CHICAGO --Madonna defended her planned adoption of a 13-month-old Malawian boy during an interview broadcast Wednesday on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," saying she was unaware of the controversy until she returned home to London last week.
"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," the pop star said in a taped interview conducted via satellite on Tuesday.
The interview with Winfrey marked the first time Madonna has spoken on TV about the adoption ordeal that has captured tabloid headlines around the globe.
Madonna and her husband, director Guy Ritchie, were awarded temporary custody of the boy, David Banda, earlier this month.
But the adoption has been challenged by human rights groups who allege the songstress used her fame and fortune to flout the country's adoption laws.
Banda has spent most of his life in an orphanage in the southeast African country after his mother died shortly after childbirth.
The boy's father has said he is too poor to raise the boy and wanted the famous couple to adopt his son.
But last weekend, the 32-year-old farmer said he did not understand the adoption meant he would give up custody of his son "for good."
David was taken to London last week after Malawi's High Court granted Madonna and Ritchie an interim adoption order.
Madonna has two children -- daughter Lourdes, 9, and son Rocco, 6. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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