adoption

Today is the start of National Adoption Week – Have you ever considering adopting a child? Thousands of children are taken into care every year. Of these many are never lucky enough to become part of a secure loving long-term family. This important week reminds us there are kids out there waiting to be taken in by someone who will make them part of their own family and give them the ‘forever home’ they are longing for.

New York's junior senator Kirsten Gillibrand is working tirelessly on federal legislation to lift the ban on gay couples and singles adopting children. "This legislation would open thousands of new foster and adoptive homes to children ensuring they are raised in loving families," Gillibrand said of her Every Child Deserves a Family Act. Her territory - NYC - leads the nation in the number of gay individuals who are foster and adoption parents.

Today’s news about the diminishing numbers of babies being adopted in the UK does not at all surprise us. The BBC has today reported that only 60 children under one were adopted in the UK last year, of the 3,500 currently in the care system.
This marks a significant drop from the 150 adoptions of children under one completed in 2007. The drop indicates that the barriers to authorising prospective adopters and to releasing children for adoption seem to be increasing and the process taking longer.

For 33 years, Florida barred gays and lesbians from adopting. That changed last fall, when Florida's Third District Court of Appeal in Miami ruled the law unenforceable and the state declined to challenge it. Since then, family law attorneys estimate more than 100 gay people in South Florida have pending adoption cases. After five years of legal battles, Miami's Martin Gill and his partner won the right to adopt their two sons. The family has since attended a holiday celebration at the White House, and met President Obama.

Eleni Kyriacou talks to three couples about how IVF and fertility treatment can turn lives upside down
Carole Waters, who has now adopted
Carole, 43, lives in Hampshire with her husband Andy, 43. They have had one IVF cycle and one frozen embryo transfer (FET). They have a daughter, Bea, five.

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil got married to recording artist Ivan Wilzig over the weekend, in the Hamptons. In 2008, the prince announced plans to adopt a child. If he does, he will reportedly be the first gay man to adopt a child in India.

Adoption agencies in New York state are getting ready for an increase of interest as same-sex couples encouraged by the state's marriage equality law take the next step and adopt children.

The state already permits unmarried couples, both gay and straight, to adopt children. But a wedding ring is an important milestone in a relationship. "It's sort of the next natural progression," said Jonathan Truong of Brooklyn, who decided to adopt a boy after marrying his longtime partner, Ed Cowen, in Canada. "You have that feeling of wanting to be in a family."