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Jane |
Some years after I gave up my daughter Rebecca, a close friend, unmarried, confided she was pregnant and was considering adoption for her child. "At least I know he will be well taken care of," she said. By then I had represented adoptees accused of crimes in juvenile court and I
knew that adoption did not always deliver the ideal life. I shot back "You won't even know if he gets enough for dinner. The only way to be sure he's well-taken care of is to raise him yourself." My friend kept her son and he is the joy of her life.
Of course there are extraordinary circumstances which make raising your own child impossible but if it's possible, my advice still holds: raise your child yourself. Adoption is a lottery, as John Sales portrayed in his excellent 2003 film,
Casa de los Babys.
Tory and Quinn Carlson and their sister lost that lottery. The boys, 18 and 16 respectively, were shot dead in a chicken coop, along with their mother, Lana, and a neighbor who happened to be there, by their step-father, David Wayne Campbell. They had been adopted from Russia by Lana and her first husband who