The very public story about the Ukrainian government's refusal to allow singer Elton John and his partner David Furnish to adopt an HIV-positive orphan had filmmaking couple Mike Dudko and Olga Rudnieva wondering if they were any more qualified to adopt a child. Following up on the story, they discovered that the child's parents were forced to reclaim him, appear on news stations disparaging John, and that the child was eventually left in the care of his aged grandmother when the mother overdosed on drugs and the father returned to prison. This lead the couple to ask why it is more difficult to adopt a child than to bear one. Looking at the adoption policies in different countries and the barriers that adoptive parents face in red tape and finances - including some agencies that blatantly state that children of different races rate different fees and are presumed to cost more or less to raise than others - as well as some of the tragic and heart-wrenching stories of children raised by unstable or uncaring biological parents or those raised without role models, the documentary asks the very touchy question of whether some people shouldn't be allowed to raise children (some horrifying testimony from social workers as well as the heart-breaking and chilling memoirs of Dave Pelzer - the titlular "Child Called 'It'" - tug at the heartstrings, but evidently still necessary given some of the attitudes about parents' seemingly inalienable rights as well as the inability or unwillingness of officials to intervene in situations that are apparently only judged dangerous in hindsight (perhaps for fear of setting precedents that could well get out of hand). It also asks if the ability to love and nurture is more important than the adoption agency's requirements of income brackets, the number of parents (married or not, heterosexual or not), age, and so on. It is easy to cynically detect a certain amount of self-involvement in the filmmakers turning the cameras on themselves in response to a story involving a celebrity, but KIDS RIGHTS nevertheless sheds troubling light on the disconnect between the goals and requirements of agencies interested in children's welfare and the children they have failed (at least partially by making if difficult for potential parents to adopt on sometimes dogmatic grounds).