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Many groups debate modernizing adoption Bill overhauls Pennsylvania's 77-year-old law Sunday, November 18, 2001 By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
How long should a mother have to change her mind after placing her baby for adoption?
Whose rights are more important -- an adopted child's right to know his past, or a mother's right to put that past behind her?
And if the adoptive parents break a pledge to stay in touch with the birth mother, should she be able to sue to enforce the agreement?
For three years, a Joint State Government panel examined these and other thorny questions in an effort to overhaul Pennsylvania's 77-year-old adoption law. The resulting bill, which was introduced last month, has something in it for everyone to support, or oppose.
While Senate Bill 859 would give adult adoptees greater access to birth records, many advocates say it's still too restrictive.
Religious groups, on the other hand, believe the open records provision goes too far, and oppose a provision allowing third-party adoption by non-spouses, including homosexual partners.
The bill also would shorten Pennsylvania's four- to six-month revocation period -- the time a birth mother has to change her mind -- to 20 days, in step with a national trend toward shorter waiting periods.
Such changes are welcome, say some who have tried to adopt a child in Pennsylvania and given up.
"Pennsylvania is an adoption-unfriendly state. I tried contacting some Pittsburgh attorneys, but it was pretty discouraging. I just didn't think I could spend three years on a waiting list," said Susan Muschweck of Marshall.
Eventually, she went to Louisiana, and after one failed adoption -- "the birth mother changed her mind, and it was like a death for me" -- she adopted two girls in quick succession.
While failed adoptions are rare -- fewer than 1 percent of the total -- Muschweck's experience in other ways is fairly typical.
Pennsylvania "is one of the worst states in the nation to adopt a child," said Lynn Mischen, who runs an adoptive parents' support group.
Besides burdensome paperwork and that lengthy waiting period, there's a supply problem.
"We just do not get the babies here like other states do," Mischen said. This is, in part, she believes, because the state's settled population means there are more extended families to help raise a child.
The bill's authors hope that its sweeping approach will ease passage, given that past efforts to change individual parts of the law always sank in committee. Predictably, opponents are crafting amendments to change it.
The Pittsburgh law firm of Reed Smith was one of 14 organizations nationwide honored Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for aiding in the adoption of foster children.
Reed Smith received the Adoption Excellence Award for providing free legal services to Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families to terminate the custody rights of abusive and neglectful parents, and then to complete adoptions of the children. In addition, Reed Smith provides office space and technological support for four staff members of the Adoption Legal Services Project, which facilitates adoptions of foster children.
Since Reed Smith began offering the service six years ago, 150 of its attorneys, law clerks and paralegals have provided free legal aid toward the adoptions of more than 600 foster children.
County Human Services director Marc Cherna nominated Reed Smith for the award.
The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, a lobbying group in Harrisburg, is happy with the current law, said spokesman Fran Viglietta, and sees no reason for change. It opposes the new provisions allowing gay couples to adopt and the open records approach, arguing that it doesn't provide enough privacy to birth parents.
"We don't oppose adoptees searching for birth parents, but our conference is convinced those who wish to be unidentified have a right to this confidentiality," said Viglietta, citing wording that lets adoptees get birth certificates if the parent can't be found to give permission.
Groups that back the rights of adopted adults don't like the open records provision, either, but for another reason: It allows only adoptees born after the bill's passage to get their birth certificates so they can trace biological parents.
"We are treated still as dirty secrets," said Cynthia Bertrand Holub, head of the Pennsylvania branch of Bastard Nation, a national lobbying group for birth parents and adoptees. "It's preserving the whole culture of shame that sealed our birth records in the first place."
Keeping secrets
Lots of states are taking a new look at adoption laws, most of which were passed after World War II as social workers became more involved in the placement of children and the move to seal records accelerated in a climate that treated illegitimacy as a stigma.
There is a misconception that such laws were passed to protect birth mothers' privacy, adoption experts said, when, in fact, the impetus was to guard middle-class adoptive families from public scrutiny and interference by birth parents.
Many states allowed adoptees to see their birth certificates until relatively recently in adoption history. In 1953, the year that Pennsylvania court records were sealed, a separate law was passed that said adult adoptees could obtain their birth certificates.
"What that tells us is that the original intention was not to protect birth mothers' privacy from their offspring, but to simply keep court records, which include home studies, counseling and other records, confidential. And many of those records don't pertain to us. But birth certificates do, and they recognized that," Holub said.
But in 1984, fearful that open records would lead to more abortions by women worried about confidentiality, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference successfully lobbied to deny adoptees access to those original birth certificates.
Today, it's a different landscape for the estimated 6 million adopted people in the United States. More are seeking birth records, federal law promotes the adoption of "special needs" children over foster care for them, and more same-sex couples want to adopt.
At the same time, the marketplace for infant adoptions has changed dramatically. Demand has jumped, fueled by the increase in older, infertile couples, while supply is at an all-time low. Before Roe vs. Wade in 1973, 95 percent of out-of-wedlock pregnancies ended in adoption; today, that figure is fewer than 3 percent as more young mothers opt to keep their babies.
For those relative few who decide to place their babies for adoption, one of the most emotional issues is how long they should have to change their minds.
Mothers aren't back on their feet in 72 hours, the waiting period in many states, said Connie Haessler, adoption services director at The Children's Home in Shadyside.
"States that have three-day revocation periods worry me," she said. "The mother still may be recovering from the birth, may be feeling hormonal and may not have gotten sufficient counseling."
When Judy Vasalinda placed her child for adoption 37 years ago, there was a six-week revocation period in Pennsylvania. Under the new bill, it would be 20 days. "I was very certain that was what I wanted to do, and that was enough time for me," said Vasalinda, director of Adoption Connection, an adoption agency in New Brighton.
But Sue Romberger, founder of an online support group for birth parents and adoptees who have lost touch, thinks that a 60-to-90-day waiting period is preferable.
"Less than three weeks is a short time to make a decision with lifelong ramifications," Romberger said. "While I will never know if she would have used it, my birth mother was never told she had the right of revocation. And no child should ever grow up to find they were relinquished because there was no time to calmly, after birth, consider the options."
Unexpected opposition
While there's enough in the bill to stir controversy, its crafters say they're surprised about opposition to a provision that makes open adoption agreements, in which the birth and adoptive parents agree to stay in some form of contact, legally enforceable.
Currently, if the adoptive parents don't uphold the bargain, the birth parent can't sue to force them to. That would change under the law.
But the National Council for Adoption, a Washington-based lobbying group, has strongly fought most aspects of open adoption for years, and this provision is no exception. "I don't want to see another 'custody-like' court battle down the road," said Patrick Purtill, the council's president.
Mary Ann Petrillo, a Westmoreland County lawyer who handles about 100 adoptions yearly, has problems with that provision, too.
Her clients sign agreements spelling out their responsibilities, and, "From day one, I caution them about being extremely serious about following through with the birth parents," she said.
"Shame on them if they don't uphold it," she added. "But what you want to be careful about is turning adoption into something that resembles long-term foster care, which allows the birth parents to come onto the scene through court-ordered intervention."
Proponents say that's unlikely under this bill. No monetary damages may be sought and the burden of proof is on the birth parent, who must show that enforcement serves the best interests of the child.
"First, an 'open' adoption with continuing contact is not a scenario that is right for everyone," said Nancy N. Newman, a Philadelphia lawyer who headed the advisory panel. "But when both parents make an agreement, it should be enforceable, the goal being to promote permanency in the adoptive family by assuring that the birth parent was completely comfortable with her decision."
Despite these ongoing battles, proponents hope that the national trend toward openness will help the bill through what is certain to be a difficult passage.
Today, open records are the law in Alabama, Delaware, Alaska, Kansas and Tennessee. Many other states are considering such legislation, although efforts have stalled in several under pressure from lobbyists, religious groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Changes are under way in the Pennsylvania proposal, but its essence will remain intact, said Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. This bill, he vowed, will see the light of day.
"It addresses a lot of emotional issues," he said, "but it's a reasonable compromise."
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