By David Castellon with Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

Of the hundreds of teenage girls going through unplanned pregnancies that Karen Pringle deals with in her job, few — maybe 1 percent — tell her they plan to put their babies up for adoption.

Pringle and others who work with teenage and pregnant girls in Tulare County say rarely does the subject of adoption come up. And when it does, the girls and young women often don’t think much of the idea.

Pringle is perinatal services coordinator for the Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency.

Maricela Lupercio, director of Latinos4Life, an anti-abortion group based in Visalia, said adoption seems to be particularly taboo among Hispanic girls and young women.

She recounted a recent conversation with a woman who had an abortion at 15, became pregnant again and gave birth to a child.

She now is pregnant for the third time at 19 and was considering another abortion, Lupercio said. “I asked her if she had ever considered adoption, and she said, ‘Oh, no. I could never do that.’ ”

Lupercio said that for some girls, particularly Hispanics, adoption has a bad image — even worse than abortion for some.

“As far as I know and [among] the people who I know and I’ve met, in the Hispanic culture, it’s not as common to adopt babies,” she said.

So a lot of Hispanic girls often aren’t exposed to adoption and never see the positive outcomes of it, Lupercio explained.

They believe “adoption is some taboo thing to do,” and it just doesn’t enter their minds as an option in dealing with unplanned or unwanted pregnancies.

Sharon Phillips, a school nurse who teaches health and sex education classes for 12 Tulare County school districts, the closest being the Tulare Joint Union High and Farmersville Unified school districts, agrees.

“I never hear adoption [brought up] very much,” she said.

Sex education instructors contacted for this report said abortion or adoption aren’t part of their curriculums. And if students bring those subjects up during their classes, their responses usually are limited.

For example, “If they were to ask me, I would tell them where they could go to ask about adoption,” said Aracelly Oros, program coordinator for the Proteus Inc. Community Challenge Grant, which provides comprehensive sex education classes to Visalia middle and high schools.

It’s not something many parents or friends of pregnant teens want to hear either, said Shyla Erich-Smith, a Tulare-based adoption attorney.

“It seems to be a theme that I’ve heard that they’re being pressured to keep the children by their peers, by their parents. There just seems to be a cultural thing in this area,” she said.

And that pressure can lead to some bad decisions, including girls hiding their pregnancies — or at least trying to — so they can have their babies adopted without family and friends finding out, Erich-Smith said.

During her murder trial in October, Nancy Ortiz testified she had hidden from her family three pregnancies, secretly had given birth over nearly two years and had abandoned all three newborns in her Orosi neighborhood.

One of those babies died of hypothermia.

Ortiz, 24, convicted of second-degree murder and child abuse, claimed she never considered abortion or adoption because she didn’t believe her family would have allowed her to do either, even though she was an adult.

Erich-Smith said she’s had several clients who have hidden their pregnancies by wearing baggy clothes, as Ortiz did.

Many pregnant minors aren’t aware that the law says they can make decisions about their babies that their parents can’t override even though they aren’t adults, said Peggy Schulze, adoption services manager for Chrysalis House Inc., a Fresno-based adoption agency.

Still, even with the law on the minor parents’ side, some still give in to family and peer pressure in deciding whether to keep their babies, Erich-Smith said.

Adding to the pressure on young parents is the belief that once they arrange an adoption, they never will see their children again, Schulze said. “It just doesn’t seem a positive choice.”

But that’s not necessarily true, as those sorts of “closed adoptions” aren’t the only options available, she said.

“A closed adoption is where [a mother] may or may not choose the adoptive parents, but there is no identifying information exchanged, there is no contact after placement. That is very, very rare now. Most women don’t choose closed adoption,” Schulze explained. “Most women want to know how their child is doing down the road. They want updates. They want pictures, and we explain to them they have this right.”

As such, the birth mother — and the baby’s father, if he chooses to be involved — have options ranging from periodically receiving photos and updates on the child to having occasional visits with the child to becoming extended family, depending on the agreement made with the adoptive family, Schulze and Erich-Smith said.

In addition, the birth parents can set guidelines for choosing the adoptive parents, including religion, race and whether there already are other children in a household.

In adoptions arranged by lawyers and adoption agencies, mothers can choose to meet with potential adoptive parents and pick who will get their babies.

If birth parents don’t want to deal with a lawyer or private adoption agency, the county’s Health and Human Services Agency also has an adoption unit, said Kathleen Trevino, the agency’s adoption team leader.

“They can give us some parameters [for selecting adoptive parents], but a lot of our families aren’t looking to do open adoptions like the private agencies,” she said.

Health and Human Services doesn’t have as extensive a list of people looking to adopt as adoption lawyers and adoption agencies may have, Trevino added.

Parents working to adopt their children through the county would have to surrender those children to the county through a relinquishment process that can begin before the child is born but can’t be finalized until after the birth and the mother has been released from the hospital.

Adoption lawyers and adoption agencies may offer counseling to the birth mothers and fathers before and after the adoptions, and Trevino said her office’s social workers can provide counseling or refer the parents to Tulare County Mental Health Services if they need more extensive treatment.

Newborns given up through California’s Safe Surrender Program also may be put up for adoption, though parents have a 14-day cooling period to change their minds and reclaim their children. After the 14 days, parent may still be able to regain custody of their surrendered children once authorities determine they are fit to care for them.

In some cases, parents may not have choices about adoptions if their children are removed from their custody because of abuse or neglect.

“In most cases, we try unification” to bring the families back together, which may involve parenting classes, substance-abuse counseling or the resolution of the situations that resulted in the children being removed, said Charlotte Wittig, a Tulare County Superior Court commissioner whose duties include overseeing adoptions of children who have become county dependents.

In the year ended last June 30, 123 children who were county dependents were adopted, down from 204 in the previous year, according to Health and Human Services records. Since July 1, 70 county dependents have had their adoptions finalized.

By David Castellon with Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

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