The Ties That Traumatize

SOMETIME BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON April 20, two-year-old Jessica DeBoer of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is scheduled to disappear, leaving behind a heartbroken couple she calls Mommy and Daddy, a dog named Miles, her yellow bedroom and just about everything she has ever known, except perhaps a few favorite stuffed animals. Under court order, the dark-eyed, inquisitive girl will be transported 400 miles west to the small farming community of Blairstown, Iowa, to begin life anew as Anna Lee Schmidt.

Jessica is not likely to go quietly. The child is the victim of an appallingly slow and wrenching struggle between the couple who conceived her and her would-be adoptive parents who have held and nurtured her almost since birth. Last Tuesday, the claims of blood prevailed when the Michigan Court of Appeals deferred to an earlier ruling of the Iowa Supreme Court that granted custody of the girl to her biological parents, Cara and Daniel Schmidt. Now the other couple, Roberta and Jan DeBoer, have 21 days to appeal a decision that has sent shudders throughout the nation’s adoption community. Says Mary Beth Seader, vice president of the National Council for Adoption: “People don’t trust the permanency of American adoption anymore.”

Jessica’s troubles began 40 hours after she was born in a hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was then that her mother Cara, 28 and unwed at the time, waived her parental rights and put the infant up for adoption. Cara identified the father as her boyfriend at the time, Scott, who also consented to the adoption. Elated, the DeBoers, who had arranged weeks earlier to adopt the child, drove all the way from Ann Arbor to claim their new baby. Soon after returning home, they received a letter from Cara that read, “I know you will treasure her and surround her with love, support her, encourage her to dream, to reach for the stars . . . God bless.”

That blessing soon became a curse as Cara started to have second thoughts. Six days after the birth, she informed ex-boyfriend Daniel Schmidt that he had actually fathered the child; she had listed Scott as the father partly to avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging an ex-lover. Anguished, Schmidt promptly launched a legal battle to terminate the adoption proceedings. Backed up by blood tests proving his paternity, he blocked the adoption in Iowa courts.

Daniel and Cara married last April. With help from a Des Moines-based antiadoption group called Concerned United Birth Parents, they fought the DeBoers all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, which ruled 8 to 1 last September in favor of the Schmidts’ right to custody. The DeBoers then turned to Michigan courts and won a round last February when a lower court ruled that Jessica’s best interests would be served if the child remained in Ann Arbor. That ruling was unanimously overturned last week by the appeals court, which sidestepped the merits of the case by denying the lower-court jurisdiction. Said Roberta DeBoer: “This is like death. Our daughter is dying.”

During the legal wrangling, Baby Jessica has been growing up in the DeBoers’ Cape Cod-style home, listening to bedtime stories and practicing words like Mommy and Daddy. The prospect that she might be legally taken from her home — which even the Iowa courts considered “exemplary” — has dumbfounded many Americans. But while the DeBoers have garnered the most sympathy, they also share part of the blame. Within weeks after they first tucked Jessica into her new nursery, Roberta and Jan learned that the biological parents were fighting to regain custody. By choosing to dig in even after the adoption proceedings were nullified, the couple risked defeat later, when transfer to another home would be more devastating for Jessica.

Though the National Council for Adoption estimates that less than 1% of the 50,000 U.S. adoptions each year are contested, Jessica’s case raises alarming questions for millions of adoptive parents. In at least half of all adoption cases, the natural fathers can’t be located. What now if a contrite dad reappears? And what if the wrong biological father gave his consent? “Are we going to have a DNA test for every putative father?” asks Susan Freivalds, executive director of Adoptive Families of America.

In custody and adoption suits, courts are guided by law to favor the claims of biological parents unless abandonment, abuse or neglect can be proved. In ruling on Baby Jessica’s case, the Iowa Supreme Court issued a broad defense of parental rights, arguing that the courts “are not free to take children from parents simply by deciding another home offers more advantages.” Many child-welfare activists were angered that Jessica’s welfare was not weighed more heavily by the court. Says Freivalds: “Apparently, adult property rights to a child supersede what’s best for the child.”

Sometimes even abandonment is permitted. In Connecticut two years ago, an 18-year-old mother using a false name abandoned her child in a New Haven hospital just hours after giving birth. More than five months later, she resurfaced and sued to regain custody of the child, who had since been adopted. Last December the state supreme court upheld a lower-court ruling granting her custody even though she was living in a shelter for the homeless at the time.

Daniel and Cara Schmidt surely must think they will make the best possible parents for Jessica, and the child may agree when she is older. But that will be small comfort to her on the morning of April 21 if she wakes up in a completely different house under the loving gaze of strangers.