Emma Nicholson, a life peer Member of the House of Lords, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Member of the European Parliament and self-confessed opponent of international adoption is at it again. The UK's Daily News follows the story:

Following the publication in Monday's edition of British daily Financial Times of a full-page advertisement entitled "Romania's concealed childcare crisis" completed by 33 NGOs which denounced the child protection system in Romania as ignoring the Romanian orphans and pointed out that EU officials have no idea about the traumas the orphans are subjected to in the Romanian institutions. The former EP's rapporteur on Romania, Baroness Emma Nicholson, rejected all the allegations. She pointed out that the non-governmental organizations that have signed the document have a strong financial interest in the resumption of the highly profitable international adoptions business.

In a letter to the editor entitled "Romania banned international adoptions as an evil trade in children" published yesterday by Financial Times, Nicholson said that Romania banned international adoptions in 2001 because it had turned into a trade.

"Rejecting all allegations" is quite the common practice for the Baroness who seems to lack all ability to absorb life at its most drastic. It must seem quite the tidy solution when one of privilege decides that her perfect world really should catch on.

Should anyone doubt her extreme negative position on adoption, here's an excerpt from her own website:

Emma has led the fight against the trade in children, known as Inter-Country Adoption.

Isn't that one of the scariest things you've ever read?

Here's just part of what the Center for Adoption Policy (The Center for Adoption Policy (CAP) is a New York based 501(c)3 organization. Its mission is to provide research, analysis, advice and education to practitioners and the public about current legislation and practices governing domestic and inter-country adoption in the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. CAP is an independent entity. It is not affiliated with any agency or entity involved in the placement of children.) has to say:

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne is the rapporteur (chair) of Romania's application. Lady Nicholson is on a crusade to end inter-country adoption, which she believes is cultural genocide. As she has stated: "It was a mistake from the beginning to assume that for a child, a foreign adoptive family is better than the family which can not care for him. This is totally false."(Lady Emma Nicholson, CNN interview, June 11, 2002.)

Lady Nicholson's position as rapporteur allowed her to pressure the Romanian government into declaring a moratorium on international adoptions that has lasted for over three years. The Romanian Prime Minister stated that "the issue had political implications" -- a clear recognition that his government would look at the issue of international adoptions in the light of its effect on Romania's attempt to join the EU and not as a matter of child welfare.(Radio Free Europe, October 21, 2001.)

Lady Nicholson and her colleagues have succeeded in making the moratorium permanent. In direct response to her threats to block Romania's EU entry, the Romanian government enacted legislation in July 2004, which will become effective January 2005, banning intercountry adoption except in the case of biological grandparents living outside the country, and then only if attempts to find domestic adoptive families are unsuccessful.

Emboldened by their success, these adoption foes are attempting to make elimination of inter-country adoption an unstated requirement for joining the EU, as well as a prerequisite for new EU countries to receive vital EU economic subsidies. Furthermore, there is evidence that the EU campaign is spreading to Russia. A central CAP priority is to try to preserve and protect intercountry adoption in the EU and Russia, where over one million children live without permanent families.

Elsewhere, allegations of corruption in the process of adoption, such as in Cambodia and Guatemala, routinely cause cessations of international adoption. Implementation of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption (HCIA) represents a global initiative to eliminate corruption in adoption practices without sacrificing children to a life of institutionalization. CAP is dedicated to the ratification of this treaty by the United States and to ensuring that practical legislation is enacted to ensure that the requirements of compliance with this treaty are responsive to the needs of children, and not so onerous as to effectively end inter-country adoption.

The best interests of children are easily subsumed to a larger political agenda. Institutionalized children have no seat on the committees that negotiate treaties.

The fact that a person so blatantly biased, so completely and intentionally oblivious to the fate of hundreds of thousands of children, and so clearly intent on keeping the world divided in every way ... large and small ... has the sort of power the Baroness has is terrifying. I urge everyone ... and I mean EVERYONE, adoption in your life or not ... to fight against her attitudes, to inform as many others as possible, and to press the case of the children and the families who could love them.

Oh! how I would love this woman to spend a week in a Cambodian orphanage. No! A lifetime ... that would be fair ... a lifetime without a chance, with hope, without love only an family can provide.

Perhaps she'll trade her peerage, or share it?

Somehow, I just don't see that happening ...