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Saturday, Nov 28, 2009
Attorney Danciu decided to help write a bill proposing a Florida paternity registry after defending the adoptive parents of controversial "Baby Emily," a Florida child whose biological father, a convicted rapist, had claimed -- long after the adoption -- that he wanted the child, despite the fact that he had failed to show up at early court hearings about the adoption. The court eventually granted custody of the child to her adoptive parents.
The measure didn't receive much support from Florida's conservative state government, despite lobbying from the state's adoption community. Some male senators laughed and called it a "sex registry," recalls Danciu. Others were concerned about confidentiality in a state where all public records are open to the public unless they are awarded a special exemption. What if a man had an extramarital affair, registered it, and his wife somehow saw it? wondered the lawmakers. "Lists can be dangerous," state Sen. John McKay told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel at the time.
Recalls state Sen. Debby Sanderson, "When we were talking about a paternity registry, one senator said 'That could wreck a married man's life.'"
The bill died, but legislators, still concerned about paternal rights and cases like that of Baby Emily, came up with what they thought was a better idea. Instead of forcing men to disclose messy details of their lives in order to have a say in a baby's future, the mothers would have to publicly advertise their sexual histories in newspapers to give the men a chance to identify themselves -- or not. This alternative plan, which became part of the new adoption statute, became law in October 2001: The 106-page statute was pushed through the system in just two days. Only eight senators voted against it.
The notice provision requires that women who cannot identify the fathers of children up for private adoption take out ads that list their names, addresses and physical description, along with the names of all of the men they had sex with during the 12 months before the baby was born. The ads have to run once a week for four weeks in all the cities where the baby could have been conceived. If a woman had sex with 20 men in 20 cities, she is required to buy newspaper ads in all of them.
Although there is no official count, adoption professionals guess that the law has affected hundreds of mothers since it was signed into law. Jeanne Tate, an adoption lawyer and executive vice president of the Florida Association of Adoption Professionals, says that during one recent week she helped 10 of her clients place ads; since October, her office has placed 50. Her guess is that hundreds of ads have been run in the last 10 months.
The cost for the ads can be prohibitive: One ad might cost a few hundred dollars, but a sexually active woman who has moved around a lot could end up paying thousands of dollars. (The legislators made exemptions for state adoptions so that the state wouldn't have to pay the cost of the ads; only those who choose private adoption are forced to take out ads).
But the humiliation and potential danger inherent in publicly announcing sexual encounters with vanished or forgotten partners is far more debilitating than the cost of the ads. Melissa, a pregnant 18-year-old student, is now required to publish a notice in a Bronx newspaper about her one-night stand with a man she barely remembers.
"I'm disgusted," she says. "I don't feel that I should have to put my sexual history in a public newspaper. It's embarrassing enough that I made a mistake and have to do this. I'm going to college and don't want anyone to know. I'm [giving up the baby] to change my life. But this makes me feel ashamed."
Nancy, a 41-year-old Palm Beach County mother, says she was impregnated by a violent boyfriend who subsequently locked her out of her home and disappeared when it came time to sign any paperwork for the adoption. Fortunately, she gave birth before the new law went into effect: Without paternal permission, she would have had to put ads in the papers.
"Given his past behavior, if I had published his name in the paper for everyone else to see, it could have triggered something unpleasant. I would have had to hide from him," she says. She also had concealed the pregnancy from her family: "A newspaper record of this would have estranged me from my family. It's a huge invasion of privacy."
