Adoption row: Missionaries of Charity have strayed away from their stated path

The Missionaries of Charity motherhouse in Kolkata was informed of the new regulations set by the Guidelines Governing Adoption of Children by the federal Ministry of Women and Child Development, according to an October 10 statement by Sunita Kumar, spokeswoman of the Missionaries. “We are meeting to deliberate them”, said Gyan Prakash Topno, spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

Earlier, prospective adoptive parents would approach a child-care institution, which had the sole prerogative to give a child up for adoption.

“Our rules only allow married couples to adopt”, Sister Amala explained, saying the sisters are concerned about the moral upbringing of the children who are adopted by single individuals, rather than a mother and a father.

The first clause would mean that unmarried adults in same-sex relationships, couples living together, and those divorced or separated could adopt children, contrary to the church’s thinking about family and parenting, he said.

Fearing that dishonest gay people might use the law to pretend to be heterosexual in order to get their hands on an Indian orphan, officials at Missionaries of Charity have made a decision to halt adoptions altogether.

Maneka Gandhi, the minister for women and children who is known as a social liberal, has made shaking up the country’s sclerotic adoption system a priority. “They have accepted this (end of adoption services) as the will of God”, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We are trying and persuading them because they are valuable, good people and have experience”, she said.

The non-cooperation of religious groups like the MC to the new adoption guidelines pose serious challenges to the Central Adoption Resource Agency’s (CARA) plan to scale up its operations.

“In case a child care institution is not able to work as per the guidelines, it has the option to transfer the children to other child care institutions which are working under the central government guidelines”. And will the rules ease adoption process?

“The ministry has also simultaneously started country-wide workshops to enable child care institutions understand the new guidelines and work under the new IT environment”, the statement said.

“We told them there is a no reason to refuse a single parent who is eligible and fulfills all conditions in the guidelines”.

The Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa, have requested that the government de-register 13 of their orphanages.