Childless
Mother: Guilty
Until Proven Innocent
By Mirah Riben
03 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Why is Jonelle of Mesa. Arizona
having to fight for the right to parent her own son? What did she do
to her months-old son in the three days she got to see him that was
so horrible? Why is her constitutional right to parent her child being
challenged, not by the state or her son’s father—but by
unrelated strangers? Equally important, why is this infant, Adrian Zane,
being denied the right to be with his mother?
Jonelle, a 24-year-old intelligent
and fully capable college graduate with a bachelors degree in nutrition
and a minor in chemistry from the University of Arizona was studying
for MCATS to enter medical school when she became pregnant. She is not
a drug user nor has she been in any trouble with the law in any way.
She doesn’t even smoke cigarettes.
On October 18, 2006 Jonelle
gave birth to her first child—a healthy son who she has never
been accused of abusing or neglecting. Jonelle is self-supporting as
a neuro-monitor, a job that would allow her time with her son, as she
only works 20 -25 hours a week with full-time pay. She lives in a two-bedroom,
two bath townhouse with ample, clean space for her and her son.
Jonelle discovered she was
pregnant shortly after moving to South Carolina. She had no friends
and no family in the area. Her son's father distanced himself and wanted
her to abort the pregnancy. “What was supposed to be the most
beautiful time in a woman's life,” she says, instead “was
the most depressing and lonely time of my life.”
A single expectant mother, Jonelle went to her parents for help. Instead
of helping her, however, their feelings of shame caused them to hide
her and her pregnancy from all extended family and friends who might
have influenced her to do anything but what her parents wanted their
grandchild placed for adoption without anyone ever knowing…except
of course Jonelle.
Given no help or options, Jonelle found what she thought was a reputable
adoption agency called “A Baby To Love” and dialed a toll-free
number.
After 24-hours of labor, alone, Adrian was delivered by caesarian section.
Three days later, still in the hospital, weak, groggy from the surgical
birth, confused and stressed out…Jonelle was given relinquishment
papers to sign by an attorney she had never previously met, and whom
she believed was representing her interests. At the same time, she had
a 30-minute first ever meeting with a couple who wanted to adopt her
newborn son. Within an hour after that meeting on a Friday, the attorney
called to tell her that she had to make a decision about the adoption
by end of business that day, before the weekend. She felt as if she
was having a breakdown but got no help, only pressure from her parents,
the attorney and a social worker. Jonelle says, “I never wanted
to give my child up. I truly felt forced.”
In a plea to the judge Jonelle wrote: “There was never a time
throughout the adoption process that my rights or lack of rights were
ever discussed with me. The content of what I was to sign was NEVER
discussed with me until the day I signed. There is no way after going
through the emotional trauma I went through during my pregnancy and
giving birth to my son ALONE, by C-section, I was able to fully understand
the content of what I was signing. I was never told that after I sign
the papers there would be no way I could reverse my decision. I was
misled into believing I had ninety days to reverse my consent…
I didn’t understand the consequences of signing that document....
I never wanted to sign those papers, NEVER.”
Jonelle’s story, unfortunately, is far from unusual. In a 2006
online survey of mothers who relinquished, eighty-two percent of the
424 respondents reported feeling pressured to relinquish. Sixty percent
said they experienced coercion, signed under duress, or felt their legal
rights had been in some way denied.
How was this young woman—or anyone in her position—to understand
that the attorney she was trusting to represent her, was in fact representing
the interests of those who pay his fee—prospective adopters? L
Ann Babb, Ethics of American Adoption states: “[A]doption, more
than any other human service, is rife with conflict of interest. Adoption
agency social workers and attorneys routinely represent both birth and
adoptive families [who are] party to the same adoption. Agencies whose
very existence is based on fees paid for consummated adoptions claim
to offer unbiased ‘crisis pregnancy’ counseling to expectant
mothers.”
Despite the fact that the American Bar Association’s Standing
Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility concluded in 1987
that a lawyer may not ethically represent both parties, dual representation
in adoption is permitted in Kansas and California, and prohibited in
Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Wisconsin. All other
states, including South Carolina where Jonelle gave birth and signed
relinquishment of her rights, are silent on the issue. Why would anyone
think such a thing could be possible? It would not be allowable in any
other legal transaction, so why would have any reason to suspect such
impropriety, especially in a case involving something as important as
the transfer of child custody?
How are expectant and newly delivered mothers to know that infant adoption
in the US has become big business based on a dwindling “supply”
of healthy white infants to meet demands? How many of any of us are
aware that: “…there is no professional standard for or regulation
of adoption practice” or that we have “profit-based motivation
in child placement [that] is … loathsome” and “largely
driven by money.” Would she or anyone know that “[p]rofessionals
have yet to develop uniform ethical standards… or to make meaningful
attempts to monitor their own profession”? Or, that the adoption
agencies and facilitators “main job” according to adoption
facilitator Ellen Roseman “is coaching prospective adoptive parents.”
How is any such woman to know that attorneys like the one she was dealing
with was one of many attorneys acting as a private adoption facilitator
or intermediary….a go-between who scouts for women just like Jonelle:
expectant mothers alone and in crisis acting on behalf of clients who
pay his fees to obtain the sought after commodity of a healthy while
infant? Anyone—attorney, clergy, physician, car salesman or hairdresser—can
hang a shingle and arrange adoptions with little to no oversight of
any kind, other than the regulations to open and run any type of business.
Alex Valdez Jr., spokesman for the California Department of Social Services
states: “Essentially, [adoption facilitators] are required to
have a business license, publish a list of their services, and [have
a] $10,000 bond before they hang a shingle.” And, if a match fails—as
it did the first time for Jonelle—the facilitator can offer the
same child to another set of would-parents and collect yet again. Randall
B. Hicks, an adoption attorney whose fees, home studies are paid for
by his adoptive parent clients, said facilitators are “not licensed
nor trained to do anything.”
When “in other professions and occupations, licensing or certification
in a specialty must be earned before an individual can offer expert
services in an area. The certified manicurist may not give facials;
the certified hair stylist may not offer manicures” why is unreasonable
to expect the same of adoption practitioners? “Yet…individuals
with professions as different as social work and law, marriage and family
therapy, and medicine may call themselves ‘adoption professionals.’”
In adoption “…anyone with enough money to advertise him-
or herself as an independent adoption facilitator can claim expertise
and get into the business of moving children from family to family.”
How could a woman be expected
to make such an important, and irrevocable decision without being properly
informed? The Child Welfare League of America’s Standards of Excellence
for Adoption Practices recommend that all mothers considering adoption
and their families receive “counseling to help them understand
the grief and loss” they may experience. This is only a recommendation,
however, and is not enforced.
Elizabeth Samuels, Associate Professor of Law, University of Baltimore,
states: “For mothers considering placing their children for adoption,
skilled, unbiased counseling is invaluable: complete, well-communicated
information is indispensable; and time is, perhaps, ‘the wisest
counselor of all.’” Yet Samuels notes: “Many of these
state laws do not ensure that best practices will be followed in all
infant adoptions…. When a state places its legal imprimatur on
the unmaking of one family and the making of another, the state should
at least ensure to the greatest extent possible that all the individuals
involved have followed or have been afforded ‘best practices.’
These are the practices that ethics and humanity demand…. In a
number of other countries—including European countries and Australian
states—consent may not be given or does not become final for a
period of approximately six weeks.”
Jonelle and Adrian, like all mothers and babies who are unnecessarily
torn apart by adoption will suffer life-long feelings of loss. Yet,
despite the gravity of an act made by the stroke of a pen that affects
the lives of many extended family members—both related and by
adoption—the distressed mother is denied the decency of a “cooling
off” or grace period, unlike any other legal transaction.
What “crime” did Jonelle commit that created an orphan of
her cherished son? Being innocent and lacking the knowledge that infant
adoption in the US is often corrupt and exploitive; that there is an
invisible line separating black market adoptions from business-as-usual
in the multi-billion dollar unregulated industry of American infant
adoption. Jonelle was worn down, physically and emotionally exhausted,
lacking any support of any kind, and believing for just long enough
to put pen to paper that it was the best, or only, thing she could do.
And by the time the ink dried on that paper, Jonelle had legally abandoned
her child and become an unfit mother in the eyes of the law, and her
son left to pay for the “sins” of his father.
Jim Gritter writes in Lifegivers: Framing the Birthparent Experience
in Open Adoption: “How curious that one moment these critics admire
[a mother’s] contemplation of adoption and consider it a sign
of maturity, and the next they consider it a cause for concern. The
proposed act that one day was regarded as a ‘loving choice’
is the next referred to as ‘unloading responsibility.’”
If her new attorney is successful in getting her relinquishment revoked
based on coercion and pressure and the timing so soon after her birth….she
will still have to prove her fitness as compared to the strangers in
whose custody her infant son has now been for fewer months than he was
inside of her. Why? Why must she prove her fitness? Why is she guilty
until proven innocent? She is “guilty” of having trusted
“her” attorney to explain and represent her rights. If she
had never made that one phone call to a so-called adoption “agency”
and instead simply given birth and taken her son home from the hospital,
there would have been no question of her fitness. The irony is that
in doing what women are told is “best” for their babies,
they are automatically labeled unfit.
Infant adoption in the US
is in dire need of an overhaul. “Professionals and organizations
concerned with professional adoption practice have uniformly opposed
the facilitation of adoption through intermediaries, such as medical
doctors and attorneys, who are neither trained nor licensed to provide
child placing services….” Yet, there is “no professional
association or academics, no certification or licensing procedures,
no professional recognition as adoption specialists, and no training
or educational qualifications.”
Unlicensed, untrained adoption
facilitators hurt all of the parties to adoption. They are often only
charged when they have ripped off or scammed one of their paying clients,
and few of them ever press charges. But the most innocent, most vulnerable
are of course at the greatest risk. Lack of proper background checks
by unregulated entrepreneurs have led to children being placed with
pedophiles and even murderers, all in the name of free enterprise. Who
is concerned about, and protecting the rights of, these precious children—and
their mothers—after they are born?
SOURCES:
http://www.BirthParentProject.org
L. Ann Babb, Ethics in American Adoption, Westport, CT: Bergen and Garvey,
1999.
Laura Mansnerus, “The Baby Bazaar: How Bundles of Joy Not for
Sale Are Sold.” New York Times, October 26, 1998
Dan Gearino, “Special
Report Hope & Risk: Money, Hope Lost In Failed Adoptions,”
Courier Des Moines Bureau and Courier Lee News Service. February 20,
2006.
Jamie Court, “Beware
the Baby Profiteers.” LA Times, August 20, 2006.
Elizabeth J. Samuel, “Time
to Decide? The laws governing mothers’ consents to the adoption
of their newborn infants.” Tennessee Law Review, V. 72, Winter
2005.
Lifegivers: Framing the Birthparent
Experience in Open Adoption. Washington, DC: CWLA Press, 2004.
Mirah Riben
is the author of “shedding light on…The Dark Side of Adoption”
(1988) and “The Stork Market: America’s Multi-Billion Dollar
Adoption industry” (2007)
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