A recent New York Times article, “Unwed Fathers Fight for Babies Placed for Adoption by Mothers,” (Tamar Lewin, March 19, 2006) is a must-read piece about the issue of putative father registries, which we've recently discussed in this blog. I’ve provided the link to the Times article here, but will also quote from the piece in my post, below.

The article begins with the story of Jeremiah Jones, who learned that his former fiancée was pregnant only three weeks before her due date. What’s more, he didn’t hear this news from her, but from the adoption agency’s lawyer, who called to inform him that the woman was planning an adoption. The lawyer asked Jones to relinquish his rights, but Jones did not want to.

"I said absolutely not," said Mr. Jones, a 23-year-old Arizona man who met his ex-fiancée at Pensacola Christian College in Florida. "It was an awkward moment, hearing for the first time that I would be a father, and then right away being told, 'We want to take your kid away.' But I knew that if I was having a baby, I wanted that baby."

Mr. Jones has never seen his son, now 18 months old. Instead, he lost his parental rights because of his failure to file with a state registry for unwed fathers — something he learned of only after it was too late.

Under Florida law, and that of other states, an unmarried father has no right to withhold consent for adoption unless he has registered with the state putative father registry before an adoption petition is filed. Mr. Jones missed the deadline.

Of course, the reason he missed the deadline is that he wasn’t aware of the pregnancy, and like most men, he had no idea he had to register with the government in order to maintain his parental rights.

About 30 states have putative father registries, but as with all laws relating to adoption, the rules are different in every state. No matter how the plans work, however, it seems clear that the registries do not exist in order to uphold fathers’ rights, but instead work to protect the adopting parents from the heartbreak of overturned adoptions. A common reason for an adoption to be challenged and/or disrupted is that the biological father was never told of the baby's existence, or given the opportunity to raise his child himself.

The article quotes Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, as to why the registries are a bad idea. "It's all smoke and mirrors," Mr. Pertman said. "How can registries work if no one's heard of them? And it's just not reasonable to expect that men will register every time they have sex."

Many men think that the only purpose of registries is to clear the path for more adoptions to move forward. Birthfather Erik L. Smith, quoted in the Times article, agrees. "As long as registries aren't publicized, I think they just work as a way to get rid of fathers like me."

According to the article, one in every three American babies has unwed parents. This means that the situation is far too common for us to cling to archaic and nonsensical loopholes like putative father registries. These registries do nothing to serve the mother, the father, or the child. Instead, they support the interests of an adoption business that is trying to make more babies available for hopeful adoptive parents--no strings attached.