Actress Katherine Heigl and her husband, singer Josh Kelley, have adopted another baby. Katherine and Josh already have one daughter – 3-year-old Naleigh – who they adopted from South Korea in 2009.
Katherine Heigl’s rep confirmed the couple had adopted, but said there were no further details about the child’s background.
In an interview earlier this year, the former Grey’s Anatomy star said: “We have talked about having biological children as well, but we decided to adopt first. I’d like to adopt again.”
Katherine Heigl
Earlier this week, E! host Giuliana Rancic and her husband Bill announced they were expecting their first child.
Comments
24 Comments so far
Always lovely to hear good news stories. Goodness knows the adoption laws in Australia are an absolute disgrace. I know it shouldn’t be as simple as filling out a form and getting a baby but the process here is a joke. No wonder people like Deborra Lee Furness are campaigning so hard for change.
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Congratulations to her. It takes an immense amount of kindness and courage to adopt. She has all those qualities which many people do not, and it is to be admired.
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I like the way Katherine Heigl does things the ‘non-traditonal’ way. Even though they have talked about having biological children, they have chosen to adopt first, how awesome! What a big decision to make too!
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Australia has a long was to go with streamlining adoption bureacracy. I hope we start to make in roads soon so that more people can experience the same happiness as Katherine Heigel and her partner.
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I really hope Australia doesn’t streamline the adoption process. As it is, Australia only deals with countries which are signatories to the Hauge convention. This limits baby trafficking (but doesn’t entirely prevent it – there are several documented recent cases of babies being stolen and then adopted by unsuspecting Australian couples).
America has no such scruples. I personally don’t think it should be any easier for rich Westerners to buy the babies of the poor, and nor should we seek to replicate the multi-billion dollar baby farming industry that is the American adoption system.
Australian governments of all political persuasions don’t limit adoption because they’re mean, or just can’t be bothered to help people adopt – the policy is in place for very good reasons – not engaging in baby farming chief among them.
And you know, adoption is really not the great panacea anyway. It’s really, really hard. As Katharine Hiegl found, the bond is not instantaneous – and sometimes, it never comes.
We need to remember that even into the 70′s and 80′s, babies were being forcibly removed from their mothers in Australia because they were poor, or young, or unmarried. For those women, and those babies, adoption was not exactly the answer. We all accept that.
So why do we now think it’s OK to take overseas babies from their own families, simply because those families are poor, or young, or black? Even if the child is a ‘double orphan’ (rare) it’s exceptionally rare that a baby would have no grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, or no extended family at all.
Children are not consumer items. It should never be ‘easy’ to acquire somebody else’s child.
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Excellent reply!
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I think you’ve misunderstood me. I didn’t say anything about baby trafficking. If you ask anyone who has been through a legitimate adoption process here in Australia I think you’ll find there are many areas in which it could be improved.
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Yeah? Name four.
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I am an adoptive parent. I have been through the process relatively recently. I have no issue with the process we went through to adopt and the thoroughness of it. IMO, there are many, many ways (more than 4) that the process can be streamlined from the Australian end without compromising the integrity of the assessment protocols. Once an application sits with an overseas country it is out of Australian control with regards to timeliness.
I’ll name 4 if you want, but I suspect it will bore people to tears and I don’t think that’s the point of Anonymous’s original post.
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Ditto from another adoptive parent (inter-country). I agree that any adoption process should be incredibly rigorous but the Australian process government has taken it too far, often to the detriment of the adoptee.
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You know, I would actually be really interested in how you think the Australian assessment protocols could be streamlined without compromising their integrity. I am extremely well-versed in Australian adoption and honestly, cannot see anywhere that it could be streamlined.
Should we be dealing with non-Haugue countries, perhaps?
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Sydneygirl isn’t saying that she doesn’t feel for parents who want to legitimately adopt – it’s likely she does. Of course it’s a horrible, long, difficult process.
But I think the point is that there is such a scope for exploitation and abuse if the process is not properly monitored, that the long process is an essential and therefore good thing. The process might cause a couple in Australia to wait longer to recieve the child – but that is a small price to try to assure the safety and interests of the baby.
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I don’t think the original author meant anything about baby trafficking. However sadly it is getting more and more difficult to adopt, especially from other countries. Some countries would rather keep their children in their own orphanages, despite that the majority will be dead before they’re 5.
Sadly many children will have a far better life being adopted by a “western” couple then they could ever achieve in their own countries, especially girls.
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Congratulations to Katherine Heigl & Josh Kelley, but WOW, I wish it was that easy and quick to adopt a baby in Australia (either from within Australia or from overseas). I’m sure those Australian people on any of the long, long waiting lists will be thrilled for them. Money and nationality makes all the difference, I guess.
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To be fair, for all we know they’ve been on the waiting list since they adopted their last baby. We don’t know what their personal struggle has been. It’s very easy to look at someone else’s life and call it easy – but really you don’t know anything more than what is presented to the public.
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True, but a recent article on the actress from a crime show ?Marisa (sorry can’t remember her name), she says that it normally takes “about the same time as growing a baby” ie 9 months and not the several years it takes here. Also, they got a ‘out of the blue’ phonecall from their lawyer one day, and within weeks were able to adopt a second child, that would never happen here.
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I saw the same interview on Ellen, and I thought she said it was 2 days from the time of the phone call from the Lawyer. Agreed that we do not want to see any administration that creates baby trafficking, but there are so many children out there who could be welcomed into homes – loved, safe, well fed and cared for.
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Yes but I doubt that was the lawyer calling out of the blue saying “hey, apparently there’s a spare child floating around – did you guys want another one?” Presumably the fact that they had a lawyer retained for this purpose implies that they had been on a list and were already in the process. It might have taken two days to actually get the child once they had been processed and a child found, but that doesn’t mean the who process took two days.
It might be a quicker process in the States, but I think just making assumptions that anything (eg in someone else’s life) is quick and easy when you don’t know all the facts is unhelpful and dangerous. (Apart from anything, it leads you to feel hard done by and resentful, cause you feel like you’ve had a hard slog when others get it easy. Then you feel like crap and hate everything! Bad cycle!)
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Your comment about not making assumptions is very very true but the reality is – it is significantly easier to adopt in the States than it is in Australia. Easier and years and years and years less time.
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In Australia you cannot lodge an application for the next adoption until 12 months after the first one. There’s reasons why; amongst them to give the parents and baby time to “settle in” and also for the two adoptions not to be close together, for everyone’s sake. Not that that can happen these days with the long waiting time. So that’s one of the many differences between adopting in the USA compared to Australia.
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Agree with Anon. Don’t know if it’s the same in the USA but in Australia its easier to adopt if you already have an adopted child.
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Really? It’s easier to adopt here in Australia if you already have one adopted child? How’s that? What part of the process do you not have to do? This is a genuine question, I’ve friends who have adopted twice (or more) and, as far as I know, they had to go through everything again.
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She is so gorgeous. But I did stop at the pic of her in the black and white striped coat .. bit old.. bit julia gillard….
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She looked like she was about to meet the Queen. Maybe she was!
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