When a judge in Malawi rejected Madonna’s application to adopt a second Malawian child, said Beth Nonte Russell in the Los Angeles Times, the press focused on things like Madonna’s outfits. The real story is that due to legal hurdles and misplaced nationalism, an orphaned 4-year-old, Mercy James, was denied a good home. Malawi alone has a million orphans, and making them “political, cultural, and financial pawns” is a form of “modern-day slavery.”
Malawi has so many orphans, said Kevin Watkins in Britain’s The Guardian, because pregnant women there, and in other poor countries, face “terrifying risks.” Mercy’s mother died five days after giving birth, without making any headlines. About once a minute, a poor woman dies in childbirth or during pregnancy—if Madonna wants to help the children, she should “save the mothers.”
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