Starting this month people giving up their children for adoption and those seeking to adopt will no longer be able to do so privately, as a law stipulating that all adoptions will have to go through authorized institutions — excluding those conducted between relatives — comes into force.
“Revisions to the Children and Juveniles Welfare Act (兒童及少年福利法) stipulating that child adoption should go through government-authorized institutions were passed at the end of November last year and have taken effect from the end of May,” Child Welfare Bureau director-general Chang Hsiu-yuan (張秀鴛) said.
“With the new measures in place, we hope to better regulate child adoption, preventing problems such as child selling and adoptive families ‘returning’ children to their original families,” she added.
She said that on average, courts approve between 3,000 and 4,000 child adoptions a year, of which “about half are adoptions between relatives and the other 50 percent are non-relative adoptions, mostly done privately.”
Out of the private adoptions, between 30 and 40 percent end with adoptive families regretting their decision and terminating the adoption.
“Many people adopt children simply because they do not have kids and want to pass on the family lineage. As they are largely ill-prepared, they regret their decision once they find the kid is not behaving as they would have expected,” Chang said. “This hurts the children involved.”
Even worse, there have been cases where parents have sold their children, she said.
Local media outlets have reported stories detailing the sale of infants for between NT$300,000 (US$10,020) and NT$350,000.
The most shocking case occurred in 2006 when a Taipei doctor was involved in 50 cases of infant trading and issued forged birth certificates falsely listing his “customers” as the biological parents of 101 infants.
“When adoptions are done through authorized institutions, such problems can be better prevented,” Chang said. “In addition, parents who want to adopt children would be required to attend 30 hours of lessons on relevant laws, welfare resources, child-raising and how to tell their adopted children about the adoption.”
“The authorized institutions are also required to track adoptions for three years to provide assistance on any problems that may occur and will regularly host reunions for adoptive families to discuss issues that they face in common together,” she said.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported