Too long a day, and too busy, yesterday, to post. But I heard about this on NPR, on the way somewhere or other: Say you are a childless couple, and you want to adopt a newborn. Open adoption is a practice under which babies are adopted by people who have contact with the birth mother (or birth parents), as contrasted with the sort of adoption where a baby is placed by a state or private agency with an adopting parent, and the natural parents are completely removed from the picture.
Open adoptions often occur in situations where the "giving" and the "receiving" parents are in contact even months before the birth. Everything is arranged by agreement among the birth mother/father and the adopting parent(s).
Sounds okay, right: willing buyer/seller, all that sort of thing. Of course, there would have to be rules. And here is where the proliferation of individual states' laws creates uncertainty, unnecessary expense, and similar avoidable problems.
Does the birth mother have the right to change her mind after giving birth, even if the adoption has been pre-arranged and the baby delivered to the adoptive parent? For how long after the birth can this "window" during which she can change her mind remain open? A day? A month?
What are the rights of the natural father? Can he irrevocably give them up, or can he also change his mind?
Can the prospective adopting parent make cash payments to the birth mother? Under what circumstances, and in what amounts?
Are there any "residency" or short-term stay requirements for the adopting parent?
What are the rights of an adopted child, upon reaching maturity? Can he have access to the identity of his birth mother?
And so on. Folks, the answer is ... it depends on which state you are in. Wouldn't a nice, uniform national set of rules, carefully and dispassionately drawn up to protect everyone's interests, be in, well, everyone's interests?
Sure; but that might violate the sovereign rights of some state or other. And, oh, the states we're in!
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