The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption (23 page)

The pastor refused to let Bethany address the congregation. It was a minor victory for Fetrow, but she is still barred from seeing her child and
feels that Bethany is at the root of the problem, having facilitated her adoption by telling both sides what they wanted to hear and leaving both with false impressions about the agreement. Bethany has an online forum, and Fetrow had started going there in 2002 to ask other women for help. In 2007, after the incident with the Bethany director, she logged on to vent, writing that she finally got it: adoption is all about the money. She was kicked out of the group.

Kris Faasse, director of adoption services at Bethany, said that although she was unaware of Fetrow’s or Carol Jordan’s particular stories, their accounts are painful for her to hear. “The fact that this happens to any mom grieves me and would not be how we wanted to handle it.” She added that only 25 to 40 percent of women who come to Bethany choose adoption, a figure that, she said, “is so important, because we never want a woman to feel coerced into a plan.”

Some adoption reform advocates see open adoption as the panicked reaction of the industry to dwindling adoption numbers, an effort to court potential birthmothers with promises that their experience will not resemble that of previous generations. Adding insult to injury, they also charge that open adoption was again the result of adoption agencies’ research into the lives of Baby Scoop Era birthmothers, finding out what was worst about their experience—resoundingly they said it was not knowing if their children were okay—and coming up with a cosmetic fix. “They said your child will know who you are. What they didn’t do was make any of it legally enforceable,” said Young. “It’s just a marketing ploy. As soon as they get the papers signed, a lot of adoptive parents will close the adoptions, ‘in the best interest of the child.’”

Mirah Riben said that open adoption became necessary after changing public attitudes toward single motherhood made shame an ineffective recruitment tool. “Now they use open adoption: you can have your cake and eat it too. You can be a Sunday parent.” New birthmothers are told that older mothers are embittered by the way things were back then and that today adoption is different, “a gentle and sweet loss.” But that’s not what happens, Riben said.

Riben argues that open adoption is, in a subtle way, a key aspect of coercion today, as agencies enmesh expectant mothers with prospective adopters from the early stages of their pregnancies through to the delivery room, and agency counselors progressively condition women to think of the fetus they are carrying as a child that belongs to the prospective adoptive parents (a sentiment taken literally by yet another 2012 reality TV show about women considering adoption,
I’m Having Their Baby
). “Their
whole bonding experience is being corrupted,” said Riben. “They’re made to feel as if they’re carrying this baby for them, as if they’re a surrogate mother or a handmaid.” As a result of the relationships many women are encouraged to build with prospective parents while pregnant, many new mothers feel unable to keep their babies after they’ve changed their minds.

After birth is when many open adoption plans falter. Although in some cases, agencies say, the birthmother is the one who drifts away, not the adoptive parents, many birthmother websites, blogs, and online forums are filled with testimonials of women who agreed to open adoptions and then lost contact, often after birthmothers expressed regret or the dynamics of the relationship proved too complicated or painful, spooking adoptive parents into cutting off contact. That threat, thinks Riben, makes other birthmothers reluctant to complain. “If their adoption is remaining open, they need to be compliant, good birthmothers and toe the line. They can’t afford to be angry or bitter, because if they are, the door will close and they won’t see the kid.”

Shari Levine, from Open Adoption & Family Services, is such an avid supporter of open adoption that she featured the practice in her agency’s name. But she has seen the promise of open adoption used in manipulative ways so often that their website has a list that warns potential birthmothers of what to look for—and to learn what to avoid—in any adoption agency they consider. Some independent adoption attorneys advertise open adoptions, Levine said, but in practice may only offer a birthmother the chance to view her child once from afar. Others coach prospective adoptive parents to sell themselves to expectant moms in dishonest or emotionally manipulative ways, including one woman who was urged to change her name from “Ann” to “Annie,” to appear homier. To Levine, such deceptions contradict the very nature of honest open adoptions, meant to be based on building clearly defined relationships that will withstand extreme emotions. “If you don’t have an agency that has a philosophy about relationship building, then you have pretty empty open adoptions that end up not being open at all,” she said. “That’s when open adoption becomes a ploy to get moms on board.”

That outcome—an open adoption suddenly closed—can be the worst for birthmothers. The Center for American Progress found that “the poorest grief resolution occurred when adoptive parents did not honor agreements for ongoing information.” This was evident in the story told to me by one Texas mother who relinquished in 2006, only to have the adoptive parents close the adoption. “They had to put me on pills,” said the woman, who declined to use her name in the hopes that the adoptive
parents might change their minds. “If I hear a baby crying, I need to cover my ears. I can’t watch movies with kids of a certain age. My heart hurts, like a constricting pain. I’m not moving on with my life, that’s for sure. . . . I have a good friend who went through a situation like me, and she said, if I don’t get my child, I’m going to commit suicide. I said I’m right there with you. . . . Life is nothing without your children. You’re walking among the dead.”

UTAH MIGHT PROVIDE
the best example of what domestic adoption would look like if some of the advocates seeking to raise numbers had their way. Although women have made many reproductive gains since the Baby Scoop Era, surprisingly many state adoption laws have become less favorable for birthmothers, drastically reducing the time after birth when a mother can relinquish, varying from several weeks to within twenty-four hours in some states, all far short of the six weeks that is standard in most European countries and in some cases cutting the period to revoke consent completely. Adoption organizations publish comparative lists of state laws almost as a catalogue for prospective adopters seeking states friendliest for adoption, usually meaning those most restrictive of birthparent rights. Among the worst is Utah, roundly recognized as the most “pro-adoption” state in the country, earning it the nickname the “baby warehouse.”

Utah adoption agencies are a vital presence in the Christian adoption community, particularly the Mormon Church’s LDS Family Services, which has sixty-nine offices worldwide and, critics say, has influenced many of Utah’s adoption laws.
*
Although many Americans still consider the Mormon Church exotic, it is an increasingly important actor in conservative activism. In recent years Mormons have become a vital partner to the traditional religious right, with LDS donors and scholars pairing with Protestant evangelicals and conservative Catholics to advance conservative goals. Adoption politics seems not just another aspect of this shared agenda but rather an arena in which Mormons are leading the pack.

In 2005 LDS Family Services was inducted into the NCFA’s “Adoption Hall of Fame.” On the occasion then-NCFA President Thomas Atwood
lauded Utah and LDS Family Services for providing a national model for advancing the “best interests of children.” But for Mormon women facing an unplanned pregnancy, life in Utah is a virtual reenactment of the Baby Scoop Era. Mormon church policy encourages and sometimes demands that unmarried pregnant women surrender babies for adoption, “preferably through LDS Social Services,” as repentance for their sin. For Mormon adoptive parents, adoption costs through LDS Family Services are significantly lower than nationwide averages, at approximately $4,000 to $10,000 per adoption, due to heavy church subsidies. (Together with federal adoption tax credits, this would render an adoption effectively free.) A number of women have alleged severe pressure from local clergy to relinquish children in exchange for good standing in the church, and some claim they were threatened with excommunication if they didn’t. One Mormon woman in Massachusetts, Peggie Hayes, who became pregnant out of wedlock in 1983 said that her ward bishop, future 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for whom she had babysat, “pressured” her to relinquish her son to LDS Social Services. “He told me he was a representative of the church and by refusing, I was failing to comply with the church’s wishes and I could be excommunicated,” Hayes told the
Boston Globe
. Though Romney has denied that he threatened her with excommunication, Hayes said the message she received was that she had a choice between keeping her child or keeping her standing with God. “This is not like ‘You don’t get to take Communion,’” she explained. “This is like ‘You will not be saved. You will never see the face of God.’”

But Utah’s pressure to adopt reaches beyond church influence or state borders. Jo Anne Swanson, a court-appointed adoption intermediary and independent researcher, has studied a number of cases of pregnant women lured out of their home states to give birth and relinquish babies under Utah’s lax laws. By bringing women into Utah while they were still pregnant, agencies could avoid having to deal with the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC), federal regulations that govern the adoption of children between states. Some women were recruited by 800 numbers listed halfway across the country, dialing what they assumed was a local number that instead rolled through to Utah.

The reason agencies want to get women to Utah is because there mothers can relinquish their babies twenty-four hours after birth, and relinquishments are irrevocable from the moment they are signed. The state allows relinquishments to occur with only two witnesses, and numerous mothers who have been flown in from out of state have relinquished their children in locations as haphazard as hotels and parks. Some agencies
even give birthmothers small payments—something considered a deeply unethical practice. Women who reconsidered the relinquishment once they were in Utah have had agencies threaten to refuse airfare home.

In 2005 a prospective adoptive couple in Utah, Steve and Carolyn Mintz, recounted to the
Salt Lake Tribune
how they witnessed the director of their adoption agency, A Cherished Child, fly into a rage at an out-of-state woman in labor who backed out of their adoption. “She started screaming at [the mother] saying, ‘You can’t do this. You made a deal.’ She was intimidating this girl right as she was about to have this baby,” Steve told the
Tribune.
But then several weeks later the story got worse when the couple saw the same birthmother and her newborn daughter on a local TV news story about crowded homeless shelters. Both mother and child had been stranded in the state after she refused to relinquish.

Women aren’t the only ones who get hurt in Utah. A number of complaints have been lodged by birthfathers who sought to parent their children but Utah’s complicated system of registering paternity shut them out. The confusion, many fathers contend, is deliberate, and Utah again is at the forefront of “adoption-friendly” states in bending the rules to assist its agencies. For a father to contest an adoption happening in Utah, he must register with Utah’s putative father registry within twenty to thirty days of receiving notice not necessarily that the mother is planning on adoption but just that she may be visiting Utah—a vague statement that few would understand as a declaration of intent to relinquish but that under Utah law has often been considered forewarning enough.

Utah’s law on paternity was changed to accommodate more adoptions in 1995, stating that “by virtue of the fact that he has engaged in a sexual relationship with a woman,” an unmarried man is considered “on notice” that an adoption may occur and the burden of protecting his parental rights is entirely on him, relieving agencies of the need to seek consent.

Adoption attorney Larry Jenkins, who has defended adoptive parents in many lawsuits over contested paternity rights, explained that under the registry law, “Our statute puts the burden on him to take affirmative steps to protect his rights. And he doesn’t have any rights at all unless he takes those steps before she signs.”

Following this move, nonkinship adoptions in the state doubled between 1996 and 2002. The increase included cases like that of Robert Manzanares, a Colorado birthfather who fought LDS Family Services for four years for custody of his biological daughter after his former girlfriend tried to relinquish her for adoption in Utah. In an interview with New Mexico’s
KOB Eyewitness News,
Manzanares alleged that a Mormon bishop told the
girlfriend that, unless she placed her child for adoption with a Mormon family, she would not get to the highest level of heaven. At eight months pregnant, the girlfriend wrote Manzanares an e-mail claiming she was going to visit her sick father in Utah, thereby setting a clock for Manzanares to challenge an adoption he didn’t know was occurring.

Or there is the case of Mario Beltran, a California father whose pregnant girlfriend planned an adoption through an LDS Social Services office that relocated her to Provo, Utah. Attempting to stop the adoption, Beltran wrote a letter to the agency clearly indicating his desire to parent, but because he didn’t also contact Utah’s putative father registry, he lost his claim. When the case went to court, an adoption attorney successfully argued that Utah law does not obligate agencies to inform unwed fathers of how they must register their rights.

In 2011 the
Deseret News
reported that 71 of 320 pending and completed adoptions—almost a quarter—were for mothers who had traveled from out of state to relinquish. Among those 71 cases, only 7 fathers asserted their rights, something adoption advocates in Utah claim is due to lack of interest but critics say should be attributed to Utah’s labyrinthine legal process and adoption agencies’ deception. Some agencies brazenly admit to the deception, as one advertised an available infant with the notice: “Agency will not be getting a consent from the birth father. The Utah Birthfather Registry can be used specifically for families finalizing the adoption in Utah.”