When Stephen F. Melinger visited the newborn twins he was adopting at Methodist Hospital in April, health care workers became alarmed. On one occasion, the New Jersey man showed up with a live bird in his pocket. On another, the shoulder of his shirt was stained with bird feces.
After Melinger, a single, 58-year-old schoolteacher, indicated he was planning to drive the infants back to New Jersey by himself, child welfare authorities were called. He was unprepared to parent, hospital workers believed, and didn’t even seem to realize the babies would need feedings every three hours.
Melinger’s actions prompted a child welfare case in Marion Superior Court that has raised questions about Surrogate Mothers Inc., the Indiana company that arranged the infants’ births to a married woman from South Carolina, and about the legality of the Hamilton County adoptions, which the company also handled.
The adoptions were approved despite the absence of a legally required study of Melinger’s New Jersey home or a period of preadoption supervision by an Indiana-licensed agency, court records show.
This case could test Indiana’s lack of regulation of surrogate births and laws governing the strict confidentiality of adoption records that prevent even judges and social workers from gaining access.
Brave new world, indeed…
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