After all the controversy, custody and adoption battles, Madonna could finally welcome her adoptive daughter Mercy this weekend in London, according to the Independent UK. The three-year old girl from Malawi has hit the headlines earlier this year when she was chosen by the pop diva for adoption, only to be turned down by a Malawi court in April on the grounds that according to the country’s adoption laws, an adoptive parent must have lived in Malawi for at least a year. However, the singer didn’t give up and appealed, which resulted in the original ruling being overturned on June 12. Mercy’s mother, a teenager, died at childbirth. Her father filed an objection to the adoption but has also withdrawn his case.

Mercy’s case opened up again the controversy about celebrities adopting children from impoverished countries. Inter-country adoption has become popular in recent years and some social scientists believe this is actually counterproductive and that celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie and their well-publicized adoptions are clouding the issue.

Some of the objections brought forward by the critics are:

• It gives false hopes to people, sometimes leading parents to deliberately abandon their children in orphanages in the hopes that some rich celebrity would pick her/him out to enjoy a life of comfort.

• Children are uprooted and cannot grow up in familiar cultural and religious surroundings.

However, adoption advocates, especially those who have adopted children from other countries defend their choice: they can’t help every child in this world but at least they could help one or two escape poverty and disease. Surely, this is a worthy cause.

So what do you think? Are you for or against inter-country adoption? Celebrity adoption?