India's domestic adoption policy has recently been changed to allow single-parent homes to adopt a child, which as been met with opposition. Responding to the move, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity has formally announced their intention to cease all adoptions through its orphanages.
A new amendment was passed in Parliament this summer that overruled the previous regulation that required the parents to be wedded before they could apply for adoption.
This month, the Missionaries of Charity said that they are seeking de-recognition for 13 of the 16 orphanages run by them in the country, according to the Times of India.
"We have already shut down our adoption services because we believe our children may not receive real love," Sister Amala from New Delhi branch of Missionaries of Charity orphanage told TIME Magazine.
"We do not wish to give children to single parents or divorced people. It is not a religious rule but a human rule," she said.
Missionaries of Charity will continue to take in children and facilitate care for orphans, but will not put them up for adoption.
Women & Child Development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi said the organization has opposed this step because of their reservation to coming under a "uniform secular agenda."
"They have cited ideological issues with our adoption guidelines related to giving up a child for adoption to single, unwed mothers. They have their own agenda, and now when they have to come under a unified secular agenda, they are refusing it," Gandhi told the Times of India.
"However, we are trying to persuade them, they are good people," Gandhi reportedly told state-level ministers of WCD at a two-day conference.
India's adoption regulatory authority made a series of amendments recently to make the application and processing time quicker and more transparent, and require the parents seeking adoption to register under the national adoption agency.
The point contended by the Christian organization is that the regulations do not distinguish between married and unmarried people.
The new rules also suspend organizations for non-compliance.
In India, the adoption rate is dismal, mainly owing to cumbersome bureaucratic processing. This year, only about 1,200 children were adopted, even as over 9,000 prospective parents were in waiting list.
