Longstanding Taboos Tossed Aside : Couples Seeking to Adopt a Baby Use Classified Ads

When they got married back in 1977, Chris and Susan planned to have children, but the notion did not become an obsession for the Central Illinois attorney and his ballet instructor wife until they hit their 30s and their careers were on track.

The couple went through batteries of tests to find out why Susan was not conceiving. They followed all sorts of medical suggestions to facilitate the process; Chris wore loose boxer shorts, he slept with cold compresses, they tried artificial insemination. But there was no child.

Adoption agencies turned them down flat or promised years of delays in producing an adoptable infant. Undaunted, they took their quest for a baby to an arena traditionally reserved for those seeking used cars, jobs or apartments to rent--the classified ads.

“My wife and I are happily married and interested in adopting an infant,” read the ad they bought in selected college newspapers in the state earlier this year. “If you know of anyone who is considering placing a child for adoption, please call collect. . . .”

More and more, childless couples like Susan and Chris are turning to advertising to accomplish what nature and the established agencies have so far been unable to. And from Portland, Me., to Sun City, Ariz., college papers, general circulation dailies, weeklies and even throwaway “shoppers” crammed with grocery coupons have been tossing aside longstanding taboos and accepting such solicitations.

“We’ve given some thought to billboards, but I don’t know how much it would cost,” said Chris, who asked that the couple’s last name not be published because of the fear of crank calls.

As birth control, legalized abortion and the aging of the baby boomer generation strain the supply of adoptable white infants, experts agree that couples are increasingly turning to ads as a faster, easier and, in some cases, cheaper path to finding children than through agencies.

“If you want something, you’ve got to go out and get it,” insisted Vivian Soballe, a Chicago psychotherapist who has used classifieds and even a plea painted on a busstop bench to find her three adopted youngsters. “ . . . It’s not commercializing. This way the couple are doing something for themselves. They’re not just at the mercy of some bureaucrats from the agencies.”

Critics contend the trend is ominous, turning infants into exploitable commodities while making it easier for lawyers to broker adoptions by getting around laws in most states that forbid them to directly solicit babies for their clients. Instead, couples, typically coached by their attorneys, place the ads, set up special phone lines in their homes to field initial queries from pregnant women, boyfriends or parents, and then refer callers to lawyers who do the rest of the work.

“These ads are placed essentially to lure young (pregnant) women into a situation which is not in their best interests or sometimes that of the babies,” complained Jeffrey Rosenberg, policy director for the Washington-based National Committee for Adoption, a Washington-based lobby for adoption agencies. “ . . . If I wanted to open a falafel stand on the street, I’d have to get certification from the state or city, but in 45 states you (attorneys) don’t have to have any special license to arrange an adoption.”

Lawyers Cite Abuses

While even adoption lawyers admit that baby selling and other abuses go on, advocates of the independent route say concerns such as Rosenberg’s are unfounded because all states require court-supervised scrutiny of a couple’s fitness, financial status and home environment before approving an adoption no matter how it was arranged. Laws vary, but most states forbid couples involved in a private adoption to spend anything on the birth mother other than her legitimate medical costs.

In Sacramento, Jim Brown, head of the adoptions branch of the California State Department of Social Services, calls advertising a “gray area” that could enhance the prospects of many children’s being placed in good homes. “On the other hand, it looks like it’s a commercial enterprise,” he said. “The jury is still out on whether it serves a public purpose.”

Glenna Weith, a Champaign, Ill., attorney whose firm handles 50 to 75 adoptions a year, said medical and legal costs for her clients average between $4,500 and $6,500 a baby, though charges can go much higher if the natural mother or infant have medical complications. Many private adoption agencies charge thousands of dollars more, but frequently provide counseling and housing for the natural mother as well as other services.

“It’s no more lucrative than a real estate closing,” said Weith, who charges her adoption clients regular fees of between $75 and $150 an hour.

Demand Is Up

The growing turf battle between agencies and lawyers underscores how tight the market for available babies has become. Simply--albeit crassly--put, demand is up and supply is down.

Statistics are shaky, but the National Committee for Adoption estimates that at any time 2 million couples, most of them with fertility problems, might be considering adoption, though far fewer are actively trying. A survey by the group found the number of adoptions in the United States dipped from a peak of 175,000 in 1970 to around 142,000 in 1982. Even that is misleading because most of the cases involved youngsters adopted by relatives or step-parents, or children who were handicapped or in foster care.

At present, Rosenberg estimated that only about 20,000 healthy, American-born infants become available for adoption each year by non-relatives and virtually all are snapped up immediately. Making things even tougher is the fact that, while black babies are more readily available, most white couples insist on a white baby. Another 10,000 foreign-born infants are imported annually to satisfy adoption demand, double the rate of only five years ago, Rosenberg said.

Meanwhile, more and more two-career couples have found that they have postponed attempts at family rearing until one or both of them has passed their fertility peaks.

Fertility Drugs Failed

Chris, 32, and Susan, 34, are a case in point. When fertility drugs and other techniques failed to produce a pregnancy, they applied to adoption agencies. Catholic Social Services here in Danville turned them down because Susan is a Methodist. LDS Social Services said Mormons get first crack at their babies. The Children’s Home and Aid Society in Rockford said it serves only northern Illinois residents while Counseling and Family Services of Peoria wrote back to say the wait would be “five years or longer.”

All but two of the 32 licensed agencies in Illinois turned them down flat, and even those two were less than encouraging. That is when they went to an attorney in nearby Champaign, who advised them to install a special phone line--they call it “the baby phone”--and then to advertise the number. So far this year it has rung only once with what the couple considers a legitimate query, a man claiming to have fathered a child illegitimately. They referred him to their lawyer, but heard nothing more of it.

Still, they found the call encouraging. “One call, that tells us that it works,” said Chris. “That was the first positive response we’ve gotten on anything.”

Robyn Quinter, co-president of Families for Private Adoption, a support group based in the Washington, D.C., area, said advertising has cut the average time it takes members to adopt a child down from several years to nine months. Some people get six to seven legitimate responses in a week, said Quinter, who found a baby girl through the classifieds in 1984 and then adopted the infant’s newborn half-brother the next year.

The group holds seminars on advertising strategy where couples can pick up tips on how to word ads and where to place them. Quinter’s advice: concentrate on small, rural area papers rather than those in big cities. “You’re looking for a population group where they may not be as sophisticated in terms of information about birth control, a strong fundamentalist area where the anti-abortion message would be quite strong and there might be a stigma against single mothers,” she said.

Unplanned Pregnancies

Campus newspapers are also good, she explained, because virtually all female readers are of the prime age for having an unplanned pregnancy, and college women with moral or religious qualms about abortion might be more inclined to surrender a baby than have it hinder their careers.

“A lot of people think it can lead to exploitation,” Quinter said, “but I think it’s an opportunity. You’re presenting a young (unwed) mother with another option of what to do with her child.”

While agencies normally insist on complete anonymity for birth mothers, Washington adoption attorney Mark Eckman said ads give natural and adoptive parents a chance to check each other out in much the same way singles ads provide opportunities to meet prospective mates. “It’s very much like a blind date or a courtship,” he said. “It can be love at first sight or a complete turnoff.”

Ads Refused by Some

Some publications refuse adoption ads as a matter of policy. Darrell George, an advertising executive with the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, said his paper stopped accepting adoption ads 18 months ago after the state attorney general’s office expressed concern. “It’s extremely difficult to check out the people placing the ads,” said George, who expressed fears that some advertisers might actually be profiteers trying to exploit pregnant women.

Similarly, Harry Thiel, general manager of the Illinois State University Bidette, said his paper considered running such ads too risky. “We’re worried someone might get hurt,” he said. “We’re not sure if there’s a girl in a dorm who becomes pregnant whether she’s in a proper emotional state (to make these kinds of decisions).”

But other papers are coming to a different conclusion. Donald Longacre, classified director for the Chicago based Pulitzer-Lerner weekly newspapers, said the 50 paper chain began accepting private adoption ads two months ago. The policy change is “a sign of the the times,” Longacre said. “It’s more acceptable now. Fifteen years ago we were among the first newspapers to accept dating service advertisements.”

The Chicago suburban Life newspaper chain has taken the process a step further, offering discounts on adoption classifieds. “By the time people come to put an ad in the newspaper they’ve probably spent thousands of dollars to try to have a child and we don’t think we should profit on someone else’s misfortune,” said Arlene Voss, the chain’s assistant classified advertising manager.

Voss, who admits to getting “very marshmallowy” when she talks about the subject, says she knows of at least 35 babies who have been placed through Life ads. She keeps in touch with some of the adoptive parents and covers her desk with pictures of the infants.

The Los Angeles Times will not accept ads from couples but only from state approved adoption agencies, an advertising executive said. “There’s always the frightful danger of exploitation, especially where there is a large immigrant population,” the spokesman explained.

Agencies Run Ads

Though agency officials criticize private adoption ads, many agencies themselves run classifieds. Harris Van Oort, executive director of the Nebraska Children’s Home Society, said his organization often buys space in the Omaha World Herald and other Nebraska newspapers to “keep the voice alive” about the adoption alternative.”

“We live in the consumer age,” he explained. “If you want something, you go out and get it.”

That is exactly what Mark, a 41-year-old Chicago dentist, and Laura, his 38-year-old schoolteacher wife, are doing. They tried fertility drugs and other medical techniques for seven years before turning to adoption agencies, only to find that many agencies automatically reject couples in their late 30s as too old to adopt. Over the last two months they have spent $1,200 on newspaper ads and fielded several calls as a result, some pranks, some obscene and some seemingly on the up and up. One caller offered to sell what he claimed was his wife’s baby for $10,000, Mark said.

Despite such frustrations, the couple vow to keep plugging away. “When you’re younger and successful at an early age you think you can do anything you want to,” Mark said. “We didn’t see any problems with fertility ahead. . . . All I want is one baby and then I’m out of business. I’m going to take my baby phone and put it in the alley and then run over it.”

Times researcher Wendy Leopold in Chicago also contributed to this story.