Adoption

Strong Women Make Strong Families

     Adoption is certainly preferable to abortion, we can all agree. But it takes sensible social policy to encourage it over other options because abortion is too easy and perhaps too  legal everywhere.  Ultimately it is always a choice of the mother whether she maintains herself in health during a pregnancy and protects her unborn until a successful delivery. Whether men like it or not women are in control of their bodies and insofar as prior to fetal viability at least they are in control of fetal health and viability as well. There is currently pending a case in the Supreme Court in the US in which an adoption has come under fire because of the competing interests of parental rights coupled with the competing interest of Native American rights  as codified in a statute seeking to protect native american indian tribes from pilfering agencies who would seek to steal infants from their native american parents to give to adoption parents. It is a well intended statute to protect integrity of native american communities but its limits and purpose are tested in this case.

     The case has stirred emotions all around in a scenario where apparently a rather deadbeat unwed inseminator who chose not to be called Dad initially on what could be understood as a troubled or doomed screwed up relationship (literally) gave up parental rights with a disparaging text message only to find out that his old girlfriend (or shagmate depeneding) wanted to give the baby girl up for adoption to a loving couple several states away. She wanted the child better cared for than the father was then capable of and she was possible of.

    The unwed young mother thought that the child would be better off with two sets of parents who could well tend to the child while the birth father was totally absent from the scene until he learned of the adoption.  It was an 'open' adoption meaning the child would know of her birth mother's identity and eventually if it wanted could establish a relationship of some kind later.

    What does this have to do with native american rights? The father apparently claims to be a member of the Cherokee tribe making the child in some part Cherokee Native. He also is an Iraq war veteran who claims through his attorney(s) that he was duped into giving up rights because notice of the adoption was only served days before his deployment to Iraq more or less.

    Abandonment is a factual issue and the courts look or should to things like involvement at the birth, involvement with the pregnant mother before or after the birth and apparently court in the adoption state did. After two years of being placed with the adoptive parents the baby was determined eventually through a series of appeals to belong to his birth father.  Everyone was singing the song 'Cherokee People' until someone said, Hang on a Minute!

    Normally there should be great deference given to an actual birthfather if he wants to raise his child. There might well be good reasons why he wanted nothing to do with the mother-he might not be totally
sure at first the child was his, he might think she was horrible to him, he might have had a total rupture of relationship with her for reasons no one knows for sure having to do with both their meanness or infidelities. One can forgive perhaps his negligence, one can also understand why she would fight any later attempt for the father to get full custody and invalidate an adoption if there was a war going on.

   But there is one serious consideration that should give Scalia any pause from his usual deference to what a man wants to do with his household.

    Adoptions can only happen if women CHOOSE to have children; If they CHOOSE to maintain a healthy pregnancy even when the man abandons them and all hell breaks loose in their romantic lives. Women, if they are to CHOOSE their children over their desires, and CHOOSE to bring a life into the world, have to have the confidence that they have the right to decide how the child is raised if they are abandoned. That includes their right to choose how the child should be tended to and with whom.

   I would no more take the right of a natural mother away to choose where the child should be placed than I would tell her she cannot fire a bad babysitter.  This is a mother's right. And it is a mother's right regardless of the ethnic identity of the father- certainly of a deadbeat absent father who took no interest in the health or welfare of the child until much after its birth.

  And you may in whole or part quote me on that.