It's hard, maybe even impossible to talk about adoption in broad strokes. The premise--a woman, for whatever reason, feels unable to raise a child and cedes custody to a parent or parents not only desirous, but also willing and able to raise that child--is inherently complicated. No adoption narrative is simple, even though many adoption stories are happy. I'd go as far to venture that every adoption story is bittersweet, to varying degrees.

The fissure experienced at the beginning of a life--if adoption occurs then--is huge, especially as that’s a time we imagine and hope mother and child will remain connected from womb to arms. None of my children remember the first time I held them (at least not consciously). But I remember, having given birth, how essential that first near-thud--my newborn's slippery body upon my belly--felt. After that gargantuan push to affirm our separateness, the new body upon mine affirmed our continued connectedness. At Saskia's birth, which I was extremely fortunate to attend, I felt much more tentative, aware that this baby had indeed journeyed forth from Caroline's body. She was not automatically intended for my arms. No matter how prepared I was to receive her in my arms, my arms were brand-new to her. Right after she was born—a teeny, tiny thing, under six pounds--she did not go to family. The nurses took her. There was no gentle placement onto any mother’s stomach or into any mother’s arms. For a few--nearly endless--minutes, the nurses checked on her and dried her off and wrapped her up. Rather than handing her to "mom," the nurses handed her to our small, female team: me, Caroline's mother, Caroline's sister, and Caroline. We all took turns holding her and not so long after we greeted her, Hosea came into the room to meet her. Nineteen months later, all these women--plus more of Caroline's family--remain in Saskia's life. She is a happy, secure toddler, and while she doesn’t yet understand the significance of her Auntie Cece to her, it'll never be a secret.

Perhaps that's why I found the Carla Moquin's story--reported in People Magazine (print version, September 21, 2009 issue, not online)--so upsetting. In a nutshell, Moquin, mother to a one year-old baby, with husband out of work, and in a "crumbling marriage" found herself pregnant again. Her husband urged adoption and Moquin, at first, resisted. Then, she found an online profile for a couple seeking an "open adoption." That is not what the adoption turned out to be. The adoptive parents never filed the open adoption agreement, which they and she and her husband had signed, a commitment that Moquin contends the adoptive parents never intended to fulfill. Once the adoptive parents, Susan Englert and Demyn Plantenberg seemed to be backing away from the agreement's terms, Moquin went back to email exchanges between the couple and herself and she realized the couple had been disingenuous with her all along. Moquin cites examples such as this one: a promise to treat her like "family" was followed by subsequent messages explaining they saw family maybe once a year.

Moquin is suing for the adoption to be rescinded and for her to get full custody of now five year-old Peri, citing Englert and Plantenberg-s actions as fraudulent. Legally, Moquin has an uphill fight--and legal delays, which have already occurred--work in the adoptive parents' favor, because by age five, a judge is going to worry about the emotional repercussions of such an upheaval upon the child (although this in itself doesn’t determine the case’s outcome).

While the magazine story focuses upon Moquin--Englert and Plantenberg refused to be interviewed--it does not side with Moquin. A friend forwarded an email written by Ellen Roseman, the adoption facilitator now helping Moquin. Roseman, who has been involved in open adoptions for many years, believes Moquin was grossly mistreated. She writes: "I fully and strongly support (Carla’s quest to regain custody of her daughter, Peri in the California court system. It is difficult for any Judge to order the removal of a child from a home after several years, but where fraud can be proven, the child is almost always placed elsewhere, no matter the age. Deliberate fraud was committed in this situation and admitted to; it is unusual for an adoptive couple to blatantly admit their intention was to commit fraud in not filing a signed contact agreement, nor adhering to it. Both a high profile litigation attorney and the agency social worker have stated they advised the adoptive couple to follow the law. The couple repeatedly refused!" Roseman continues that California judges generally won’t sign off on an adoption without the plan filed at the same time. She believes in this case that Moquin's assertions are all true--and what’s more she's "gentle beyond belief --- really exceptional woman in every way." Roseman also writes of the adoptive mother’s conduct in court: “I am convinced that she is not stable enough to have any child in her home. Yelling, table pounding, and swearing without restraint demolished any possibility of changing the course of this case...........nothing the mediator said changed her shocking demeanor."

In a sense, Roseman's pleas underscore the question I had when reading the original story, which is this; if the adoptive parents had a compelling story about why they'd slid from the stated promise of an open adoption agreement, why hadn't they asserted that?

Carla Moquin has set up a website that shares her story (and seeks requests for donations to defray her considerable legal costs).

A set agreement about how much contact will occur between birth--or first mother--and adoptive family is, I think, extremely hard to make, because how everyone’s lives will unfold is unknown at the time of the child's birth. Beyond logistics--where everyone lives, how much money or time they have for travel, what other occurrences might take place, from a family member's illness to subsequent children's arrivals in either household--there is the fluid--total unknown--of how everyone, the child included--will feel over time. You could liken open adoption and prenuptial agreements, in that both are statements of intent--and, in the best cases, of good will.

In the worst cases, overt coercion occurs. Kathryn Joyce wrote for the Nation about Christian adoption agencies like Bethany Christian Services that prey upon pregnant women in uncertain and often nearly impossible circumstances. After a lengthy description about Carol Jordan's prisoner-like experience staying with a "shepherding family" during her pregnancy, as arranged by Bethany Christian Services, Jordan felt as if she was forced into surrendering the newborn despite her ambivalence about doing so. The agency brought the sobbing adoptive parents into her room and meantime she was told if she took the baby with her, she would no longer be welcome to stay with the shepherding family. Without any money at all, not even enough to go anyplace for a night or buy a bus ticket, Jordan realized she could not take the baby. But she was terribly distressed. From Joyce's article: "When Jordan called Bethany's statewide headquarters one night, her shepherding mother answered, responding coldly to Jordan's lament. ‘You're the one who spread your legs and got pregnant out of wedlock,’ she told Jordan. ‘You have no right to grieve for this baby.’" Not surprisingly, Joyce compares the kinds of agencies with the way pregnant women were treated during what's now known as the "baby scoop" era--the years before abortion was legalized when a higher percentage of pregnant women found themselves in nearly impossible circumstances, especially as being a single mother--giving birth out of wedlock--was a more widespread source of shame.

So many years after women experienced that kind of shameful exile described in Ann Fessler's extraordinary documentation in her book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade or that Meredith Hall chronicled in her exquisite memoir, Without a Map, which described her personal experience surrendering a baby during her teens, we'd hope no woman would endure that particular suffering. Shaming, blaming, degrading women as a vehicle to “get” children into “good” homes seems, to be polite, inhumane, and obviously, truly far worse.

During the process of finding a baby, we were shown profiles and files about a number of potential “matches.” At one point, I was speaking with a social worker about a pregnant woman a month or so from giving birth. This African American woman was giving birth in Utah, and at first, I remember thinking, are there black women in Utah? (For the record, yes there are, and I should not have been so small-minded). But this black woman in Utah was from my hometown of Philadelphia, and she )ad five other children there, and was on welfare, and the agency convinced her it'd be "easier" to uproot, have the baby (the social worker did not know tell me how her five children were faring in her absence) and return to her life. The social worker assured me Utah had great adoption laws (very favorable to adoptive parents, virtually no waiting period!). Conversely, quite obviously, Utah has very unfavorable laws for women giving birth, because they sign rights away before even recovering from giving birth. I remember physically pulling the phone from my ear and making a face, as I thought, I am speaking to the enemy here, the people I’ve spent years as a reproductive justice supporter opposing. That social worker did not communicate any empathy or concern for the pregnant woman she was basically offering up to me as vessel for baby. We passed.

Less coercively, we also passed on a situation in which, after the mother gave birth, she refused to see the child, or even learn the baby’s gender. While we aspired to an open adoption, there was, I’ll be honest, this one moment of this little inkling, that’d be easy, clean, done, followed by a much more sober feeling that the situation harkened too much of deep shame and anger. Wouldn’t the baby sense that kind of huge rejection? I felt so sorry for the woman who gave birth in such utter secrecy (she'd hidden her pregnancy from her five year-old child and her partner, whom she lived with and who was not the father of this brand-new baby). The photo of her hardened, angry face scared us, and since the entire "matching" process is oddly arcane and random and finally brings you to believing in kismet, we passed on no contact ever.

The thing about open adoption is that not only is so much unknown when two families that previously were not connected join together in this unconventional way, but there is no road map, no set script, no compass let alone GPS system. Fellow writer and friend, Dawn Friedman, has been chronicling her family's experience--a very open adoption--in articles and on her blog, This Woman's Work; just this past week, Madison, Friedman’s five and a half year-old daughter, became a big sister when her first mother, Pennie, gave birth to son Roscoe. In her openness--to Pennie, to Madison's feelings, to writing about their process--Friedman affirms that these relationships are rich and complicated, and that love is not solely a simple, straightforward thing, even when it's given freely.