For months now we have been following the case of an American couple trying to adopt a South African baby who had been abandoned at birth upside-down in a bucket, and looking at the state of orphans and international adoption in South Africa.

For more than two years this family has refused to take no for an answer, continuing to fight all the way to the highest court in the land and against some formidable opposition to international adoption in general and their adoption specifically. People in positions of authority have lied and attempted to influence the outcome through the media.

Fortunately, their tactics didn't work.

A twenty-five minute hearing this week saw the Constitutional Court order the Children's Court to fast-track the child's adoption hearing, putting an end to the ordeal and allowing the family to take Baby R home to Virginia, possibly before her third birthday on the 11th of November.

All this time, money, effort, stress, distress and hoopla because of an unofficial Department of Social Development "policy" discouraging adoptions to America that was eventually "acknowledged to have no basis in law".

That there are people in the world so quick to sacrifice a child's one chance for a family on the alter of some self-deluded concept of the wrongness of adoption is made very clear by this one simple case of one baby girl.

Regarding Baby R, one who jumped at the chance to put the kibosh on her future happened to be one of the most powerful people in the chain of command of the social welfare system.

Director-General Vusimuzi Madonsela out-and-out lied to stop Baby R's adoption, saying that five black South African parents were "ready and willing to adopt" the child, a claim that was eventually proven to be false.

Last month, a member of his own staff, a court-appointed advisor and advocate, testified that she found no less than twenty-five reasons for granting guardianship leading to adoption to the American couple who had been fighting so long for the child.

"Time is of the essence and while I accept that Baby R may have been adopted by a local family when she was younger, at this point in time there are no suitable local adoptive parents who would be a match for her, notwithstanding the Department of Social Development's efforts to mislead this honourable court in this regard," Feinstein said.