Laws Don’t Protect Potential Adoptive Parents

There are no laws to protect potential adoptive parents.

• There are laws to protect the rights of babies.
• There are laws to protect the rights of birth mothers.
• There are laws to protect the rights of birth fathers.
• There are even laws to protect the rights of birth grandparents.
• There are no laws to specifically protect the rights of potential adoptive parents.

At Heart to Heart we try very hard to protect you.

We try. Can we say those two words again, “We try.”

Sometimes we fail and then people write horrible tirades about our failure.

We are human. We make mistakes, but through the entire adoption process, we try. All of us. Everyone in this office tries. We’ve had individuals who were not committed, but they don’t last long. This is too emotional a job to continue if you aren’t committed. There is so much emotion involved in adoption. There are so many opportunities for joy, and, conversely, there are so many opportunities for sorrow.

There is no bell-curve. There is no day which is just, “Fine.” We either help a birth mother find the perfect placement and we find an adoptive family who is the perfect fit; or, we deal with a failed adoption. A mother who can’t commit. A family who is struggling. A birth father who doesn’t want the baby, but doesn’t want a placement. Sometimes things become complicated.

On our Facebook page, we get a lot of “Likes” and “Shares” on the wonderful quotes about love and combining hearts. We like and want to share all those sentiments, because, on good days, those sentiments become very real to us. On bad days, we just have to remind ourselves about the many wonderful outcomes.

Please, however, keep in mind. We must function within the laws and within human foibles. So many situations become happy stories, but let us list some of the horrible situations we have had to deal with.

• Men who say they are the birth father but aren’t.
• Grandparents who threaten the birth mother if she signs relinquishment.
• Birth mothers who get arrested just days before giving birth.
• Birth mothers being approached by a private attorney or couple who want the baby and are willing to pay. Payment, of course, is illegal but has been known to occur.

Outside of the agency, there are even more problems: We often hear stories of such tragedies as:

• Women who aren’t really pregnant.
• Birth mothers “choosing” several couples to adopt her baby and then accepting support from all of them.
• Women with no real desire to place.
• Drug affected babies. A condition unrecognized until birth.
• Unreasonable demands from birth family.

Since the legal system doesn’t explicitly try to protect potential adoptive family, we try. We try to give you honest answers and adequately screen our birth mothers. We try.

To read at least one success story read Motherhood Matters or the book, “Motherhood in Black and White.”