Argh
Jed and Cally Nielson of American Fork thought they would be celebrating their first Christmas as a family with newly adopted baby Harvey this year.
But they haven’t even begun purchasing any gifts for their 5 1/2-month-old boy. Besides spending their $25,000 savings on a custody battle, the Nielsons said, they may actually be facing the holiday alone if Harvey is sent back to his birth parents in Idaho.
“We don’t want to just hand him back,” Cally Nielson said. “How could anyone hand their baby back?”
Deseret Morning News | Adoption turns into nightmare
Read the article and you’ll see that the first dad was involved up until “the last couple of months of the pregnancy” so it’s not like he abandoned this baby. Also the agency informed the Nielson’s that he was contesting the adoption when the baby was only two weeks old. It was a legal-risk adoption and as emotionally painful as it is, that dad has a right to assert his paternal rights.
I don’t understand how anyone can justify this kind of fight — the baby was two weeks not two years old when they found out!!! I think it’s unconscionable.
It’s that last line that kills me. How do they think the dad feels?
Aargh indeed. If my memory serves me correctly this particular agency has sponsored bills that completely diminish birth parent’s rights, especially fathers.
I agree. Give the child back at two weeks. Walk away no matter how painful, it’s only going to get more painful the longer you wait.
This seems to happen All The Time, though. Adoptive parents are told very, very early on that there’s a legal challenge, and they choose to fight. And some of it is the emotional entanglement of the new parents, but I also wonder: what’s the agency saying? Who provides the lawyers?
Who benefits from these cases? Because it sure doesn’t seem like the baby or the adoptive parents or the birth parents do.
Maybe I’m too paranoid and cynical after all my time on your blogroll, Dawn!
My grandparents adopted a baby in the 1950’s and found out 6 months later that he had major handicaps (blind, deaf, spina bifida…) and the major reaction from friends and neighbors was that he ought to be given back and exchanged for a healthy child. My grandparents responded by telling people that if he needed a family before, he needed one even more now! If these people knew that the bio-dad wanted the baby, I can’t imagine what went through their minds as they prepared to fight for a child they had only just met. I think this is a good example of what happens when people start to think of children as property instead of people.
This is so crazy making! I mean look at what Stephanie Bennet is going through, or Cody O’Dea or the myriad others who are fighting to get their children back! Honestly this should be illegal, if the father wants the child back, or that matter the mother, that is what should happen. Especially if the fight start before anything is final. Waiting periods are almost a joke in this country, because once you do relinquish, once you sign the papers no matter if you were coerced or not, whether the father consented or not chances are you will not win if the adoptive parents decide to fight. Many are told to take the baby and go into hiding! It is sick and twisted and if these people had a conscience they would do the right thing!
PS I found you via FauxClaud an have added you to my reading list!
You all want to hear something to make you sick. Shawn Mcdonald (of Texas) did file with the registry on time. And only found out that he was to be a father agin with the same woman that hid his daughter with the help of her new boyfriend. He was calling the hospital begging not to take his child and good old LDSFS still took him. They never even talked to shawn. He has been fighting for over 2 years to get his son back. For right now he get’s a weekend a month with his son 3 states away.