ADOPTION DEAL QUESTIONED: From the Indianapolis Star

When Stephen F. Melinger visited the newborn twins he was adopting at Methodist Hospital in April, health care workers became alarmed. On one occasion, the New Jersey man showed up with a live bird in his pocket. On another, the shoulder of his shirt was stained with bird feces.

After Melinger, a single, 58-year-old schoolteacher, indicated he was planning to drive the infants back to New Jersey by himself, child welfare authorities were called. He was unprepared to parent, hospital workers believed, and didn't even seem to realize the babies would need feedings every three hours.

Melinger's actions prompted a child welfare case in Marion Superior Court that has raised questions about Surrogate Mothers Inc., the Indiana company that arranged the infants' births to a married woman from South Carolina, and about the legality of the Hamilton County adoptions, which the company also handled. ...

This case could test Indiana's lack of regulation of surrogate births and laws governing the strict confidentiality of adoption records that prevent even judges and social workers from gaining access.

In an unusual order this past week that opened the Melinger proceedings to the public, Marion Superior Court Judge Marilyn A. Moores wrote that the adoption transaction could constitute felony "child selling." ...

Melinger has filed paperwork with the adoption court suggesting he is the biological father.

Moores will decide what happens to the Melinger babies, saying that until she's assured the children will be safe, "they're not going anywhere." The twins, Kathy Zee and Karen Zaria Melinger, are in a foster home, under the supervision of the state's Department of Child Services. One of the babies, Kathy Zee, is on oxygen full time. The court has granted Melinger weekly supervised visitation. ...

Two Indiana adoption agencies say Melinger would have had difficulty securing a traditional adoption.

"I couldn't say that in our history we've ever placed with a 58-year-old single man," said Julie Craft, founder, president and administrative director of the Adoption Support Center in Indianapolis, which has been in business 19 years. ...

Melinger's infant daughters, whom court records indicate are white, were born April 8 to Zaria Nkoya Huffman, a 23-year-old black woman with two children of her own. Melinger hired her through Surrogate Mothers, which recruits clients, surrogates and egg donors on the Internet. The source of the eggs is unclear. ...

In Indiana, surrogate births occupy a gray area where anything goes because family law has not kept pace with reproductive technology. Surrogacy contracts are not illegal, but they cannot be enforced in court.

Critics have said the contracts constitute "child selling" or "profiting from an adoption," both of which are felonies. These charges never have been brought against anyone in Indiana in connection with surrogate births. Litz once criticized a Marion County judge who had suggested he was facilitating criminal activity. ...

"He said he was looking forward to retirement very soon, and he could not imagine not having children in his life," said Thurston, who asked why a bachelor in his late 50s would want to adopt infants. "He said he thought he had at least 20 years to give them." ...

The surrogate mother, Huffman, is following developments from afar.

After the births, she and her husband signed away any rights to the children. Still, she proudly displays their photos in her South Carolina living room, along with pictures of her own family.

"I would rather take them myself than see them in foster care," said Huffman, who feels a sense of responsibility for the twin infants' fates. "If I had not done what I did, they would not be here."

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posted by Eve at 6:57 PM | link

2 Comments:

At 10/17/2006 4:46 PM,  W. Conner one of their old foster sisters said...

Tell the twins that they are really speical to us and that all of the conners miss them very much hope to see them soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

At 10/17/2006 5:08 PM,  maggie said...

W. Conner do you know what happened to the twin? Maggie

 

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