Anne here, trying to sort through the truly venomous press and comment attacks on Madonna, on the subject of her proposed adoption of a four year-old girl Mercy James from Malawi.

Critics of the adoption argue the young girl, living with a dead mother and father unknown, would have a better life in an orphanage, perhaps the one that Madonna has already built for children in Malawi, than in leaving the country with her new white mother.

Madonna leaving court in Malawi on Monday. via DailyMail UKGetting the facts straight is difficult. Press reports that the ruling in the case has been delayed don’t jibe with what we reported as the judicial process in the first place. Madonna is making her own case to the court, and presumably she has done so in concert with on the ground officials.

Despite what people say, Madonna is not prone to dropping out of the sky in her big jet and turning the Malawi court upside down.

Malawi’s Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), a network of 80 locally-based civil rights organisations, has expressed concern regarding the second adoption of a local child Mercy James, arguing that children need to be taken care of within their natural environment, and not a foreign family.

The HRCC argues that quality of life issues aren’t only about material needs, and we agree.

The ABC News stresses that a standard of biculturalism versus assimilation is critical. “The new family must see themselves as a family of color as opposed to a white family that adopted a child of color.”

Dominic Nutt, a spokesman for Save the Children UK, also believes that Madonna’s adoption should not be permitted. Nutt’s view is:

“Well, our biggest concern is that we believe that in the most — in the majority of cases, orphans, so-called orphans, in fact [are] not orphans — they have at least one parent living — and even those that don’t, have a wider family that can look after them. And we believe that children in poverty should be best looked after by their own people in their own environment. And that people like Madonna and organizations like Save the Children are best off helping those families by building schools and supporting them to look after these so-called orphans and not transporting them to live across the world in mansions, in pop stars’ mansions, that sort of thing.”

I’ve posted several press reports on this subject, because we are very committed to the concerns of African children here at Anne of Carversville.

VIP visit: Madonna with daughter Lourdes took a trip to a centre for orphans in Malawi which she set up through her Raising Malawi charity. Via Daily Mail UKWe share concerns about human child trafficking, but disagree that Madonna’s legal attempts to adopt the girl are self-centered and lacking in compassion for the child. I’ve wager that not one person challenging the adoption actually wants to lead the life of Mercy James in Malawi.

Contrary to what we might think, Africa children are not being snatched randomly out of the continent. Their chances for adoption are the slimmest globally.

Life expectancy in Malawi is 44 years. Most children over the age of 10 don’t attend school. Extended relatives were not caring for Mercy James. I do not make light of the idea of taking young Mercy James out of Africa. But I’m astonished at what I feel is a cheap-talk analysis of the problem and the actual conditions of this young girl’s life.

Let’s at least agree that as critics, people are saying that she should remain in Malawai, uneducated and sentenced to die young, with no real family structure around her.

The challenge for Madonna to use her celebrity to advance care on the ground for these children is a fair one. She’s already doing more than the rest of us put together, trying to provide for children in Malawi.

I do support challenging Madonna to return both children to Africa as often as feasibly possible, or even stipulating agreed-upon visits in advance, similar to the concept of visitation rights in the U.S.

Most of all, I’m astonished over the ‘hate mail’ on this topic of Madonna. I don’t hear concerns expressed in a logical, heartfelt way for the child. What I hear is a lot of anger and criticism of Madonna and how she leads her life. Our human appetite for venomous dialogue never ceases to deliver a severe jolt to my system, when I hear people speak on such complex topics as children in Africa. Anne