Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / February 2006

http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2006/02/19/news/local/doc43f7998585efc714901732.txt

HOPE & RISK: Adoption plans don't always work out as planned

By Dan Gearino
DES MOINES - The adoption of children is changing faster than parents or
regulators can follow.

This rapid shift, fueled by the Internet and national advertising, creates
opportunities for prospective adoptive parents but also increases the risks
of a financial and emotional disaster.

Today, and for the next three days, the Quad-City Times Des Moines Bureau
investigates some of the perils and promise of infant adoption in Iowa.

This is a story about people who can be in some of the most vulnerable
moments of their lives. The mothers and their families are facing an
unwanted pregnancy; the prospective adoptive parents are eager for a child,
with some willing to pay more than $30,000 in fees to adopt; and the
children are at the mercy of decisions and laws made by adults.

Such circumstances would seem to demand close scrutiny by regulators and
high standards of entry for adoption service providers. But the opposite is
true, as a patchwork of state laws does not closely regulate an industry
that routinely crosses state lines.

Iowa City adoption attorney Lori Klockau has watched her practice transform.
When she started 14 years ago, nearly all adoptive families had some
connection to the mother or at least lived in the same area.

Today, the Internet allows for quick connections all over the country and
the world.

"Now, about 80 percent of the cases I'm doing are Iowa babies going to
adoptive parents in another state. That's a big change," Klockau said.

But regulatory safeguards have not kept pace. This has given rise to a
relatively new class of adoption professionals called facilitators. These
people, who in many states are not required to be licensed or trained, get
paid an upfront fee that can reach $7,000 to match an adoptive family with a
mother.

A few dozen facilitators and adoption agencies advertise across the country
in newspapers and phone books, sometimes offering to relocate pregnant women
and pay their living expenses.

Residents of Illinois and Utah got a glimpse last year of how this can go
wrong. In an incident that became known as the Baby Tamia case, an Illinois
woman said she was coerced by an adoption agency to relocate to a Utah
hotel, give birth and place her baby for adoption. An Illinois judge ordered
that the baby be removed from the adoptive family and returned to her family
in Illinois.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed a bill in August that dramatically
boosts the protections for families involved with adoption.

Iowans have vivid memories of the Baby Jessica case in 1993, which also
involved a child being removed from adoptive parents. Jessica was 2 years
old when courts in Michigan and Iowa ruled that she should be transferred
from her adoptive family in Michigan to her family in Iowa. Television
cameras captured the image of a sobbing Jessica being taken away from the
only family she had known.

Her father in Iowa successfully argued that he did not know the girl was
being placed for adoption. This led to the creation of father registries in
Iowa, Michigan and other states.

But the greater effect of the case was that prospective adoptive parents
learned some of the risks of adoption - risks that have arguably become
greater as the industry takes on a national scope.

"It's very rare when a child is returned, but everyone knows about the Baby
Jessica story. Things like that made us cautious," said Nancy Emmerson, an
adoptive mother in Davenport.

Her family adopted through a nonprofit agency, which is a part of the
adoption industry that once handled nearly every adoption but now is
suffering from competition with nonagency service providers like
facilitators.

One reason for the rise of facilitators is many of them are more aggressive
than agencies at recruiting mothers, which leads to quicker placements,
though often at a greater financial cost.

But the picture is not all, or even mostly, bleak. Adam Pertman, director of
the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York, describes an "adoption
revolution," in which old stigmas and secrecy are fading away and adoption
is widely accepted.

He is an advocate for open adoption, in which the mother's identity is known
to the adoptive parents.

"The vast majority of the time, (adoption is) going smoothly, ethically and
well. . (However), we're dealing here with the transfer of children from one
family to another, and not the interstate transfer of refrigerators, so we
have to get it right every time," he said.

Dan Gearino can be contacted  at (515) 243-0138.

HOPE & RISK: Adoption experts make their case against relocation

By Dan Gearino
The merits of moving pregnant women for adoptions is debatable, with
well-known adoption lawyers and commentators saying bad results can occur
for all involved.

Patricia Johnston, an Indiana-based adoption educator and author, is sharply
critical of the practice, which she says is done by only a small share of
attorneys and facilitators.

"For anyone to say the relocation is the birth mother's choice is
exaggerating the issue. They're dealing with a client in crisis, who has
little idea how adoption works and is completely dependent on the
professionals they work with," she said.

The former president of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, Mark
McDermott of Maryland, says relocation should be rare. He says the practice
is most common for "entrepreneurial and aggressive" service providers.

Another former president of the adoption attorneys group, Indiana-based
Steve Kirsh, says relocation is a bad idea, even if the woman is homeless.

"My experience is that a homeless birth mom is almost never going to place a
child for adoption," Kirsh said.

On the other side of the issue is David Keene Leavitt, director of the
Adoption Law Center of Beverly Hills in California. He maintains furnished
apartments for mothers.

"Occasionally we have a girl who wants to leave home. She doesn't want the
folks at home to know what's going on," Leavitt said.

He also relocates women to get them out of states in which there are more
restrictions on adoption practices, such as Ohio.

"If you have a girl in Ohio and she has no money, she needs food; she needs
her rent paid; you can't do it. So you get her out of there and bring her to
a state where this is proper," Leavitt said.

Women may be relocated to Iowa for similar reasons. According to Leavitt,
the state has less restrictive adoption rules than several of its neighbors,
including South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Dan Gearino can be contacted  at (515) 243-0138.