TMC backs Missionaries of Charity’s decision to stop adoption homes

Although, the previous laws did not hinder single, separated, and divorced parents from adopting children, it was however up to the discretion of the Charity’s adoption centre to approve or disapprove the adoption request, as applications for adoption were filed directly to the concerned adoption centre.

The charity founded by Mother Teresa, Missionaries of Charity, is pulling all adoption services in India rather than allowing gay parents to foster children in need of homes.

At a meeting in New Delhi this past week, Maneka Gandhi, the minister for women and child development, said the Missionaries of Charity had refused to register children in their care with the central authority.

MoC’s statement inadvertently highlights another dissonance, that between the government’s desire to see an increase in adoption rates in India versus the anachronism that is Section 377. “But if they do not follow the central guidelines, we will be left with no option but to derecognise the orphanages run by them and shift the children to other places”, Gandhi added. According to a report in The Indian Express, there are over 9,000 parents waiting to adopt but only 800 children are free for adoption.

“Getting the unregistered homes into the fold of the system is very important as there is always a possibility of child trafficking in these institutions”.

The new government order states that “any prospective adoptive parent, irrespective of his marital status and whether or not he has his own biological son or daughter, can adopt a child”. She told a conference on women and children Thursday that the Missionaries of Charity did not want to “come under a uniform secular agenda”.

Another sister at the Catholic missionary society told NPR that the organization had been thinking “for a few time” about shutting down its adoption services in order to “look after special needs children who had not been adopted”.

It added: “If we were to continue the work set up by Mother Teresa, complying with all the provisions would have been hard for us”. “We would take support of the district administration and district police intelligence staff to do the job”, a senior Ministry official said. “Our rules only allow married couples to adopt”.

“Earlier parents would approach the orphanage and it was entirely the prerogative of the institution to give the child for adoption”.