Recently in Adoption Category

Houston millionaire, John Goodman, made his girlfriend his daughter by adopting her, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Goodman, the heir to a fortune from air-conditioner manufacturing, legally adopted 42-year-old Heather Laruso Hutchins. The move, it is speculated, is designed to allow Hutchins to control a trust fund that Goodman set up for his other two children. Since the trust is set up so that beneficiaries can't take from it until they are 35, Hutchins can take from it, since she is 42-years-old.

But adopting his girlfriend may not just be for giving a girlfriend access to a trust-fund.

After comedian Tracy Morgan, star of the NBC show 30 Rock, was hospitalized with an illness, his estranged mother, Alicia, sought to try and get in touch with him, reports the Houston Chronicle.

Tracy Morgan apparently lost consciousness at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and was taken to a hospital. It was then that his mother learned about the episode and tried to contact the hospital, where no information was provided to her.

A woman recently left a 4-year-old child at a Houston fire station, reports KHOU Houston, saying she had tried her best to care for him.

The woman was not the child’s biological mother. In fact, no one knows who the child’s mother is. The abandoned child had been with the father, who allegedly has a drug problem and left the child with his neighbor.

The neighbor tried to care for the child for four months and eventually brought him to the fire station where he was accepted under Texas’s safe haven laws.

A tragic incident in northwest Harris County has been in the news since early this morning. According to the Houston Chronicle, a young mother named Rebekah Sanders apparently killed her five year old and three year old children, and then tried to kill herself.

The bodies of the children, as well as the wounded mother, were discovered at a home near West Little York. The children are identified as five-year-old Gabrielle Woods and three-year-old Gabriel Sanders. The mother, Rebekah Sanders, was flown to Memorial Hermann hospital. She had been shot in the head and was in critical condition. It is believed that she shot herself.

Parental failure hit a new low, or high, in Texas recently.

The Associated Press is reporting that a six year old daughter was allegedly made to videotape her mother engaging in group sex acts at her house.

In an article by the Dallas Morning News, it was revealed that this was not just a one time incident, but allegedly happened at least three different times. The six-year-old daughter was made to videotape her mother having sex with several men.

Even during times when many U.S. states are pushing for legislation that would prohibit same-sex couples from adopting a child, The New York Times reports that there’s still a growing number of gay couples who are adopting and starting a family of their own.

Census numbers show that 19 percent of same-sex couples raising children reported having an adopted child in the house in 2009, which is up from just 8 percent in 2000. The trend of more same- sex couples adopting most likely comes with the overall increased acceptance of gays and lesbians in American society along with the growing number of children that are waiting to be adopted.

Each year, Americans recognize the month of May as National Foster Care Month. This is a time where community organizations and social workers will encourage people to adopt a child out of foster care. These types of adoptions can be especially rewarding because the children in foster care have often been abandoned, orphaned, or abused. Hence, many people feel that these children need parents more than anybody else.

On April 29, President Barack Obama declared the month of May as National Foster Care Month in a proclamation, which stated that “we all have a responsibility to remain persistent in the charge to provide the best care possible for children when they cannot remain in their own homes.” Now is the perfect time of year to learn more about adoption and a good time to recognize the people around you that dedicate themselves to improving the lives of children in foster care.

There are tens of thousands of abused and neglected children in Texas who are in foster care and looking for a home. This is why the organization Children's Rights has filed a class-action lawsuit against Texas officials, alleging that the state has not done enough to get the kids in state custody into permanent homes.

The Texas Tribune reports that caseworkers with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services are supposed to have 18 months to reunify children with their biological families or find them adoptive homes. If none of these options are available after 18 months, the child is supposed to move into a permanent managing conservatorship.

A bill passed through the state's Senate Health & Human Services Committee earlier this month that would, if passed into a law, allow Texas to offer license plates reading "Choose Life," in an attempt to discourage abortions. The Associated Press reports that the bill would pool money from its license plate sales and private donations to a Choose Life account, which would benefit organizations that assist women considering adoption.

Matthew Simpson from the ACLU of Texas has expressed concerns of state license plates becoming a forum of debate for controversial topics. Is it wrong for the state to allow one point of view of a political issue on license plates, but not other points of view? Perhaps the state of Texas shouldn't be taking a stance on the subject of abortion, or maybe there should be "Right to Choose" license plates available for sale as well.

The Senate State Affairs Committee approved a bill last week that if passed into a law would require a physician to perform a sonogram on a pregnant woman at least 24 hours before performing an abortion. In addition, Senate Bill 16 will require doctors performing an abortion to inform the patient about alternatives to the procedure that could be useful to the mother, including new mother services, adoption agencies, and child support information.

Austin News KXAN reports that Gov. Rick Perry has declared SB 16 as an emergency piece of legislation, which means that the bill is on the fast track to being heard on the Senate floor. The bill must be heard in the first 60 days of the legislative session.