Furthermore as a recent divorcee who just moved her family across the world and adopted a child just two years ago, she is not necessarily the best candidate for adoption here in the U.S. I know the rules here and when families are in such a state of flux, they are not deemed “ready” for adoption The only reason she was able to adopt was due to her fame and fortune. Same goes for Angelina Jolie who adopted Maddox in a roundabout way when Cambodia had ended foreign adoptions to the U.S. I have nothing against inter-country or inter-racial adoptions, just would prefer that everyone play by the same rules.

Another issue is that African children are the current flavor of the month. And there is this “she/he would have died without me” mentality that goes along with it. As an African, I am offended by this. Some years back it was Chinese girls. Who will be next? Furthermore I am troubled by the fact that menbers of Mercy’s biological family were against the adoption.

Truth is we will never know what the real story is. All we can do is watch their lives unfold, hopefully for the best. And wait for the tell-all “My Life with______” that will surely come.

Madonna is already building schools and orphanages though her organization. She also sponsors many orphans. Her organization provides scholarships so older children can pursue medical and legal degrees. It’s great if children can remain in their country if they do have a support system, but is also great to have a family instead of living in an orphanage. As bright and wonderful as an orphanage can be made, it’s still an orphanage where hundreds of children will reside with a few adults to care for them. I don’t necessarily think she should be expected to donate and not consider bringing one of those children into her home. I fully support inter-country adoption, but I do think effort should be put into preventing the orphan situation rather than trying to remedy it after it gets to overwhelming numbers, as it has in Malawi which is the second poorest country in the world.

Laws are there to serve a purpose. In this case, to address the needs of and protect the children of Malawi from possible predators, but the laws are not serving that purpose. Instead they are preventing children from getting adopted in the first place and not really doing anything to examine the prospective parent. There were once laws in the US preventing women from voting, or people of different races from marrying, once they no longer addressed the needs of the population, they were changed. The same should be done with the adoption residency laws in Malawi.

She’s an extremely famous woman and the press will always follow her and her children, adopted or not, they’ve done so for decades so I don’t see how that will change.