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Why birth fathers shouldn't be overlooked in the adoption process
The adoption process has historically focused solely on birth mothers, leaving birth fathers out of the equation. But it's important to know how adoption affects birth fathers, and what rights they have in the adoption process.
Birth fathers can experience many of the same emotions birth mothers do, including trauma.
The effects of adoption on birth fathers are severely underresearched.
Many fathers do not have the right to stop an adoption, even if they want to raise their child.
There are multiple cases in which birth fathers' rights to their children were denied in the adoption process.
It is important for birth fathers' rights not to be disregarded or ignored in the adoption process.
When it comes to the adoption process, the focus is understandably is on the birth mothers. Yet though a child has two parents who are affected in the situation, the role of the birth father is often absent or not considered in the adoption narrative.
During the forced adoptions of the Baby Scoop era, birth fathers were just as present, and many were given no opportunity to know about the adoption, much less consent to it. Even in the case of the forced adoption redress program in Victoria, Australia, birth mothers are eligible while birth fathers are not.
Cheyne Bull, a psychologist and adoptee, explained for Vanish.org:
In the era of closed adoptions in Australia, fathers were almost never named on original birth certificates. It has been found that one likely reason for this was that if the father was never named, they wouldn’t have legal rights over their children and therefore couldn’t stop the child from being adopted.
Having no father recorded on original birth certificates has reinforced the stereotype that fathers 'abandoned their responsibility.' This in turn has made it much more difficult for adoptees to search for their fathers, due both to a lack of information as well as the belief that their fathers didn’t ever want to be found.
Yet in reality, fathers can experience trauma, though that trauma is often ignored or downplayed.
As one analysis found, the effects of adoption on birth fathers are extremely under-researched.
In the analysis, researchers looked at 100 academic papers about adoption published from 2000–2022, which at least potentially involved birth fathers. They found:
Just 12 actually included birth fathers as participants.
Only five focused specifically on birth fathers.
The rest discussed birth fathers based on what birth mothers, adoptive parents, professionals, adoptees, and records said.
Because of this, birth fathers are seen as absent, irresponsible, and uncaring. Yet when birth fathers are actually interviewed, the results couldn't be more different.
Fathers routinely said they...
loved and felt bonded to their child.
thought about the child frequently.
wanted information about how the child was doing.
wanted a relationship with and felt responsibility for the child .
felt grief after the adoption.
This grief, researchers said, was often described as disenfranchised, because it goes unrecognized. Yet many birth fathers said they continued grieving for years, if not their entire lives.
While it is true that sometimes, fathers are absent or did not care about a potential adoption, it is not as common as some might expect.
Frequently, fathers are kept out of the adoption process, for a multitude of reasons. At times, the birth mother doesn't want him involved, case workers do not engage him, he is not listed on the birth certificate, and few laws give him any say in the decision.
And even after the adoption, fathers are often erased; one study in the analysis found that fathers' names, ages, birthplaces, and other identifying information were recorded less than a third of the time.
This is astonishingly similar to abortion, in which fathers have little-to-no say over the fate of their own children, and the conversation focuses almost entirely on the mothers.
While the era of forced adoptions has largely passed, fathers still do not have universal rights to their own children.
Shockingly, this varies by state — meaning in one state, a father has a right to parent his child, while in another, the child can be placed for adoption whether he approves or not.
Some states effectively put the burden on the birth father to proactively protect his rights, even if nobody personally tells him an adoption is happening. So if he does not intervene within a set amount of time, even if he wasn't notified, he has lost the right to his own child forever, because the state assumes "implied consent" to the adoption.
Even if the birth father discovers he has a child who was placed for adoption and says he never consented to it, in certain states like (but not limited to) Arizona, Arkansas, and Alabama, his consent will have been deemed unnecessary, as he did not come forward in the required time frame. There is no consideration given to a birth father who was not informed, and therefore, could not consent.
Even a Supreme Court decision, Lehr vs. Robertson, upheld this injustice. In that case, the biological father wasn't given notice before his child was adopted by the mother's husband, and therefore, he hadn't registered with New York's putative-father registry. He later argued that the adoption was invalid because he had a constitutional due-process right to notice.
The Supreme Court said no, arguing that New York had given him an easy mechanism to protect himself: register. Had he done that, he would have been entitled to notice. The Court said that because receiving notice was within his own control, the Constitution did not require the state to give him individualized notice simply because he was the biological father.
The dissent noted that the mother and the court knew who the father was and where he was, yet he still wasn't personally notified of the adoption, which violated due process. But that wasn't part of the majority opinion.
There are many examples in which birth fathers have fought to have the right to their children, and many of them take place in Utah, which puts an unusually strict burden on fathers.
If the father does not take a series of steps, which include filing a parentage action, filing notice with the state, submitting an affidavit saying he is willing and able to take custody of and provide support for the child, and offer to pay pregnancy and birth expenses according to his means, he can lose the right to his child... even if he doesn't know the mother is pregnant.
This even applies to men who don't live in Utah, which has given the state a reputation for a place where mothers can go to relinquish their children without fathers being allowed to intervene.
In Carlton vs. Brown, Carlton was in Pennsylvania, and the pregnant mother went to Utah without telling him. After she gave birth there, she placed the baby for adoption, and told Carlton their baby had died. He later discovered the child was actually alive and had been adopted, and tried to challenge it. While he was given a technical victory, with the Supreme Court ruling that a lower court wrongly denied his parentage petition, he was not able to get his daughter back, and the finalized adoption remained intact.
In O'Dea v. Olea, the couple was living in Wyoming when the mother got pregnant. When the father found out the mother was considering abortion, he tried to persuade her not to, offered to help with medical expenses, and offered her a home. She later told him she miscarried. Months later, in May 2006, he learned she might still be pregnant. He contacted her and discovered that she was indeed still pregnant and was planning adoption.
He immediately told her he wanted a relationship with the baby. He contacted the adoption agency he thought she was using — LDS Family Services in Montana — and told them he intended to parent the child. That agency stopped providing adoption-placement services to her because of his objection. He also registered with Wyoming’s putative-father registry, as well as Montana's, and he sent notice to LDS Family Services in Utah saying he intended to assert his rights.
The day the mother gave birth, she called the father telling him she was in Utah, to stop contacting her, that he would not father nor see the child, but that he would pay child support. He took that to mean she was no longer considering adoption. And because she had lied to him before, he didn't believe that she was actually in Utah. Yet the day after giving birth, the mother placed the baby for adoption, and to make matters worse, the Utah adoption agency already knew about the father.
Before the birth, the agency had checked Wyoming to see whether anyone had filed there. On June 15, the day the baby was born, Wyoming officially told the Utah agency that he had registered as the putative father. Yet because he had not registered in Utah, the adoption was allowed to proceed.
He contested that, but the Utah Supreme Court ruled against him.
There are many, many, many, many, many, many, many similar examples.
The issue is so pervasive that a class action lawsuit has even been filed against the state of Utah by a group of biological fathers. That case was dismissed with no ruling given, and while there have been some minor court victories, fathers in Utah — and other states — can still have their children taken away from them, even if they fight to keep them.
The conversation about adoption should not only focus on birth mothers. Fathers have a role to play in their children's lives too, and they can be emotionally and psychologically affected by both abortion and adoption.
Read other articles in this Live Action News adoption series below.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Bridget Sielicki
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·Why birth fathers shouldn't be overlooked in the adoption process
The adoption process has historically focused solely on birth mothers, leaving birth fathers out of the equation. But it's important to know how adoption affects birth fathers, and what rights they have in the adoption process.
Birth fathers can experience many of the same emotions birth mothers do, including trauma.
The effects of adoption on birth fathers are severely underresearched.
Many fathers do not have the right to stop an adoption, even if they want to raise their child.
There are multiple cases in which birth fathers' rights to their children were denied in the adoption process.
It is important for birth fathers' rights not to be disregarded or ignored in the adoption process.
When it comes to the adoption process, the focus is understandably is on the birth mothers. Yet though a child has two parents who are affected in the situation, the role of the birth father is often absent or not considered in the adoption narrative.
During the forced adoptions of the Baby Scoop era, birth fathers were just as present, and many were given no opportunity to know about the adoption, much less consent to it. Even in the case of the forced adoption redress program in Victoria, Australia, birth mothers are eligible while birth fathers are not.
Cheyne Bull, a psychologist and adoptee, explained for Vanish.org:
In the era of closed adoptions in Australia, fathers were almost never named on original birth certificates. It has been found that one likely reason for this was that if the father was never named, they wouldn’t have legal rights over their children and therefore couldn’t stop the child from being adopted.
Having no father recorded on original birth certificates has reinforced the stereotype that fathers 'abandoned their responsibility.' This in turn has made it much more difficult for adoptees to search for their fathers, due both to a lack of information as well as the belief that their fathers didn’t ever want to be found.
Yet in reality, fathers can experience trauma, though that trauma is often ignored or downplayed.
As one analysis found, the effects of adoption on birth fathers are extremely under-researched.
In the analysis, researchers looked at 100 academic papers about adoption published from 2000–2022, which at least potentially involved birth fathers. They found:
Just 12 actually included birth fathers as participants.
Only five focused specifically on birth fathers.
The rest discussed birth fathers based on what birth mothers, adoptive parents, professionals, adoptees, and records said.
Because of this, birth fathers are seen as absent, irresponsible, and uncaring. Yet when birth fathers are actually interviewed, the results couldn't be more different.
Fathers routinely said they...
loved and felt bonded to their child.
thought about the child frequently.
wanted information about how the child was doing.
wanted a relationship with and felt responsibility for the child .
felt grief after the adoption.
This grief, researchers said, was often described as disenfranchised, because it goes unrecognized. Yet many birth fathers said they continued grieving for years, if not their entire lives.
While it is true that sometimes, fathers are absent or did not care about a potential adoption, it is not as common as some might expect.
Frequently, fathers are kept out of the adoption process, for a multitude of reasons. At times, the birth mother doesn't want him involved, case workers do not engage him, he is not listed on the birth certificate, and few laws give him any say in the decision.
And even after the adoption, fathers are often erased; one study in the analysis found that fathers' names, ages, birthplaces, and other identifying information were recorded less than a third of the time.
This is astonishingly similar to abortion, in which fathers have little-to-no say over the fate of their own children, and the conversation focuses almost entirely on the mothers.
While the era of forced adoptions has largely passed, fathers still do not have universal rights to their own children.
Shockingly, this varies by state — meaning in one state, a father has a right to parent his child, while in another, the child can be placed for adoption whether he approves or not.
Some states effectively put the burden on the birth father to proactively protect his rights, even if nobody personally tells him an adoption is happening. So if he does not intervene within a set amount of time, even if he wasn't notified, he has lost the right to his own child forever, because the state assumes "implied consent" to the adoption.
Even if the birth father discovers he has a child who was placed for adoption and says he never consented to it, in certain states like (but not limited to) Arizona, Arkansas, and Alabama, his consent will have been deemed unnecessary, as he did not come forward in the required time frame. There is no consideration given to a birth father who was not informed, and therefore, could not consent.
Even a Supreme Court decision, Lehr vs. Robertson, upheld this injustice. In that case, the biological father wasn't given notice before his child was adopted by the mother's husband, and therefore, he hadn't registered with New York's putative-father registry. He later argued that the adoption was invalid because he had a constitutional due-process right to notice.
The Supreme Court said no, arguing that New York had given him an easy mechanism to protect himself: register. Had he done that, he would have been entitled to notice. The Court said that because receiving notice was within his own control, the Constitution did not require the state to give him individualized notice simply because he was the biological father.
The dissent noted that the mother and the court knew who the father was and where he was, yet he still wasn't personally notified of the adoption, which violated due process. But that wasn't part of the majority opinion.
There are many examples in which birth fathers have fought to have the right to their children, and many of them take place in Utah, which puts an unusually strict burden on fathers.
If the father does not take a series of steps, which include filing a parentage action, filing notice with the state, submitting an affidavit saying he is willing and able to take custody of and provide support for the child, and offer to pay pregnancy and birth expenses according to his means, he can lose the right to his child... even if he doesn't know the mother is pregnant.
This even applies to men who don't live in Utah, which has given the state a reputation for a place where mothers can go to relinquish their children without fathers being allowed to intervene.
In Carlton vs. Brown, Carlton was in Pennsylvania, and the pregnant mother went to Utah without telling him. After she gave birth there, she placed the baby for adoption, and told Carlton their baby had died. He later discovered the child was actually alive and had been adopted, and tried to challenge it. While he was given a technical victory, with the Supreme Court ruling that a lower court wrongly denied his parentage petition, he was not able to get his daughter back, and the finalized adoption remained intact.
In O'Dea v. Olea, the couple was living in Wyoming when the mother got pregnant. When the father found out the mother was considering abortion, he tried to persuade her not to, offered to help with medical expenses, and offered her a home. She later told him she miscarried. Months later, in May 2006, he learned she might still be pregnant. He contacted her and discovered that she was indeed still pregnant and was planning adoption.
He immediately told her he wanted a relationship with the baby. He contacted the adoption agency he thought she was using — LDS Family Services in Montana — and told them he intended to parent the child. That agency stopped providing adoption-placement services to her because of his objection. He also registered with Wyoming’s putative-father registry, as well as Montana's, and he sent notice to LDS Family Services in Utah saying he intended to assert his rights.
The day the mother gave birth, she called the father telling him she was in Utah, to stop contacting her, that he would not father nor see the child, but that he would pay child support. He took that to mean she was no longer considering adoption. And because she had lied to him before, he didn't believe that she was actually in Utah. Yet the day after giving birth, the mother placed the baby for adoption, and to make matters worse, the Utah adoption agency already knew about the father.
Before the birth, the agency had checked Wyoming to see whether anyone had filed there. On June 15, the day the baby was born, Wyoming officially told the Utah agency that he had registered as the putative father. Yet because he had not registered in Utah, the adoption was allowed to proceed.
He contested that, but the Utah Supreme Court ruled against him.
There are many, many, many, many, many, many, many similar examples.
The issue is so pervasive that a class action lawsuit has even been filed against the state of Utah by a group of biological fathers. That case was dismissed with no ruling given, and while there have been some minor court victories, fathers in Utah — and other states — can still have their children taken away from them, even if they fight to keep them.
The conversation about adoption should not only focus on birth mothers. Fathers have a role to play in their children's lives too, and they can be emotionally and psychologically affected by both abortion and adoption.
Read other articles in this Live Action News adoption series below.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Bridget Sielicki
·Opinion
Nancy Flanders
·Fact Checks
Cassy Cooke
·Opinion
Sheena Rodriguez
·Pop Culture
Nancy Flanders
·Opinion
Anne Marie Williams, RN, BSN
·Abortion Pill
Cassy Cooke
·Human Interest
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·