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Ruling overturns adoption measure
An appellate court tosses the law forcing birth moms to advertise their sexual histories.
©Associated Press
April 24, 2003
WEST PALM BEACH -- The 4th District Court of Appeal struck down a law Wednesday that requires birth mothers who want to give a child up for adoption to publicize their sexual histories in newspaper ads.
The state's lawyers had refused to defend the law, which came under heavy criticism because it required all mothers, including rape victims and underage girls, to publicly disclose potentially embarrassing and invasive information. Adoption advocates said the law even encouraged abortions.
"It subjected women to public humiliation and harassment for no benefit," said Mariann Wang, an attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
The court said the law "violates a fundamental right to privacy" and "substantially interferes" with a woman's independence in choosing adoption and the right not to disclose intimate personal information.
The three-judge panel added that the state failed to show how the rights of the father or the state could outweigh "the privacy rights of mother and child in not being identified in such a personal, intimate and intrusive manner."
The law requires a mother to list her name, age and physical description, along with descriptions of any men who could have fathered the child and the name and age of the child. The ads must run once a week for four weeks in a newspaper in every city where the child could have been conceived.
When lawmakers overwhelmingly signed off on the bill two years ago, they cited the three-year fight over Baby Emily, whose father, a convicted rapist, contested her adoption.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that Emily's adoptive parents should keep her, but told lawmakers to set a deadline for challenging adoptions.
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