Here's the question that started me off down a thought highway ... if an adopted child is proven to have been kidnapped and the biological family is found, what should happen to that child?

Talk on web groups in response to the story out of Holland about the adopted child proven to have been kidnapped in India ranges widely in opinion. Some insist that the only 'right' thing to do is to return the child to the original family. Others see this as subjecting the child to a horrible trauma, attempting to right a wrong with another wrong.

Adoptive parents quake at the thought of handing their child over to anyone, even if the anyone can be proven to be a mother. Thoughts of blackmail and extortion have come up, with genuine and realistic worries about the potential when almost unlimited leverage falls to those who may have very different ideas of right and wrong and fair and caring. Nightmare scenarios of nefarious types jumping into a game of find birthparents, then use them like a gun to the head against adoptive parents are arising, and not without just cause.

Some families are trying hard to think of ways to share a child, with kids and families going back and forth ... spending holidays together, alternating homes much like children from divorce may experience. Of course, the costs would be tremendous as the distance is great.

In thinking about the children, there are issues of language and lifestyle, fear of disease and less-than-First World medical care, education, opportunities and more. Is this elitist?

And if it were your child? From either side of the equation, where would you stand?

There are no answers, not from me anyway, only the possibility for deep thought and discussion, and continuing determination to demand ever-increasingly higher and higher standards for international adoption practices.

A fervent wish that people would be nicer, more caring, less greedy goes along with this, too.