Nearly everyone agrees the 68-year-old Adoption Act is not fit for purpose. So where is the political will for change, and how much longer do families touched by adoption have to wait?
Wiping away tears, Nita Battise, vice chairperson of the tribal council of the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, reacts to the Supreme Court ruling upholding a law that gives Native American families priority in adoptions and foster care placements of tribal children.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
A Supreme Court ruling has upheld the right of Congress to pass laws about Native American tribes’ rights to self-government.
Tehassi Hill, tribal chairman of the Oneida Nation, stands outside a U.S. appeals court in 2019 after arguments in a case that has made its way to the Supreme Court.
AP Photo/Kevin McGill
A case before the Supreme Court will determine whether a federal law meant to protect Native American children from being forcibly removed from their families is constitutional.
The most commonly criticised feature of the bill is the arbitrary maximum period of two years within which a decision about permanent placement has to be made.
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One of the state’s most significant powers is the ability to remove children from their families. Potential reforms in NSW could expand this already racialised power in frightening ways.
The number of Guatemalan children adopted by foreign parents dropped from 4,100 in 2008 to 58 in 2010, after the country drastically curtailed the practice.
Reuters/Jorge Dan Lopez
In 2005, almost 46,000 children were adopted across borders. Ten years later, just 12,000 were. The foreign adoption system is imploding, potentially putting children’s lives in danger.
South Korea continues to have a problem with abandoned babies and ongoing overseas adoption despite economic growth.
Jessica Walton
Surrogacy is fraught with uncertainties. Proposed regulation, inspired by the way the caring professions are regulated, would protect the surrogate and provide certainty about legal parentage.