn girl was found just before dawn yesterday in Central Park, left on the ground and wrapped in a blanket. The baby, found with the placenta still attached, was in stable condition last night at St. Luke's--Roosevelt Hospital Center.

September 8, 2001

Adoption specialist to be recognized in Washington (The Daily Record)
Gloria Smith, a longtime adoption advocate, along with 120 others, will be honored as an "Angel in Adoption" Tuesday in Washington, D.C., by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.

Washington picks some 'angels': Families who adopt children (Michigan Live)
Congress will honor 137 people from around the country by naming them "Angels in Adoption." The awards ceremony, for families who have helped foster children find safe and permanent homes, will take place Tuesday in Washington.

East Timor's Displaced Children (The Washington Post)
Indonesian 'unity' group foils efforts to reunite families who fled their homes after militias laid waste to East Timor in response to an overwhelming vote to secede from Indonesia two years ago.

Is No Adoption Really Better Than a Gay Adoption? (The New York Times)
Opionion piece opposing the recent Federal District Court decision in Florida that upheld the 1977 Florida law that bans adoptions by gay men and lesbians.

September 7, 2001

Head of Children's Services Says He Won't Stay in the Job Under a New Mayor (The New York Times)

September 6, 2001

Andrei Cherkasov: New Turns in Notorious Case of Nadezhda Fratti (Pravda)
Details of the case against a woman who is accused of illegal dealings in connection to adoptions she arranged in Italy for children from the Volgograd region of Russia.

Court suspends BR lawyer for role in adoption scheme (The Advocate)
The Louisiana Supreme Court has suspended a Baton Rouge lawyer for her role in a scheme in which pregnant Russian women were recruited to come to the United States and give up their babies for adoption for a fee.

September 5, 2001

Many kids in foster care don't see doctor (The Miami Herald)
DCF fails to provide some basic needs.

The New American Family (The Miami Herald)
The blossoming of international adoptions is changing the face of families and communities from coast to coast. Here's an in-depth look at how we're all adapting.

September 4, 2001

Cambodian police stun rights group, releases alleged baby traffickers (Yahoo News)
Cambodian police on Tuesday stunned human rights groups by releasing five people who allegedly brought babies and young children for illegal adoption, saying their arrest was the result of a misunderstanding.

Abandoned Babies (New York Times)
Letter to the Editor: Your Aug. 31 front-page article "Few Choose Legal Havens to Abandon Babies"...

Adoption Medicine Brings New Parents Answers and Advice (New York Times)
Today, more than a dozen physicians in the United States and Canada are considered specialists in the emerging field known as adoption medicine.

Agencies offer adoption help, counseling to women in crisis (The Advocate)
Abandoned babies frustrate child agencies, lawmakers.

Adoptions of disabled increasing (The Tennessean)
DCS launched an innovative program to find parents for its children who are the most difficult to place. ''See What Adoption Takes'' began in December in the midst of a class-action lawsuit brought by eight foster children

Amanda Baden: Transracial adoption does not harm children (Independent Argument)
From a talk by the assistant professor in human services at St John's University, New York, to the annual conference of the American Psychological Association.

Proposal creates paternal duties (Lawrence-Journal World)
Minister backs bill putting onus on fathers to discover pregnancy.

September 3, 2001

Homes for abandoned RP children sought (Inquirer News Service)
There has been a dearth of adoptive families for about 7,000 Filipino children being cared for in welfare institutions, according to President Macapagal-Arroyo.

Cigna boosts a benefit (The Inquirer News Service)
Since 1994, Cigna Corp. has provided adoption assistance to its employees and helped more than 200 parents adopt children. Now, the Philadelphia-based health insurer is enhancing that employee assistance by increasing the amount of reimbursable expenses to $5,000 from $3,500 and adding two weeks of paid time off.

Delaware hospitals prepare for abandoned-baby law (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Hospital administrators say they are drawing up policies and training employees in preparation for a new state law that allows parents to abandon their newborns at emergency rooms.

September 2, 2001

Senator Hutchison of Texas Adopts a Baby (New York Times)
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and her husband, Ray Hutchison, have adopted a 4-month-old girl.

State lines stall interstate adoptions (The Washington Times)
To millions of Americans, state borders are virtually invisible -- mere lines on a map that do nothing to block interstate travel, communication or commerce. But for people who want to adopt a foster child in another state, state lines can loom as large and forbidding as the Berlin Wall.

September 1, 2001

AIDS Could Orphan Third of Africa's Children (Northern Light)
Up to one third of children in Southern and East African countries could be orphaned by HIV/AIDS by 2010, the head of a South African charity told the International Forum for Child Welfare (IFCW) in Ireland this week, SAPA reported on Friday.

Life for Romanian children changes for better (The Irish Times)
Irish attitudes about orphans in Romania are fixed in television images which are over a decade old. But, as Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer report from Bucharest, this week's controversy over Mihaela Porumbaru tells a different story.

Law gives mothers option (The Sun News)
The S.C. Department of Social Services was in the process of preparing information for schools about where teens could safely drop off a newborn when authorities found a baby boy at Aynor-Conway Career Center.

Roadblocks along adoption's path: Dual standards snare would-be parents (Sacbee News)
Three cases highlight what more than a dozen foster parents and social workers say is a common and emotionally charged battle to gain custody of infants in foster care.

August 31, 2001

Gay men to keep fighting adoption ban (CNN)
An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said she would ask a federal court to review its decision upholding a Florida law barring gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

Few Women Choose to Abandon Newborns at Legal Havens (The New York Times)
While 35 states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, have adopted safe haven laws in the last two years, sometimes with considerable efforts to promote them, there is little evidence that they are having the desired effect.

Scandal at Hale House (The Philanthropy Roundtable)
Sifting through the rubble of a once-proud nonprofit.

Court Backs Florida Ban on Adoption By Gays
A Florida judge yesterday upheld a state law banning gays from adopting children, the first federal court ruling on the issue.

August 30, 2001

Graves meets with foster care providers (The Morning Sun)
Gov. Bill Graves met privately Wednesday with representatives of the nonprofit groups that provide foster care services for abused and neglected children. The meeting came as legislators continued to have questions about the state's decision to turn foster care programs over to private groups and the financial problems the groups have faced.

Rent-a-womb cheapens all humanity (The Star)
As far as jobs go, pregnancy might be the ultimate sweatshop. The hours are long, the hazards range from diabetes and edema to hemorrhoids and varicose veins, and the pay, at the going rate of $20,000, works out to less than $3 per hour.

Couples Face Choices on Embryos (The New York Times)
In vitro fertilization brought Patricia and Allan Butryn two sons and a daughter but left them with a dilemma: what to do with two extra embryos now frozen in a Chicago clinic.

A mom states her case (The Daily Globe)
In a stuffy hearing room just off the governor's office, Jan Brown got closer yesterday than she ever had before to the day in court she has sought for more than two years. Brown was at the State House to testify before the Governor's Council against Jeffrey Locke, the commissioner of the Department of Social Services, who has been nominated for the Superior Court bench.

Federal judge rules Florida's ban on homosexual adoptions is valid (CNN)
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Florida's law banning homosexuals from adopting children is valid, saying the state has a legitimate interest in only allowing married couples to adopt.

August 29, 2001

SJC quandary: What determines motherhood? Case pits genetics vs. legal precedent (Boston Globe)
In an age when science is creating many new ways for people to become parents - donated eggs, donated sperm, gestational carriers, artificial insemination - the Supreme Judicial Court next week will for the first time look at whether a genetic mother can replace a birth mother on a baby's birth certificate. It's a designation that brings legal rights to a child.

Texas Expands "Baby Moses" Law (WFAA Radio)
The "Baby Moses" law that allows mothers to drop off newborns safely at fire stations is being expanded.

Auditioning for parents: In search for families, adoption parties have advocates and critics (The Boston Globe)
And next week, in Boston, children seeking adoptive parents will get a chance to shine before a crowd of potential moms and dads at Fenway Park. About 180 abused, abandoned, and otherwise parentless children seeking adoption will walk to home plate on Sept. 8, flash their smiles on the stadium's Jumbotron, and hope one of about 1,000 adults watching from the stands will see a future son or daughter.

August 28, 2001

New agreement on Filipino adoptions (The Irish Times)
An agreement to allow Irish couples to adopt children from the Philippines will be signed tomorrow. The Minister of State with responsibility for children, Ms Mary Hanafin, is in the Philippines for the signing.

"Snowflakes" Available (Evansville Courier & Press)
Frozen embryos have a new option beyond destruction.

August 26, 2001

Researchers Say Embryos in Labs Are Not Available (The New York Times)
If scientists want to develop new supplies of embryonic stem cells, they may have to take the bold and controversial step of creating human embryos expressly for research, many leading fertility experts say.

Adoption agency acts on baby-buying claims (The Star)
An Ontario adoption agency has suspended its relationship with an American woman who arranged at least 45 adoptions of Vietnamese children for Canadians, following allegations that babies had been bought from their families.

Bringing China back into their lives (The Plain Dealer)
More and more adoptive parents [of Chinese children] in Greater Cleveland are facing such tricky questions of identity - and getting help from a group that has not always been easy for outsiders to penetrate: the Chinese-American community.

Father has rights to Baby Sam (St. Petersburg Times)
Should kidnappers get to keep the child they've stolen if they do a better job raising him than his parents could have? That is essentially the question raised in the legal odyssey of Baby Sam, a child whose case has national implications for the rights of natural parents.

'Internet twins' still in state custody (Jefferson City News Tribune)
The St. Louis twins who were twice adopted over the Internet, then caught in the middle of a highly publicized trans-Atlantic custody battle, are still in the custody of the state of Missouri.

Foster-care adoptions break record in S.C. (The State)
473 children were adopted from foster care in fiscal year that ended in June.

Clinic to Supply Embryos to Harvard (The New York Times)
A fertility clinic will give embryos to Harvard in a deal that could make the university one of the world's top suppliers of embryonic stem cells.

August 25, 2000

Posthumous fathers to be recognised (BBC News)
Men who become fathers after death thanks to IVF techniques are to be recorded on their baby's birth certificate.

August 23, 2001

Global Surrogacy Market: Canadian Says She Feared Jail for Surrogate Procedure (ABC News)
From a hotel room in Kuwait City Shani Russell caused quite a stir, barraging news organizations, aid agencies, members of the Canadian parliament, even Canada's prime minister with frantic e-mails asking for help getting out.

Adoption by Foreigners Can Be Fine (The Herald Tribune)
Romania recently imposed a one-year ban on adoption by foreigners, mainly in response to European Union charges that it was selling its children. The government has to be sensitive to such criticism because it hopes to join the EU.

Growing up with gay parents We are family, too, children say (USA Today)
Experts are starting to take a closer look at how growing up with gay parents affects kids. An array of new findings on families headed by homosexuals will be reported at the American Psychological Association meeting that starts Friday in San Francisco.

Flooded families with adopted children are eligible for assistance (The Charleston Daily Mail)
Families with adopted children in flooded areas of Southern West Virginia are eligible for help from the state Department of Health and Human Resources. The money comes from a $250,000 grant to the state under the 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., DHHR spokesman John Law said Wednesday.

Swift unveils plan for parents (Taunton Gazette)
NORTH ADAMS -- About 50,000 low- and moderate-income parents could take up to 12 weeks off with pay after the birth or adoption of a child under a state-paid parental leave plan unveiled yesterday by acting Gov. Jane Swift.

August 21, 2001

Internet Providing Lifeline to China's Unwanted Children (CNN Transcripts)
Now, the Internet may not be to Singapore's liking, but it's providing a lifeline to China's unwanted children, giving the chance of a happy home.

State, courts battle over child (The Miami Herald)
Jobless woman fighting to adopt.

August 20, 2001

Adoption rule stunts local family's growth (Press Plus)
New Jersey: Beginning next month, the state Division of Youth and Family Services, or DYFS, will allow just eight children to live in adoptive or foster homes. That sum includes all foster, adopted and birth children. The policy change was spurred by a fatal accident in May at a Monmouth County home where 15 children lived.

Grandparents taking control (The News Journal)
8,500 Delawareans are raising grandchildren.

Foster parents use Baker Act to commit 65 unruly children a month in Palm Beach (South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
Between January and June, the Baker Act law led to the commitment of 390 Palm Beach County children in the state's foster care and mental health programs - an average of 65 a month.

The 'little immigrants' (Toronto Star)
Orphans came to Canada by the boatload between 1869 and 1948. Many suffered hardship and abuse. History has largely overlooked their contribution - until yesterday.

Frozen embryos' heated debate (The Record)
Frozen embyros are the focus of heated arguments over research using stem cells, which are pulled from human embryos. President Bush recently limited federal funding for stem-cell research, allowing dollars to flow only to researchers using stem-cell colonies from embryos that were already destroyed.

August 19, 2001

The Family Mobile (The New York Times)
Feature article about a family who has adopted 17 children and the difficulties involved in caring for such a large family.

August 18, 2001

Judge Assails City Agency on Abuse (The New York Times)
Citing concern that children are being taken from their homes simply because their mothers have been battered, a federal judge said yesterday that he was giving the city's child welfare agency six months to improve the way it handled the removal of children from households where domestic abuse occurred.

August 15, 2001

Surrogacy resolution rests with British woman, attorney says (CNN)
The attorney for a California couple accused of reneging on a surrogate contract said resolution of the case rests with the British woman pregnant with twins and her attorney.

ADOPTING A CAUSE (Trentonian)
A Bucks County pro-life organization has put out a newsletter urging couples to consider adopting some of the estimated 150,000 embryos frozen at fertility clinics around the country rather than letting the fertilized eggs be destroyed by doctors tired of keeping them in storage.

Court Says Woman Can Bar Embryos' Use (The New York Times)
The New Jersey Supreme Court yesterday upheld a woman's right to decide whether frozen embryos produced by her and her ex-husband through in vitro fertilization during their marriage can be implanted in another woman.

August 14, 2001

Meet the Parents: New Ways to Check Out Kids Pre-Adoption (ABC News)
Adoption fairs, where children and potential parents mingle, make 11-year-old Brichelle nervous.

Woman Adopts Abandoned Baby: Girl Is Proof That New Program Can Work (NEWS NET 5)
A new law is allowing mothers to take their unwanted newborns to a hospital, hand the baby to a doctor or nurse and walk away. The law maintains that there are no questions asked and no criminal charges filed, as long as the baby is not hurt. NewsChannel 5's Jodi Brooks reports that there is living proof that the program can work.

Surrogate mother sues California couple (CNN)
In a legal case that challenges the definition of parenthood, a British woman pregnant with twins is suing a California couple, saying the husband and wife backed out of a surrogacy contract after she refused to abort one of the fetuses.

A No-Win Legal War: Unborn Twins and Surrogacy Ultimate Losers in Legal Battle (ABC News)
A battle between a British surrogate mother and a California couple who allegedly demanded she abort one of the twins she is carrying will have no real winners, but at least two losers, experts say - the twins and surrogate parenting itself.

Fatherless embryos: are they a moral answer? (Sidney Morning Herald)
Scientists in the United States are about to bring a new twist to the debate over the use of human embryos in stem cell research. They are working on ways to coax unfertilised eggs to grow into embryos that produce stem cells. If successful, they would create a human embryo without sperm, and, therefore, without conception - that landmark cited as the start of human life.

Mother Faces Tough Choices (The Times Record)
After Medicaid tightened qualifications allowing families to have at-home nursing care, Tammie Wade, 31, of Waldron (AR), said giving up her 6-month-old twins for adoption may be their "only way to survive" because she cannot afford to care for her family.

August 12, 2001

Dad wants to sever ties after DNA test (San Antonio Express News)
In a case that could answer the legal question - "What makes a man a father?" - a San Antonio man is trying to terminate his parental rights to his teen-age son, claiming a DNA test shows he is not the biological father.

Five foster parents sue for privilege to adopt (Sun-Sentinel News)
Five gay men are joined in a lawsuit that challenges the adoption law in Florida that forbids homexuals from adopting. It is the toughest such law in the nation because it prevents anyone who is gay, whether single or a couple, from adopting, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union say.

State's gay adoption ban faces test (The Orlando Sentinel)
Houghton, 38, and three other gay men soon may have a chance to prove their contention that Florida's adoption ban is unconstitutional because it singles out homosexuals. U.S. District Judge Lawrence King is expected to rule any day on whether the first federal challenge of its kind should be dismissed or proceed to a nonjury trial. A pretrial conference is set for Friday.

Foster children counted by census for first time (Contra Costa Times)
Numbers show nearly 50,000 youths live in California foster homes

August 10, 2001

House of Commons: Adoption and Children Bill (Parliament--The Stationery Office)
This is the text of the Adoption and Children Bill, as presented to the House of Commons on 15 March 2001.

Across The USA (USA Today)
Alabama: Montgomery -- Fifteen hundred people adopted as children have begun gaining access to their birth certificates under a state law passed a year ago. Adoptees can now get copies of the documents if they're 19 years old and pay a $20 fee. Previously, birth certificates would only be provided if adoptees could prove to a judge that they needed to find their birth parents for medical reasons.

State 'needs laws for gay parenting' (The Irish Independent)
LAWS to protect all sides in gay parenting should be introduced in this country, a legal expert said yesterday. UCC law lecturer Deirdre Madden said: "I don't think that the quality of parenting really depends on one's sexuality." Ms Madden, an expert on assisted reproduction, said in an RTE radio interview that there were currently no surrogacy laws in the State, and a new law is needed to cover all situations.

August 9, 2001

Surrogate Mom Sues to Avoid Abortion (KPIX TV 5 News)
A pregnant surrogate mom identified as Helen is suing a San Francisco couple for breach of contract. Helen is pregnant with twins, which the couple reportedly do not want.

August 8, 2001

There are Other Ways (The Washington Times)
Under the guise of helping infertile couples and diseased individuals, two groups of scientists, led by Dr. Severino Antinori and professor Panayiotis Zavos, announced yesterday that they would soon begin efforts to produce human clones.

August 7, 2001

Critics protest fee plan of INS: They say hikes create hardship (Miami Herald)
A proposal by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to raise the fees it charges immigrants will create additional hardship and hurdles for those trying to legalize their status in the United States, say local immigration advocates and attorneys.

Lost and found (Guardian Unlimited)
Around 100,000 babies are abandoned every year in China - in department stores, ditches, even on rubbish dumps. What sort of future can these orphans expect? John Gittings investigates

Cloning Conference Starting in D.C. (The New York Times)
The National Academy of Sciences is bringing an international panel of scientists together Tuesday for a discussion of the technology and where it is heading.

Laws needed for surrogate parenting - senator (The Irish Times)
Legislation is urgently needed to deal with the issue of surrogate parenting, Senator Mary Henry has claimed. This follows reports of an Irish gay couple parenting triplets through a surrogate mother in California. Dr Henry, an Independent senator and medical doctor, said a number of Irish couples were already using surrogacy and "pretending otherwise is getting us nowhere". She said that "some have spoken openly about using surrogacy, including one couple who are certainly household names".

Woman, 60, becomes Japan's oldest mum (News Interactive)
A 60-YEAR-OLD Japanese woman became the nation's oldest new mother last month when she gave birth to a healthy baby after undergoing in-vitro fertilisation in the United States, the director of the centre that coordinated the procedure said.

New rules to speed adoption (Guardian Unlimited)
England: The government will today unveil national standards on adoption and a national register designed to speed up the matching of children with families who wish to adopt.

Putting children at the heart of the adoption process (10 Downing Street/Newsroom)
The new National Adoption Register for England and Wales and National Standards aimed at improving the adoption process have been launched by the Government.

Gay adoption - judgment reserved (I-Africa.com)
The Pretoria High Court has reserved judgment in the application by Judge Anna-Marie de Vos that legislation preventing her and her lesbian partner from co-adopting children be declared unconstitutional.

August 6, 2001

Cloning Doctor's License at Risk (The New York Times)
Italian medical authorities warned Monday that an Italian doctor risked losing his rights to practice in Italy because of his plans to clone human beings.

Team plans to clone up to 200 humans (CNN)
A team of reproductive specialists is expected to announce plans Tuesday to clone up to 200 human beings.

Critics warn of cloning risks (CNN)
ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Controversial plans by an Italian doctor to try to create the world's first cloned human baby have been fiercely criticised by politicians, ethical groups and scientists alike.

Gay couple battles adoption law (Lincoln Journal Star)
A 3-year-old boy named Luke will prompt the Nebraska Supreme Court to wrestle with an issue it never has before: whether state law allows adoptions by same-sex couples.

Adopted kids face higher suicide risk: But few actually try, researchers report (MSNBC)
Adopted youngsters are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide than their non-adopted peers, a new study finds.

Sense of family is vital in adoption, foster care (The Charlotte Observer)
Meeting of professionals looks at helping children who need homes.

August 4, 2001

From Cloning to Cures (The New York Times)
In a backlash against the onrush of biomedical research into areas that raise moral and ethical issues, the House of Representatives passed a bill this week that would ban all human cloning and subject anyone who violates the ban to criminal penalties and huge civil judgements. Unfortunately, in their zeal to legislate morality and cover their flanks from the religious right, the legislators may put a crimp in research that has promising medical benefits. Once the nature of the work is understood, most citizens would accept the very limited form of cloning involved as a useful scientific tool.

Here's how to fix foster care: Open your home to a needy child (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
If the lawyers, social workers and administrators in the system are dedicated and hard working, as I believe them to be, and if the resources available to them are adequate, which I believe to be the case, how can the tragedies keep happening? The answer, I think, is that we simply have too few foster parents.

Hong Kong orders girl back to China (The Times)
In a decision that effectively strips Hong Kong people of their right to adopt children outside the territory, the court ruled last month that, because she was born in China, her adoption was not legal in Hong Kong. Agnes could not stay.

August 3, 2001

Gay adoption, marriage rights set for WA (NineMSN)
Same-sex couples would have the same property and superannuation rights as married couples and could adopt children under reforms to be introduced to the West Australian parliament later this year.

A third of Swedes in favour of gay adoptions (Northern Light)
A third of Swedes think that same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children, according to a recent opinion poll.

August 2, 2001

Bioethicists Fall Under Familiar Scrutiny (The New York Times)
Scientists at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine knew they were treading on uncertain moral ground when they proposed mixing eggs and sperm to create human embryos for experiments. So, they say, they consulted three separate panels of ethics experts for advice.

GAY FOSTER PARENTS? YES (The New York Post)
A RECENT report by The Post's Andrea Peyser ("Gay foster outrage," July 31) pitted the interests of the aunt of two children - Megan, 6, and Justin, 1 - against those of two gay men who have taken in the kids as foster children.

HHS Approves Child Welfare Demonstration For Illinois (U.S. Newswire)
HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today approved a child welfare demonstration project that will allow Illinois to develop and implement an enhanced training program for public and private sector child welfare staff.

August 1, 2001

An ethicist's opinions on 'therapeutic cloning' (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
In its sweeping vote yesterday, the House of Representatives banned not only human cloning for reproduction but also cloning to produce embryonic cell clusters for medical research.

House Backs Ban on Human Cloning for Any Objective (The New York Times)
After an impassioned debate that pitted the promise of cures for disease against the horror of making babies that are genetic replicas of adults, the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin today to ban cloning, not only for reproduction but also for medical research.

Would-be embryo donors find few takers (The Chicago Tribune)
A great majority of unutilized embryos are being discarded because using them for research is currently too controversial (thus, few scientists are willing to accept them) and putting them up for adoption frequently requires costly and complex screening and legal restrictions.

A Mother's Addiction, a Family's Recovery (The Washington Post)
After a decade lost to crack, a southeast woman struggles to reclaim her life and her children.

SCOTS TO BENEFIT FROM NEW STANDARDS FOR DAY CARE, RESPITE AND ADOPTION SERVICES: - better meals, informed choice, advocacy and support - (Scottish Executive)
New draft care standards which aim to improve the qualify of life of Scotland's children and adults are being issued for consultation today by the Scottish Executive.

Adoption information and the law (Detroit Free Press)
Michigan law entitles adopted people over age 18 to know the identity of their biological parents if the parents have filed a consent form, or if they give approval through a confidential intermediary.

Tangled Issues in Congress: Cloning and Stem Cell Study (The New York Times)
With more than 260 members of Congress now on record in support of federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, a related conroversy, cloning, is now forcing lawmakers to draw explicit limites on how far they think embryo experiments should go.

MONTEREY PARK: Davis signs bill helping foster care children (The Mercury News)
Gov. Gray Davis on Monday signed a bill that will add $18 million to programs to help foster care children become independent adults.

July 28, 2001

Views clash on how to help Romania's children (The Irish Times)
A recent ban on adopting Romanian children is evidence of conflicting attitudes on how abandoned children there can be helped.

July 26, 2001

N.J. Mom Seeks Benefits for Twins (The Seattle Post)
A woman whose twin daughters were conceived through in vitro fertilization after her husband died is demanding that the girls be paid their father's Social Security benefits.

Fear of Separations for Foster Kids (The Washington Post)
Foster care is supposed to be a temporary step before family reunification or adoption, but often it tears children apart from their strongest allies - their siblings. The official policy in most states is to keep siblings together when possible, but that goal often gets set aside in overloaded foster care systems. A 1996 survey by the Child Welfare League of America found more than 85 percent of foster children have siblings in foster care but only about a quarter of them are together.

July 25, 2001

House Judiciary Panel Passes a No-Clone Bill (The New York Times)
The House of Representatives moved one step closer today to tackling the thorny issue of cloning, when the Judiciary Committee, voting along party lines, approved a bill that would outlaw not only cloning people, but also the use of cloning technology to treat disease.

Govt concerned at rising inter-country adoptions (The Times of India)
The government on Wednesday expressed concern at the increasing number of inter-country adoptions from India but said the existing laws were adequate to ensure handing over of orphans to right persons.

July 24, 2001

2 Legislative Committees to Study Child Protection (Kennebec Journal - Morning Sentinel)
Two legislative probes ordered after the Jan. 31 death of a state foster child in Chelsea - allegedly at the hands of her foster mother - are about to begin six months after 5-year-old Logan Marr died. The studies follow Marr's death and the indictment of 39-year-old Sally Ann Schofield, a former state child-protection caseworker, on charges of depraved-indifference murder.

July 23, 2001

Sound Compromise Emerges on Use of Human Embryos (USA Today)
Attempting to produce human embryos by cloning or in vitro fertilization for the exclusive purpose of harvesting stem cells treads into a realm where neither the public nor Congress is comfortable [ . . . ] Hence the compromise. Use the embryos that are unwanted and will be destroyed anyway. This does not encroach on the concerns of those who fear the deliberate creation of human embryos for harvest. And it allows federal regulators at the National Institutes for Health and elsewhere to influence the quality and ethical soundness of embryonic stem cell research.

Adoption case spurs bid to brace Mass. rules: Call for safeguards after claim on boy (The Boston Globe)
A 1-year-old boy who was put up for adoption last year is now at the center of a bitter legal battle that includes charges that the mother committed fraud and a Boston adoption agency was sloppy in its handling of the case. The trial, scheduled to begin today, is the kind that in other states has played out to intense media coverage and made-for-television movies: The boy's mother put him up for adoption. She was not married to the child's biological father, and allegedly didn't tell the man that she had given the child up. When the father found out, he went to court to get his son back. But now the child lives with a new family, outside Massachusetts, which hopes to adopt him.

July 22, 2001

Adoption Gulf: Locals seek to forge links with Mexico (The Denver Post)
Mexico's government representative in Denver and Colorado adoption says she wants to help U.S. adults adopt more children from Mexico. Next month she'll go to Mexico City, she said, to meet with top child welfare authorities and discuss forging links between U.S. adoption agencies and orphanages.

Adoption Gulf: Adoption Gulf Strands Kids: Legal, Political Issues Leave Mexico Orphans Homeless But Hoping (The Denver Post)
Despite an international adoption boom that benefits thousands of abandoned and orphaned children worldwide, adults in Mexico and the United States fail to cooperate when it comes to kids. Of the record 18,539 children Americans adopted abroad last year, just 106 came from neighboring Mexico.

July 21, 2001

Gay man challenging state adoption law may lose boy he raised (The Sun-Sentinel)
The Florida Department of Children & Families has told a gay man challenging Florida's ban on adoption by homosexuals that it plans to place his 10-year-old foster son with another family. Steven Lofton learned of the department's intentions on Friday during a court hearing. Lofton is a plaintiff in an upcoming federal court trial in Key West that will challenge Florida's 1977 law that prohibits adoption by homosexuals.

Most Canadians want cloning ban, research controls: Poll shows strong majority wants agency to regulate reproductive technology (The Ottawa Citizen)
A solid majority of Canadians wants the federal government to outlaw human cloning, and a controversial medical practice in which would-be parents choose the sex of their baby, a new federal poll reveals. The national survey, conducted in April for Health Canada, also shows strong support for the government to establish a regulatory agency that would oversee the country's fertility clinics, reproductive technologies and embryonic research.

July 20, 2001

Bill Would Ban 'Hug Therapy' For Children (The Salt Lake Tribune)
In an attempt to prevent deaths like the one in Utah six years ago and another in Colorado this spring, a Utah lawmaker is drafting legislation that could outlaw so-called holding or hugging therapy for emotionally troubled children.

July 19, 2001

DCF hires company to share its duties: Central Baptist Family Services of Chicago will be paid millions to handle adoptions and other services. (St. Petersburg Times)
State leaders have long worked to shift some duties away from the Department of Children and Families and toward the private sector. A big part of that shift is under way. Children and Families has agreed to pay an Illinois company $5.2-million to oversee adoptions and work with at-risk families in Citrus, Hernando and surrounding counties. The contracts, which recently went into effect, will be up for renewal in June 2002.

A Further Look at Children of Gay Parents (The International Herald Tribune)
While there is no evidence that having gay or lesbian parents harms children, the sociologists say, the notion that it has no impact on a child's life is implausible at best. And, after reviewing two decades of research on the topic, the authors conclude that social scientists in fact have found provocative differences, but have played them down for fear that their findings will be misused.

July 18, 2001

A new kind of adoption: And hiding opportunities from infertile couples (The Union Leader)
But there is a new technology that can help infertile couples to adopt a baby as quickly as a few days after the child's conception. The unwanted baby, called a "blastocyst," is moved from a petri dish in a fertility clinic into the womb of the adoptive mother. What a beautiful, life-giving technology. Too bad the national media doesn't want infertile women to hear about it. On Monday, two women and their husbands who had struggled with infertility but bore children by this technology testified on Capitol Hill. [ . . . ] These couples praised the technology that bore them children, and asked the nation to make more "blastocysts" - frozen babies in petri dishes - available for adoption.

Moms ignoring law offering protection from prosecution (The Denver Post)
Since Colorado's "abandoned baby law" went on the books one year ago, four babies have been deserted by their mothers. And each time, the law, which allows unwanted infants to be left at fire stations or hospitals in return for protection against neglect charges, has been ignored. Now, some are blaming the legislature. It did not provide any money for advertising it.

Awareness of abandoned baby law focus of Palm Beach campaign (Naples Daily News)
Palm Beach County plans a media campaign to raise awareness about the state's year-old abandoned baby law, saying infants are still being discarded instead of being left in safe hands.

Omaha Tribe alleges abuses at agency (Lincoln Journal-Star)
The Native American Omaha tribe unleashed a litany of alleged abuses they say occur at the tribe's Child Protective Services on the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska. They met at the Capitol with Ron Ross, director of the state Health and Human Services System, to discuss how the state's $500,000 annual appropriation to the Omaha Tribal Child & Adult Protective Services, or CPS, will be managed.

'A.I. and adoption: Come on, let's get real (Boston Daily Globe)
Adoption-related undercurrents running through ''A.I.'' are as powerful as they are poignant to the tens of millions of us whose lives are touched daily by this wondrous, complex, poorly understood institution [ . . . ] Thousands of adopted people, those who first lived for years in foster care or orphanages, will see more in these scenes than just a machine checking out his operating systems; they will see their younger selves, struggling to figure out how to win the hearts of the strangers who are deciding whether to give them permanent homes.

Stem Cell Debate in House Has Two Faces, Both Young (The New York Times)
Advocates on both sides of the stem cell debate issue recently traveled to Washington to put a human face on the question that has vexed the Bush administration: whether it is appropriate to use taxpayer money to conduct experiments that might save human life when those experiments, in the view of opponents, require the destruction of human life.

July 17, 2001

Protecting unwanted babies (MSNBC/Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, FL)
In recent weeks, South Florida has seen three cases of abandoned babies. But, instead of ending up in safe hands, all three infants ended up dead, despite a state law designed to protect unwanted babies and their mothers. Now, there is a new effort to spread the word of the law. Blair reviews adoption law (BBC News)

Blair reviews adoption law (BBC News)
An overhaul of adoption procedures has been ordered by the prime minister, in the wake of the Welsh child abuse scandal. Tony Blair believes too many hurdles are placed before couples wanting to adopt, leaving many children needlessly in care. Many couples say the process of adopting a child takes too long and is too difficult. Meanwhile there are an estimated 50,000 children in England and Wales living in care.

July 16, 2001

Congressional Herrings (Slate)
Opinion piece that disagrees with the "right to life" stances that claim stem cell research is "murdering" embryos and fetuses that would have otherwise become full-grown people.

Odd mix of activists stands together against cloning Coalition supports bill that could mean fines, prison time for scientists involved in practice (USA Today)
Activists on both sides of the abortion issue are joining forces this week to push for a total ban on human cloning. The unusual coalition is lobbying for a bill that would impose a 10-year prison sentence and $1 million fine on scientists who practice cloning for reproduction or research.

Helping vulnerable kids: An alternative to foster care (Bergen Record)
The kinship care bill, which has passed both houses of the Legislature, would create a new form of guardianship for relatives raising their kin. It would provide financial help to relatives with low incomes.

July 15, 2001

Second time around for many grandparents as more children raised by older caregivers (Seattle Times)
Census 2000 numbers show 61,905 Washington children under 18 live in a household run by a grandparent, compared with 38,922 children in 1990. That's a 59 percent jump, much greater than the state's overall 21 percent growth rate during the decade. While it is likely that many of these homes shelter three generations, experts project that nationwide, the grandparent is the sole caregiver in a huge percentage of them.

July 13, 2001

The Seed Series: Merchant Semen: How to find the right sperm donor (Slate)
For infertile couples, single women, and gays, the process of producing a child-anything from in vitro fertilization to donor insemination to surrogacy to adoption-is not simply psychologically agonizing. It is also commercially befuddling. As shoppers, we're accustomed to excellent information, government regulation, and consumer protection laws. But desperate baby-seekers are at the mercy of ignorance, conflicting medical advice, price gouging, recalcitrant insurance carriers, a complete absence of regulation, and ticking biological clocks.

The Seed Series: The "Genius Babies," and How They Grew: Help Slate tell the story of the Nobel Prize sperm bank (February, 2001) (Slate)
Twenty years ago, on an outbuilding of his Southern California estate, tycoon Robert K. Graham began a most remarkable project: the Repository for Germinal Choice, a sperm bank for Nobel Prize winners. Part altruism, part social engineering, part science experiment, the repository was supposed to help reverse the genetic decay Graham saw all around him by preserving and multiplying the best genes of his generation. By the time Graham's repository closed in 1999, his genius sperm had been responsible for more than 200 children.

State seeks begins move to privatize child welfare in Broward (Sun-Sentinel News)
By releasing an invitation to negotiate, the Department of Children & Families encourages private organizations to apply for the job as lead agency in the county. Under legislative mandate, the lead agency eventually will replace DCF and become responsible for thousands of children currently under state care.

When Embryos Grow Up; Families of Adopted Embryos to Testify in Congress (U.S. Newswire)
On Tuesday, July 17 the House Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). The panel will feature three young children and their parents who adopted these children as embryos, and experts on adult stem-cell research and medical ethics. The purpose of the hearing is to focus on the people who have been left out of the ESCR debate: the children who lose their lives in the destruction of embryos.

July 12, 2001

DiFrancesco urged to sign 'kinship care' legislation (Bergen Record)
A bill that would help keep children with their relatives instead of foster families when their parents can't raise them appears to be on hold in Trenton -- and its boosters worry it might languish.

DCF seeks ad agency to bolster foster care (Orlando-Sentinel)
The Department of Children & Families is looking for an ad agency to address the perennial problem of recruiting foster and adoptive parents.

July 11, 2001

Getting children out of limbo (The Philadelphia Enquirer)
A Philadelphia judge hopes her changes to the system will mean youngsters don't have to wait years in state care.

July 10, 2001

Australian Research Fertilizes Eggs Without Sperm (Health-Reuters)
Australian researchers said on Tuesday they may have found a way to fertilize an egg with cells from any part of the body, rather than sperm--a finding they say offers hope to infertile men.

Sides in custody case await ruling by Supreme Court (Tuscaloosa News)
After face-to-face meetings and then failed mediation sessions, the two sides in a two-state custody battle have broken off all contact as they await a new ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court, a lawyer for one of the parties said Monday.

N.S. adoption ruling a landmark victory for same-sex parents (Edmonton Journal)
Gay and lesbian couples in Nova Scotia were praising a landmark court ruling Monday that gives them the right to adopt children and makes the province one of few that legally recognizes homosexual parents.

July 9, 2001

Orphans targeted for tests: Human behavioral studies used orphans (Des Moines Register)
The University of Iowa's stuttering experiment six decades ago at a Davenport orphanage shocks people today but wouldn't have been considered so unusual at the time, according to experts.

Adoption parties tread thin line (The Star-Ledger)
Adoption match parties are hosted by state agencies across the country, showing off children who are no longer the little babies people line up to bring home. From New Jersey to Georgia to Indiana, advocates argue that such events encourage adoption of these children by bringing them face to face with adults, rather than circulating their pictures or having social workers tell their stories [ . . . ] But the parties also walk a delicate line, with some critics worrying that the method is too similar to shopping, too oblivious to what happens inside the child once the parties are over.

July 8, 2001

The Chinese girl who calls me mum (The Observer)
Emily Prager went to Shanghai to trace her adopted daughter's family - and in trying to piece together LuLu's past, she rediscovered her own.

Infant law relies on exposure (Greensboro News-Record)
With remarkable speed, laws to stop the unsafe abandonment of young children have spread throughout the nation since Texas led the charge. More than 25 states have them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures [ . . . Despite good intentions, abandonment laws have fallen flat in many states because no one knows they exist [ . . . ]

July 7, 2001

New York Ranks City's Private Foster Home Programs (The New York Times)
City child welfare officials said yesterday that they had completed an unsparing performance evaluation of all private foster home programs and vowed to send fewer children to the worst performing ones.

Linking to Kazakstan: Adoptive parents get together (First Coast Community)
Twenty-two hours and 11 time zones away from the Beaches, located between China and Russia, is a tiny country called Kazakstan where children are being orphaned and placed daily into orphanages known as "baby houses." Although Kazakstan is one of many countries where children are born and abandoned, it is unique because its government provides the children with clean, safe surroundings, reunion members said. During the past four years, about 1,000 Kazakstan kids have been adopted by families from the United States.

International-adoption reform may not help parents (USA Today)
Proposed regulations for a law aimed at reforming international adoptions are ''loophole-ridden'' and will do little to protect U.S. parents, consumer advocates say.

July 6, 2001

County prepares to take foster care reins: New law transfers child welfare power from state (Las Vegas Sun)
In perhaps its most important decision affecting children this year, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill requiring the state Division of Child and Family Services to transfer control of foster care to Clark and Washoe counties [ . . . ] Clark and Washoe currently take abused and neglected children out of homes and transfer them to the state. That system is unusual as these counties are the only two political jurisdictions in the nation with such an arrangement.

July 5, 2001

Orphans' Stay in Bay Area a Mixture of Fun, Promise (San Jose Mercury News)
Happy Families International, a non-profit Los Gatos agency that helps find homes for orphaned kids around the world, brought the children to California for two weeks as a prize for winning a talent contest. It's also a chance for the children to be seen by prospective parents, although the children aren't told that.

Adoption Funds Headed to D.C. Agencies (Washington Post)
Last month, the D.C. Council, as part of its 2002 Budget Support Act, approved a provision that will set aside $3 million of the funds to create an adoption resource center, to establish a $1 million scholarship fund for adopted children and to recruit and support adoptive families.

Adoption group helps heal old wounds (Easton Courier)
The first, last and only time Mary (last name withheld) saw her infant son was when he was three weeks old. She was 20, a junior in college, and had just signed the paperwork relinquishing her parental rights.

July 4, 2001

Unused Frozen Embryos End Up In Limbo (Health Scout News)
A study of couples who went through in-vitro fertilization at one clinic in Chicago and had unused embryos stored in the clinic's freezer found that more than 40 percent of the couples could not be contacted after three years. And of those couples who could be reached, less than 30 percent wanted to stick with their initial choice of what to do with the unused embryos, the researchers found.

Cloning Could Help Infertile Couples, Experts Say (New York Times)
Human reproductive cloning could eventually play a role in treating infertility, a medical ethics expert said on Wednesday.

State, NGOs move to improve orphan care, while urging more responsibility of parents (Jordan Times)
The status of orphans and orphan care has been a point of concern for His Majesty King Abdullah who in March requested that the government examine in more depth the system of institutional foster care in the country and the role of families.

Babies stolen by the Junta (London Times)
A grandmother's dogged search for a child who disappeared 22 years ago has uncovered a traffic in babies sold by Argentina's military rulers for illegal adoption.

July 3, 2001

Foster Kids May Fare Worse After Returning Home (New York Times)
Laws that encourage children placed in foster care to be reunited with their families as quickly as possible may undermine attempts to help resolve the problems that drove them into foster care in the first place, study findings suggest.

Path to parenthood leads many overseas for adoptions (Olathe News)
International adoption is attracting a growing number of single parents and couples with its comparatively quick, sure road to parenthood.

Tax breaks help cut staggering adoption costs (Bankrate.com)
The new tax law, effective in 2002, has three elements that impact adoptive families.

July 2, 2001

Eggs 'created' for older women (BBC News)
Women who are infertile because they have no eggs of their own could mother children using any cell in their bodies, suggest scientists.

Scientists Manufacture Human Eggs (New York Times)
Scientists appear to have found a way that someday could allow women to become mothers after they no longer can produce viable eggs, a potential advance in breaking the last great barrier to fertility treatments.

Foster children lacking therapy (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Most long-term foster children suffer emotional problems, and almost 40 percent are severely troubled. Yet many receive no mental-health treatment, a new state study says.

Adopted Indian 'Lost Birds' try to reclaim heritage (Contra Costa Times)
Over Mother's Day weekend 1996, Andrew returned to the San Carlos Apache Reservation to reunite with his family -- his brother, Leo, who grew up in a foster home on the reservation; his maternal grandmother, Regina, who had enrolled him in the tribe; and a slew of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Adoption scandal: Hearing begins (Times of India)
Hearing of the anticipatory bail application of Savitri Devi, president of the John Abraham Bethany Memorial Home at Tandur in Andhra Pradesh, one of the accused wanted by the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka police, began at the First Additional District and Sessions Court in Gulbarga on Friday.

Alien cult vows to clone first human (News.com [Australia])
A sect that believes human life was created by aliens is planning to dodge US Government attempts to ban it cloning the first human.

'Duplessis orphans' accept Quebec compensation (Seattle Times)
Canadians who as children were placed in mental institutions decades ago by officials to get more federal money have accepted a compensation offer.

Adoption makes lives richer (Cincinnati Enquirer)
It seems like just yesterday my husband traveled to Monrovia, Liberia - a small country on the West African coast - to complete adoption proceedings and bring our newest children home.

Homer family is learning to love from the inside out (Jackson Citizen Patriot)
Late last summer, the Shermans received the call that would change their lives. The agency called with the names of two little girls, sisters who had been abandoned as toddlers.

New option for Pennsylvania's foster families begins (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Pennsylvania recently established a new option for permanent relationships between abused or neglected children and foster parents.

July 1, 2001

International adoptions sometimes a shot in the dark (Tennessean)
''My starting point with the adoptive parents is that, just like with biological children, there are no guarantees,'' said Dr. Paul Heil of Old Harding Pediatrics Associates, who has developed expertise in evaluating foreign adoption medical reports.

Mother and Child Reunion (ON Magazine)
The Internet is helping millions of birth parents and adoptees find each other, but with the technology come unforeseen perils.

In search of the past (London Times)
One fifth of all adopted people have applied for and received their original birth records.

There Are Such Children in Irkutsk Region: They Eat Anything What Moves (Pravda)
There have been recently many publications about Russian backwater life, about small salaries, about houses demanding renovation, about heating and light troubles. Though not many people really know, how it is to live in some remote place in Russia.

June 29, 2001

Poundstone Charges Involve Adopted Kids (ABC News.com)
The lewd conduct and child endangerment charges against comedian Paula Poundstone involve her adopted and foster children, according to a published report.

June 27, 2001

Foster care plan keeps families together (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
In a move that seems to represent a novel approach to child protection, a program is starting in Milwaukee that will let biological parents accompany their children into foster homes instead of being separated from them

'Safe Place for Newborns' (Clarion-Ledger)
A new law dubbed "Safe Place for Newborns" allows mothers to drop off unwanted babies at hospitals or adoption agencies within 72 hours after birth - if the newborn is unharmed.

June 26, 2001

Foster-care lawsuit gains class-action status (Seattle Times)
A Whatcom County Superior Court judge yesterday awarded class-action status to a lawsuit aimed at forcing changes in the state's foster-care system, a ruling that sparked intense reaction from state officials and child-welfare advocates.

June 25, 2001

Foster Children Have Right to Sue (About.com)
First court ruling in country to establish and examine enforceability of federal rights of children languishing in foster care because state fails to take action to find adoptive homes.

Problem children on foster-care roundabout (The Advertiser [Australian])
Children with behavioural problems in foster care in SA are being forced to regularly change homes because carers cannot cope with them.

Foster children can sue, U.S. judge says (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Foster children may sue states for violating their civil rights by failing to move them swiftly enough into permanent homes, a federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled.

June 24, 2001

Law allowing legal abandonment of newborns is still in infancy (Detroit News)
Born on Valentine's Day, Baby Girl Brown was a tiny celebrity almost from birth: the first child in Michigan to be abandoned legally by her mother. Since Valentine's Day, nothing has quite worked out as it was supposed to. Not for the mother. Not for the prospective adoptive parents. Not even for the lawyers and judge struggling to clarify the various laws and rights colliding with each other.

June 22, 2001

Adoptions Are Put on Hold In Romania
Romania suspended international adoptions Thursday, following criticism by a European Union official that it is "selling" its children.

June 21, 2001

Romania Suspends Intl. Adoptions (New York Times)
Romania suspended international adoptions Thursday, following criticism by a European Union official that it is ``selling'' its children.

Ex-foster children have place to turn (Daily Record)
Tony Musto was bright enough to earn a scholarship to the Stevens Institute of Technology, but he had no definite place to sleep or eat when dorms closed for college breaks.

Ex-foster children have place to turn
At age 29, the man who spent eight years of his life in foster care - including five at St. Peter's Orphanage in Denville - realizes how much he would have benefited from a mentor once he aged out of the foster care system.

June 20, 2001

Abandoned newborn found behind grocery (Sacramento Bee)
A newborn girl was found abandoned behind a strip mall in south Sacramento on Tuesday afternoon by two youths taking a shortcut to the grocery.

Four volunteers set out to help Romanian orphans
Four local women are volunteering to use their expertise to help Romanian orphans.

Kidsave: Adoption by 'tryout' Program is controversial, but success rate is high
The program, which is supported by private donations, has found homes for 453 children ages 5 to 15 since it was started in 1999 to ''eliminate the harmful institutionalization of children,'' says executive director Randi Thompson. There is a catch, though. Some of the children who come to America are sent back when an adopting family can't be found, and that doesn't sit well with many adoption experts.

Abandoned newborn found behind grocery
A newborn girl was found abandoned behind a strip mall in south Sacramento on Tuesday afternoon by two youths taking a shortcut to the grocery.

Baby suffocates in foster home
A 7-month-old Milwaukee boy in foster care apparently suffocated after being placed in a single bed to sleep overnight with two other children, a medical examiner's report obtained Wednesday states.

June 19, 2001

Louisiana lawyer, Russian guilty in baby scam (Boston Herald)
A Louisiana attorney and a Russian woman have pleaded guilty to running an immigration scam to obtain babies for adoption in the United States, according to federal court documents unsealed Tuesday.

Therapists Get 16 Years In Death of 10-Year-Old
-- A judge sentenced two therapists to the minimum -- 16 years in prison -- in the death of a 10-year-old girl who begged for air and screamed for mercy after she was bound head-to-toe in a flannel sheet during a discredited psychotherapy procedure called "rebirthing."

Louisiana lawyer, Russian guilty in baby scam
A Louisiana attorney and a Russian woman have pleaded guilty to running an immigration scam to obtain babies for adoption in the United States, according to federal court documents unsealed Tuesday.

June 18, 2001

Egg donations flourish (Detroit News)
With the number of egg transplants -- each usually involving multiple eggs -- surpassing 7,000 in 1998 and doubling every two to three years, the fierce competition has forced brokers to offer ever larger financial enticements.

Foster children finding 'medical home'
University of Alabama at Birmingham's Family Place Pediatric Practice, where she works, has received a $200,000 federal grant to provide a "medical home" for foster children. Over the next five years, the grant will allow Family Place doctors to act as primary care physicians for foster children. Childrens' records will remain there, no matter how many times the children move.

June 17, 2001

'Children of Communism' search for their stolen past (Boston Globe)
Uzlova is one of the so-called ''Children of Communism,'' infants who were seized from their parents in the 1950s and early 1960s by Czechoslovakia's pro-Soviet government and ''adopted'' by politically connected families. Now, after five decades in the dark, she is determined to discover her lost roots. It has been a frustrating and emotional quest that has led her through police archives, courtrooms, government agencies, and numerous dead ends.

Flaw in adoption legislation
Sir - The Adopted Peoples Association, the representative organization for Irish adopted adults, welcomes in principle the recently announced legislation which will finally allow adopted adults to know their identity.

Ins and outs of new breaks for parents in tax law
UNDER THE NEW tax law, parents will find new and improved tax breaks to help with expenses ranging from adoption to college.

June 16, 2001

Day bittersweet for 'Orphan Train' riders (Kentucky New Era)
Ethel Flowers remembers the fall of 1934 as if it was yesterday and every Father's Day since has held bittersweet memories for her. She was 7, it was the tail end of the depression, and times were hard. It was a chilly October day; she and her two brothers and a younger sister, along with 10 or 20 other children were placed on a train leaving from the Kentucky Children's Home at Lyndon.

Report: Kids of Gays More Empathetic (New York Times)
Psychologists sympathetic to gay rights have long asserted that children raised by same-sex parents are no different from other children. But two professors are now challenging that premise in a study that both pleases and worries gay activists.

June 15, 2001

Reports on stutterers reached few (Des Moines Register)
A retired Wisconsin professor said he spent years investigating a controversial research experiment from 1939 that taught Iowa orphans to stutter. He wrote a book about it in 1999, but his work received little attention.

Looking After the Unwanted (Africa News Service)
To commemorate Day of the African Child on 16 June, IRIN is launching a WebSpecial which draws together some of the most important issues shaping a day in the life of an African child, from different regions of the continent.

$12M deal proposed to boost DYFS staff (Bergen Record)
In an attempt to solve a staffing crisis at the state Division of Youth and Family Services, state officials and union leaders reached an agreement Thursday to spend $12 million to hire at least 124 more state social workers.

Local comment: Gay, lesbian people have a right to adopt
Bans unfair to kids and 'guardians'

June 14, 2001

New Homes Away From Foster Care
Housing: To ease the difficulties of young adults leaving the system, federal and private aid provides remodeled duplexes and a secure start.

June 13, 2001

State leaders struggle to improve the system
Saenz has directed a task force to re-examine the philosophy behind child-welfare work and find more efficient ways to support children and their families.

Alleged abuses in foster care up by 121pc
ALLEGATIONS of abuse against foster carers has soared by 121pc in two years, according to a Government-commissioned report yesterday.

Group Home Foster Care Faulted
District social workers are failing to visit or monitor foster children living in city group homes, which are unregulated and staffed with untrained and poorly qualified workers, according to a report released yesterday.

The state: Foster careless
A new critique - by the state itself - points to some of the same shortcomings, including lack of documentation that caseworkers are conducting the required checks of foster children.

Adoption option for children in care is accepted (Irish Times)
Health boards should consider adoption for all children in long-term care, according to a report which has been accepted by the Government.

Child Soldiers Used Widely, Report Finds (LA Times)
300,000 youths are fighting in 41 countries, group tells U.N. as African teens recount their stories.

June 12, 2001

Woman is jailed in baby scam case
The FBI tracks down a Largo woman in Seattle and accuse her of cheating 16 families across the country.

Parent's Sex May Be Factor in Citizenship, Court Rules
Justices Uphold Law Favoring U.S. Mothers of Out-of-Wedlock Children

June 11, 2001

Getting Help in Adopting a Child Abroad

One son, two 'Mamas': A system of heart-wrenching decisions (Sacramento Bee)
Jeremiah is far too young to comprehend the swirl of legal maneuvers that surround his life. His is a custody case so complex that many of the adults involved do not completely understand it.

Adoptees want open birth records (Albany Times Union)
More than 75 people gathered on the Capitol steps Sunday night to call on state lawmakers to pass a bill that would open adoption records for people seeking medical information about their birth parents.

June 10, 2001

Ethics and Orphans: The `Monster Study' (San Jose Mercury News)
Norma Jean Pugh, the youngest of the experimental subjects, above, was regarded as a misfit after she developed a stutter. Now known as Kathryn Meacham, she lives as a recluse.

LONG IGNORED, THEY'RE AMERICA'S (New Jersey Star-Ledger)
The three girls are among the 12,000 children who have been orphaned by AIDS in New Jersey since the beginning of the epidemic in 1981.

Birth records index to be revamped (Waco Tribune-Herald)
After eight months, the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Texas is closer to republishing a birth records index that was removed from its Web site late last year.

Manitoba gay couples press for adoption rights (CBC News [Canada])
Gay men and women in Manitoba signed a petition Sunday demanding the provincial government give them the right to adopt children.

New law leads to family reunion (Orange County Register)
They shared their story during Roberts' recent visit here - a reunion made possible by a change in Alabama adoption law. Enacted in August, the law allowed Roberts to get a copy of her original birth certificate and learn her birth parents' names.

Some find savior in policy to take kids from addicts (Sacramento Bee)
They were two little girls, born just 11 days apart in May 1994 to mothers who loved methamphetamine more than they loved their children. Rebecca and Sarah never met, but they lived parallel lives -- until the death of one liberated the other from a life of squalor.

Lost in the system: Heavy caseloads take toll on workers (Sacramento Bee)
One in five foster children in the United States lives in California -- 115,000 boys and girls. And although the numbers of abused and neglected children have grown everywhere, nowhere is the crisis more apparent than in Sacramento County.

June 8, 2001

Pretend mother gets time for fraud (Orlando Sentinel)
Back in July 1999 Destiny Lea Bonner promised her unborn baby to an Illinois couple, and she took $10,000 from them and a Tampa adoption agency who brokered the deal. Problem was -- she was never pregnant, a court found. And she spent all the money.

Teenage mothers offered foster help (London Times)
A campaign to encourage people to become foster carers to teenage mothers and their babies is under way to try to ensure that young mothers in care are not separated from their babies.

Court Allows Adoption Challenge (Salt Lake Tribune)
The Utah Court of Appeals cast a shadow over the state's adoption statute Thursday in a decision that allows a father to challenge his daughter's adoption.

Romania Adoption Advisory (About.com)
No new applications will be processed while laws are being reviewed

June 7, 2001

California moves toward recognizing partners (Gay.com)
On Thursday, the state Assembly approved a bill that would extend legal protections to gay couples in several areas, including adoption, sick leave and estate planning. Perhaps most importantly, it would also allow partners to make medical decisions for each other.

White House Fact Sheet on Responsible Fatherhood (US Newswire)
The following is a fact sheet on promoting responsible fatherhood released today by the White House:

'20/20' revisits the orphans of Romania (USA Today)
"Ten years later, it's disappointing to see how little has changed for the children of Romania," Jarriel says.

Child abandonment program on way (Kentucky Post)
Parents who might otherwise harm or abandon their newborn children soon will be able to drop them off at hospitals in Northern Kentucky without being charged with a crime, under a plan expected to be implemented by mid-July.

Hospitals are 'safe places' for unwanted babies (Seattle Times)
Ten Seattle-area hospitals, like those in Wisconsin and Minnesota, announced yesterday that they have become "safe places" where panicked parents can drop off unwanted newborns anonymously, without fear of prosecution.

Couple builds home to keep orphaned siblings together (ABC-KAMC)
That's what an Albuquerque, New mexico, contractor and his wife hope after building a one (m) million-dollar home for orphaned siblings who might otherwise be separated in traditional foster care.

Fewer kids shuttled into foster care (Orlando Sentinel)
For the Florida Department of Children & Families, homes such as the Pitzers' are hard to come by. In the agency's District 7 -- which covers Brevard, Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties -- a shortage of foster-care families and adoption families has remained a constant problem.

June 6, 2001

Bearing the Brunt of War (allAfrica.com)
Angola has 100,000 children orphaned by war, another 1 million who have lost one parent and about 200,000 children who have at some stage been forced into military combat.

Single, with children (Chicago Tribune)
After two broken engagements, Alison Boynton began to think she might never find the right man to share a close emotional bond and start a family. So the 31-year-old elementary school teacher, who views being a mother as more important than getting married, stopped looking for a mate and prepared to raise a child alone.

Foster care reforms win OK: Assembly package responds to dire needs (San Francisco Chronicle)
The Assembly yesterday approved the most comprehensive package of foster care reforms in recent years, after a searing report called California a poor surrogate parent that routinely turns the personal anguish of children into a "public calamity."

It's no longer a hard-knock life (China Daily)
When Li Peishuang first came to Jiang Lijun and her family's two-room apartment in downtown Shanghai in December 1998, she was extremely shy. Before that day, Li, an orphan with a crippled leg, had lived in the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute for more than two years. She did not know who her real parents were and had never experienced parental love or family warmth.

Several hospitals to take spurned newborns -- no questions asked (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
In an effort to save the lives of abandoned babies, eight local hospitals have agreed to let desperate parents leave unwanted newborns in their emergency rooms -- no questions asked.

June 4, 2001

A baby at any cost? (Canadian National Post)
Doctors are divided over a therapy that is designed to help women who frequently miscarry. Some claim it offers the best hope yet; others say it is unproven, too expensive and too risky

Skillful sleuth reunites families (Honolulu Advertiser)
As the state's only Family Court-approved searcher, the 59-year-old Lana'i native specializes in finding biological parents for adopted children.

Fla.'s gay adoption ban challenged (Philadelphia Daily News)
Houghton became Oscar's legal guardian in 1996. He's helped the boy tackle health problems and learning disabilities, and wants to adopt him. Oscar's relatives are amenable, but the state of Florida says no: Its 1977 law prohibits adoption by any lesbian or gay man, the toughest anti-homosexual adoption measure in the country.

June 3, 2001

Face of the future? After false starts and frustrations, the Carters finally have a name for the object of their affection (Sacramento Bee)
A child with an adoption number and little else, ambling suddenly into your living room, straight through your realm of possibility and full speed into your heart. She is such a treasure, such a stunning discovery, that you wouldn't dare use her real first name in the newspaper, for fear that another adoption agency will go find her and skirt her off to a home that isn't yours.

June 2, 2001

Custody policies have roots in '80s (Bangor Daily News)
Now that a foster child has died a similar horrifying death - bound in a chair, tape over her mouth, alone in a basement - the state again is looking for lapses or policies that may explain what went wrong. Some critics are finding problems that date back to the changes adopted in the aftermath of the 1984 killings.

'Angel Anne' helps adoptees locate roots (Des Moines Register)
The Des Moines woman assists those searching for biological parents.

Rate of Single Moms High on Dakota Indian Lands (Salt Lake Tribune)
Amid the exodus of youth from the Plains are four Dakota counties with sobering similarities: They are among the nation's youngest, they have startlingly high numbers of single mothers and all are on American Indian reservations.

June 1, 2001

Manitoba, Sask increase gay rights in line with 1999 Supreme Court ruling (Vancouver Sun)
Manitoba is proposing to change a long list of legislation to give gay couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples but it has balked at including adoption.

Assisted conception birth rates increasing: study (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
A study by The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reveals there were more than 3,800 births after assisted conception in Australia in 1998, a jump of more than 10 per cent on the previous year.

Background inquiries continue in custody battle over twin girls (SLT Today.com)
Background investigations continue in the custody battle for twin St. Louis girls who were once the focus of international attention during a highly publicized, cross-Atlantic adoption dispute.

Human cloning called too unsafe to perform (Seattle Times on Philly.com)
Human cloning is so unsafe that it should never be conducted, and the scientific community should speak out clearly on the issue, the director of the federal Human Genome Project told a gathering of scientists in Seattle yesterday.

'Maybe' Not: WB Sitcom to be Renamed (Zap2it.com)
The producers of the WB's new fall sitcom "Maybe I'm Adopted" have opted to rename the show because of complaints that the existing title paints adoption in a negative light, reports Variety.

State mends fences with foster parents (Seattle Times)
Turnover plagues the foster-care system, but reforms aimed at giving foster parents better caseworker support and new respect may result in more stability.

More children wards of state (Detroit News)
At least one county in Michigan is seeing a rise in the number of parental-rights termination cases -- a point of concern for child advocates.

Maine trails U.S. in returning kids to their parents (Portland Press Herald)
As many foster children are adopted as reunited with their natural families in Maine, according to statistics released Wednesday by the chief justice of the Maine Supreme Court. That is at odds with national figures showing a much higher home-placement rate in the country as a whole.

May 30, 2001

Milwaukee County relieved of child welfare duties (Milwaukee Business Journal)
Milwaukee County will no longer be responsible for the care of Milwaukee area foster children as the state transfers child welfare services to four local nonprofit agencies.

DSHS Unveils Plan to Improve Foster Care (PR Newswire)
An ambitious plan with the goal of achieving major reform of the Washington foster care system was released today by the Department of Social and Health Services.

Adoption Law Anniversary: Families Reunited (KGW.com)
Hundreds of families have been reunited in the last year, thanks to Measure 58, which was approved by voters in 1998 and went into action last year.

Shift away from foster care has jarring impact (Bergen Record)
Christina Clark spent her tortured childhood bouncing between a drug-using dysfunctional mother, relatives, foster homes, and live-in programs for abused children.

Judges rubber-stamp agency in abuse decisions, some say (Bergen Record)
Others involved in the system say family court judges are overburdened and rely primarily on DYFS' version of the case, often without giving parents a real chance to defend themselves. And the public defenders hired to represent parents often have little chance to investigate or prepare before appearing in court.

May 29, 2001

Police canvass Golden Beach for leads (MSNBC)
Police officers from Miami-Dade and Golden Beach canvassed the exclusive seaside city Thursday, handing out flyers with information on the death of an infant girl found in a duffel bag by a bus stop this week.

Finding home (Honolulu Weekly)
Annette Baran advocates for adoptees finding their birth parents in the complex tangle of modern adoption law.

Parents pay bribe or stay in jail (Seattle Times)
In China, where `one child' is the law for most families, local officials try to squeeze a profit out of poor couples who have two or more children.

Mrs. Powell to Tell US About Uganda Orphans (Africa News Service)
Alma Powell, wife of the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on Sunday pledged to make the plight of Ugandan orphans and challenges of Uganda Women Orphans to Save Orphans (UWESO) known to people in America and elsewhere.

May 28, 2001

'Their voices must be heard' (London Times)
Children's opinions must be heard if international custody disputes are to be resolved without resorting to the use of force by tipstaffs, experts believe.

How boys beat law to be with mother (London Times)
A 14-year-old girl and her two younger brothers had armed themselves with cricket bats and a kitchen knife and turned their home into a fortress to thwart Court of Appeal officers who wanted to fly them back to New Zealand.

Biological Mother Says Propps Raised Son Well (Albuquerque Journal)
A New Mexico couple accused of kidnapping a baby from New York more than two decades ago did a good job raising him, the young man's biological mother said.

May 27, 2001

House OKs abandoned baby bill (Statesman Journal)
Despite a last-minute appeal by an adoption rights advocate, Oregon appears headed toward joining a growing number of states that offer safe havens to babies abandoned by their mothers.

Surrogacy: Bearing the greatest gift of all (Jerusalem Post)
A Hebrew University researcher has completed a groundbreaking study of the results of the five-year-old law - the first of its kind in the world - legalizing state-supervised surrogacy.

Foster Facts (Morning Call)
List of statistics

For couple, adoption was a good investment (Indianapolis Star)
While pondering finances, Goshen family felt called to adopt 2 babies from Vietnam.

May 26, 2001

Vietnamese women jailed over baby sales (Radio Australia News)
Two Vietnamese women have been jailed for five years for selling two baby girls for 800 US dollars.

Md. Gay Man Adopts His Partner, Makes 32-Year Relationship Legal (Washington Post)
A Silver Spring man has adopted his gay partner of 32 years in order to establish a legal family relationship, since they can't get married.

When Children Relied on Faith-Based Agencies (New York Times)
There are two things to remember about the "long tradition" of faith-based antipoverty efforts referred to by President Bush in his recent speech at the University of Notre Dame: First, for most of American history a primary goal of such efforts was the propagation of particular faiths, and second, no antipoverty program has ever succeeded well or for long without adequate financing.

May 25, 2001

Safe-haven bill foes force postponement (Tennessean)
Legislation providing immunity from prosecution to mothers who drop off their unwanted newborns at a safe haven came under attack yesterday from Bible-quoting opponents but was defended by the sponsors as a means for saving the babies' lives.

Trend toward older adoptive parents raises concerns (Dallas Morning News)
Fueled by the unprecedented push for permanent homes for state wards, which began after a 1997 federal act called on states to speed up adoptions of foster children, 1,300 parents older than 60 have adopted 3,400 children through the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

McConnell in call to halt declining adoption for children in care (The Scotsman)
THE education minister, Jack McConnell, has appealed for more people to adopt young children in care, after statistics revealed a decline in the number of applications to do so.

New law protects identity of natural fathers (Irish Times)
Most natural fathers of adopted people will continue to have their identities protected under new adoption legislation, it has emerged. The identity of natural mothers will be revealed, however, as all adoptees will be entitled to their original birth certificate at the age of 18.

Welfare board remains juvenile (The Hindu)
As the controversy on the child adoption racket rages on, the spotlight escapes the Juvenile Welfare Board which has an important role to play. For all practical purposes the board could be non-existent, given the utter disregard shown by the adoption homes to it.

Abused Foster Children Win Case (New York Times)
A federal jury awarded $3.3 million to three children who were physically and emotionally abused while in foster care. Jurors on Thursday found the state liable for damages and said Department of Children and Family Services caseworker Clifton Woodard failed to safeguard the children.

May 24, 2001

Adoption 'cash grab' retained (National Post [Canada])
Despite a protest by adoption groups, the Ontario government will continue to charge a $925 fee on orphaned children adopted from overseas.

Donor insemination offspring press for right to know (Canoe.com [Canada])
Stevens, a Toronto film-maker, has joined a growing number of donor-insemination (DI) offspring pressing for the right to know their biological origins.

New Bill to allow adopted people see birth certs (Irish Times)
Some 42,000 adopted people will have access to their original birth certificates at 18, according to proposed legislation agreed by the Cabinet this week.

Child Agency Gets New Plan and New Push (New York Times)
As Nicholas Scoppetta, the commissioner of the city's Administration for Children's Services, unveiled a new five-year child welfare plan yesterday, he stepped up his lobbying efforts to make his revamped agency a permanent government fixture.

Baby Delivery law raises legal doubts (Detroit News)
Less than six months on the books, the Baby Delivery law has already raised several troubling legal questions -- for the courts, parents relying on its avowed protections and those involved in carrying out its requirements.

May 23, 2001

Lawmakers approve baby drop-off plan (Chicago Sun-Times)
Illinois lawmakers have approved a plan meant to keep desperate mothers from killing their babies. The plan would let mothers leave babies who are 3 days old or younger at hospitals or fire stations, without facing criminal charges.

Private business to research adoption histories (Oklahoman)
The state Human Services Commission agreed Tuesday to hire outside businesses to speed up the process of providing family histories to adopted children.

The Right to Information (Irish Times)
The decision by the Cabinet to introduce legislation giving 40,000 adopted people a right to their original birth certificates, at age 18, is welcome, if long overdue. The Adoption Bill, published last night, will also give parents who gave children up for adoption, the right to find the names of the adoptive parents.

Law on adoption data next year (Irish Times)
Parents who gave up children for adoption will be entitled to find out the names of the adoptive parents once the children reach 18, according to proposed legislation cleared by the Cabinet yesterday.

Sharp fall in domestic adoptions (Irish Times)
Domestic adoption or adoption of Irish children placed with families by agencies had dropped significantly from a high of 1,287 in 1975 to just 90 adoption orders in 1999.

From Russia, With Love (Newsweek)
An American volunteers to work in a Stalin-era orphanage-and finds it's not quite what she expected

"Pity the orphan children, make adoption easier" (Manila Bulletin)
"REMEMBER the Norwegian couple, Sylvi Albrektsen Strom and Ole Strom, who adopted two-year-old Samuel? They wrote me. Let me quote excerpts of their letter:"

May 22, 2001

Williams Adopts 9-Month-Old Twins, Says Motherhood Her Natural Calling (Salt Lake Tribune)
Natalie Williams' big hands, which have given her a career and earned her an Olympic gold medal, are juggling something other than a basketball with their soft, sure touch -- her new son and daughter.

Dead baby found in casino trash bin; Safe-Haven bill faces Assembly vote (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
A dead baby was found in a trash bin at the Harrah's Las Vegas on Monday, just a day before the Assembly examines legislation designed to prevent such incidents.

Nevada to raise payments to foster parents by 47 percent (Reno Gazette-Journal)
State payments to some 800 foster parents will jump by an estimated 47 percent starting July 1, under plans adopted by the Nevada Legislature's budget committees.

Longing to adopt a child? Cast your Net on new site (Globe and Mail [Canada])
A couple who adopted their son after finding the birth mother on the Internet have launched Canada's first on-line adoption service for people yearning for a baby.

May 21, 2001

Adopt-a-Kid Lists: Too Public? (Wired.com)
Basically, it's a balancing act between privacy and placement, said Kisselbrack of the New York Office of Children and Family Services. The children's full names aren't given; neither are their addresses. "But since they have special needs, we need to give prospective parents the information they need to avoid issues down the road," he said.

Looking to Adopt? Beware the Web (Wired.com)
After shelling out more than $15,000, the Smiths (not their real name) were left empty-handed by an adoption facilitator they met on the Internet. After 10 weeks of waiting to pick up their baby in Tijuana, the facilitator told them that the birth mother had changed her mind.

New center for kids achieves a foothold (New Haven Register)
Thirty-six concerned citizens in 1996 met at the home of Randi Rubin Rodriguez and her husband, Sergio, to discuss gaps in services for children and families affected by violence and substance abuse.

Adopted people may get access to birth certificates (Irish Times)
Proposals to give more than 40,000 adopted people access to their original birth certificates at 18 are to be put to the Cabinet tomorrow. Adopted people would get their original birth certificates regardless of whether the birth parents had believed their identities would remain secret.

May 20, 2001

Suit Over Foster Care Settled in Tennessee (New York Times)
The State of Tennessee has settled a class-action lawsuit against its foster care system, agreeing to sweeping changes in the tracking of the children in its system and accepting oversight by independent monitors.

D.C. Dispatches: House passes adoption tax credit (Columbus Dispatch)
Without a dissenting vote, the U.S. House last week approved a bill co-sponsored by Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Perry Township, that doubles the adoption tax credit to $10,000 a year.

Foster children getting star treatment (Connecticut Post)
Already armed with compassion and a more than $100 million endowment, the help that a local non-profit group is getting from celebrities is making all the difference in its fight for foster kids.

County has high rate of adoption success (Detroit Lakes Tribune)
Through a public-private adoption initiative that began locally in 1998, Becker County has successfully finalized between 30 to 35 state ward adoptions that did not involve a relative or foster family, and another 27 cases where the parental rights of a child were transferred to a relative or foster parent.

May 19, 2001

Yao Ye leaves China for medical care here (Irish Times)
Yao Ye and three other babies are the first children from Changsha to be brought to Ireland for medical treatment under Orphan Aid's new Ashling Project which was officially launched in China this week. The treatment is paid for through Orphan Aid fundraising.

May 17, 2001

Child abuse reports stack up (St. Petersburg Times)
Backlogged cases don't involve children in danger, the Sheriff's Office insists, but it can say less assuredly when or whether it will catch up.

Their mission: Give children a chance (Philadelphia Inquirer)
A Haddonfield couple have devoted their lives and home to their adopted family of 15.

Ties that Bind ... (AARP Bulletin)
Uniting Adopted Children with Birth Relatives Can Bring Joy-or Pain-to All Generations

Congress on tax cuts: No stopping us now (Christian Science monitor)
Plans are afoot to cut beyond $1.3 trillion - starting with relief for adoptive parents.

Where Adoption Is Suddenly an Open Book (New York Times)
When Robert Crabtree saw an envelope from the Oregon health department in his mailbox one day last July, the black hole he had carried around for most of his life started to close. Inside was his birth certificate and the name of his mother, which he was seeing for the first time.

May 16, 2001

Rock issues call for international ban on human cloning (Edmonton Journal)
Canada is calling for an international ban on human cloning to stamp out unethical reproductive procedures that violate human dignity, Health Minister Allan Rock said Tuesday.

Austria delivers first anonymous birth (News.com [Australia])
An Austrian project which allows despairing women to give birth in hospital secretly, so that the baby can be offered for adoption, has produced the country's first "anonymous birth", doctors said today.

State settles suit, pledges to reform DCS foster care (Tennessean)
The state yesterday settled a major class-action federal civil rights lawsuit initiated by eight foster children, agreeing to allow an independent monitor to oversee its troubled Department of Children's Services and to implement a host of reforms designed to improve services to the 10,000 children in its care.

Mom's right to reclaim baby questioned (Detroit News)
Lawyers involved in the case of Baby Girl Brown, the first newborn to be surrendered under Michigan's new baby delivery law, say the mother clearly told everyone around her what she wanted before she fled the hospital. The problem, according to an Oakland County judge, is the hospital staff failed to tell the mother that under the law she had 28 days to change her mind.

May 15, 2001

Election 2001: Adoption (Rainbow Network)
Fostering is guided by the Children Act, which does not set any legal precedent against gay men or lesbians wanting to foster children.

India Identifies 317 Quake Orphans (Excite News.com)
More than 300 children were orphaned in the earthquake that devastated western India, and more than 600 others were left with only one parent, the government said.

May 14, 2001

Mom who threw baby in canal stirs debate (Arizona Republic)
Seventeen-year-old Aimee Lee Weiss is an unlikely inspirer of politics. She is accused of suffocating her newborn son in two plastic Wal-Mart bags, placing him in a book bag, then dropping him in a canal behind her family's Florida home.

May 13, 2001

Children are welcome, says this middle-aged new mom (Toledo Blade)
Many first-time mothers are turning to adoption to fulfill a lifetime dream of rearing a family, said Laura Draheim, placement coordinator for Lucas County Children Services. "So I said, I'll try it," Ms. Szilagye recalled.

Happy Mother's Day to birth mothers (Halifax Herald)
Happy Mother's Day to all birth mothers who gave up a child for adoption. I know from listening to your heartfelt stories of wanting to know what happened to your now-adult child that your tears will be many today.

For this clan, Mother's Day is family affair (St. Petersburg Times)
Over the past 25 years, this mother and her family have welcomed 39 profoundly handicapped children into their home.

Single Mom Fosters Special Bond (Albuquerque Journal)
Barbara Purcella was 25, single and had two boxes of macaroni and cheese in her kitchen when she got the telephone call asking her to take in two foster children.

Finally, a family (St. Petersburg Times)
A mother's love and persistence help make a family complete with the adoption of three young children.

New adoptive mother wrestling with 'why' (Evansville Courier & Press)
Sooner or later, many children ask their parents where they come from. In Anjelica's case, when the questions came last fall, it had been barely two months since I adopted her from Ukraine, and I could see she wasn't quite yet always comfortable calling me, "Mama."

At Hale House, Broken Bonds and Pain for a Little Girl Lost (New York Times)
With her rushed journey, Amanda began a spiral from place to place, and from family into foster care. At one point, at age 6, she was placed by an Arkansas court with people who put her to work in their traveling cleaning business. She is 8 now, newly adopted by the last of many sets of foster parents. But throughout, Amanda's picture stayed on Hale House's Web site, helping it collect millions in donations.

Good fortune arrives in tiny package from China (Journal-Standard)
Holiday has new meaning to Freeport couple after adoption of their daughter.

Where Children Find Refuge (Washington Post)
Maryland Couple Offers Shelter to 182 and Counting

May 12, 2001

Unselfish love: Mother's Day is bittersweet for those who chose adoption (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

A Special Mother's Day for Mother and the Daughter She Gave Up (Associated Press on kgw.com)
Mary Katherine Monahan barely had time to look at her baby. Then she had to give the girl away. Now, more than 40 years later, her daughter has found her, and the parallels between their lives make it seem as if they were never fully apart.

Giving at birth (Bellingham Herald)
On the eve of Mother's Day comes Birth Mother's Day. A group of Seattle birth mothers created the day in 1990 to honor those moms, like Watson, who placed their children up for adoption. "I take pride in the fact that I did what I needed to do for my child," Watson says. "It's a healthy thing and not secretive or scary."

Adopted sisters excluded from natural dad's estate (National Post)
Two sisters from British Columbia have been excluded from their father's estate because they were adopted by another man.

May 11, 2001

Search on for parents of rescued children (The Hindu)
The State Government has begun steps to locate the biological parents of about 180 children, rescued from private orphanages and looked after at the Government-run Sisu Vihar, so that the children could be restored to them. In respect of infants adopted by foster parents abroad, the officials will check the relinquishment certificates issued by their biological parents, and if these are found to be genuine, and the infants were voluntarily given in adoption, then the process of adoption will continue.

May 10, 2001

Legal fight to view adoption files (Society Guardian [UK])
A grandmother trying to "complete the picture of her life" yesterday asked the high court to rule that she had a right of access to confidential information about her adoption more than 50 years ago.

Parents' drug use behind foster rise (The Age [Australia])
Increasing drug abuse by parents is behind a 21 per cent increase in the number of Australian children living in foster care, residential housing or with relatives, experts said yesterday.

May 9, 2001

Court Won't Hear Implant Case (Excite.com)
New York's highest court refused to hear an appeal of a ruling that denies visitation rights to a white woman who was the unwitting surrogate mother of a black child after an embryo mix-up at a fertility clinic.

Child adoption bill sent to governor (Jefferson City)
Legislation that would speed up adoptions of children by their foster parents was sent to Gov. Bob Holden on Tuesday.

Adoption Tax Credit Bill Cleared (Excite.com)
Legislation that would double the tax credit for the expenses of adopting a child and raise the income eligibility limits for taxpayers who claim the credit was approved Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Adoptees see double on Mom's Day (Philadelphia Daily News)
Written by clinical psychologist Mary Ann Koenig, herself an adoptee, "Sacred Connections: Stories of Adoption" recounts the emotional and psychological journeys of individuals involved in the adoption process - from adoptees to adoptive parents and birth parents alike. The book is a touching compilation that includes true stories wherein reality dictates that not one but two Hallmark cards should be purchased on May 13.

May 8, 2001

Agencies can't retain child welfare workers, study finds (Nando Times)
A survey exposing problems retaining child welfare workers found state agencies lost 20 percent of their staffs in one year, and the rate was twice that at the private agencies they contract with.

Foster children numbers rise (news.com.au [Australia])
THE number of children in out-of-home care in Australia has risen by 21 percent in the last four years, according to a report released today.

John Towriss: A personal international adoption story (CNN.com)
John Towriss is CNN's Deputy Bureau Chief and Director of News Coverage in Washington D.C. He shares his own experience in bringing a new child into his family.

May 7, 2001

Byers to promise leave for adoptive parents
Parents who adopt are to be promised new rights that the Government says will leave them up to £2,600 better off. The pledge will come this week as Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, fleshes out plans to extend paternity leave.

Adoptive, birth parents to share views in series (Kentucky Post)
This week, the Nolls will join adoption workers and people who have experienced adoption from several directions to tell their stories at an Adoptive Parenting Information Series. Families who have adopted, a mother who gave her child up for adoption, and an adult who was adopted as a child will answer questions.

Adoption apology too late for Indians (Chicago Tribune)
At her new home, White Hawk was afraid for a long time, and then ashamed. "My adoptive mother constantly told me I was being saved from being a pagan, good-for-nothing Indian," said White Hawk, 47. In 1988, she found her way back to the Rosebud reservation, and discovered 19 aunts and uncles she hadn't known existed; her mother was already dead. "I was led to believe I was taken from nothing and I go back to find so much: people who remembered me and who were glad I came back," she said. "You can't imagine how angry I was."

Attitudes toward adoption shifted (Rocky Mountain News)
Colorado has not had an orphanage since Clayton College at Martin Luther King and Colorado boulevards shifted its mission in the early 1980s.

Orphanage revival (Rocky Mountain News)
Colorado is about to study the revival of orphanages as a way to handle some of the 7,500 children overflowing from foster homes.

Judges mum about foster care in child-protective proceedings (Kennebec Journal)
Allegations that state child-welfare officials failed to investigate reports of abuse by foster parents or to follow its own policies in the wake of the death of a foster child came as an epiphany to judges asked to remove children from their parents' care.

Both sides of 'Sam' case gain from ruling (Tuscaloosa News)
Both sides in the interstate custody fight over 5-year-old Joseph Sam Johnson appear to have pulled at least one legal victory out of the April 27 Alabama Supreme Court decision.

Adoption parley focuses on results of new law (Jerusalem Post)
Results of a change in adoption laws allowing non-profit agencies to assist parents adopting children from abroad are the focus of today's gathering of adoption experts, parents, and government officials at the Hebrew University's Baerwald School of Social Work.

Children On Sale (India Today)
Trading in human lives finds another dimension as orphanages prey on destitute parents to run a thriving adoption racket

How Agencies Flout Central Guidelines / Sequence of Major Events in the Child Adoption Racket (India Today)

India's stolen babies sold in Australia (Times of India)
India's "stolen babies" controversy has taken a new turn, with newspapers here saying that infant girls stolen from Indian orphanages and maternity wards are being sold in Australia for adoption.

Identities of biological parents faked (The Hindu)
Preliminary investigations by the Corps of Detectives (CoD) into the adoption racket has revealed that the adoption centres in Andhra Pradesh had `faked' the identities of the biological parents of 20 children from Gulbarga District who were offered for adoption.

May 6, 2001

Stolen infants 'adopted here' (The Age [Australia])
Infant girls bought or stolen in multi-million-dollar international rackets have been adopted in Australia, a prominent Indian campaign on the rights of women and children claims.

Roda Mistry's ICSW to surrender adoption right (The Hindu)
In an interesting twist to the adoption controversy, the Indian Council of Social Welfare (ICSW), run by former Minister, Ms. Roda Mistry, has decided to surrender their right to adoption work.

World's first genetically altered babies (The Age [Australia])
Scientists confirmed yesterday that the first genetically altered humans - babies carrying DNA from two mothers - had been born and were healthy, sparking worldwide concern from ethics watchdogs.

Kids Wait for Homes, And You Call (New York Daily News)
The phones started ringing as soon as Monday's paper hit the stands with our new monthly feature, "A Child Is Waiting," a page of foster children. "They want to be adopted," blared the headline, and more than 150 of you called to say, "Tell me how."

Failed adoptions OK to deduct (Detroit News)
The federal tax code, which provides tax breaks for people who adopt, does the same in cases in which an adoption falls through. However, most adoption tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, and efforts to extend them have proved unsuccessful.

Long Way Home: Adoption quest's a paper chase (Sacramento Bee)
Somewhere out there, in a land that sometimes seems more distant by the moment, there is a little Kazakh girl who's destined to be a Carter.

Seeking Cures, but Finding Anguish (LA Times)
For at least 30 years, stories of patients pursuing experimental treatments with similarly tragic outcomes to that of Candace and her mother, Jeane Newmaker, have surfaced at regular intervals. They all have at their center deeply troubled souls hungry not for help but cures, and programs that promised to provide them.

Teen plants seeds of Charity (Greenwich Time [Connecticut])
The 17-year-old Brunswick School junior founded a nonprofit foundation that will help to financially sustain foster care programs and medical treatment for orphans in China. The Greenwich-based China Care Foundation also will provide financial assistance to American families interested in adopting Chinese orphans.

Making a Home (ABC News)
For the past couple of weeks, almost everywhere I go somebody wants to talk about adoption. No doubt, it's because so many people saw me and my son on the Barbara Walters' special...

May 5, 2001

Group offers woman $500 to go on birth control after death of baby (Detroit News)
Her youngest child dead at age two weeks, Rochelle Pennex -- mother of 12 other children, some of whom had cocaine in their system at birth -- wants to have more children. But the county wants to terminate her parental rights, and a nonprofit group wants to pay her $500 to stop having children.

Quebec halts adoptions from India (CBC News)
The agency that oversees international adoptions in Quebec has put a stop to adoptions from India. Allegations of child trafficking have forced the closing of several orphanages operating in India.

AMA doubts Aust would allow US birth technique (ABC News)
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it is unlikely a technique being trialled in the United States to help infertile women have children would ever be cleared by any ethics committee in Australia.

Fertility treatment uses DNA of 3 people (Mercury News)
30 BABIES HAVE BEEN BORN USING PROCESS THAT DRAWS GENES FROM 2 WOMEN, 1 MAN

Disabled orphans face bleak futures (Mercury News)
The 5-year-old, abandoned by her mother shortly after she was born, is one of thousands of children with disabilitie