http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=9643949
A case in Nebraska recently has piqued my interests. Apparently a 21 year old woman became pregnant and sought to have the baby placed for adoption by a private agency. She required that the adoptive parents not be pregnant and not have any biological children of their own. In a private adoption the biological mother can choose that sort of thing. The adoptive parents she was matched with lied about the fact that they had conceived four months prior via in vitro fertilization. She was four months pregnant when the baby was matched with them, and knowing full well the knowledge of the pregnancy would cost them the adoptive baby, they lied. When it was discovered that the adoptive mom was pregnant, the 3 month old baby was taken from her care and custody was returned to the biological mom. Now, 11 months later, after the child has been in the custody of his biological mother for almost a year, the decision to remove the child from the adoptive parents home has been overturned. The baby is now being placed back with the adoptive parents, who now also have a 7 month old biological child.
I don't know how this decision could have been made with the interests of the child in mind given that the child is being taken from the only home he's ever known and placed with complete strangers. I have a 1 year old as well, and this just rips my heart out. My son screams when he has to go into the church nursery for an hour; I can't imagine him having to be parented forever by someone completely unknown and Mommy just disappearing.
The adoptive parents were intentionally deceitful. They lied about being pregnant. They lied to get another baby. Lying is wrong. And this wasn't a "whoops! I'm pregnant!". The biological child of the adoptive parents was conceived through the very costly, very time consuming, very planned out process of in vitro fertilization. Apparently they were waiting to see if she would miscarry, but she was four months pregnant when they were matched with the child! Four months! They were bet-hedging for a baby. Their line of reasoning sounds like "Well, in the event this one in the uterus doesn't work out, at least we'll have another one coming. So it won't be that big of a deal after all." They sound stellar.
There are some things about the private adoption industry in the US that bother me. I've looked though private adoption profiles on the internet out of sheer curiosity, and they all seem to be the same thing. Couple X wants a white baby no more than 2 days old. You actually get adoption fees waved sometimes for African American babies. They just can't seem to find parents willing to take AA babies, even healthy AA babies. If you want a baby, you want a baby. I understand wanting a biological baby, but if you can't have biological children, why spend the thousands and thousands of dollars just to adopt a white newborn when there are thousands of babies all over the world who need parents? If you can afford a private adoption in the US, you can afford to adopt from Ethiopia. But, no, those babies are black. God forbid our children don't look exactly like we do. I find it hard to be sympathetic towards couples who wait and wait and wait in the US to adopt a baby when there are thousands needing homes over seas- and it's cheaper too!
I hope this child in Nebraska gets placed back with his biological relatives who love him and want him back very badly. I can't imagine what this young child is going through having been ripped out of his home and placed with strangers. Hopefully the courts will come through for this kid and he'll suffer minimal trauma. But I'm just not that optimistic. Sad story.
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Comments
However, it's difficult and expensive to adopt overseas, especially in Africa. There are legal obstacles in many countries, long delays, hidden medical issues and the risk that an adoption will fall through.
Many would-be parents do adopt kids who don't look like them, but it's hard for white parents to get black babies. I know three white couples who asked to be put on a public foster/adopt list: They were told they lacked the cultural skills to raise a non-white child.
First, an expectant mother who has made an adoption plan can choose a waiting couple that meets certain criteria that she may be looking for, but this is in no way an absolute contract. This EM, now mom, specifically wanted an infertile couple who would not have any biological children and would only be able to add to their family through adoption. Now there is no way such a criteria is enforceable. Suppose the adoptive mom gets pregnant, miraculously later after the adoption? Or suppose they want to use IVF for a sibling? The emom/first mom really has no say in how they choose to build their family. That is just not how adoption works.
Did the adoptive couple lie by omission? Absolutely! Did it piss me off as one of the complete honesty brigade? You betcha. However was there a part of me that understood that for a woman like this adoptive mom who had had several second and third trimester losses, pregnancy is no guarantee of a live baby at the end of 9 months. And as such, it is easy to focus on the baby joining your family through adoption and say to yourself that if the pregnancy actually works this time, you will be blessed with 2 instead of 1...Irish Twins, I think they call it. Sure it tramples all over what the emom/first mom wanted, and I absolutely do not agree with that decision. But if the emom hadn't had a problem with biosibs, this case would never have gone anywhere.
In any event, despite the outcry from the public, since the adoption had not been finalized, the adoptive parents did not have true custody (finalization takes from 6-10 months after you are placed with the child) and the adoption agency who truly had custody, removed the child since the adoptive mother violated its contract (this agency specifically prohibits people from continuing fertility treatments while pursuing adoption...not all agencies do this). The bmom/first mom by that time had terminated her parental rights and did not have legal standing. I am interested in knowing what grounds the court used to reverse their initial decision.
(Also, just so you know, IVF is often less expensive than private adoption...and is covered by insurance. I spent more on adoption than IVF, so please be careful with your cost assessments).
And lastly, please don't get me started on the, well if you're infertile, you should just raise a black baby and be happy about it crap that I hear so much from the cluelessly fertile. See here's the thing. Those of us who are infertile still have the same dreams and hopes about our families as those who are fertile. We just hope that God/Goddess/fate/whatever will cut us a damn break and give us a chance to experience what others have come to them much more easily. As such, no one is looking for bargain basement, you take what you can get, parenthood. What we choose, however, is the path to parenthood that is right for each of us.
I'm a black woman married to a white man. All things being equal, if there were a surplus of white babies and a paucity of black and biracial babies, I would smack anyone who tried to tell me to take my white baby and be happy since all babies are essentially fungible. (Truth be told, I tend to get a bit tweaked when anyone tries to tell me anything about how or when I should do something since a) it's my life, not his/hers and b) I am mentally competent to make my own decisions without the need for others to judge or comment on them.) My husband and I made the choices that were right for us: private versus foster to adopt. Certain criteria that felt comfortable to us as far as the expectant parents, just as they had criteria for us. And yes, we hoped for and matched with an emom who was pregnant with a biracial little girl. Some people are fine with a visibly transracial adoption and others prefer to be less visible with their adoption. We have no shame about choosing adoption as our family building modality, but happily, as we look like we could be Zizi's biological parents, as she grows older, her adoption story gets to be hers to tell, rather than something that becomes the elephant in the room every time the 3 of us walk in together.
Interestingly, Zizi's youngish firstmother specifically wanted a biracial couple who had been through infertility to parent her daughter, and she really wanted a couple where the mother was black, so she would know how to handle the child's hair! And this is to J's credit, because she knows that despite all this colorblindness that people love to pay lip service to, race and culture does matter. And parents who adopt transracially need to understand that it takes more than love to help their minority child with their particular issues. So I am not in favor of infertile whites who would prefer to adopt a white infant, changing to adopt a baby of color simply because it would be faster, cheaper, or because they would be "saving a child." Those are all the wrong reasons.
Just like many white couples/families are looking to adopt white babies, there are black/brown expectant mothers who are looking to place their babies in black or brown households. Its not like all the sisters who are placing suddenly have no preference. But no, there aren't enough families/couples of color in the adoption rosters...there are many reasons for that as well.
I just saw that you mentioned international adoption. You do know that the costs for international are even higher than domestic and that many international programs are closing because of the corruption (baby stealing from parents and other ills) that exist in those situations.
So please, a little research before stepping on the soapbox. It would save me tons of typing.