SALT LAKE CITY — As she looks back on her experience traveling to Utah to place her child for an adoption, an Arkansas woman says she feels like “giving birth to my baby was a transaction.”
“I was told, ‘You’ve got to have the baby or you’re going to have all these doctor bills and you’re going to have pay this and you’re going to have to pay that,’” Lakaiya, who introduced herself only by her first name, said before the state Legislature’s Judiciary Interim Committee last month.
During her time in Utah earlier this year, documents the group Utah Adoption Rights shared with FOX 13 News show she received more than $18,000 for housing, telephone and utilities; nearly $9,000 for food, household supplies, clothing and entertainment; and $6,000 in postpartum expenses.
“Money, money, money was the stronghold,” she told lawmakers shortly before bursting into tears and rushing out of the room. “Care, support and stability was the illusion.”
Lakaiya's story highlights concerns raised recently by adoption reform advocates, who are seeking changes to laws they say have led the state to become a destination for so-called adoption tourism. Utah’s loose regulations around payments to birth mothers and agencies’ prolific online recruitment practices have led some to deem the state the “wild west for adoption.”
“I can tell you with my experience that there is no other state like Utah,” said Wesley Hutchins, an attorney who specializes in adoption, during a recent panel on ethics in the industry.
While some states put a cap on how much money adoption providers can dispense to birth mothers, Utah law does not. It requires only that the expenses be “reasonable.”
Draft legislation under consideration at the state Capitol would change that, by limiting expenditures for living expenses to $4,000 unless a court determines additional costs are necessary and reasonable. It would also cap the amount an agency could directly provide to birth mothers to $500.
“Moms are telling us that before they left their home state, the reason that they really were compelled to come is because they were offered cash in a lump sum after the adoption, after they had signed consents,” Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, a birth mother who works nationally on adoption issues, said in an interview.
Ranyard co-founded the group Utah Adoption Rights after hearing negative experiences from out-of-state women who traveled here for adoptions. She argues that uncapped payments to birth mothers can create financial dependency on an agency or even leave a woman feeling coerced into placing her baby.
She described the potential limitations on living expenses and especially on cash payments as “a hugely important thing that’s in this bill that would curb this practice, as this is the incentive to get moms to come out here.”
Tara Romney Barber with the Children’s Service Society of Utah – an adoption agency that does not work with out-of-state women – also offered support for the changes during last month’s hearing. She said they would prevent “any undue financial coercion that women may experience when coming to Utah to make a plan for adoption.”
But as state lawmakers continue to debate the issue ahead of next year’s legislative session, some adoption agencies have pushed back on those and other proposals in the bill, fearing too much restriction could make it harder for women who want to come to the state for the purpose of an adoption to do so.
“Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water I guess is kind of my feeling,” said Isaac Thomas, executive director of Act of Love Adoptions.
'They can make better decisions’
In the final weeks of her pregnancy, 20-year-old Angel Burdine decided to get on an airplane and cross the ocean from Hawaii to come to Utah for the first time in her life.
After Burdine found out she was pregnant and decided to place the baby for adoption, she initially wanted to stay in her own community for the birth. But after connecting with Act of Love online and learning about the moral and financial support she would receive here, she decided to make the trip.
She also hoped her time in Utah would give her some distance from “the drama that was here in Hawaii.”
“The father of the baby, he was not the most supportive because he was abusing alcohol and was really suicidal,” she added in an interview.
Act of Love picked Burdine and her young daughter up at the airport. Over the course of the next six weeks or so that she estimates she was in the state, the agency helped cover her medical costs, groceries and lodging. Burdine was also grateful that the agency flew her father in for support and that she got to spend time with the Utah-based family she chose to adopt her daughter.
Hearing that couple’s story of infertility “really touched me,” she recounted. She also was raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arkansas and longed for her daughter “to grow up in the background I did."
Months after signing the adoption paperwork, Burdine said she still struggles at times with her decision – even though she said she had an "amazing experience” overall and feels like she made the right choice.
“I did what was best for my daughter,” she said, sitting in front of a wall at her Hawaii home covered with photos of her newborn and cards from the family who adopted her. “She’s going to be happy. She’s going to grow up and she’s going to do a lot of things that I couldn’t do.”
Isaac Thomas, executive director and social work director with Act of Love Adoptions, explains below why birth mothers come to Utah to place their children for adoption:
Act of Love, which connected FOX 13 News with Burdine, estimated it works with about 60 birth mothers each year and said only a handful of them choose to travel to Utah, like Burdine did.
In many cases, the agency said it’s able to help pregnant women in other states find resources in their own communities. Laraine Moon, a social worker with Act of Love, said she prefers to do that when possible but believes that there are some circumstances when it makes sense for women to come to Utah.
“It’s an investigation process to say, ‘Is coming here the right thing or not the right thing?’” she said, noting that some of the women she works with are facing homelessness or domestic violence. “And periodically it is absolutely the right thing. Periodically.”
Once they’re here, Moon said the financial support the agency provides to birth mothers through the adoptive family can be a positive, stabilizing force.
“All of a sudden their mental capabilities are more clear,” she said. “They can make better decisions when that basic need is being met.”
Payments are typically made directly to service providers. But Moon noted that there are times when the agency provides birth mothers with a Visa card with cash, “so they can put gas in their car” and "run to the grocery store when they want to” without the agency “helicoptering” over them.
All pregnancy-related expenses agencies provide to a birth mother are required to be tracked and go before a judge, notes Jaime Chidester, a birth parent supervisor and case manager at Act of Love. Under that system, she argues that payments already receive an appropriate level of scrutiny.
If lawmakers approve the $4,000 proposed cap for living expenses, she fears the requirement to go to a judge for funds beyond that amount would create additional expense for adoptive families and potentially put birth mothers “in a hardship position.”
“I think our practices with living expenses right now are, especially those of us agencies that are really documenting and reporting back, I think those are good practices right now,” she said. “I think those things definitely should be left alone."
'Careful with who you trust’
In addition to the cap on living expenses, another major change adoption reform advocates have been pushing for is to a section of Utah code that says adoptions are irrevocable – even in cases where consent was obtained through fraud.
Hutchins, the adoption attorney and an adoptive father, argues that section of code has essentially "legalized fraud.”
“Basically what that statute says, ladies and gentlemen, is that you can commit fraud in the adoption realm and get away with it,” he said during a panel at the Salt Lake City Downtown Library late last month. “What the statute says is that you can sue for money damages, but you can never get your child back.”
The draft legislation released last month would allow a birth parent to revoke consent or relinquishment for an adoption within 30 days under certain circumstances, and so long as a court found the adoption was obtained “through duress, fraud, or undue influence.”
It would also require all adoption agencies to be licensed as nonprofits and spell out the rights of birth mothers to have independent legal counsel.
“Ensuring that she has her own separate legal representation that is an advocate for her and not an adversary and not someone that holds power over her or has necessarily a big financial stake in her decision, that’s going to be important to ensure that she has informed consent,” Ranyard said.
In video below, Wes Hutchins, an attorney and adoptive father, addresses his concerns with Utah’s fraud immunity statute for adoptions:
Chidester expressed support for the legal representation language in the bill, as well as the proposal that all agencies must be licensed as nonprofits, like Act of Love already is.
“It makes a lot more things transparent,” she said, “and I feel like that alone would take care of a lot of concerns.”
But she noted that Act of Love is more wary of changes it believes would make it harder for women to travel here – such as a proposal to prohibit agencies from arranging transport for a woman to the state after 36 weeks of pregnancy.
“I feel like traveling to Utah should be the choice of the birth mother” in consultation with her doctor, “not limited by legislation or what people do and don’t like here in Utah,” Chidester argues.
Rep. Katy Hall, who brought the draft legislation before the Judiciary Interim Committee, said last month that provision was based on the recommendation of medical community members. That late in a pregnancy, she said they told her, is “not a safe time to do flying or even driving long distances."
Ranyard added that reform advocates are not interested in interfering with a woman’s constitutional right to travel and pointed out that the bill would affect agencies rather than individuals.
“If mom wants to drive here or hop on a bus herself and this is the option that she needs to exercise, she can do that,” she said. “There’s nothing in this bill that would restrict her right to self-determination and travel.”
As the legislative session draws nearer, Chidester said she believes many of the challenges lawmakers are hearing about “come down to licensing issues instead of legislative issues.”
“If something is not going right, licensing should be looking at it,” she said. “It should be looked at, it should be addressed and whatever actions need to be taken to correct it. We absolutely want adoption to be positive and we want it to be ethical across the board in Utah.”
As for Burdine, she said she’s aware of the concerns surrounding adoption in Utah. And while she had a positive experience here, she acknowledged that birth mothers need to be “careful with you who trust” and encouraged women who travel from out of state to listen to their instincts.
“If you do things just because people want you to and it’s going to make other people happy, it’s going to hurt you in the end,” she said. “It’s not easy giving up a baby for adoption. So don’t do it for anybody. Do it for yourself. Do what’s right for your mental health, your physical health, the baby’s health and the baby’s physical health.”
The Legislature’s Judiciary Interim Committee is expected to continue the debate on Utah’s adoption laws during its meeting Wednesday at the state Capitol, though an official agenda has not yet been released.