Tagged: adoption

There's a special  screening tonight at the AMC Livonia 20 of the documentary "Stuck." It was an Audience Choice Winner at the Heartland Film Festival.

The film focuses on the process of international adoption and the  children and prospective parents who get "Stuck" in that process.

"Stuck" tells the story of four children and the families who want to adopt them following the children and families as they try to negotiate the bureaucratic ins and outs of the international adoption system.

Film producer Craig Juntunen joined us today along with Kendra Pinkelman. Pinkelman and her husband are trying to adopt a boy from Russia.

That adoption process came to a grinding halt when Russia banned U.S. adoptions last December.

And the Director of the Eastern Michigan Office of Adoption Associates, one of Michigan's leading agencies for international and domestic adoptions, Paula Springer also joined us. She has worked in the adoption field for some 30 years.

Listen to the full discussion above.

Don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the current lame duck session of the legislature is trying to do about as much as lawmakers normally do in about ten years. Now I am sure that’s an exaggeration, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Consider this. In a single day, the governor and the Republican majority pushed through the most momentous labor legislation in years, taking the once inconceivable step of outlawing the union shop and making Michigan a so-called right to work state.

They aren’t stopping there, however: The governor is going to have to make a decision on four bills, or parts of bills aimed at making it harder for women to get abortions in Michigan.

For the last two years, lots of people have believed that Rick Snyder may be a pro-business fiscal conservative, but that he was really a moderate on social issues. Well, now we are about to find out.

Michigan adoption agencies would be able to refuse to place kids with families who violate the agency's religious or moral convictions. 

That's under a new bill proposed in the state legislature.

Private agencies can already use faith-based principles when it comes to adoption, like not placing kids with homosexual parents.

But this bill would make it illegal to deny agencies funding or licenses because of their convictions.

Legislation would give private adoption agencies the legal right to turn down prospective parents for any moral or religious reason.  That’s what’s in a pair of bills being considered by lawmakers in Lansing.

The bills would guarantee private adoption agencies working on state contracts would be protected from rules that could compromise their religious or moral convictions.

Michigan’s Department of Human Services is being sued for failing to disclose to parents that their adoptive children had special needs and therefore qualified for federal aid.

David Kallman is an attorney representing 8 families in the case.  He says because they didn’t know their children had disabilities, so they missed a deadline to claim these benefits for their adopted children, and are now struggling with major medical bills.

He says the families love their kids and want to help them.   But the expenses are decimating them.

A spokesman for DHS says they can’t comment on the case, since the suit won’t be filed until tomorrow, but that they investigate all allegations into wrongdoing.

- Chris Edwards, Michigan Radio Newsroom