Ooh, a heated debate!
It's a tricky one - it's an area where the general and the personal collide.
- From a point of view of the individual child, it's probably safe to say that he'll have better prospects being brought up by Madonna, than by being brought up in a Malawian orphanage. And it would be a travesty if, after a series of expensive and time-consuming legal actions, the result was that the child was returned to the orphanage. I don't think he'd be too appreciative in later life of that.
- But from a general point of view, Madonna clearly bent a lot of the rules - unless she's been living in Malawi secretly for the last 18 months anyway - or had a lot of rules bent for her by the Malawian government. So the general message of "You can break the rules if you're rich and famous enough" is clearly a kick in the teeth for other people who are trying to adopt children from another country. It sets a bad precedent, in other words.
I think the best solution would be for Madonna to keep the child, but for both her and the Malawian government to admit that mistakes were made on both sides, and to clarify and refine the inter-country adoption process in general. But that's pie-in-the-sky stuff, mainly because powerful people never admit mistakes.
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