[BRIEF NOTE] More on Alexandra
Feb. 16th, 2005 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom the Toronto Star:
I hope that she takes everyone involved to the cleaners. And again, what was Children's Aid doing while all this was going on?
In the meantime, I'm left wondering why it has taken so long for adopted children to gain rights equivalent to those of children raised by their biological parents, and ashamed that this task isn't complete.
Religious conservatives may oppose the process of adoption because it creates non-traditional families not necessarily linked by biological ties; well-meaning liberal may oppose the process of adoption because it can, well, create non-traditional families not necessarily linked by biological ties. Since when, though, has biology been recognized as the exclusive principle underlying constructed communities like the family?
Romanian-born Alexandra Austin, who was adopted by an Ontario couple but sent back five months later to poverty and deprivation, has launched a $7 million lawsuit against her adoptive parents, the Canadian and Ontario governments and Swiss International Air Lines.
The suit, filed by Toronto lawyer Jeffrey Wilson, is also a landmark human rights case that aims to eradicate inequalities in the federal Citizenship Act that allow foreign-born adopted children to fall through the international cracks, becoming stateless if their new parents fail to apply for Canadian citizenship.
"Internationally this will be a landmark case," says Wilson. "It forces us to look at the issue of `What do we, the international community, owe to an adopted child?'"
I hope that she takes everyone involved to the cleaners. And again, what was Children's Aid doing while all this was going on?
In the meantime, I'm left wondering why it has taken so long for adopted children to gain rights equivalent to those of children raised by their biological parents, and ashamed that this task isn't complete.
Religious conservatives may oppose the process of adoption because it creates non-traditional families not necessarily linked by biological ties; well-meaning liberal may oppose the process of adoption because it can, well, create non-traditional families not necessarily linked by biological ties. Since when, though, has biology been recognized as the exclusive principle underlying constructed communities like the family?
