Click for Main Weblog

   
The Weblog at The View from the Core - Tue. 01/04/05 07:08:07 AM
   
   

Adoption Law Madness?

Or, the fruition of an old plan?

Asking the wrong questions.

Jennifer Roback Morse writes at C-LOG, Sunday:

Overturning an adoption placement that has been in place since the child's birth simply can't be in the child's interest. Yet that is what a Florida judge seems about to do. Actually the adoption wasn't finalized because the birth father demanded custody of the child after it was born. Although I am usually an advocate of father's rights, and involvment, this case just seems wrong to me. The birth parents were not married. The birth mother made an adoption plan for her child, that the judge wanted to overturn. Why does the desire of an unmarried father take precedence over the well-being of a three-year-old child?...
Hopkins (the birth mother) and the boy's father, Steven A. White Jr., never married, and she didn't learn she was pregnant until she sought medical treatment for injuries suffered when she was assaulted in the residence they shared, court documents show. Hopkins supported the Scotts' adoption of Evan until it appeared the court might grant White's request for custody.
So now, the little boy is leaving the adoptive parents who have cared for him literally since birth, to go live with his birth mother and her new husband. He will also have court ordered visits with his birth father. In other words, the court is removing this child from a stable, two-parent, married couple family (which we know gives kids the best overall life chances) and placing him into a family which is at best, a stepparent family (the birth mom and her husband), and at worst a contentious shared custody/visitation situation, (which we know is one of the most difficult environments for kids.) This case makes no sense to me....

I would suggest to Morse that it makes no sense to her because she's asking the wrong questions. These, I think, are the questions she's asking: what is best for the child? what is right? what is just?

Come on, Jennifer!

I think it would make a lot more sense to her were she to ask these questions: is not the family the bedrock unit of society? do we not want the American nation to become weaker and weaker until it finally collapses? would not the degradation of the family facilitate America's downfall? how can we weaken and injure the family? what decision in this specific case would be one step further along that path?

Those can be the real questions being answered, Faithful Reader, even if nobody is asking them out loud — even if nobody is aware that they're being asked silently.

Indeed, these questions could have been asked and answered long, long ago, setting in motion a series of cascading events leading us to where we already have gotten — no?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 01/04/05 07:08:07 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

   

The Blog from the Core © 2002-2008 E. L. Core. All rights reserved.