As always, there are hot-button topics in the adoption world getting a lot of attention, and a couple of them -- completely unrelated on the surface -- are overlapping a bit in a way I find interesting.

One, the case of the Stocklaufer family where the husband was deemed by a judge to be too fat to become father to an adopted child even though he and his wife had been specifically chosen by the mother and are biologically related.

Gary Stocklaufer yesterday underwent a gastric bypass in hopes of dropping half his weight and having his son returned and being allowed to adopt the child.

This, however, may not be likely, as Max ... the little boy in dispute ... has already been placed with a foster family for possible adoption.

Calling this a "legal kidnapping", Cynthia Stocklaufer, the mother who had cared for Max from the time he was one-week old until he was removed from their custody, admits that there is no guarantee that great post-surgical weight loss will result in the family being reunited, but adds, " ... we have to try."

A court spokeswomen has called this a "complicated determination" while insisting that the court is required "to consider the welfare and best interests of the child", but there's no word, other than general health concerns, of how this comes into play in this case.

Across the Atlantic, there's been a huge backlash to a quota system in the UK for adoption that appears to be resulting in children being removed from parents with little or no reason.

When some parents recorded a thumb-screw session with social workers, then posted the recording on YouTube all heck broke loose, and people all over the world took to criticizing the British government for their take and tactics.

Although the biggest issue may boil down to the not-so-quaint, but certainly antiquated British insistence on secrets (hush, hush) that actually involved having said insistence engraved in stone ... okay, in law, but it's the same thing for the time being ... social workers are claiming to be pressured into harvesting children for adoption by the government's quotas, ostensibly put in place to encourage adoption of some of the legions of foster kids in the country.

Does this, or does this not sound like a lazy answer to a complicated question?

Although some would make what they see as an important distinction between the case of the Stocklaufers and the situation in the UK, indicating that even with the blood connection Gary and Cynthia are not Max's biological parents and the British quota system is removing children from those who physically created the kids in question, I don't see any great difference.

Both situations bring to my mind what can happen when people with a bit of power and a pocketful of personal prejudices are allowed to ride roughshod over the lives of others.

As Gary Stocklaufer put it just before gracefully and hopefully submitting himself to a potentially dangerous procedure:

"There's no guarantee that I'll get my son back, but how could a judge … look themselves in the mirror and say they made the right decision when they know they made the wrong decision," he said. "The question they ask themselves is how they going to correct this mistake."

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