THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408280047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
The room was small and bare, save for a rocking chair.
Hundreds of young women had sat in that chair over the years. It's where they gingerly held their babies and made a decision that the previous nine months had led them to: whether to give up a child.
At the time I toured the home for unwed mothers, I thought the room was a poignant place. Today, 12 years later, I'm wondering why there weren't two rocking chairs.
One for the mother, and one for the father.
What a difference a decade makes. Back then, fathers' rights were the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Giving up a baby was strictly a mother's business.
Today, fatherhood carries more weight. Fathers are more involved in the day-to-day care of their children. If they don't live with them, they either pay child support or risk jail time. Social workers trail fathers in hospital nurseries, asking them to sign on the dotted line to acknowledge paternity.
But even though young, single women usually aren't shipped out of state to have babies anymore, fathers still aren't included in adoption decisions like they ought to be.
Two high-profile stories are proof of that.
Even a year later, it's impossible to erase the image of 2-year-old Jessica screaming as she was taken from adoptive parents she had been with since birth and returned to biological ones.
How could this happen? The birth mother had lied about who the father was two years earlier, leaving a legal loophole for the real father.
And just when we convince ourselves that case was a fluke, the ``Baby Richard'' case springs up. This time, an Illinois judge awarded custody of a 3 1/2-year-old to birth parents after the child had lived with an adoptive family since he was four days old.
How could this happen? The birth mother had lied. Told the father the baby had died. Then came clean with the truth after the child already had settled in with his new family.
If you think keeping dads in the dark is a rarity, start checking the classified ads. Sandwiched between the help-wanted ads and foreclosures are notices asking fathers of babies to appear in court.
Why? In case they want to claim rights to their children before they're adopted.
Is this any way to let a father know he is one? There's got to be a better way. How about calling him on the telephone?
Often it's how a birth mother hopes he won't find out.
Sometimes mothers genuinely don't know who the father is, or where he is. Sometimes they have a plan of action in mind and don't want a father messing it up. Or they may see the missing information as a trump card, a flaw in the paperwork that could some day be used to help retrieve the baby.
Whatever the reasons, they're not good enough.
Some folks in Virginia are working to change that. They're proposing a law that would make deception - whether by birth mother, adoptive parent or agency - a felony.
And if that doesn't work, Virginia should take a hint from Illinois, where a new law boosts children's rights: When adoptions go awry, judges must put the child's best interests before the rights of the parents.
After all, what's right for a child - not what's right for parents, be they adoptive or biological - ought to count the most. by CNB