Adoption and Family Planning
See also: LGBT parentingSince September 2009, same-sex couples in a civil union can jointly adopt. The law enabling this was approved by the House of Deputies on 28 August 2009 and by the Senate on 9 September 2009. Uruguay was the first country in Latin America to allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
17 out of a possible 23 senators voted in favour of the move. After the vote, Senator Margarita Percovich said: "It is a right for the boys and the girls, not a right for the adults. It streamlines the adoption process and does not discriminate". Diego Sempol, a representative of the gay rights group, Black Sheep, said: “This law is a significant step toward recognizing the rights of homosexual couples”. Nicolas Cotugno, archbishop of Montevideo had previously said it would be a "serious error to accept the adoption of children by homosexual couples", claiming it was "not about religion, philosophy or sociology. It's something which is mainly about the respect of human nature itself". He also claimed: "The Church cannot accept a family made up of two people of the same sex. These are people who unite and live their life together, but the Church does not consider that a family. A child is not something you make. I don't want to be too harsh in my comment, but with all due respect, a child is not a pet". Senator Francisco Gallinal of the National Party claimed: “The family is the bedrock of society and this measure weakens it. For us, allowing children to be adopted by same-sex couples is conditioning the child’s free will.”
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Uruguay
Famous quotes containing the words adoption, family and/or planning:
“Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, “Adoption, not Abortion,” although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)