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Lula Approves New Law to Make Adoption Easier in Brazil
By Nireesh @ 10:02 AM :: 141 Views ::
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President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva approved Monday a new law that will make it easier for approximately 10,000 children in Brazil’s orphanages to be adopted and have a family.
“It isn’t every day that the president of the republic has the pleasure of approving a law born of our noblest sentiment, which is love,” Lula said at the ceremony.
The new legal regulation eliminates complicated bureaucratic procedures and says that anyone over 18 can adopt a child, provided the age difference between the two is at least 16 years.
If the toddler is adopted by a couple, they must be legally married or prove to the court that theirs is a stable union.
The restriction banning the adoption of children by same-sex couples is retained in the new legislation, though gay and lesbian organizations are demanding a reconsideration of the matter.
Under the new law, family members will have priority in adopting children followed by any Brazilian couple living in the country.
Only as a last resort will adoption of a child be permitted for Brazilians living outside the country or for foreigners, who must spend no less than 30 days in Brazil with the child to obtain final approval.
Some novelties of the new law is that it will not allow the separation of siblings, who must be adopted by the same couple, and will promote Indian children being adopted within their own communities.
Officials estimate that in Brazilian orphanages there are some 100,000 children, though only 10 percent of them are available for adoption.
The rest are kids who live in these shelters but are not orphans and receive regular visits from their families, who have left them there for economic or other reasons.
The new law also takes that situation into account and limits to a maximum of two years the stay of children left there because their parents have no means of supporting them, though that period of time can be extended by a court order.
The legislation also establishes that pregnant women or mothers who for any reason want to give their children up for adoption get help from the government, to keep the tots from simply being abandoned. EFE
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