Sunday, September 03, 2000
Justin is already living with his 'real parents'
For now, a 3-year-old boy named Justin lives with his older brother and their adoptive parents in northeast Ohio. By all accounts, he is happy, well adjusted and safe.
Soon, he might be ripped from that life and tossed into another, all because a court decides a child is better off with the mother who gave birth to him.
It could be that I'm missing something. There could be some overwhelmingly salient fact I'm leaving out. Happy, well-adjusted child with adoptive parents who love him, facing deportation to birth mom who gave him up willingly at 11 months.
How could this be?
Please tell me.
The people who deal with such matters tell me that less than 1 percent of all adoptions are contested. It's just the contentious adoptions that make the news. To this I say, thank goodness. But what of the 1 percent?
It may be generalizing to say that people who adopt are more responsible than people giving children up. But it's a leap I'll make.
The question now, in the throes of Justin's case, is: Why take the chance?
If someone told me I had even a 1 percent chance of my heart being ripped out and broken, why would I take it? It's not like getting married and divorced. That's the couple's call. With adoption, the decision is taken from you. Your heart is broken by a judge.
Justin
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Richard and Cheryl Asente of Girard, Ohio, adopted Justin when he was 11 months old. Five weeks later, his birth parents, Regina Moore and Richard Dorning of Northern Kentucky, decided they wanted him back.
Sorry, the Asentes replied. He's ours.
That was more than two years ago. It's been in the courts since. The latest is, a Kentucky appeals court is expected to rule within the next three months where Justin should be.
If the court rules against the Asentes, and I were considering adopting, I'd put it out of my mind immediately. If one kid is not adopted by one deserving couple because of the publicity surrounding this case (or the Baby Jessica or Baby Richard cases that have attracted national attention in the last decade) then it is a bad decision.
Love is not bestowed or inherited. We are not obligated to love someone because he or she is related by blood. Love, like trust, is earned. That Justin was born to Regina Moore may have legal status. To me, it ends there.
I asked a friend about this. She adopted a boy when he was seven weeks old; He's 3 now. She has endured uncomfortable visits with the birth mother and nasty letters when she didn't send pictures to the birth mother on time. The agency she worked with after the adoption asked her to send the birth mother a Mother's Day card seven weeks after the family adopted the child.
My friend dreads the day her son will want to know who his birth mother is, and why she gave him up.
Isn't this enough stress?
Of the Asente case, my friend says, “(The birth parents) weren't there for the earaches, for the sleepless nights. How can they take him from the stable life he has now?”
How, indeed? How can the selfishness of a remorseful adult be allowed to sabotage the emerging dreams of a happy 3-year-old?
Regina Moore made her choice; it's time to allow Justin the freedom of that decision.
“Is it not in (a child's) best interest to be with parents who want to be with him?” Ms. Moore asked, in an Enquirer story from March 1999.
Yes, it is. And Baby Justin is already there.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
DAUGHERTY ARCHIVE
