I just wanted to give a child life, says Madonna

Madonna has vigorously defended her decision to adopt a Malawian baby boy and attacked her critics for discouraging others from offering life and hope to African orphans.
She did, however, concede that Malawi's lack of adoption laws meant she "more or less" had to "make them up as we went along".
The singer appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show yesterday to give a spirited defence of how and why she took 13-month-old David Banda from the orphanage where he had spent most of his life.

The 48-year-old mother of two has been accused of using her status to speed up the adoption process, and human rights groups are challenging the interim order in court.
She also addressed charges that she went against the wishes of the boy's father, Yohane Banda, who has since been quoted as saying he did not realise he was giving his son up for good.

The multi-millionaire singer said she was shocked and "disappointed" to find her decision to adopt so attacked.

"I didn't realise that the adoption was causing any controversy until I came back [to England]," she told Miss Winfrey via a satellite link from London.
She said the media coverage could discourage others from adopting "a child living in an orphanage who might possibly not live past the age of five 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."
Denying that she had pulled strings, the singer said: "If only my wealth and my position could have made things go faster.

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'.

"
The singer said she and her husband, Guy Ritchie, first discussed adopting a child two years ago.
"I wanted to go into a Third World country I wasn't sure where and give a life to a child who might not otherwise have had one."
Madonna first saw David, whose mother and three siblings are dead, on film.

"I'm financing a documentary about orphans in Malawi, so I was allowed to view footage and photos of a lot of the children," she said.
"An eight-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." The singer told Miss Winfrey she had her "heart set on David".
The boy had "survived malaria and tuberculosis, and no one from his extended family had visited him since the time he arrived [at the orphanage]," Madonna said.

"So from my perspective, there was no one looking after David's welfare."
She attacked reports that Mr Banda, 32, misunderstood what was happening when he agreed to the adoption as "completely false". "I do not believe that is true.

I sat in that room, I looked into that man's eyes," Madonna said.
"I believe that the press is manipulating this information out of him. I believe at this point in time, he's been terrorised by the media.

They have asked him things, repeatedly, and they have put words in his mouth."
David, who was "extremely ill" with "severe pneumonia" when Madonna met him, is now recovering at home with the Ritchie family in London the couple also have a son, Rocco, six, and daughter Lourdes, 10.
Madonna said the children were enchanted with their new baby brother.

"They just embraced him, and that's the amazing thing about children," she said.