Court Rules in Baby Veronica Case: Dad Prevails

Just got ahold of the opinion -- you can see it here.  Will blog about it later, off on an adventure with the kids today!  Upshot is the adoption is denied and custody is awarded to the birth father:

This case involves a contest over the private adoption of a child born in Oklahoma to unwed parents, one of whom is a member of the Cherokee Nation. After a four day hearing in September 2011, the family court issued a final order on November 25, 2011, denying the adoption and requiring the adoptive parents to transfer the child to her biological father. The transfer of custody took place in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 31, 2011, and the child now resides with her biological father and his parents in Oklahoma. We affirm the decision of the family court denying the adoption and awarding custody to the biological father.

Unwed Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy & Teen Parenting: The Solution

OK, the followup to the part of the article talking about the problem -- here's the part about the "solution" for teen/unwed pregnancy.

B.  The Solution

Attitudes toward unwed pregnancies and teen pregnancies have changed over time, as have the perceived solutions for the problem.  Social and public policy has always focused on prevention – either prevention of pregnancy through abstinence or through access to birth control or prevention of childbirth through abortion.  But once a pregnancy occurred, and was likely to be brought to term because of the unavailability of abortion, solutions varied over time. During the Puritan era, the solution for an unwed pregnancy was typically marriage, thus avoiding single child-rearing for the most part. Again, during the late 18^th century and early 19^th century, a hastily-arranged marriage was the solution for premarital sex that resulted in a pregnancy.  With increased urbanization and industrialization and the increased mobility it brought, it became easier for fathers to avoid marriage, so new solutions needed to be found.

Adoption did not become a perceived solution to the problem of unwed or teen pregnancy until after World War II.  Prior to that point, social and public policy called for keeping unwed mothers and their children together.  “Family preservation was the creed of early twentieth-century child welfare reformers.”  Separating mother and child was thought to be damaging to the child, harmful to the mother, and dangerous for the adoptive parents.  Adoption would deny the child the “real mother love” it was entitled to, and would deny the birth mother an “incentive for right living.”  Adoptive parents would be saddled with children genetically predisposed to bad behaviors “which cause family heartache.”  There was little interest in adoption at this time because of strong beliefs in behavioral heredity – the children of women who had sex out of wedlock were thought to have “bad blood,” and consequently, “blood will tell.”

Until the 1930s, unwed mothers were encouraged by social reformers, evangelical maternity homes, and social workers to keep their babies.  Several states joined in, enacting legislation designed to discourage the separation of mother and infant. One form these laws took was mandatory breast-feeding and bonding laws that required unwed mothers in maternity homes to remain with their children for a number of months before the children could be relinquished for adoption.  Even in states without such regulations, many maternity homes required expectant mothers to agree not to relinquish their children,  and to remain in the maternity home for at least six months following birth even if they intended to relinquish the child for adoption. In Minnesota, adoption placement by unwed mothers was allowed only “if it seems necessary under all the circumstances.” Thus, the expectation before World War II was that teen and unwed mothers would parent their children.

There was a change in attitude toward adoption by social workers as they “professionalized” in the 1930s and 40s.  While social reformers saw the child of the unmarried mother as “a tool in the redemption of the mother,” social workers began to see their client as the child, separate from the interests of the mother. Increasingly, social workers saw the best interests of the child to be served by adoption. Social workers began to pressure unmarried mothers to surrender their children to adoption instead of parenting them:

When a Door of Hope resident expressed her desire to keep her baby, her social worker “worked with her, trying to show her how important it would be that the child be given every possible consideration.  We tried to point out to her that possibly if the child was placed for adoption, it would get things that she could not possibly give to him.” Another unmarried mother recognized the influence social workers could exert, even when trying to remain neutral: “It’s not what Mrs. K. says exactly, it’s just that her face lights up when I talk about adoption the way it doesn’t when I talk about keeping Beth.”

One scholar describes this time in American adoption history as a time of “pressure, coercion, and inhumanity in procuring consents.” The underlying attitude of adoption professionals was that an unmarried woman and her child did not constitute a family, as evidenced by the following quote from an agency head:

An agency has a responsibility of pointing out to the unmarried mother the extreme difficulty, if not the impossibility, if she remains unmarried, of raising her child successfully in our culture without damage to the child and to herself . . . . The concept that the unmarried mother and her child constitute a family is to me unsupportable. There is no family in any real sense of the word.

In denying parent/child dyads the status of family, social workers privileged the normative family, and viewed these dyads as “’a blow at the solidarity of the family’ itself.” Unmarried mothers were seen as unfit, and expected to relinquish.  One agency head decried the lack of “skills and techniques” to obtain relinquishments among his social worker staff, and the “fearfulness in being aggressive in securing a release, as I feel, for the best interests of the child, they should be in many instances.” Thus, the expected outcome of an unmarried pregnancy was placement for adoption, and social workers and agency professionals felt duty-bound to ensure that unmarried mothers relinquished their children for adoption.

As social workers changed their attitudes about unmarried mothers placing children for adoption, there was a concomitant growth in interest in adoption after the war. The American eugenics movement tapered away and the importance of parenting – especially mothering – emerged with the post-war baby boom. Infertile couples wanted in on the baby boom, and with less concern that behavior was biologically determined, adoption became an appealing option.  While maternity homes prior to the war worked to prepare unwed mothers for single parenting, after the war the homes anticipated that the girls would place their children for adoption by infertile couples. Thus, from the period following World War II until Roe v. Wade ushered in legalized abortion, the solution for minors’ pregnancy was adoption. By placing a child for adoption, an unwed mother could redeem her transgression and contribute to her own rehabilitation.

With Roe v. Wade, abortion became an additional solution for unmarried women’s unintended pregnancies. Adoption placement continued, but there was a significant decline starting in the late 1970s.  Whether the availability of legal abortion caused that decline is a highly contested matter, since the legalization of abortion did not occur in a vacuum.  At the same time abortion became legal, stigma associated with unwed pregnancy and illegitimate birth started to decline as well:

Social scientists may eventually understand fully why attitudes toward sex and marriage changed so profoundly.  Whatever the mechanisms, in less than a decade a shameful condition was transformed into a personal choice.  The rise of the women’s movement, the sexual revolution, the greater availability of abortion (which made out-of-wedlock childbearing truly a choice), and the increasing fragility of marriage all no doubt contributed to the astonishing shift in the social meaning of illegitimacy. 

By the end of the Roe v. Wade decade, 90% of unmarried mothers were choosing to parent their children rather than place them for adoption.  By the late 1980, 97-99% of unmarried mothers were choosing to parent their children. Given the availability of abortion, “choosing to continue a pregnancy means choosing to raise a child. Today, the decision to keep a child is one that tends to be made before the baby is born.”

            With this changing landscape, fewer pregnant minors are relinquishing parental rights and consenting to adoption.  One scholar describes as most common the view of adoption expressed by this 16-year-old mother:

Sure I thought about it, but I never could do it.  I know a lot of people could do a better job than me of being a mother and they can’t get pregnant, but that’s not my fault.  I’m not going to go through nine months and then give someone else the benefit.

With the decrease in stigma associated with out-of-wedlock birth, minor mothers feel less pressure to relinquish parental rights.  Placing a child for adoption appears to them to be privileging material gain over the familial love that a poor and young mother might feel is the only thing she can supply. This reluctance to place a child for adoption can been seen in a positive light: “These young mothers express a commitment to moral values over material advancement, a passionate attachment to children, and a willingness to try to sustain a family (albeit a nontraditional one) whatever the social and financial cost.”

            While the increase in adoption placement after World War II coincided with the increase in adoption among parents, the opposite has occurred in recent time.  With delayed childbearing and increased infertility, the demand for adoption has increased at the same time the supply has decreased.  In this environment, some adoption professionals are returning to the potentially coercive “skills and techniques” of the past to encourage teen mothers to relinquish their infants. The National Council for Adoption, spearheaded legislation to create and fund the Infant Adoption Awareness Program, which offers free training to those who might come into contact with pregnant teens at health clinics, to encourage adoption.  The NCFA also offers the training to school nurses and counselors, abstinence program personnel, crisis pregnancy center counselors to encourage girls to consider adoption placement. Although the law requires counseling to be nondirective, there is considerable evidence in the training materials that the counselor is expected to direct the girl toward adoption.

One method suggested in the training materials is that a girl resistant to adoption is self-deceived and selfish, is behaving “inhumanely.” Consider this statement from the training materials:

Of course, if others are living inhumanely, they will not benefit from what we offer until they change their hearts—until they give up their self-deceptions. At the least, our humane obligation is to be relentless in showing those seeking help how to create and maintain a humane way of being in the midst of their seemingly overwhelming circumstance.

* * *

So before answering these kinds of questions, we must also be living in the principles and assumptions that guide our adoption philosophy. For example, this curriculum invites adoption counselors, unmarried young women who are pregnant or have borne a child out of wedlock, biological fathers not married to the woman, parents of the young woman, and potential adoptive parents to consider the best interests of the infant as paramount. This principle stands in contrast to granting every person connected to the infant equal claim on the child. We are pursuing adoption as a process that provides parents for a child who needs them. It is meeting that need in the best possible way for the child that invites us to take the adoption option seriously.

So the nondirective adoption counseling should start from the proposition that the birth mother must “change her heart,” and recognize that she has no better claim to the child than any other person – any other attitude is self-deceptive and self-centered. This is a shocking statement, given the way we ordinarily frame parenthood and parental rights. Indeed, if the decision of who was the rightful parent of the child rested solely on “best interests of the child,” any number of biological parents would lose their children to wealthier, more stable parents!

What does the training material suggest to put these ideas in practice?  Recall the statement illustrative of why so many teens are resistant to adoption:

Sure I thought about it, but I never could do it.  I know a lot of people could do a better job than me of being a mother and they can’t get pregnant, but that’s not my fault.  I’m not going to go through nine months and then give someone else the benefit.

The training materials suggest that the counselor respond as follows:

This statement can be declared from a self-centered or other-centered perspective. A variety of starting points are possible here, and must fit the counselor’s own sense of how to discuss realistic possibilities. . . .

Counselor: “It sounds as if that is a statement where you are acknowledging the value of this baby— that the child means something to you. Is that right?”

If the young woman acknowledges her meaning is that she would have become attached to the child, you could ask, “When you first made the decision to carry the child, do you sense you did it for the child or for you?” [This is, of course a question that can be answered in four ways: I did it for the child; I did it for me; I did it for both; I don’t know (or none of the above).]

A humane decision will always include being for the other, and being for the other in a humane way will always reveal that you are simultaneously “for” yourself.

And in a section entitled, “What do I say if my client says. . .,” counselors are told to answer the statement, “I could never give my baby away,” by encouraging adoption: “Adoption can be a courageous and unselfish decision because you are putting the child above yourself.” A video of a birth mother discussing her decision to relinquish illustrates that the technique is employed.  She describes that she told her counselor emphatically that she was not at all interested in adoption placement.  But it seems her “nondirective” counselor pressed the idea, because she found herself working through an “adoption workbook.” It is hard to square this with “nondirective” counseling touted by the training materials.

            It is against this backdrop of history, social practice, and ideology about teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, teen parenting and attitudes toward adoption that a pregnant minor is asked to make a decision about adoption placement.  Thus, it is instructive to consider how minors’ decision-making differs from the decision-making of adults, how the law has traditionally viewed the decisions of minors, and how the law treats the decisions of minors in abortion and adoption.

Unwed Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy & Teen Parenting: The Problem

             
Here's another part of my article (still in draft!) on minors' consent to abortion and adoption.  Here, I''m trying to set the background which sets the attitudes that explain our different treatment of these issues.  I'm slapping it up here in two posts, since it's kind of a long section -- first, how we've defined the problem of teen pregnancy through the years, and second, how we've framed the solution in response to that problem.

A. The Problem

We hear frequently about the “problem” of teen pregnancy.  Most view teen pregnancy in a negative light, although there is, perhaps, less agreement on what is problematic about teen pregnancy.  Is the problem one of early sexuality?  Early child-bearing?  At certain points in our history, rates of early childbearing, and consequently early sexuality, were substantially higher than today’s rates. In the 1950s, for example, the teen birth rate was 97 per thousand,  while in 2010, the teen birth rate was only 31.4 per thousand.  Of course, in the 1950s, almost all teenage mothers were married, at least by the time their babies were born. That is not the case today.  So is the problem one of “unwed” pregnancy, representing the new immorality of premarital sex or the difficulty of single child-rearing?  As to sex outside of marriage, there is nothing “new” about that.  Even during the time of the Puritans, whose very name conjures up visions of “prudish, ascetic, and antisexual,” premarital sex existed. In 17^th century America, one in three brides in the Chesapeake Bay colony was pregnant when married, as was one in ten in Massachusetts. Still, unwed births remained low during this time, at 1-3%.  So during this era, the solution for an unwed pregnancy was typically marriage, thus avoiding single child-rearing for the most part. Today, the connection between unwed pregnancy and single child-rearing is less than many assume.  Most single child-rearing occurs because of previously-married partners who are not sharing child-rearing responsibilities, not because of children born to unmarried parents.  Even children born to unmarried parents today are likely to be raised by both parents, in a stable relationship.  And, in the ‘90s, at the height of the teen pregnancy “epidemic,” one in three pregnant teens was actually married.

Through the period of increased urbanization and industrialization of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the incidence of unwed pregnancy waxed and waned.  At its highest point, an estimated 30% of brides were pregnant at the time of marriage.  At its lowest point in the mid-nineteenth century, the rate of premarital pregnancy declined to 10%, fueled by religious revival and moral reform movements.  Again, a hastily-arranged marriage was the solution for premarital sex that resulted in a pregnancy. The primary “problem” of unwed pregnancy at this time was one of morality – a woman was stigmatized by a non-marital pregnancy because of its proof of non-marital sex. 

The rates of teen and unwed pregnancy increased throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, peaked in 1957, and has been generally declining since then.  This fact is surprising to many because of the rhetoric, starting in the 1970s, about an “epidemic” of teen pregnancy. One scholar argues persuasively that the “epidemic” of adolescent pregnancy in the 1970s was a myth, unmoored from any historical context that would have identified adolescent pregnancy as part of an ongoing historical trend rather than a modern-day crisis. Some demographic shifts at this time did, however, show marked changes in teen pregnancy.  First, in terms of numbers, though teen pregnancy rates declined, the number of pregnant teens did not decline because of the increased number of teenagers of the baby boom era becoming fertile.  Second, in terms of age, teens were becoming pregnant at younger ages than in years past.  The birth rate of women 18 to 19 years old declined by one-third from 1966 to 1977, while birth rate for girls 10 to 14 increased by one-third.  And during this time period, because of delayed marriage, the rate of unmarried births among teenagers increased dramatically.

At this time, the “problem” of teen pregnancy tended to be seen as the increased burden of teen childbearing to society, especially when taken together with expansions of government programs for poor families.  In 1975, for example, the federal government disbursed $4.65 billion in Aid to Families with Dependent Children to households of mothers who were teens at the time of their first births. Unlike earlier periods where marriage solved the economic problem of supporting the progeny of teens, marriage of this age group was in decline.  In addition, there was a substantial decline in unmarried mothers placing children for adoption.  While at least half of unmarried mothers placed their children for adoption in the 1950s, in the 1970s, 90% of unmarried mothers chose to parent their children.

The 1980s and 1990s brought more talk of an epidemic of teen pregnancy.  Birth rates among teens did increase during these decades, but made marked declines in the new century.  As the number of teenagers raising children – as opposed to placing them for adoption – increased, the “problem” of teen pregnancy became identified as the consequences of teen pregnancy and childrearing on mothers and children.  The litany is familiar:  minor mothers complete on average fewer years of school, are less likely to graduate high school, and are less likely to go on to college. Minor mothers have more children in their lifetime than do mothers who delay first pregnancy to adulthood, and have those children at closer intervals. Fewer educational attainments and larger families mean that “adolescent mothers are less likely to find stable and remunerative employment than their peers who delay childbearing.” Teen mothers are disproportionately poor and dependent on social welfare programs. Children raised by single teen mothers are likely to be raised in poverty, engage in drug use and other delinquent behavior, perform poorly in school, and repeat the cycle by becoming adolescent parents themselves.

It is less certain today that these problems are related to teenage childbearing, rather than the underlying poverty that is a risk factor for teenage pregnancy.  More recent studies reveal a more nuanced picture of teen childbearing a causative of these problems.  “A few pioneering studies have called into question the methodological error of assuming that teens who became mothers would have had the same life trajectories as teens who did not, had they delayed pregnancy.”  For example, when researchers compared similarly situated girls who parented to girls who experienced miscarriages, they found that many of the negative consequences of teen childbearing were less than expected and relatively short-lived:

By the time a teen mother reaches her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be a single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood.  In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives.  Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience and labor market earnings and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs.

As further support for findings that teen pregnancy does not cause poverty or other social ills, but instead arises in situations where poverty already exists, one study found in following teen mothers into their 30s, that mothers with childhood advantages fared better over time than impoverished mothers.  In other words, teens who were poor when they became pregnant remained poor – as did poor teens who miscarried – and less poor pregnant teens remained less poor.  This research calls into question long-held assumptions about teen parenting creating a negative life trajectory for teens.

Other studies suggest some positive consequences of pregnancy and parenting for teen mothers. In a study focusing on inner city youth, pregnancy and childbearing led to a “heightened sense of purpose connected with increased health and safety-conscious behaviors.”  Teen mothers report that motherhood “provided them with a priority in life, together with a determination to achieve things for both themselves and their children.” One study reveals that girls who parent their children have no different juvenile delinquency rates than never-pregnant girls, and that girls who have abortions or place their children for adoption have substantially higher rates of juvenile delinquency than those who parent. A number of legal and societal changes have also ameliorated some of the negative effects of teen pregnancy.  For example, since 1972, it is illegal for public schools to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy, which allows many pregnant girls to continue their education.

            As society struggled with identifying what is problematic about the problem of teen pregnancy, shifting from concerns about immorality, impropriety of single parenthood, financial costs of supporting single mothers, and the negative societal consequences of teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, teen childbearing and teen childrearing, it also struggled with identifying solutions for the problem.

Another Illegal-Adoption-Isn't-Child-Trafficking Story

I've posted before that the U.S. does not consider illegal adoption to be child trafficking, because the bad acts done are not done to procure services from the adoptee (sigh).  In this article about child trafficking charges against those who adopted out Sierra Leone children without their parents' consent, someone from an anti-trafficking organization opines that what happened wasn't trafficking:

Anti-trafficking organizations in Freetown are also feeling the effects of the HANCI case.

Janet Nickel works as a technical advisor for an anti-trafficking program with World Hope International. She says communities they work with are confusing adoption and trafficking. They think it means the same thing.

Nickel explains some do not realize that trafficking involves exploitation. "So you explain that and then people say oh yes, that is happening, it's going on in our community and they can start naming cases where somebody has been exploited but they never thought of it as trafficking, as they thought trafficking is adoption," she stated.

She also questions if the trafficking charges are even accurate. "If there's no exploitation, if it's not for criminal purpose, it doesn't fit the definition of child trafficking," she added.

* * *

Nickel adds one young woman adopted through HANCI has come back and met her biological father. She says there is no evidence of any exploitation of the adoptee.

So go ahead and steal children for adoption, lie to their parents about what's to happen with them, fabricate records -- but no worries, it's not trafficking!  Sigh.

Adoptive Parents Create System to Track Missing Ugandan Children

Interesting story from Holland, Michigan (not Holland-Holland!):

A Ugandan orphanage is where Anna Kalmbacher met her first son, Micah.

He was a sick baby who was left behind on a bus, presumably on purpose, in 2008.

Kalmbacher and her husband, Gabe, of Holland ended up adopting Micah the next year, as well as another Ugandan boy, Judah. The following year, a third orphan, Julia, joined the family.

“Now Uganda is the next latest, greatest place to adopt from,” Kalmbacher said. “But there are a lot of sad, sad things happening to break down families (there).”

To meet the new demands, recruiters are popping up in Ugandan towns and villages, pushing poor families to give up their children for adoption.

When children are separated from their families, it can be nearly impossible to reunite them due to Uganda’s disjointed police infrastructure.

“This is not unique to Uganda, but it’s very concerning,” Kalmbacher said.

 Earlier this year, the Kalmbachers launched A Child’s Voice, which partners with agencies in Uganda to ensure the welfare of the nation’s children.

A Child’s Voice was instrumental in starting a new, 24-hour hotline for Ugandan officials or citizens to call to report a missing, found or abandoned child. Information that callers provide is recorded in a centralized database. The hotline launches Wednesday.

Tennis Camp! Love-Love!!!!

Minors' Consent to Abortion & Adoption: Legal Complexity

OK, here's another section of the law review article I'm working on for my day job.  Here I deal with why the adoption decision should be afforded MORE protections than a minor's decision about abortion, leading to my proposed solution that minor birth parents should be given independent legal counsel:

The differential treatment of a minor’s decision to have an abortion and a minor’s decision to relinquish parental rights and consent to adoption is striking.  Are the decisions so dissimilar as to justify this difference?  Three reasons are commonly given for why minors should not be making the decision about abortion on their own:  1) health risks associated with all medical procedures, including abortion; 2) emotional fallout after abortion; and 3) the seriousness of the decision.  The decision about relinquishment of parental rights and consent to adoption seems to share these characteristics with the abortion decision.  In addition, the adoption decision differs from the abortion decision in at least one significant way: the legal complexity of the adoption decision.

* * *

Adoption is a legally-created and pervasively regulated enterprise.  The hallmark of adoption law, traced to the first “modern” adoption statute in 1851, is the complete replacement of the biological family with the adoptive family:

The early adoption statutes provided a mechanism for the transfer of full parental control from one person to another. The statutes carefully specified that the adoptive parents stood in the shoes of the biological parents with respect to custody, obedience, and care. They explicitly transferred "all" parental rights from the biological parents to the adopting parents, with a corresponding transfer of the child's legal obligations of obedience, support, and maintenance. Thus, although the parent-child relationship was transformed with respect to the parent's identity, the nature of parental rights and authority remained unchallenged. Adoption thus confirmed the indivisibility of parental rights by allowing new parents to replace legally the birth parents.

For that replacement to be effectuated, a court must first terminate the parental rights of the birth parents before granting parental rights to the adoptive family.

 The Supreme Court has long recognized parental rights as fundamental rights recognized by the Constitution.  Because of the fundamental nature of parental rights, the Supreme Court has said that a state cannot lightly revoke those rights. When a state seeks to terminate parental rights involuntarily (without the parent’s consent), the Constitution requires a heightened standard of clear and convincing evidence. Despite the fundamental nature of parental rights, a parent can voluntarily relinquish these rights.

Voluntary relinquishment of parental rights cuts off all parental rights, including “the parent's right to the custody of the child and his right to visit the child, his right to control the child's training and education, the necessity for the parent to consent to the adoption of the child and the parent's right to the earnings of the child, and the parent's right to inherit from or through the child.” A minor birth parent may not know or understand what rights parents have, so that she does not fully understand the rights she is relinquishing.  Consider the case of 17-year-old LaTonya Chienta Anderson. She signed a relinquishment and consent that read as follows:

Know all men by these presents, that I, LaTonya Chienta Anderson, the mother of . . . do hereby consent to the adoption of my said child . . . in order that said child may have all the privileges which may accord her by the Laws of Alabama upon her legal adoption.  And I do hereby consent and request that the Probate Judge make all such orders and decrees as may be necessary or proper to legally effectuate said adoption.”

The affidavit made no mention of the termination of LaTonya’s rights, only that the child would acquire certain unnamed legal privileges. The affidavit gives permission to the judge to make all orders necessary to legally effectuate the adoption, but does not inform LaTonya that one of those necessary orders would be the permanent and irrevocable termination of her parental rights. The child was being adopted by the parents of the putative father, and the mother had been freely visiting the child while in the custody of the grandparents, but nothing in the affidavit informs LaTonya that she would no longer have a legal right to visit her child. There was evidence from the social worker conducting an investigation prior to finalization of the adoption that the mother did not understand the finality of the adoption and the legal implications.  After the social worker explained it to the mother, she said she wanted to withdraw her consent. The appellate court held that the consent was valid because the mother “freely and willingly” signed the consent after reading it and “choosing not to question anything.”

This case seems to illustrate perfectly why a minor needs additional protections in signing an adoption consent.  It is easy to imagine that she saw the adoption as a way to make the custody “legal,” without understanding the implications for her own parental rights.  All  that is encompassed in her request that the judge “make all such orders and decrees as may be necessary or proper to legally effectuate said adoption,” was likely just so much mumbo-jumbo to the minor mother.

 Voluntary relinquishment of parental rights and consent to adoption must be knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily given.  Because of the complexity of the legal decisions involved in adoption, it is difficult to see how a minor’s actions in this regard could be knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily given – at least without support from a legal professional.  Consider a student in my Adoption Law class.  Now an adult, she had relinquished a child for adoption when she was 16 years old.  She shared that information with the class, and said key to her decision to place her child for adoption was that she had been given a choice of adoptive parents and the promise of continuing contact.  During the course of the class, she was dismayed to learn that the promise of continuing contact – an “open adoption” agreement – was not legally enforceable in the state in which she entered into it.  When she looked with adult eyes at her relinquishment affidavit, she realized that she had relinquished the child to the adoption agency, not to her chosen adoptive parents, and that the agency could have placed her child with other adoptive parents.  She learned during the course of the class that her child’s right to inherit from her had been terminated. She discovered that she could not have access to her child’s original birth certificate, even though her name was on it as mother. This birth mother was obviously intelligent, proven by her graduation from high school and college, and her admission to law school.  But at age 16, she was not aware of the legal intricacies of the adoption placement decision.

The issue of open adoption, or post-adoption contact, is a particularly thorny legal issue in adoption placement. Since adoption requires termination of parental rights of the biological parents, they possess no residual rights to insist on post-adoption contact. Only in the minority of states where there is legislation on point does a birth parent have an enforceable right to post-adoption contact.  It is still common practice in states without enforceable open-adoption agreements, however, for agencies and adoptive parents to enter into such unenforceable “agreements.”  For example, Amazing Grace Adoption Agency, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, offers the following services to birth parents:  “Choosing and meeting with an adoptive family; Receiving information and pictures of your baby following an adoptive placement; Different levels of openness with the adoptive family.”  If you visit the website of Missouri Adoption Agency, a page will describe open adoptions, and includes a testament by a birth mother describing her contact with her relinquished child: “It was my desire to have an open adoption and this has worked beautifully for all of us.” At Spirit of Faith Adoption Agency in Ohio, the agency describes open adoption as an option: “Most importantly, because of openness, there can be contact in the future and an ongoing story to share of your child’s life; a story that is based on love. When there is openness, or on-going communication between adults, your child will know that the decision you made was not an easy one, and made out of love for him/her.” The birth parents may not be aware that the openness promised by these agencies will not be legally binding in these states.

In those states with enforceable open adoption agreements, there are complex legal requirements to limit the parties who can enter into such agreements and to limit the types of adoptions in which such agreements are enforceable. For example, in Connecticut, post-adoption contact agreements are not enforceable in private adoptions, only in adoptions from foster care.  In Nebraska, court-approved contact agreements are only renewable two-year terms. In Wisconsin and Vermont, open adoption agreements are only enforceable in stepparent adoptions.  In Indiana, the agreement is enforceable only if the child is over age 2 at the time of the adoption,  while in Oregon, if the child is under age 1, the child must have spent at least half his or her life with the birth relative seeking an open adoption agreement. Similarly, in Oklahoma, the agreement is enforceable only if the child resided with the birth parent prior to the adoption. In Montana, a court can refuse enforcement of an open adoption agreement if enforcement would be detrimental to the child or undermine the adoptive parent’s parental authority, or if due to changed circumstances, compliance with the agreement would be unduly burdensome.  Even without these limitations, most states with enforceable agreements require careful attention to the intricacies of the statutes.  In most states, open adoption agreements are enforceable only when approved by a court and/or included in an adoption decree. In Texas, a post-adoption contact agreement is enforceable only if a judge incorporates it in the termination of parental rights order; it is not enforceable if it is only included in the affidavit for voluntary relinquishment of parental rights, or if it is only included in the adoption decree. These are not requirements that a minor birth mother is likely to know.

Minor birth parents may not be aware of legal rights associated with revocation of consent or when consent is invalid, with inheritance rights, with right of access to information and/or contact in the event of a medical emergency, or with any of the other multitude of rights and obligations affected by the legal relinquishment of parental rights and consent to an adoption.  If the only adults with whom the relinquishing minor interacts are the adoptive parents or the lawyer or agency representing the adoptive parents, a minor will have little access to information crucial to a voluntary and knowing consent.  The judge overseeing the adoption is not usually in the position to serve this function. Though adoption is a legal process, it is not uncommon for a birth mother never to set foot in the courtroom. Statutes allow a birth parent to waive notice of any and all hearings at the same time the affidavit of voluntary relinquishment is signed. Thus, there is no opportunity for a birth parent to ask questions in court, for a judge to assess the maturity of the minor birth parent or what the birth parent understands about the legal parental rights she is waiving. Judicial involvement in the adoption does not necessarily allow for judicial oversight of the minor’s decision about adoption placement.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

If you've managed to read down this far, and you're a birth mother who relinquished as a minor, I'd love to hear more about your understanding of the legalities of your relinquishment.  Please comment! 

A Tough Real-life Lesson in Racism for African-American Pact Campers

An adoptive mom recounts a tough lesson in racism learned by Pact Camp African-American adoptees, when they visited a near-by town (dubbed Whitesville by the author) on the 4th of July:

And so, following an intense workshop in which they and their parents shared their biggest fears, and during which the parents read letters they’d written to their children (I wasn’t there, but I was with a few of the parents after who couldn’t hold back tears as they relayed the experience)—off they went, kids and counselors, into Tahoe City for ice cream. It was the 4th of July. What could possibly be more American than children, ice cream and Independence Day?

Well, it could be this: A group of mostly brown, adult-looking kids and their mostly brown adult counselors walking down a sidewalk in Whitesville when a white man says, “It’s the 4th of July, but it might as well be Halloween, seeing as how all the n*****s have come out.” Apparently, he doesn’t read the Boston Globe [a reference to an article in that newspaper claiming we're a post-racial society].

It should be noted that the man didn’t bother to use any asterisks when speaking; that’s my edit. (For those who may have wondered where my line is, now you know.)
And it should be noted that a white sheriff’s deputy subsequently dismissed the possibility that the word—the whole phrase, in fact—had been uttered at all. Surely, he didn’t say that. You must have misheard him, he said to the group, discounting their collective experience, defending the lone perpetrator and living up to their every expectation of police.

Montana Ranch for Adopted Kids Denied License

Oh, boy, after all kinds of rave reviews of the ranch, and negative comments about the Russians for seeming concerned about kids at that last-resort Montana ranch, now this:

The Russian government isn't alone in raising questions about a Montana ranch that cares for troubled children adopted from foreign countries.

Montana regulators are actively involved in a legal battle to shut down the Ranch For Kids near the Canadian border, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public information request.

Those records show the ranch in Eureka has been operating without a license since 2010. The state board that oversees private alternative adolescent residential and outdoor programs ordered it last year to stop operating until it obtains a proper license.

Ranch owner Joyce Sterkel is appealing that order in court, saying the ranch has become part of a church mission and is no longer under the board's authority. Sterkel did not immediately return a call on Wednesday.

Last month, Russian children rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and human rights envoy Konstantin Dolgov showed up at the Ranch For Kids' gates, demanding entry to check on the adopted children from Russia in Sterkel's care. They questioned whether the children were receiving necessary care or treatment at the remote ranch.

Ten of the 25 children there are from Russia, with others from China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Haiti, Ethiopia and other countries. Their ages vary, and their troubles range from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder to the aftereffects of spending their early lives in difficult conditions in orphanages.

The Russians were denied access that day. Sterkel previously denied any claims that the children are mistreated or lacking care. Parents with children at the ranch currently or in the past have risen to Sterkel's defense, saying her program provides a necessary service for adopted children struggling with medical and behavioral problems.

But neither Sterkel nor the Russians mentioned the Ranch For Kids' dispute with state regulators that now stretches back more than two years, after the Board of Private Alternative Adolescent Residential and Outdoor Programs declined to renew the ranch's provisional license in June 2010.

Undocumented Immigrant Loses Son to Adoption

Remember Encarnation Romero Bail? [See here, here, here, here, and here]  Well, after winning the appeal that allowed her only the right to participate in a trial about whether she "abandoned" her son when she was arrested and jailed for being without papers, leaving her son with relatives who eventually allowed "friends" to have custody of him, who farmed him out for adoption. . . . She lost at trial, according to CNN:

A 5-year-old boy caught in a heart-wrenching custody battle will remain with his presumptive adoptive family after a judge ruled Wednesday that the biological mother had abandoned him.

It was a complex and delicate case that reached the Missouri Supreme Court and was unlikely to have a tidy ending.

Encarnacion Bail Romero was jailed after an immigration raid in 2007, after which her 6-month-old son was looked after by family and then other caretakers, arriving at the age of 2 in the home of Seth and Melinda Moser of Carthage, Missouri.

The Mosers raised the child and adopted him, giving him the name Jamison.

But Bail Romero, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, claims that she never gave consent to the adoption and that she has the right to be with her son, whom she calls Carlitos.

The state's highest court ruled that the mother's rights had been wrongfully terminated, throwing the Mosers' adoption in limbo. But instead of awarding the mother custody, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial where both sides could make their case.

On Wednesday, Missouri Circuit Court Judge David Jones ruled that Bail Romero had abandoned her son and that the Mosers' adoption petition will proceed.

"We're disappointed. Encarnacion is upset," said her lawyer, Curtis Woods.

Woods said he would discuss with Bail Romero the possibility of appealing the decision.

Finding Identity Through Heritage

At CNN, a story about a Chinese adoptee finding her identity through travel to China:

When Maia Stack returned to the pagoda, or tower, where she had been abandoned as a baby she was overwhelmed by what had happened there 11 years earlier.

"I remember thinking, 'Wow, I wonder if my birth family hid behind those bushes or something'" said Stack, now 18 years old, on returning to Hangzhou, China.

"I felt very disengaged throughout the entire process. I kind of removed myself from the situation because it was too emotionally challenging."

Stack is one of tens of thousands of children -- 95% percent of whom are girls -- who have been adopted from China since its government ratified international adoption in 1992.

* * *

Being Chinese helped to define Stack's childhood growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She and her sister, who is also adopted from China, attended a Saturday school to learn Chinese language and culture while other children were playing soccer or baseball.

Stack was home schooled until partway through high school and attended a group of students that never treated her differently. However, when she started attending a charter school where she was the only Asian in a group of 40 students things changed.

"I did feel much like an outsider. I had the darkest skin, the only head of black hair in a sea of blond and brown," she said. "As the 'representative Asian,' the kids fed back to me the typical stereotypes about Asians -- super smart, good in math, short ... While they didn't mean harm, it did hurt."

Spending four-and-a-half months in Beijing in 2011 studying Mandarin changed her outlook.

"I feel very proud to be both Chinese and American," she said. "I know that those things will always be a part of me whether I live in China or in America."

Regulation of Minors’ Abortion and Adoption Decision-making

OK, here's another part of the article I mentioned yesterday -- here, just a little taste of the different legal treatment of minors' decisions about abortion and about adoption placement.  Again, citations omitted!

A. Abortion and Minors

In 1975, the Supreme Court extended the privacy protection to make decisions about abortion, acknowledged two years earlier in Roe v. Wade, to at least some minors. The Court held that a statutory scheme that gave parents an absolute veto over a minor’s decision to terminate her pregnancy was unconstitutional, while “signaling that the Court might uphold a less intrusive law. The court revisited the issue four years later in Belloti v. Baird, holding that a minor’s ability to obtain an abortion could be limited in certain respects.  In particular, a state could, consistent with the Constitution, prevent a minor from having an abortion absent parental consent, so long as the state provided a judicial bypass exception. In so doing, the Court “simultaneously recognizes and curtails the liberty and interest of young women in their own bodies.” Since that ruling, 43 states have passed statutes requiring parental notification or consent prior to a minors’ abortion, though in six of those states the parental involvement laws are temporarily or permanently enjoined. Twenty-two states require that at least one parent consent to a minor’s abortion, while 11 states require prior notification of at least one parent. Four states require both notification of and consent from a parent prior to a minor’s abortion.

           In all states with parent involvement laws, statutes also provide for judicial bypass as required by the Constitution. The judicial bypass provision is designed to preserve decisional privacy for minors and to prevent parental consent requirements from amounting to an absolute veto.  Some statutes provide specific direction to the court on factors to consider in allowing a minor to have an abortion without parental notification or consent. For example, Arizona law requires the court to allow the abortion if it determines that the pregnant minor is mature and capable of giving informed consent, or that the abortion without parental notice or consent would be in her best interests.  In Louisiana, a minor seeking judicial bypass may be required to attend an evaluation and counseling session with a mental health professional, designed to produce “trustworthy and reliable expert opinion concerning the minor’s sufficiency of knowledge, insight, judgment, and maturity,” so that the court can consider her maturity and best interests.

B.  Adoption and Minors

In all U.S. jurisdictions, a minor’s status as a minor does not impair her consent to relinquish her parental rights, so long as statutory requirements are met.  In some jurisdictions, adoption statutes will say explicitly that a minor parent can relinquish parental rights and consent to adoption. Even where the statutes are silent, however, courts generally hold that the minor mother can consent.  In Nelson v. Gibson, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the 17-year-old mother, who had since married the father of the child and sought to prevent the adoption, could consent under a silent statute:

The statute as then worded provided for the consent of the unwed mother without any limitation upon the giving of that consent by reason of her minority.  In the same section it is specifically provided that no child over the age of 14 years shall be adopted without his consent.  In other words, the Legislature was not unmindful of age qualifications, but chose to make none as to the illegitimate mother.  The age of legal capacity is wholly a matter of legislative regulation, and the disabilities of infancy may be removed for certain purposes at an earlier age than for others.  It follows that the mother, though a minor – as the law then existed – had the capacity to consent to the adoption of her child.

In a majority of U.S. jurisdictions, a minor’s decision to relinquish a child for adoption is not only valid, but is regulated exactly the same as an adult’s decision.  In only 15 states are there different or additional requirements for a minor’s decision to place a child for adoption.  In four states, a minor must be provided independent legal counsel.  In six states, a court must appoint a guardian ad litem for the minor parent. In five states, a minor’s parent must consent to the relinquishment.

Minors' Consent to Abortion and Adoption

In case you're wondering how I'm spending my summer vacation (!), I'm trying to finish up a law review article for my day job (if you've been around for a while, you've probably figured out by now that I'm a law professor).  Anyway, I thought I'd copy the intro for you, and then if folks are interested in more, I can copy other parts that might interest you.  Here goes (footnotes omitted!):

A minor girl’s decision about the resolution of an unplanned pregnancy is a highly contested issue.  Especially contentious is the minor’s ability to consent to an abortion without the interference of a substitute decision-maker such as her parents or a judge. That issue has received substantial attention from policy makers, scholars, judges and legislators.  Almost no attention has been paid, however, to the decision of a minor parent to relinquish her parental rights and place a child for adoption.  The assumption seems to be that such a decision is the only rational choice under the circumstances, so no protections are needed to protect that minor.  Thus, in the vast majority of states, a pregnant minor can go through labor and delivery without her parents knowing. A pregnant minor can relinquish her parental rights in her child in order to place that child for adoption without her parents knowing.  In fact, in all but 15 states, a minor can make the legally consequential decision of voluntarily terminating her parental rights without the advice of legal counsel, without a guardian ad litem representing her interests, without any adult in the room other than the representative of an adoption agency or adoptive parents.  By contrast, in the vast majority of states, a pregnant minor cannot terminate her pregnancy without her parents knowing, unless a judge approves.

The difference in the treatment of minors’ abortion decisions and minors’ decisions about relinquishing parental rights is, in some ways, inexplicable.  The decisions share a number of similarities that suggest that similar protections against minors’ arguably less-capable decision-making should be employed.  In addition, the decisions are different in one significant way that suggests additional protections are necessary for the minor’s decision about relinquishing parental rights, regardless of whether minors are competent to make the decision about abortion.  After all, the decision about abortion is only a medical decision, and arguably a moral decision.  The decision about relinquishing parental rights also implicates medical decision-making in carrying the pregnancy to term and moral decision-making in forgoing abortion.  In addition, the decision is one involving complex legalities about constitutionally-protected parental rights and responsibilities that the minor is choosing to forgo. The complexities of legal decision-making may require additional protections for minors relinquishing for adoption that may not be necessary for minors seeking an abortion.

One frequent argument for parental notification in teen abortions is that parents ought to know about medical procedures performed on their children.  What about childbirth by their minor children?  Shouldn't parents know about that?  The risk of death and medical complications is greater with childbirth than with abortion, after all. The other popular argument rests on the significance of the decision -- deciding whether to have an abortion is such an important thing that minors ought to have the advice of grown-ups in making the decision.  Parents can serve in that role, and if there is some reason why they should not be notified, then a judge can evaluate whether a minor is sufficiently mature to make the decision on her own.  Why don't we treat similarly for another extremely important and significant decision, whether to terminate parental rights and place a child for adoption?

This article will explore the differences in treatment between a minor’s decision to have an abortion and a minor’s decision to place a child for adoption.  Part I examines attitudes toward teen pregnancy, teen parenting and adoption, supportive of the argument that these attitudes privilege adoption over child-rearing by teens. Part II will set out the scientific research on the ability to minors to engage in competent decision-making and the legal history of minors’ decision-making in a number of areas. Part III will explore the legal limitations on minors’ decision-making in abortion and adoption placement, highlighting the different legal treatment of these decisions. Part IV will explore various justifications for parental notification in minors’ abortions and explore their applicability to minors’ decisions about adoption placement.  This section concludes that there are stronger reasons for protecting minors making the decision to relinquish parental rights and place a child for adoption than for protecting minors making the decision about abortion. Finally, Part V will propose statutory reforms to ensure that a minor’s decision about relinquishing parental rights and placing a child for adoption is well-informed and voluntary. This section proposes that, given the legal nature of the decision facing a teen considering relinquishing her parental rights and placing a child for adoption, states should require that all minors be represented by independent legal counsel during the placement process.

Torry Hansen STILL Fighting Child Support Order

Sigh:

The Tennessee woman who ended her adoption of a seven-year-old Russian boy by putting him on a plane to Moscow by himself lost her bid Friday to keep from paying $150,000 in child support.

Torry Hansen made her first court appearance Friday in a case that began in April 2010 when she sent Artyom Saveliev away from her home in Shelbyville with a letter that said he had violent behaviour problems and she no longer wanted to be his mother.

* * *

In court on Friday, Hansen told the judge her previous attorneys did not keep her informed about the case and advised her she did not need to come to court. She also said that she gave birth to a daughter last year and could not come to court because of the pregnancy.

* * *

"Without going into depth, I can say he was very violent. I can say he wanted to kill me and he tried to kill my sister," Torry Hansen said in court Friday.

She said that the boy threatened to stab her mother to death. She started to tear up when describing how the threats of violence sent her mother to the emergency room in Shelbyville.

"That was when my parents decided to take him, because he was so violent," she said.

She said it was her parents' decision to put the boy on a flight to Russia, but she was aware of the decision and acquiesced.

"I have never mistreated or abused him or any child," she said.

Under cross examination, Torry Hansen told the court that she never called the police or the state Department of Children's Services about his behaviour.

"I called numerous psychologists and was told there would be a 6-week wait to get in," she said.

When asked whether she was aware that a Russian court found that her actions constituted neglect and abuse, she said, "I am aware that they felt putting him on the plane was emotionally disturbing."

Ruling from the bench, Judge Russell upheld his default judgment against Hansen, ordering her to pay child support for Artyom, who now lives in a group home in a Moscow suburb. Russell said Hansen had not cooperated with the court and he wasn't convinced by her arguments.

* * *

After the judge's ruling, Yarbrough said the litigation is not over and his client still has options, such as appealing the order or requesting that it be modified.

"I think it is a loss, we wanted the judge to set aside the default judgment and have a full trial, but there are other options for us," he said.

"Baby Veronica" Case Headed for Capitol Hill

From the New York Daily News:

The case started in 2009, when a couple from James Island, S.C., a suburb of Charleston, adopted "Baby Veronica" from an Oklahoma woman.

Citing the baby's Cherokee heritage, the biological father filed a lawsuit under the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law that was intended to help keep Indian children with their tribes.

The man won a court order to have the child returned to Oklahoma. She left her South Carolina home on Dec. 31, 2011, to live with him in Nowata.
The adoptive parents have asked the state Supreme Court to return Veronica to South Carolina, but the court has not ruled yet.

* * *

The Coalition for the Protection of Indian Children and Families, which includes members of the "Save Baby Veronica" campaign, will lobby for changes to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

"The very intent of the law is being compromised by how it's being used," the coalition says. "This federal law was originally established to protect families and Indian children -- not destroy them."

* * *

The Cherokee Nation has intervened in the "Baby Veronica" battle, but with a gag order in place, officials can't comment on the case specifically.

Generally speaking, however, the Indian Child Welfare Act does a lot of good, said Chrissi Ross Nimmo, the tribe's assistant attorney general, who represented the Cherokee Nation in the Baby Veronica proceedings.

The coalition wants to change the law in ways that would make it easier for non-Indian families to adopt Indian children.

"This defeats the entire purpose" of the legislation, Nimmo said.

Proposed Law Opens Door to More Than Two Legal Parents at a Time

I always have to tell my Adoption Law class that the reason a child can't be adopted until parental rights of the birth parents are terminated is that American law recognizes that a child can have no more than two parents at a time.  The New York Times reports that California might change that:

Bill Delaney’s two little girls spend three nights a week with their fathers, at the home Mr. Delaney shares with his husband in San Francisco. The other nights, they stay with their mothers, a lesbian couple who live nearby.
The girls have four parents — a result of a kind of nontraditional family arrangement that has become increasingly common. But officially, California, like most other states, recognizes no more than two legal parents.   
That limit could soon be lifted.   

A bill moving through the California Legislature would allow judges to recognize more than two legal parents for a given child, opening the door for alternative families to seek legal recognition of their relationships.

“There are literally scores of different families and circumstances,” Mark Leno, the state senator who sponsored the bill, said.

“This is about putting the welfare of the child above all else,” he said.

* * *

Mr. Leno’s bill follows a court case here last year in which a young girl being raised by two lesbian mothers was sent to foster care after a fight landed one mother in the hospital and the other in jail. The girl’s father, who had maintained a relationship with his daughter, asked the court to release her to his custody.

The trial court ruled that both mothers and the father were all parents. But a California appeals court reversed the decision, ruling that the child could have only two parents.

* * *

In Portland, Ore., Sean Kane adopted his wife’s two children from her first marriage. But because they maintained close ties with their biological father, who now lives in California, Mr. Kane did not want the court to sever that legal relationship. Instead he pursued a third-parent adoption, which was finalized last year.

“I wanted to send the message to the children that they were my children, as far as I was concerned,” he said.

Mr. Kane’s adopted daughter, Sara Miner, 20, said: “If it were a choice between dropping my dad to be replaced by my stepdad, I would not have been open to it, but with a joint adoption you don’t have to battle about who is going to be Mom and who is going to be Dad. You can have a situation where everyone is happy and part of the family.”

For the same reasons I approve of stepparent/second-parent adoptions, I think this is a good thing. The more people who are legally obligated to support a child, the better! It means that children are less likely to be orphaned, less likely to end up in foster care, less likely to live in poverty, less likely to worry about all of those things.  And to the extent it presages adoptions without birth parent relinquishment (that's essentially what happened when Sean Kane adopted his stepchildren without having their bio dad's rights terminated!), it could be a very, very good thing for openness in adoption.

Chinese Foundation Creates Program to Help Orphans

From China Daily:

The One Foundation, the charity founded by film star Jet Li, announced on Thursday the creation of a program to help the country's orphans and other children whose parents are absent.

Thursday's announcement came at the China Charity Fair in Shenzhen.
Chen Hongle, the foundation's project director, said the new program seeks to help the 573,000 orphans under 18 years old and 570,000 other children who have no parents raising them.

The other children include those who lost their fathers and whose mothers remarried but didn't keep them; and those whose parents are both in prison.

Chen said 86 percent of the affected 1.14 million children are in rural areas, with the majority being in western regions such as the Tibet autonomous region and Qinghai province.

Chen said the foundation will provide children who don't live in orphanages or welfare houses with a schoolbag, which they call a "warm bag", with stationery, daily necessities and an e-book reader. For children in orphanages or welfare houses, the program will concentrate on their mental health and will give psychological support and advice, especially to those 15 to 18 and about to look for work.

It's always good to get a reminder that it's not just Western adoptive parents who are supportive of orphan care initiatives in China. Despite Jet Li's prominence in the West, the foundation is China-based.