PENNSYLVANIA New law to reduce time to wait for adoption

Birth parents will now have 30 days to withdraw their consent for adoption.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Richard and Donna Liberto recently reached the end of what they say has been an agonizing but rewarding wait to expand their family with the adoption of a 3-month-old girl.
Between the infant's birth in December and the finalization of her adoption last week, the suburban Pittsburgh couple worried that her birth mother might want to reclaim her before a judge issued a court order terminating her parental rights.
Their concerns were heightened because in September they had to part with another adopted baby whose mother changed her mind five days after the Libertos brought her home.
"It was a long three months," Donna Liberto, 38, said of the Penn Hills couple's latest adoption effort.
The waiting game will change under a new state law that places stricter limits on the time frame within which biological parents can change their minds about placing their children with adoptive families.
New law
The measure, signed by Gov. Ed Rendell last week, gives birth parents 30 days to withdraw their consent to an adoption. It will take effect near the end of May and apply to all adoptions initiated on or after the effective day.
Pennsylvania does not impose a uniform deadline for revoking a birth parent's consent to an adoption. State law allows birth parents to change their minds about placing a child for adoption at any time before a court either terminates their parental rights or issues an adoption decree.
Either process can take several weeks or months, depending on the county, said Rep. Katie True, R-Lancaster, who sponsored the legislation.
"Over the years, I've heard from people who say, 'We'll go overseas or to another state,'" True said. "It's just too chancy to do it in Pennsylvania."
"The adoption laws in Pennsylvania have been very archaic," said Steven Dubin, an adoption attorney in Southampton, Bucks County. "This is the first real step forward in a very long time."
The Libertos also have a 4-year-old daughter they adopted in 2000 from Indiana, where the process was quicker because the birth mother signed a waiver of her parental rights 24 hours after giving birth. They brought the baby home after a mandatory weeklong stay in Indiana and completed the adoption process in Pennsylvania.
"It was great, because we knew we would never lose that child," Richard Liberto said.
Another view
Judy Sullivan, a regional director for Concerned United Birthparents, a national organization that advocates for biological parents' rights, said she believes a three- to six-month period would be ideal.
"As far as 30 days, that's a nice amount of time, but I don't know if it's long enough," Sullivan said. "This is probably the woman's first pregnancy, and she's probably never even dealt with being a mother, and it can all be very overwhelming. ... Once she has this baby, that turns [everything] around completely."