Adoption Story

In the Best Interests of Whom?

And yet another child, "Baby" Richard from Illinois, has fallen prey to the inadequacies of a system that is supposed to protect him as he innocently pursues his life, liberty and happiness. We are beside ourselves in collective impotent outrage. Children-as-chattel is only supposed to feature in the Dickensian dark ages, not in the civilized 21st century. But we mustn't let our desperation to make such horrific situations go away lead us to blindly embrace what the National Conference of Commissioners for Uniform State Laws is proposing as "reform".

"The Uniform Adoption Act that NCCUSL has drafted is not in the best interests of children, " says Annette Baran, MSW. , author of The Adoption Triangle. "It is a lawyer-driven act concerned with the providing of available white infants to families who can pay for them.

"It is not even in the best interests of adoptive parents, who can be at the mercy of the marketplace, " Baran points out. "There's no supervision, anyone can place babies for adoption, and charge anything they want. " Among the organizations opposing the proposed Uniform Adoption Act are the National Assn. of Social Workers, the Child Welfare League of America, Catholic Charities USA, the American Adoption Congress, Concerned United Birthparents, the National Adoption Center, the Adoption Exchange Association, Children Awaiting Parents, and the Joint Council on International Children's Services.

It is their position that the Act fails to adequately protect the rights of children, and focuses instead on expediting the permanent separation of infants from their birth parents in the absence of adequate counseling, exploration of alternatives, and procedural safeguards.

It was in the absence of these crucial ingredients of conscientious adoption practice that the seeds were sown for the anguish of Babies Richard and Jessica: neither birthmother had adequate, unbiased counseling, something that might have led them to make more considered, timely choices, including to honestly disclose the fathers' names; nor were they supported in exploring alternatives to adoption.

As for procedural safeguards, the tendency for them to be relaxed--especially in private, independent adoptions--is surely fed by our societal tendency to paternalistically view birth parents as less endowed economically, educationally, culturally, sometimes even morally, and thus less equipped--and deserving--to parent. In the case of Baby Richard, procedural safeguards were clearly violated regarding the required good-faith effort to locate the birthfather before the adoption took place.

The decision of the Illinois Supreme Court turned on the troubling facts (as set out in the majority opinion) that the adoptive parents and their attorney had full knowledge that the birthmother in fact knew who the birthfather was and full knowledge of her plans to lie to him about the baby dying so the adoption could take place. When they published the legally-required notice of the intended adoption of the child, they did so in the back of an obscure national law publication rather than in a general circulation publication in Chicago, a questionable good-faith choice. This veritable parade of un-safeguarded procedures would be completely repeatable under the Uniform Adoption Act.

"I think what the Act ultimately does is to put adoptions more at risk, " says adoptive mother Kim Kradolfer, who is also an assistant attorney general in Montana. She co-founded an adoptive parents group that researches legislative issues, and is one of the few Americans who has actually read the court opinions in the Baby Richard case, as well as studied the proposed Uniform Adoption Act.

"I think it makes adoptions in many cases more coercive, because the birthparents may not have had the counseling, and may not be making a free decision. I think that this act will cause more of the Baby Richards and Baby Jessicas. "

If we want to turn our outrage from impotent to effective, we can let our state legislators know how we feel about "reform" that would yet again turn a deaf ear to those who need it most. And oh yes--until we find a way to legislate morality, we can pray that the "adults" in these excoriating human entanglements might rise above their fears and pride to forge some joint arrangement borne of mutual love for their mutual child; pray that they might seek to recompense their own undeniable losses with something other than the trophy of a child who is ravaged in the bargain.

Marcy Wineman Axness, an adoptee, lives in California with her husband and two children. She writes and lectures nationwide on adoption and pre- and perinatal issues, and is completing a novel, THE AWAKENING OF PEARL McEVOY.