Cover Stories: The Baby Chase

By NANCY GIBBS

In the sixth month of her pregnancy, "Nicole," 27, picked a set of parents for her baby out of a black loose-leaf binder. It was a thick album filled with letters and pictures of couples in search of a child. Jan and Dick Evans, like nearly everyone else in the book, posed smiling with their dog. "We want, in sum, to provide your child with all the benefits our own health, love and success can offer -- not to spoil, but to share," they wrote. Nicole liked that.

Over the next few weeks she visited their house, saw the baby's room. There were phone calls and counseling sessions at the Independent Adoption Center in Pleasant Hill, Calif. In the private conference room there, Nicole felt happy with her choice. Still there were some delicate points to resolve.

"You're thinking of nursing the baby while you are in the hospital?" asked I.A.C. counselor Debbie Parelskin one afternoon. The conference room became very quiet, breathless. The last time this subject came up, negotiations broke down.

"Uh, I don't know," replied Nicole, with her eyes down. "That's still vague with me."

"It's O.K. with me," said Jan gently. She and Dick have made their peace with the idea despite their natural fear that at any moment Nicole could change her mind and decide to keep the baby.

"I would like to see pictures regularly," said Nicole.

"I hope we see you regularly," Jan interjected.

"Would you let me spend some time alone with her?" Nicole asked. "Just her and me, so we could be friends?"

"I'd kind of like to have Nicole come up and baby-sit," Jan said almost shyly.

"If you'd trust me."

"Who could we trust more?"

When Nicole entered the hospital on Aug. 26, Dick's beeper sounded and the Evanses rushed over from a Los Angeles Raiders game. Jan helped coach Nicole through her labor and the birth of the baby girl. The Evanses named her Rebecca; Nicole nursed her in the birthing room.

This is the way Nicole wants it: open, easy, absent of mystery. As it happens, she was adopted herself. "I've had lots of love in my life, but lots of questions, medical things, heredity. With open adoption, all these questions will be answered for my daughter."

There is all the difference in the world between having a baby . . . and getting a baby. So much has changed in U.S. society in the past generation -- legal abortion, the growing acceptance of single motherhood, new concerns about infertility -- that people looking to become parents face a most intricate enterprise. Possessing a scarce resource, birth mothers can often dictate their terms; operating in a crowded marketplace, adoptive parents must be ingenious and relentless in their search and accommodating in their negotiations. As middlemen, the old-fashioned agencies must now compete with newfangled lawyers and adoption consultants. Sometimes, as with Nicole, the groundwork is laid by an organization with a radical new approach known as "cooperative adoption." Most of the participants have a standard, emphatic defense for the various practices they promote: we are doing what is best for the child. With all that proclaimed selflessness, how can there still be so many problems?

No one actually knows how many babies are adopted in the U.S. each year. The Federal Government stopped keeping track in 1975, though it promises to start counting again by 1991. The best estimate -- from the National Committee for Adoption in Washington -- is that there were more than 60,000 adoptions by * nonrelatives in 1986. The figure would be much higher were it not for a great and tragic irony: while adoptive parents will literally go to the ends of the earth to find healthy white, or perhaps Asian, infants, thousands of other American youngsters who are older or black or handicapped go begging for homes. In 1986 the nation's foster-care system harbored at least 36,000 of these adoptable "special-needs" children. Some 13,500 found families. That same year more than 9,000 couples and singles adopted children from overseas. Another 25,000 pursued and found that most hotly sought commodity in the adoption marketplace: healthy white American babies.

Chasing after these scarce infants is harder than ever, as supply flattens and demand soars. Abortion is one reason: half of all unwanted pregnancies are now terminated. Teenage mothers intent on keeping their children are another. In some states a pregnant 15-year-old quickly learns that with a baby she can be eligible for Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare payments that total as much as $8,000 a year. If she decides on adoption, she may get nothing but the pain of loss and the ridicule of her peers. "Adoption is really unpopular in the schools," says Independent Adoption Center executive director Bruce Rappaport. If a girl doesn't decide to keep her baby, "people will literally come up and yell at her in the halls."

And even for those willing to part with their babies, there is adoption's dark history to overcome. Until very recently, every party to the transaction bore the scars of its language: "promiscuous," "barren," "illegitimate." When adoption professionals called a woman the natural mother, it left adoptive parents in a semantic dilemma. Were they unnatural parents? The techno-jargony "birth mother" was the more neutral alternative. All the secrecy reinforced the shame: as recently as the 1970s, some delivery-room nurses covered the mirrors and draped towels in front of a woman giving up her child, or even blindfolded her, so she could not see the baby. In the nursery the infants were marked DNS (do not show) or DNP (do not publish the mother's name). Says Rappaport: "Adoption was considered a really sick process."

Though many adopted children went on to live contented, successful lives, others suffered from the start and were slow to heal, a phenomenon largely ignored by the mental-health community. The visceral sense of loss, psychologists suggest, even in the case of infant adoptions, is an abiding , wound, too little understood. Adoptees represent 2% of the U.S. population, yet by some estimates they account for one-quarter of the patients in U.S. psychological treatment facilities. "There are many issues that are particularly critical for adoptive families -- issues of compatibility, intellectual mismatches, personality conflicts," says Ruth McRoy, a University of Texas professor who has studied emotional disturbance in adopted adolescents. "Some children feel that being adopted means having been rejected by birth families. That's very difficult to accept."

Teenagers may be especially hard hit. "When I was four or five, I used to tell everyone I was adopted," recalls Karla Kelba, 16, a blond, cheery high school junior from Fountain Valley, Calif. "I thought it was very special; the kids thought it was great. But between ten and 13, I went through some rough times. The kids wouldn't play with me. They said my mother didn't want me." There was worse to come. In a health and sex-education class, "my teacher went all off on the subject of how adopted kids are second choice," she recalls angrily. "He said it was the worst thing you could do to a child -- if you had a choice, you should have an abortion."

But now the entire landscape is changing in ways that could ease the grief of birth parents and the anguish of adoptees. Experiments like open or cooperative adoption not only appeal to birth mothers grappling with their decision but may also lift the burdens of mystery and shame endured by the adopted child. Many developments are market driven, as agencies, lawyers, "consultants" and counselors compete to open fresh avenues to adoption or make the old ones less forbidding.

While public agencies concentrate on special-needs children, private agencies remain the traditional vehicle for finding healthy infants. These have historically been clubby, starched places; singles were not at the top of the selection list, nor interracial, gay, handicapped or older couples. While their policies are gradually changing -- especially in helping place older or special-needs kids -- many still primarily serve a specific religious group.

Terry Ulick, 34, and his wife Linda, 45, of Bartlett, Ill., were rebuffed by seven agencies in their six-year quest for a child. One agency said he was too fat and she was too old. "The biological rules of nature are that any two people can get together and have a child," says Terry. "When it comes to adoption, the rules of nature don't apply."

So the Ulicks, like so many couples, have had to look elsewhere. Some go to countries where local custom discourages adoption. In the past, South Korea was the prime source; in the '80s alone, more than 40,000 Korean children have been brought to the U.S. But in recent years Koreans have begun to question the propriety of shipping so many infants abroad. The government has stepped up its promotion of birth control and urged Korean families to adopt. Last year the number of children coming to the U.S. fell 18%, and prospective parents must find other channels.

While South Korea cuts back, other countries awash with orphans or abandoned children try to remove potential obstacles. Thailand, India and Peru are possible sources. Douglas Tifft and his wife Bonnie MacAdam tried the agencies, avoided the lawyers and waited a year for a Korean baby before looking elsewhere. "The process can be heartbreaking," says Bonnie. But when they applied for a Peruvian baby, the phone call came six weeks later, and they soon boarded a plane for Lima. Last week Bonnie returned to New Hampshire with five-month-old Rosa. "Once you have the baby in your arms," she says, "it seems worth all the waiting, money, traveling and hassle."

For parents who have set their hearts on white American infants and been endlessly wait-listed or rejected by the agencies, the other choice is to go private. At the hub of so-called independent adoptions, meaning placements outside the agencies, are the ranks of lawyers, who usually charge from $1,500 to $4,000 for their legal work. They typically steer couples through a tangle of laws that vary wildly from state to state.

Among the legal considerations: Are lawyer-brokered independent adoptions allowed in the state where the couple resides? (Six states prohibit private adoption.) Which of the birth mother's expenses can be paid by the adoptive parents? Hospitalization? Maternity clothes? How long does she have to change her mind about giving up her child? Does the birth father, who in most cases is out of the picture, have to give his consent? Because of their laws, California and Texas have become magnets for couples seeking independent adoptions, while Minnesota and Michigan have none. "There are probably more infants from Minnesota placed in California than in Minnesota itself," says Beverly Hills lawyer David Keene Leavitt, who has handled more than 7,000 adoptions in 28 years.

Some attorneys act as intermediaries between doctors with pregnant patients ; and prospective parents. They may also advise clients on how and where to advertise for potential birth mothers. Pictures of perplexed young women appear in ads on buses and in buildings throughout Illinois. Sample copy: "Pregnant? Scared? Are you ready to be a single parent?" For those who are not, the ad refers clients to lawyer Lawrence Raphael ("He Cares") and even provides a toll-free number.

Lawyers and self-styled adoption consultants -- many of them people who have successfully adopted -- encourage would-be parents to do their own legwork. Classified sections of newspapers are loaded with often highly personal ads detailing a couple's medical history and inviting pregnant women to call collect anytime. In her book Beating the Adoption Game, clinical psychologist Cynthia Martin offers tips: "Contact physical-education teachers, who frequently are the first to realize a young girl is pregnant; contact the school nurse to find out if anyone has morning sickness. Never talk to the principal, who may not want to know about these things." She also suggests that would-be mothers and fathers start haunting skating rinks, rock concerts, used-clothing stores, anywhere they might hear some gossip and make connections.

As more parents strike out on their own or with private brokers, some professionals fear that standards and safeguards are slipping. "Adoptive parents won't blink an eyelash over paying $20,000 to $30,000 for a healthy white baby," says family lawyer Samuel Totaro of Trevose, Pa. "This business can be a license to steal." William Pierce, president of the National Committee for Adoption and a militant defender of traditional adoption practices, argues that abuses have multiplied as formal agencies have lost control of the process. "One couple I know adopted twins through a lawyer," says Pierce. "After several weeks, the couple found that the twins were deaf. They had paid the lawyer $25,000. Did they sue? No. By the time they found out, they had become too fond of the twins to jeopardize their future."

The greatest change in recent years is the emergence of the birth mother as a principal architect of the adoptive arrangement. Her growing power allows her to shape the relationship to suit her taste and needs. In as many as 80% of the cases, she now has some role in selecting the parents, even if they never meet face to face. "It makes you feel so much better to know where your baby is going," says "Sarah," 26, from suburban Chicago, who gave up her son three months ago. "If I didn't know, I would spend my whole life wondering."

There are countless variations on the same theme. If the birth mother has her heart set on a Roman Catholic, nondrinking, harpsichord-playing vegetarian couple, chances are the agencies and lawyers will do all they can to accommodate her wishes. In the most radical arrangements, she may live with the couple until the birth and then continue to write and visit, like an aunt or a godparent, as the child grows up. Some just exchange a few letters; others go so far as to accompany the family on vacations. Adoptive couples may embrace these arrangements willingly or merely accept the openness as the price of their parenthood.

The emotional risks of opening up the process are usually worth it, say advocates, because parents and children may suffer less in the long run. Experts insist the secrecy that once surrounded adoption was a cure for which there was no disease. When the veil is lifted and histories shared, all parties can benefit; birth mothers feel less guilty, more in control. ("If her dog had puppies, she wouldn't give them to someone she didn't know," observes lawyer Leavitt acidly.) Adoptive couples feel they have been given a sort of subtle permission to parent and are better informed about the ethnic, medical and religious background of the child. Above all, the children may wonder and worry less about why their parents are not their "real" parents.

Whatever the style of adoption -- open, traditional, independent -- it is not easy for a mother to hand over her baby, even to the perfect handpicked parents. Dale Owen, 19, sought a college-educated couple who "were into animals and sports," who resembled her and the birth father, and who had a long, stable marriage. Through the Golden Cradle agency in Cherry Hill, N.J., she found just such a pair. But after she gave birth at a New Jersey hospital last August, she burst into a flood of tears and conflicting emotions: "This is my baby. I can't leave him. But I know I cannot give him what he needs." A few days later a Pennsylvania couple took her son home.

Given the emotional stakes, some birth mothers still find the old, anonymous approach to adoption the easiest course. They may leave letters to their children on register at adoption centers or state agencies in case the child ever decides to search them out. Others choose to disappear forever. "Not to be mean," says "Jackie," 18, due to give birth in December at the venerable - Edna Gladney Center for unwed mothers in Fort Worth, "but I have to get along with my life. And I want him to have his own life so he'll look for what he needs in his family."

Some adoption professionals are troubled by the aggressive pursuit of birth mothers that open adoption has spawned. Without proper counseling, such arrangements can end grievously. As soon as the transaction is legally binding, charges Los Angeles author and adoption consultant Reuben Pannor, too many adoptive couples leave the birth mother high and dry. They change phone numbers, move away or otherwise discourage further contact. "Until an adoption is finalized, the birth mother is treated royally and seductively," he says. "Then the contact is abruptly broken off."

Even if some sort of relationship is maintained, the notion of cooperative adoption may raise unsettling questions for the children. In an era of divorce, remarriage and yours-mine-and-ours families, it is perhaps less anomalous than it once was to contend with two sets of parents. Still, what does the child call this woman who comes to visit and sends the birthday cards? What is he or she to think when that person later has children she decides to keep? Worst of all, what happens if the birth mother, having endeared herself to her child, suddenly stops coming to visit?

The Evanses, Nicole and their new daughter Rebecca are just beginning to work out some answers -- a process that is not without pain. Nicole admits she felt "a tearing away" when the Evanses went home from the hospital with the baby; she paid her first visit the very next day. "It's been hard for us to hear the true sadness in Nicole's voice," admits Jan, "when we have felt so much joy." More than once Nicole has had to battle the urge to pick up Rebecca and run, particularly when Jan went out shopping and left them alone together one day. "I could have just walked out with that baby," recalls Nicole. "My car was right outside." She has joined a birth mothers' support group, and talks about going back to school to become a nurse. The Evanses have invited her family to join them at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Says Jan: "I suspect it will become a yearly ritual."

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: Cost of an Independent Adoption

With reporting by Mary Cronin/New York, Elizabeth Taylor/Chicago and James Willwerth/Los Angeles