In my best, "Gee whiz, it's about time" impression of innocence, I'll start today's news with the stunning revelation that adopted kids will now have the same benefits as biological children in Illinois.

Yep. Apparently up until the recent passage of House Bill 49, the law in that state did not ensure that legally adopted children would be treated the same as bio kids when parents died and pension plans came into play.

The process of fixing this abomination of legal mumbo-jumbo required the amendment of 15 pension codes for public positions like General Assembly members, firefighters and police, as some codes actually specifically denied benefits to adopted children.

People might want to check out the situation in their states.

While this has been going on, Texas has been doing what it can to encourage adoptions from foster care, calling on an adult adoptee to sing the praises of how kids benefit from being in loving families as well as promoting the Heart Gallery exhibit.

Hopefully, the kids that are adopted get the same benefits as bios!

There's a fight going on in Canada that's also of interest over rights to maternity leave which gives 15 fewer weeks to adoptive mothers. The justification is that mothers who birthed their children need the extra time to recuperate from the physical effort.

A mother who adopted twin girls at birth is going to the Supreme Court with her demand that this discriminates against adoptive parents. A Federal Court of Appeal found no problem with the practice and denied the woman's claim.

Such reasoning has no basis in reality. Recovering from birth, whether normal or cesarean, takes about six weeks; the greatest portion of maternity leave is spent cementing the bond between mother and child -- a bond that is equally crucial to adoptive families. It is rather ironic for the court to be claiming an additional 15 weeks is needed for physical recovery when some hospitals feel women are well enough to be sent home within 24 hours of giving birth.

There's a reunion story in the news today ... a brother and sister meeting after a separation of 46 years.

It was apparently a bumpy road to reunion, with a birth mother who was looking to keep the door closed and quite a bit of 'hit and miss', but the story has a happy ending.

Hugely famous Scottish singing/songwriter KT Tunstall includes discussion of her status as an adopted person along with views on family and reunion, as well as fame, in this article from the UK.

Born in 1975, she was adopted at just 18 days old by a primary-schoolteacher and her physics- lecturer husband. Quite often, people who are adopted describe insecurity about their identity, confusion about exactly where they belong. But Tunstall has a very close relationship with her adoptive parents and never felt different from her two brothers, with whom she grew up in St Andrews. "I could only have felt different if they had treated me differently - and they didn't."

There's much more of this in the piece and it's worth a read even if you're not a fan.