Madonna Speaks Out On Her Adoption Drama

Any Madonna fans out there?
Here's a pic of her oh, so cute baby, David with new Dad (and Madonna's hubby) Guy Richie. Cuteness.

Bits and pieces of her interview with Oprah yesterday, for those of you who missed it:

Madonna beamed herself over to The Oprah Winfrey Show via satellite Tuesday for an interview on her controversial adoption of Malawi orphan David Banda.

On whether the adoption was “rushed” because she’s a celebrity:
"I assure you it doesn't matter who you are or how much money you have, nothing goes fast in Africa. There are no adoption laws in Malawi. And I was warned by my social worker that because there were no known laws in Malawi, they were more or less going to have to make them up as we went along. And she did say to me, 'Pick Ethiopia. Go to Kenya. Don't go to Malawi because you're just going to get a hard time.'"

On the first time she saw David:
"I'm financing a documentary about orphans in Malawi, so I was allowed to view footage and photographs of a lot of the children. An 8-year-old girl who is living with HIV was holding this child. I became transfixed by him. … But I didn't yet know I was going to adopt him. I was just drawn to him."

On David’s tragic past:
"David had been living in this orphanage since he was two weeks old. He had survived malaria and tuberculosis, and no one from his extended family had visited him since the time he arrived. So from my perspective, there was no one looking after David's welfare."

On the media controversy surrounding the adoption:
"I'm disappointed because it discourages other people from doing the same thing -- for anybody who had the idea that they, too, would like to open their home and give a life to a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of 5. Anybody who had that idea would be discouraged from doing it. For me, that's what disappoints me the most. I feel like the media is doing a great disservice to all the orphans of Africa, period, not just Malawi, by turning it into such a negative thing.”

You can find more excerpts here
source