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No one is speaking to all adoptions in Utah being done wrong, or that all agencies et al are bad guys.
What we are speaking to is a disturbing trend of adoptions that appear to be done in a manner that subverts the rights of fathers and how the law is written that it is easy to do.
Just out of curiosity - have you ever tried to figure out just what you would have to do to file in Utah's putative father's registry AND the other requirement that must also be done concurrently? I have as an outsider and it is almost impossible. Try it with only a computer because in this scenario you are an unwed father who received a vague text that the expectant mother is going to Utah to visit a friend (and remember chances are she isn't due for another month).
Also, before you went into the adoption world - did either you, or your spouse, know about putative father's registries?
I knew about the punitive father registry after we knew that our daughter was going to be born in Utah, and we then began to try to find out the laws and find an attorney in Utah. At the time (my daughter is now 10) I did know how much time that was. What happened was that literally just before we went into court for the birthmother to terminate her rights, the attorney checked the registry and found that he had not registered on it. I know that he knew that the birthmother was pregnant, and I know he never stepped forward in any way financially nor wanting to parent himself. My daughter's birthfather died a few years ago and we just found out this past year that he had never even told his parents or siblings about the baby.
I apologize for writing quickly on my way to work yesterday. I meant to say that ignorance is will not be an excuse in the courts, as Mark said; previous cases have made that clear enough. But that Utah makes the process so clearly Byzantine for fathers, clearly assuming that most of them are unmarried, unlike Terry Achane, is not without judgment of fatherhood itself. It creates victims (too bad, you shouldn't have had sex and a baby!) and then punishes them (you don't deserve that baby, we will make it HARD for you to claim her!), IMO. It's just that the agency overstepped its boundaries this time in taking a married man's baby, although I am surprised it's turning out this way. We will see if and when the Freis hand Teleah over, though.
It reminds me of the murky bureaucratic machinations in Kafka's The Castle. How can a man know to register as a putative father in Utah if he has no idea that his girfriend/partner is there to give birth? If she has lied to him about where she is? Should EVERY man with a pregnant girlfriend register in Utah these days? How sad is THAT? And the time constraints put on him by having to ask for paper forms, and then FedExing them in (if he can afford that) may disqualify him for motions by his filing dates--due to the slowness of the bureaucratic machine. Can everyone afford an attorney to figure out how it works? The laws are protecting a group, and it's not the fathers.
If the laws are not meant to stymie paternity claims, put the forms online. Why not? Secret trips to give birth in Utah are not what adoption should be.
I am glad that Megan's post at her blog, Earth Stains, was so heartfelt and thoughtful on the topic of the Freis' adoption gone mad.
This is a sincere question and not meant to stir up a bunch of forum junk - - does the influence of the LDS and the concept of sealing relatives have any bearing on legislating releasing OBC's?
Mormons may like their members to adopt, but they are not for a Mormon girl placing her baby with a non-Mormon couple. My daughter was born in southern Utah and when the doctor and nurses at the small hospital she was in found out that she was placing with a non-Mormon family they were very upset and tried to talk her out of it. All the way up to us literally leaving the hospital with the baby and the attorney and birthmom, they made their feelings clear. She had a c-section and so she was in the hospital from Sat.-Tuesday, Monday was a holiday.
Mormons may like their members to adopt, but they are not for a Mormon girl placing her baby with a non-Mormon couple. My daughter was born in southern Utah and when the doctor and nurses at the small hospital she was in found out that she was placing with a non-Mormon family they were very upset and tried to talk her out of it. All the way up to us literally leaving the hospital with the baby and the attorney and birthmom, they made their feelings clear. She had a c-section and so she was in the hospital from Sat.-Tuesday, Monday was a holiday.
I think that has to do with the fact that if the child is adopted by a non-Mormon, the child won't be "sealed" to their parents for eternity.
The following is the First letter of the Presidency (2002 version).
Unmarried parents are encouraged to place their children because (quote) "Unwed parents are not able to provide the blessing of the sealing covenant". Thus, presumably, if the child is adopted by a non-Mormon couple, that more or less takes away the main "reason" for encouraging unwed mothers to relinquish their children (i.e. the fact that their child won't be able to be sealed to them).
In a way, that is religious coercion. Although sealing is not the same as baptism (and presumably the Mormon laws on baptism are exactly the same as mainstream Christian laws), imagine if only those children born to married people were allowed to be baptised - the child would be suffering for the parents' "sins".
This is a sincere question and not meant to stir up a bunch of forum junk - - does the influence of the LDS and the concept of sealing relatives have any bearing on legislating releasing OBC's?
I would think it does -- but I also don't think I'm an expert in this area and would defer to those who have studied it more closely.
I'm just thinking that for most of us, our perspectives in many areas are influenced by beliefs we hold strongly, such as matters of faith. I would think that if the majority of law makers hold a religous view that has a bias toward adoption, that bias would show up in the laws of that area.
The reason I posed the question was because we were talking about Utah. I know a decent amount about LDS - and sealing historically, to the religion anyway, supersedes biological relationships. What I don't know is how strongly LDS influences politics and legislative issues in Utah.
If an adopted child is sealed to it's adoptive family, then church policy would seem to recognize no reason to allow access to an OBC.
Unmarried parents are encouraged to place their children because (quote) "Unwed parents are not able to provide the blessing of the sealing covenant". Thus, presumably, if the child is adopted by a non-Mormon couple, that more or less takes away the main "reason" for encouraging unwed mothers to relinquish their children (i.e. the fact that their child won't be able to be sealed to them).
In a way, that is religious coercion. Although sealing is not the same as baptism (and presumably the Mormon laws on baptism are exactly the same as mainstream Christian laws), imagine if only those children born to married people were allowed to be baptised - the child would be suffering for the parents' "sins".
In my daughters case her birthfather was LDS, but the birthmother was not. The hospital wanted her to either keep the baby or place it with an LDS couple. The town she was born in is very LDS.
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