Before perspective adoptive parents can accept a match, they must weight a variety of medical and legal issues. What risks should parents consider and how do you know if a match is right for you? Host Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national infertility & adoption education and support nonprofit, interviews James Fletcher Thompson, an adoption attorney in South Carolina and a fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys since 1993; and Dr. Lisa Prock, a pediatrician specializing in adoption medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard University, on the legal and medical risks in domestic infant adoption.
Legal:
- Is it possible to adopt on your own, or do you have to use an adoption agency or adoption attorney to adopt a baby?
- What is the difference between an agency, attorney, facilitator and consultant.
- Is it advisable to adopt without the help of an agency or attorney?
- What is meant by an adoption friendly state? Is there a state that is better than others to try to find an expectant mom who may want to place her child for adoption?
- What are the different time periods that expectant parents or birth parents have to change their mind?
- As you assess legal risks of domestic infant adoption what are some factors you should consider?
- Is it possible for a birth family to get the child back after an adoption is complete?
- Who gets to make decisions for the baby in the hospital?
- What are some of the legal issues with birth fathers?
- Can a birth grandparent challenge an adoption?
- What are some red flags that you’ve seen that adoptive families should be wary of when adopting a baby in the US?
Medical:
- What are the most dangerous drugs or substances that an expectant woman can take as far as impact on the fetus and baby?
- Impact of alcohol on a fetus and baby, both short term and long term?
- Impact of opiates (prescription and non-prescription) on a fetus and baby, both short term and long term?
- Impact of methadone on a fetus and baby, both short term and long term?
- Impact of heroin on baby, both short term and long term?
- Impact of methamphetamines on a baby, both short term and long term?
- Impact of marijuana on a baby, both short term and long term?
- Is their an effect on the baby is the mother smokes tobacco during pregnany?
- Is the impact to the child less if the child is not born dependent on the drugs?
- Timing of exposure to drugs or alcohol during pregnancy.
- If the birth mother stopped using drugs and drinking when she found out she was pregnant, will the baby be spared the worst of the impact?
- What are the risks to the baby if the mother has Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C?
- What is the heritability of certain mental illnesses?
- Bipolar
- Schizophrenia
- Depression
- Antisocial behaviors
- Is ADHD inheritable?
- Should adoptive parents worry if the expectant mom has not had prenatal care?
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