Editorial

Other adoptive couples victims of deception

Saturday, February 16, 2008

A judge's ruling to take a baby away from the couple who were trying to adopt him has all the elements of a made-for-TV movie.

There's the couple, who have been loving and caring for the 3-month-old boy since he was four days old.

Then there's the biological mother, who had hoped for an open adoption, and had asked that her son be placed with an adoptive family with no other children.

And, there are the parents of the biological mother, with whom the baby was expected to be placed on Friday following the judge's ruling.

We're sure the adoptive parents and their family are devastated and angry over the judge's ruling, but consider some of the other points the judge could have taken into consideration:

* The adoptive parents continued in vitro fertilization even after they applied to the adoption agency three years ago.

* The adoptive mother was pregnant when the agency assigned a child to them, but the couple kept that information from their caseworker.

* The birth mother's mother suspected during a meeting that the adoptive mother was pregnant, but was lied to when she asked directly.

* The agency's rules prohibits couples with children younger than 18 months from applying for adoption, and must wait until children are 2 years old before a child will be placed in their home.

Unlike many children, the boy in question has several adults who love him and have gone to court in order to have custody of him.

We have sympathy with the adoptive couple, who desperately wanted a child and had suffered through three miscarriages before the latest pregnancy, and understand their reluctance to reveal the pregnancy.

But news accounts of the case don't mention unknown victims of the dispute: Other couples who might have successfully welcomed the child into their home through adoption had the first couple been truthful.

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  • There are other victims of this dispute: U.S. children awaiting adoption. The actual facts will blur in the telling and retelling of this story. Potential parents will see this story as "Birth mother takes away child from adoptive family just because she wants her child raised as an only child." Disruption of the adoption is the main fear of potential adoptive parents. To avoid this problem, they will adopt from China, Russia, or Columbia, where birth mothers cannot come back and destroy their dreams of a family.

    -- Posted by GrandBa on Mon, Feb 18, 2008, at 10:32 AM
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