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The orphaned Florida teen whose impassioned plea for a family to 'love him forever' prompted an outpouring of sympathy from around the country has been removed from his foster home following a physical altercation with another child and the father. After 16 years of floundering in foster care, after taking the pulpit at a St. Petersburg church last September asking someone - anyone - to adopt him, after his story was shared around the world and 10,000 people offered to help or take him home, Davion Only moved to Ohio in March to live with the parents who had promised...

Almost 800 babies and children were buried in a mass grave in Ireland near a home for unmarried mothers run by nuns, according to new research Wednesday which throws more light on the Irish Catholic Church's troubled past. Death records suggest 796 children, from newborns to eight-year-olds, were deposited in a grave near a Catholic-run home for unmarried mothers during the 35 years it operated from 1925 to 1961. Historian Catherine Corless, who made the discovery, says her study of death records for the St Mary's home in Tuam in County Galway suggests that a former septic tank near the...

A strong majority, 63 percent, of Americans now say that same-sex couples should have a legal right to adopt a child, according to a new Gallup poll. About one in three, 35 percent, are opposed. The result is the opposite of 1992, when Gallup first polled the question. Sixty-three percent said homosexual couples should not be legally permitted to adopt in that year. In 1998, that number declined to 57 percent. In 2003 and 2007, Americans were about equally divided on the question. The recent poll was the first time Gallup showed a clear majority supportive of giving same-sex couples...

Writer and poet Maya Angelou died this morning, according to a family statement. She was found by her caregiver and was reportedly been in poor health and had canceled recent scheduled appearances.Harold Augenbraum, from the National Book Foundation, said that Angelou’s “legacy is one that all writers and readers across the world can admire and aspire to.”But while most people are aware of her professional work, they don’t know Angelou’s personal background as well.Angelou had one son Guy, whose birth was described in her first autobiography, one grandson, and two great-grandchildren. She became pregnant as a teenager and could have...

FULL TITLE: Catholic family branded 'bigoted' by social workers for not wanting their children to be adopted by gay couple A Catholic family were labelled bigots by social workers after they complained about the adoption of their children by a gay couple. The parents, of Slovak Roma origin, protested after they discovered that their two youngest boys, aged four and one, were not going to be adopted by the Roman Catholic family they had asked for. They claimed the gay adoption would humiliate the children and deprive them of their Roma heritage and Catholic faith, and said the decision amounted...

"The biological family of a little girl taken from her foster parents and returned to her jailbird father have branded her adoptive mom and dad, ‘selfish’ for fighting to get her back and vowed never to give her up again. Sonya, aged nine, had been in the care of Kim and David Hodgin, from Dickson, Tennessee for more than seven years, but she was recently handed over to ex-con John McCaul in Omaha, Nebraska. The Hodgin family have released a heart-breaking phone conversation, revealing Sonya’s desperate pleas, begging to be reunited with them."

Raised by a Lutheran pastor and his wife, Ruth Lee never wanted to learn the identity of her birth parents. She had a happy childhood and never doubted the love showered upon her by her adoptive parents and three brothers. Blessed with five children herself — one more successful than the next, including NASA astronaut Mark Lee and West Point grad and Army Lt. Col. Brian Lee — her life was too full, too busy to think about her unknown past. But then, at age 77, she was plagued by a series of health issues. Her children begged her to...

Alabama State Representative Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery) resumed his accusations that 99 percent of White people are racists. Previously he had asserted that “even so-called pro-life whites would want their daughters to have abortions if they were impregnated by Black men.” His latest claim is that “white people are intolerant of Black children and would never adopt a Black child.” Holmes even went so far as to offer $100,000 “to anyone who could show him a whole bunch of whites that have adopted Blacks in Alabama.” When dozens of white parents who have adopted Black children showed up to disprove his...

Mixed-race families from across Alabama rallied outside the state capitol recently to demand $100,000 in cash — or at least an apology — from a state representative. Earlier this month, Alvin Holmes, who has represented the Montgomery-area 78th District for 39 years, bet a substantial purse on his claim that Alabama whites were incapable of tolerating black children. “I will bring you $100,000 cash tomorrow if you show me a whole bunch of whites that adopted blacks in Alabama,” Holmes said. “I will go down there and mortgage my house and get it in cash in $20 bills and...

MONTGOMERY, AL, April 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More than 100 people rallied at the Alabama State House in Montgomery yesterday afternoon to disprove a Democrat's controversial remarks that whites do not adopt black children and prefer to see interracial babies aborted. In March, state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said during a debate over a fetal heartbeat bill that “99 percent of the whites who are sitting in here now, if their daughter got pregnant by a black man, they are going to make their daughter have an abortion. They ain't gonna let her have the baby.” In the same March...

A woman abandoned as a newborn 27 years ago in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, fast-food restaurant bathroom has been reunited with her birth mother after a social media blitz, local media reported on Wednesday. Katheryn Deprill, left in the Burger King bathroom only hours after she was born, met her birth mother on Monday in a lawyer’s office, she told WFMZ television in an interview. Deprill said her birth mother, who she did not identify, recounted getting pregnant after being raped while on a trip abroad and giving birth in her childhood bedroom at the age of 17. Her parents did...

<p>SALINAS, Calif. –  Three starving children -- including one who was chained to the floor to prevent her from getting food -- were found last month in the squalid home of a Northern California couple, authorities said.</p> <p>All three -- two boys and a girl -- were taken into protective custody, and one was hospitalized, Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller said Friday.</p>

Deputies responding to a Salinas, Calif., home on March 14 to investigate child neglect allegations found three starved and abused children, one chained to the floor. During the investigation, deputies found very little food in the house, which they described as “cluttered and dirty.” The deputies found three children - an 8-year-old girl, a 5-year-old boy and a 3-year-old boy - who they said exhibited signs of physical and emotional abuse. The suspects, Eraca Dawn Craig, 31, and Christian Jessica Deanda, 44, were arrested for numerous child abuse-related cases.

Cheryl Eckstein, the leader of the Compassionate Healthcare Network sent out an important news story from Russia concerning Belgium extending euthanasia to children. The Voice of Russia reported on March 9, 2014 stated that: Russian officials have come up with a proposal to ban child adoption by citizens of countries where child euthanasia is permissible. The report states: Russian MPs have proposed to put a ban on child adoption by citizens of countries where the euthanasia of underage children is allowed. A lawyer, Larisa Pavlova, the Chairwoman of the board of Directors of the Parents Committee (a public organization) shares...

The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.

Should New Jersey lawmakers pass a bill that would allow adopted people to obtain their original birth certificates, revealing their biological parents' identity? On Monday, a state Assembly panel approved the measure, which would allow an adopted adult or an adoptive parent on a child's behalf to request his or her birth certificate from the state Health Department. It's the latest bill to tackle the issue. Similar measures have failed for more than three decades. Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed a version in 2011, saying he would support a compromise that allowed a confidential intermediary to search for natural parents....

Full title: Russia Signs New Gay Adoption Law Same-Sex Couples From Countries Where Marriage Legal Not Allowed to Adopt Russia banned adoptions by single people from countries where same-sex marriage is legal on Thursday, bringing the new measure into law in the middle of a Winter Olympics already steeped in controversy over Russian antigay policies. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the decree, which was posted on the Russian government's official website on Thursday. The decree reiterates a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples who are in unions "recognized as marriages and registered in accordance with the...

About a year and a half ago, my wife and I flew to Ethiopia and returned to America with our newly adopted son, Amare -- the only black member of our now family of five. We expected his new brothers and extended family, our friends, church, and neighbors to embrace and love him, and they didn't disappoint us. We did not know what to expect, however, from the general American public. We were optimistic that it would go well, but in our educational sessions about adopting internationally, some focused on the prejudices we would encounter upon our return. We were...

Among the 11 percent is tea-party favorite Tim Huelskamp, although as Ace notes, on Twitter that’s only further evidence of Huelskamp’s racism. If you’re into persecuting minorities, there’s no deeper deep cover than adopting kids who are minorities. It just proves how far you’re willing to go for the cause. This is interesting work by Jim Lindgren but it won’t change a single mind. Republican racism is a “political fact” whether or not it’s an actual one. Coming soon to MSNBC: “Whopping 89 percent of conservatives with step- or adopted kids have no family members from other races.”

In its latest annual report, released in December, Planned Parenthood says it did 327,166 abortion procedures in the course of one year and 2,197 adoption referrals. That works out to approximately 149 abortions for each adoption referral. The data comes from an accounting of “patient care” Planned Parenthood says its “affiliate health centers” did in the year that ran from Oct. 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2012. …