Friday, June 25, 2010

Italian Case on Race Preference in Adoption

Here's an interesting legal ruling, reported at Jurist:

The Italian Court of Cassation, the country's highest appeals court, ruled Tuesday that couples seeking to adopt children of a certain ethnicity or race "are not suitable for international adoption." The judgment was prompted by the case of a Sicilian couple who declared that they only wanted to adopt a Caucasian child of European descent. The decision cites violations of the Italian Constitution regarding inalienable rights, equality, and international agreements. The court stated that parents who indicate a preference should not only have their particular application denied by the juvenile court . . . but their capacity to apply for adoption in general should be called in to question.

The court also recommended that social services provide discriminatory parents with psychological support to allow them to overcome their aversion to adopting a child "who is not in [their] own image."

The decision comes more than a year after the attorney general asked the court to intervene and ban these types of discriminatory requests. Children's rights group Friends of Children, which initiated the complaint, said that they have been battling these types of requests for years and welcomed the court's decision.
So what do you think? Should a prospective adoptive parent be disqualified from adopting altogether if he or she wants to adopt only a same-race child?

4 comments:

Von said...

Comment too long and inappropriate for this space, if you wish go to http://eag-oncewasvon.blogspot.com
Thanks for bringing it to attention.

Anonymous said...

well said Von. I completely agree. Interracial adoption is not always in everyone's best interest.

Unknown said...

Interesting, that means pretty much all adoptive parents from my era would be disqualified.

Claudia said...

I can see the reasoning, but can't help thinking it's actually pretty crazy. I'm trying NOT to imagine what life is going to be like for children who are adopted across colour lines, even though their parents wanted a white kid.