PRLog (Press Release) - Dec 30, 2006 -
For 16 months, Allison Quets relied on the courts to reunite her with her children. She retained an attorney and filed for the return of her infant twins within hours of signing the consent forms for their adoption. Now charged with kidnapping, Quets’ story raises a multitude of questions about adoption, and the circumstances which led her to flee to Canada with the twins.
Faced with intense pressure to surrender her newborns for adoption, Allison Quets contacted anti-adoption activist Jessica DelBalzo. Through her organization, Adoption: Legalized Lies, DelBalzo put Quets in touch with volunteers who advised her to seek legal counsel and revoke the consent that she had unwillingly given. “This advice, along with words of support and encouragement, is typical of what we tell all parents who come to us for help confronting the loss of their children,” DelBalzo says.
The activist, involved in the movement to abolish adoption for nearly ten years, continues, “Quets’ story is indicative of many problems with the way adoption is handled.”
DelBalzo says she has been in touch with countless mothers and fathers who were coerced into surrendering their children. Their attempts to use the court system to lobby for the return of their babies have been met with legal roadblocks, media criticism, and financial strain.
“I’ve never told a mother to take her baby and run, but I’ve often thought it,” DelBalzo says. “Justice rarely prevails in these cases. The odds are stacked against these parents from the very beginning.”
DelBalzo and her fellow anti-adoption activists blame a culture that is biased in favor of adoption for the unnecessary separation of infant children and their parents.
“A mother says, ‘I want my baby.’ You don’t tell her to wait. You don’t make her get a lawyer. You return her baby,” DelBalzo says. “The whole process shouldn’t take a week, let alone a year or more.”
DelBalzo argues, “The would-be adoptive couples who withhold a wanted baby – those are the real kidnappers.”
