
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 26, 1994                   TAG: 9408260079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO                                 LENGTH: Medium

MODEL ADOPTION ACT PROTECTS CHILDREN

While the Baby Jessica and Baby Richard cases moved through the courts and the tabloids, a group of judges and lawyers crafted a model law they hope will prevent similarly agonizing adoption cases.

``The act is radical. It places the welfare of children at its center,'' said Joan Heifetz Hollinger, the act's drafter and a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

Provisions of the Uniform Adoption Act, approved Aug. 4 by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, include:

Biological fathers would have 30 days to make a parental claim after the proposed adoption of their child.

Birth mothers would have eight days to change their minds after giving up a child.

Adoptions could not be denied on the basis of the race or ethnicity of the adoptive parents or children.

The act goes to the American Bar Association for review, then will be sent to each state with a recommendation that it be considered for enactment.

In the Baby Jessica case, the child was taken from adoptive parents who had raised her for two years and returned to her birth mother and father. The birth mother named the wrong man as father, so the child's biological father had not given up his parental rights.

In the Baby Richard case, the now 3 1/2-year-old Chicago child's biological father is attempting to gain custody. The child's mother put him up for adoption and told the father he had died.

``If we do everything which is reasonably possible to notify and obtain the consent of that biological parent, that's all we can ask of the system. The child's interest in secure and permanent placement becomes at a certain point the most important issue,'' said Rhoda Billings, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a member of the group that drafted the act.

``If the birth mother or a lawyer or an agency is the one who lied to you, sue them for fraud and deceit. Someone may have a legal right to be a parent, but that does not mean that the remedy for violating that right should be human flesh - the baby,'' Hollinger said.

by CNB