Free The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage

Ironically, while the subject of visits is a touchy one initially for the adoptive couple, Bob and Kate told us that it's usually the adopting couples who want more contact once the adoption is final.
    Fears about birth moms using drugs or showing up trying to reclaim their kids are rooted in false assumptions about the kind of women who give up their children for adoption.
    “They say that women who have the least to offer as parents are likelier to keep their kids,” said Kate, who is also a lawyer. “Women who see that they have a future and who have something they want to accomplish in life, they're the ones who tend to place their kids for adoption. Women with little to look forward to tend to keep their kids. What else have they got, who else to love them?”
    “But what if the birth mom sees the baby and decides she wants him back?” asked Terry.
    “Apart from the fact that birth moms have no legal rights to have their kids ‘back’ once the adoption is final, women who place their kids in open adoptions are much less likely to want them back,” Bob said, picking up another slice of pizza. “Women who don't know where their children went, who adopted them, or how they're doing are the women who wind up regretting doing an adoption.”
    “Think about it,” Kate said. “You're a woman, you're pregnant for nine months, you feel this little person growing inside you, you go through the incredibly emotional experience of giving birth and seeing your baby emerge from your body. If you chose closed adoption, your baby disappears. All your life you're going to wonder, ‘Is my baby okay? Is my baby happy? Who are his parents?’ The only way you can ever answer these questions is by trying to get him back. In open adoption, the birth mom can come and see that her baby is okay, and go on with her life. She is empowered by her decisions and soothed by the information she has about where her baby is. She knows, she doesn't have to worry. This isn't to say that there is no grieving or even remorse. But the birth mom doesn't have to deal with her emotions in a vacuum.”
    I asked if open adoption confused their kids, Lucy and Gus.
    “No, it only confuses adults,” said Bob.
    And a two-minute conversation with five-year-old Lucy and three-year-old Gus made it clear that they weren't confused. They knew they were adopted. They knew who their birth-parents were. They knew who their real parents were. And they knew the difference.

    At the seminar in Portland, we were learning more about open adoption, but thanks to our dinner with Bob and Kate, we had a leg up on some of the other couples in the room. Still, we had some things to learn.
    A lawyer who specialized in adoption spoke on the first afternoon, and we learned that open adoption was legal in only three states: Oregon, Washington, and New Mexico. For an open-adoption agreement to be legally binding, either the birth mom or the adoptive couple had to live in one of these three states. Birth moms and adoptive couples in other states had drawn up open-adoption agreements, but these were not legally binding.
    “The birth moms in these cases have no legal recourse, as their adoption agreement is just that, an agreement, and not a legally binding contract,” the lawyer said. “There have been cases of adoptive couples entering into open-adoption agreements, signing the papers, and then disappearing with the baby. These adoptive parents will, I hope, spend an awful long time in hell.”
    The mood in the room was not much more relaxed than it was at the start of the day. The only couple sitting at the table that didn't seem so fragile that a loud noise could shatter them were Jack and Carol, who were sitting to our left. They were quick to laugh at the small jokes the lawyer made during his presentation and, sensing that we, too, had a sense of humor about this, they smiled at us conspiratorially.
    The lawyer went on. In most states, before an adoption could be