Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / July 2007

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=7b177e8e-1d82
-46a3-bf2d-f1eca67a9be1

Adoption reform plan would be a good start

A government-appointed committee is recommending some welcome changes
to Quebec's too-rigid adoption laws, changes that would allow some
birth mothers to maintain a degree of contact with their offspring.
It's about time. The proposals, while somewhat timid, are better than
nothing.
The current draconian system is way out of step with laws in other
provinces.
Under current Quebec law, once a family hands over a child to the
government-run adoption service, all contact between mother and child
must be severed.
In many other jurisdictions, continued contact between an adopted
child and the birth parents is fairly routine. Some provinces even
allow a birth mother to arrange for friends or people she knows to
adopt her child.
In Quebec, that happens only when the adoptive parent is a close
family member, an uncle or aunt or perhaps a cousin. Otherwise, the
child's fate is determined by government agencies.
The study committee, headed by Carmen LavallEe of the UniversitE de
Sherbrooke's law faculty, certainly isn't recommending anything as
radical as that.
Nour Salah, the group's secretary, says he and the other committee
members spent just over a year examining the Quebec system "from A to
Z," but for all that, their recommendations are tentative, even
timorous.
The committee has apparently concluded the "full-adoption" system now
employed in Quebec is the best guarantee for most children that they
will be fully integrated into their adoptive homes.
The committee does suggest, however, that some children be able to to
retain some links to their parents and grandparents. This makes sense
for children old enough to have developed a bit of a history with
their biological families before placement.
What it's proposing is that adoptive and biological families would
sign letters of agreement that would allow limited contact, one or two
letters a year, for example, with photographs. That's thin gruel for
both child and biological family, but it's an improvement over what we
have now.
The full-adoption system might work very well for some families, but
for many mothers the idea of handing a child over to the state to be
disposed of anonymously is just too wrenching and cold-blooded to
contemplate. Many young mothers might be more willing to put their
children up for adoption if they knew they would still have some small
role to play in the children's lives. This obviously should not
interfere with the authority of the adoptive parents, nor does it have
to.
The state does, of course, have a role to play in safeguarding the
well-being of all children, but in the end, adoption is a family
matter and is best handled by families whenever possible.