Catholic Charities agencies work
to fight adoption myths

By Brandon A. Evans

November is National Adoption Month, but it isn’t the only time of the year that adoption agencies have to fight myths about their work.

Keith Stormes, director of Catholic Charities New Albany, said that Hollywood in particular “has done such a disservice to adoption.”

Part of Catholic Charities New Albany, St. Elizabeth operates a residential program for pregnant women and also places infants for adoption in both Indiana and Kentucky.

Since 1989, when St. Elizabeth opened, 65 babies have been adopted from there.

Stormes said one of the biggest myths is that people may go through long court battles over custody when one party changes their mind after an adoption has been finalized.

Another myth, said Michelle Meer, director of St. Elizabeth and Coleman Adoption and Pregnancy Services in Indianapolis, is that adoptions are still mostly closed and secretive.

It has been a year since the agency’s merger with Coleman, and Meer said that adoptions are at a record high—they are projecting about 30 by year’s end—thanks in part to an adoption awareness program that she is helping to promote into the community.

“There are still people today who believe that a birth mother has no other choices when she chooses adoption,” Meer said.

In reality, the way in which the process unfolds is determined by how open the birth mother and adoptive parents want to be.

It’s something that Sarah, a birth mother living in Columbus who placed her daughter for adoption two years ago, has experienced.

While pregnant in 2003, “Sarah”—who has two teenagers and a young son—determined that God was pointing her in the direction of adoption.

When she came into contact with St. Elizabeth and Coleman, she said she “was really impressed with the immediate love and care.”

From the start, her plan was put into the context of “a loving choice,” and everything that the staff did reinforced that the adoption—all aspects of it—was her choice at each moment.

In a process similar to Catholic Charities New Albany, St. Elizabeth and Coleman present birth mothers with albums of information about different adoptive families.

It’s enough to know virtually every detail, Sarah said. From there, the amount of contact to have with the family—both pre- and post-birth—is decided together.

There is even a checklist, Sarah said, that goes step-by-step through the options that a birth mother can choose, from how much information and family history to give the adoptive family to how many updates and letters the birth mother wants to receive regarding her child in the years to come.

“There’s lots of options,” she said. “They can set up this adoption almost any way they want.”

The whole process has been good not just for her, but for her whole family. Sarah’s older children feel a connection to their younger sister, and she said that the adoptive family has said that they didn’t adopt just a child, but a family.

Sarah said that she has not only recommended St. Elizabeth and Coleman to

others, but has given talks at the local pregnancy center in Columbus to encourage mothers to make a similar loving choice.

Even more so, Sarah, who is not Catholic, said that the experience broadened her spirituality. She said she went into the process wanting a family “on fire for Christ,” and the family she decided on was Catholic.

“It really opened up my eyes … that God works so incredibly,” she said.

Because the birth mother has so much freedom in deciding on an adoptive family, Stormes said, it means that he can never tell adoptive families how long the wait for a child will be—in some cases it is six weeks, in some it is five years.

Nonetheless, the process is open to all who want to adopt, he said, regardless of income. There is a fee involved, he said, but it is based on a percentage of income.

“We don’t cater to the rich—it’s not like buying a baby,” he said.

Sarah said that while the adoptive family in her case probably thinks that they were the ones that received the most, she sees it as the reverse.

“Probably the largest gift that I’ve ever received is having this place in my life,” she said. “I know that [my daughter] is loved and adored and taken care of and nurtured.”

(To contact St. Elizabeth and Coleman, call 317-787-341. To contact St. Elizabeth at Catholic Charities New Albany, call 812-949-730. For more information, log on to www.CatholicCharitiesIndy.org.) †