just the birth mother's perspective. Drug addicts are generally not reliable storytellers, and I'm not sure I buy that she was clean during her last pregnancy. I've known mothers on narcotics while pregnant again, even after seeing how devastating drug abuse was on their older babies.

I wish she would stop having kids back-to-back and instead concentrate on her sobriety. Maybe then she can work towards getting her kids back.

the end of the story. Social Services were determined to do an adoption. And I think it was the same with the next child. They never gave her a chance. They never even gave her parents a chance--with the last kid that is, they had already taken good care of the first two.

The end result was an abortion. If we wanted to reduce the number of abortions, then we would stop promoting adoption as a first choice, rather than a last resort. Children deserve to be with their biological families, if possible. Coerced adoptions and CPS corruption are big problems in this country, and England seems to have a huge problem with Social Services forcing adoptions through.

While it may well be that the CPS made the wrong call here, it would take an article in a better source the the Mirror to justify not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

from another paper.

http://www.nationalheadlines.co.uk/did-social-workers-take-this-middle-class-familys-adored-child-to-meet-adoption-targets-four-year-old-boy-was-torn-from-loving-mother-at-hospital-even-though-no-one-had-hurt-him/99528/

If you have some solid statistical evidence, by all means post it. If not, stop scaremongering.

It's a tabloid that exaggerates real news, twists facts, and occasionally makes up random crap to sell papers.

It's pretty much the UK equivalent of The Onion.

Here's the cover of one of their printed releases.

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I'm willing to bet that this story is all three - The original could have been a legitimate - proably not that interesting - story, but with a few facts twisted to the point of breaking, and topped off with some good ol fashioned bullshit, you've suddenly got a headliner.

http://www.nationalheadlines.co.uk/did-social-workers-take-this-middle-class-familys-adored-child-to-meet-adoption-targets-four-year-old-boy-was-torn-from-loving-mother-at-hospital-even-though-no-one-had-hurt-him/99528/

Social Services and CPS are out of control. So are adoption agencies. It is disgusting how we have turned children into commodities.

The entire article is.

This is a story about a mother with drug problems (which can sometimes lead to children being removed from their mothers at birth), whether placing the children together with older siblings should be a higher priority than placing one of several siblings with family members, and the mother's intent to have an abortion rather than have another child removed from her custody at birth. The fact that the couple adopting the children are gay is thrown in for no reason other than to stir emotion in those who believe gays should not be allowed to adopt.

The kids were well taken care of by their grandparents. The courts ruled in their favor, but Social Services kept appealing and bankrupting them. Then they held out the promise of an open adoption to get them to break down and relent. As usual, once the adoption was finalized the door slammed shut. The adoptive parents continue to deny their so-called children the right to see their mother. That is very selfish of them.

The third child was removed simply because the first two were. They never demonstrated an ongoing drug problem, or gave her a chance to prove that she had changed. They wanted the kid and were determined to get it.

And I fully understand the mother's decision to abort. You have no idea how horrible it is to lose a child to a forced adoption. It is a painful experience that can completely destroy a woman--and often does.

which is offensive.

The excessive focus on the adopting couple being gay was an attempt by the authors to inflame. If you aren't outraged by how the court treated this mom, look who they gave the children to - a Gay couple. By the way did we mention the adoptive parents are Gay? And, oh yeah, it really bothers the mom that the adoptive couple is gay.

The article itself was offensive. Get the picture?

are being raised by gay men, rather than because she has suffered an unbearable loss that can tear a woman apart.

The authors' focus was on the unfair treatment of this family and the corrupt actions of Social Services.

The main reason that the gay couple came off looking bad is because they closed the adoption, which is incredibly selfish of them.

it is the journalism I am complaining about.

The point of including this little exchange was to paint the mother as homophobic, in a "methinks thou does protest too much" kind of way:

If no one cares, why mention it 5 times in the article. The "journalists" made the choice to fixate on the sexual orientation of the adopting couple in an attempt to inflame their readers. Which is why the entire article is offensive, not just one ignorant comment in the comment section.

An article that has that kind of slant has no business being posted on DU. I don't care how worthy you think the rest of the message is. The article is offensive, and I hope you will remove it and (if you still want to get the message out) post a different one that does not use gay people as pawns in the adoption battle you are waging.

I don't know much about CPS in the UK so I can't comment on whether there are major problems there, but I won't believe it based on a story in a tabloid. Unfit parents will have their children taken away anywhere in the civilized world after they have been given an opportunity to clean up their act. I don't doubt it varies from country to country and even from state to state within the US as to how much leeway and how many chances are given to parents. I find it hard to believe that UK CPS is champing at the bit to steal babies from fit parents or willing grandparents and hand them over to gay parents. Kind of sounds like a right-wing smear, doesn't it?

and hand them over to prospective adoptive parents, gay or straight.

It's a sufficiently extraordinary claim that I'd want to see some pretty extraordinary evidence to credit it.

coercive tactics to get mothers to relinquish. Open adoption--which usually turns out to be a lie, once the papers are signed--was developed in order to increase the supply of babies. In the U.S. the industry runs 15 billion dollars a year. That kind of money creates enormous incentive to push through adoptions.

As for CPS, there are often targets that are given by federal and state governments pressing for a certain number of adoptions. The goal is to get kids out of foster care, but in practice it creates a system where they try to go after the "desirable" kids. In other words, the younger ones, who will get adopted fairly easily.

And they're sufficiently extraordinary assertions that I'd need to see a lot of evidence - statistical, not just anecdotal - to credit them.