[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 94 (Friday, June 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8123-S8124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                ``WHY ADOPTIVE PARENTS FIGHT FOR KIDS''

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there are few things that have moved 
me as much in recent years as the tragic case of ``Baby Richard,'' who 
was taken by the Illinois Supreme Court from his adoptive parents at 
the age of four and given to his natural parents who had abandoned him 
upon birth. As an adoptive parent myself, I cannot believe the pain 
with which this family has been afflicted and the emotional harm and 
scars that will be part of the life of Richard, unfortunately.
  The other day, I happened to see in the New York Daily News an 
article by Michael Quinn, on the staff of Time magazine, who is also an 
adoptive parent.
  His article is titled, ``Why adoptive parents fight for kids.''
  It tells the story very simply but meaningfully.
  I ask that his story be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

              [From the New York Daily News, June 6, 1995]

                  Why Adoptive Parents Fight for Kids

                           (By Michael Quinn)

       Already it ranks as one of the most shameful images of our 
     time: Chicago's 4-year-old ``Baby Richard'' being slowly 
     pried from the arms of the family with whom he shared every 
     memory of his tiny universe and whisked off by strangers with 
     whom he shared nothing but DNA.
       You didn't need much to join in a nation's sense of 
     heartache--just two eyes and a soul. [[Page S8124]] 
       Yet even now, some ask: Why didn't they just give up? When 
     the biological father first pressed his case, why didn't the 
     ``Does'' simply hand the child over and spare him and 
     themselves a greatly amplified agony four years later?
       For the answer, consider the story of two New Yorkers, 
     Cameron and Brandon Baldanza--a local Baby Richard case with 
     a vastly different ending.
       Cameron, born in September 1989, and Brandon, born a year 
     later, were abandoned at the hospital by their biological 
     mother, Magaly Galindo. To be sure, Galindo did leave the 
     boys something to remember her by--an addiction to the heroin 
     she pumped into her system throughout the two pregnancies.
       Fortunately, there was someone unwilling to walk away from 
     Cameron and Brandon: Millie Baldanza, a first cousin to 
     Galindo, who took the boys into her home and into her heart, 
     knowing in advance they entered the world as junkies.
       With her husband, Jimmie, Millie nursed the two kids 
     through a nightmare no parent would want to imagine, let 
     alone experience--the body-quaking ordeal of drug withdrawal. 
     Brandon and Cameron survived--and thrived.
       Meanwhile, Galindo and the boys' birth father, Jose Diaz, 
     were working as hard at being strangers as the Baldanzas were 
     at being parents. They had virtually no contact with the boys 
     for two years, making their very first appearance in court 
     six months after the Child Welfare Administration began 
     proceedings to terminate their parental rights.
       Millie and Jimmie could have given up then. It would have 
     been hard to blame
      them, given Child Welfare's blatant bias for ``family 
     preservation''--social-workerese for the philosophy that 
     nothing is worse for a child than adoption. Or they might 
     have tossed in the towel last summer, when Brandon and 
     Cameron were forced into extended stays with their now-
     you-see-them, now-you-don't birth parents.
       But Millie and Jimmie did not give up. And early last 
     month, less than a week after the taking of Baby Richard, 
     Judge Marjory Fields of the Bronx Family Court ordered the 
     return of Brandon and Cameron to the Baldanzas at the end of 
     this month--a delay only so they can finish the school term.
       Fields based her decision on testimony from expert 
     witnesses who concluded ``the children have suffered grievous 
     harm from being removed from the [Baldanzas'] care.''
       The experts backed up that grim diagnosis with tales of 
     caseworkers forcing the screaming children into taxis for 
     visits with Diaz and Galindo, of Cameron cowering in his 
     closet and complaining of chest pains and headaches when the 
     visits were increased.
       The prognosis for the boys if they were taken from the 
     Baldanzas: ``personality disorder, clinical depression''--
     perhaps even suicide.
       That would have been the fate of Cameron and Brandon had 
     Millie and Jimmie decided to let their kids be abandoned for 
     a second time. And tragically, it may well be what lies ahead 
     for Baby Richard.
       But win or lose, there is an even simpler reason why 
     adoptive families are willing to fight from the very first to 
     the very last for their kids.
       Because that is what they are: our kids. Not some stereo 
     equipment we're ready to return if it doesn't work out. Not a 
     sports car we are borrowing for a test drive. Our kids. The 
     second they cross our door, we have made a commitment for 
     life, more serious than most marriages--and as sacred as 
     birth.
       Thanks to the Baldanzas and the Does for 
     declaring it to the world: They are our kids. 
     
     

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