Madonna is about to adopt from Malawi again. How can anyone think that’s a bad thing?

Madonna with her son David

Sometimes? People shit me. Particularly, people who make ill-informed judgement about other people’s choices. As news breaks of Madonna’s pending adoption of a 4 year old girl called Mercy from Malawi, where she adopted her son David a couple of years ago, those ill-informed people are coming out to condemn her.

According to reports today:

LILONGWE, Malawi — Madonna is expected to arrive in Malawi Sunday,
airport officials said, as the star’s plans to adopt a girl as her
second child from the poor African country began to draw criticism.

The
luxury lodge where Madonna has stayed in the past has been fully booked
and casual visitors have been turned away. International media have
begun arriving in the capital in anticipation of her visit.

Friday, a welfare official and a person involved in the adoption proceedings said the singer plans to adopt a 4-year-old girl. But a British children’s charity has urged Madonna to “think twice” before adding another African child to her celebrity family.

Save the Children UK said Saturday that the recently divorced star
risked sending the wrong message by going through with the adoption.

Spokesman Dominic Nutt said many international adoptions are
unnecessary _ and some even feed into a criminal “adoption industry.”

Nutt said he was not suggesting that Madonna was doing anything
wrong _ but he said the whole process of international adoptions is
often flawed.

Here’s my favourite quote from Mr (aptly named) Nutt: ‘…many international adoptions are unnecessary’.

FOR WHO are they unnecessary, exactly, Mr Nutt? For the children – often orphaned – living in extreme poverty without basic sanitation and clean drinking water let alone any opportunities for education. Is it unneccessary for them?

As Madonna – and other celebrities who have adopted from overseas – it is not an simple, quick or easy process. Being famous does not make it simpler, quicker or easier. The idea that anyone, famous or not, would do something as massive as adopt a child as an act of frivolity is gross and insulting. I have close friends (not famous) who have adopted from overseas and let me assure you, it is a long, stringent process that causes as much disruption (wonderful but disruption nonetheless) to your live as having a child biologically. Actually more. It takes longer and is far far harder.

I’m disgusted by anyone who can sit in their comfortable house with their western lifestyle of lavish abundance and preach and judge about what should happen to children living in desperate poverty in third world countries. Children who have NOTHING.

That little girl Madonna adopts – and every child who is fortunate enough to be rescued from a difficult, hopeless life in a country that cannot offer them things as basic as food let alone opportunities, is blessed. And anyone who is prepared to do the work and spend the money involved in adoption should be praised.