on my radar

[the_siobhan]

I just finished reading a news article about a woman who is facing an extradition trial in Canada. She kidnapped the children (twins) she had previously given up for adoption and ran across the border. The US and Canada have pretty specific agreements in place around these kind of circumstances because non-custodial parents have made a bit of a habit of grabbing children and running across government lines. So chances are pretty good she's going to be shipped home to face prosecution.

The thing that got me about this story is that the woman in question changed her mind about putting her kids up for adoption just 12 hours after signing the paperwork.

When I put Jenn up for adoption I had something like 90 days to change my mind before the file was closed and lost all my legal rights. During that time she was placed in a foster home. It wasn't until the 90 days was over she went to her permanent adoptive family, when there was no chance of them having to go through the emotional impact of having their new daughter taken from them.

So basically she would not be a kidnapper if she had been living in Canada when she made the choice to adopt out her kids, and then subsequently had a change of heart.

I'm not sure why I'm talking about this. Possibly because it's a subject close to my heart for obvious reasons. And in general I think the extradition treaties we have with the US are largely a good thing.

But in this case I think their process is broken and I'm currently debating with myself as to whether or not we have the right to decide to distance ourselves from that.

Comments

[emzebel.livejournal.com]

I've done a little googling on this case, and it is not a fair representation of U.S. adoption practice.

Some states would have given the children back to the birth mother without question within the time frame that she requested them. But I agree that in this case, the process appears to have been broken.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I tend to forget that everything in the US is handled on the state level.

I'm curious now as to what actually happened, since several people have said that normally there is a waiting period.

[emzebel.livejournal.com]

Generally, in most cases of planned adoption, the birth mother makes the decision to give the child (or in this case, children) up for adoption while still pregnant. Whether the adoption is private or through a state agency, whether she meets the adoptive family or not, whether there is counseling or not (and I absolutely agree that there should be), she has thought about this decision while going through the pregnancy and has not planned to keep the children probably from very early on.

Once the child (I'm just going to go with singular here) is born, she may or may not have a period of "goodbye" time to spend with the child before the adoptive parents take the baby home. Then, most states have some form of sunset period during which she can change her mind.

However, from what I've been able to glean from the contradicting reports on this case, the birth mother had every intention of keeping her babies, however, her boyfriend at the time wanted her to give them up to members of his family. She was very ill, having suffered from extreme illness during the pregnancy and probably depressed and probably not really capable of making good legal decisions. The most sympathetic stories describe her as feeling completely helpless and facing the possibility of caring for two possibly special needs infants on her own, what with her own physical imparements at the time, she gave the babies up - 6 weeks after they were born.

Clearly, the facts are not crystal clear here. Some sites say 12 hours. Some say 6 weeks. And exactly how and when she began the process of trying to revoke the adoption is not clear either.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that in some states the sunset provisions do not apply or are less lengthy for adoptions when the children are older. I'm not positive on that though.

But no matter how you slice it, this case is nuts.