{"id":4624,"date":"2005-07-31T10:45:24","date_gmt":"2005-07-31T10:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html"},"modified":"2005-07-31T10:45:24","modified_gmt":"2005-07-31T10:45:24","slug":"oh-these-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh, these babies&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indystar.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20050731\/NEWS01\/507310498\">What a terrible mess&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"text\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text\">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&#8217;t even seem to realize the babies would need feedings every three hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text\">Melinger&#8217;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&#8217; births to a married woman from South Carolina, and about the legality of the Hamilton County adoptions, which the company also handled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text\">The adoptions were approved despite the absence of a legally required study of Melinger&#8217;s New Jersey home or a period of preadoption supervision by an Indiana-licensed agency, court records show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text\">This case could test Indiana&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"text\" dir=\"ltr\">Brave new world, indeed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a terrible mess&#8230; 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,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Oh, these babies... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oh, these babies... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What a terrible mess&#8230; 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,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-31T10:45:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Oh, these babies... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Oh, these babies... - Via Media","og_description":"What a terrible mess&#8230; 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,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-31T10:45:24+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html","name":"Oh, these babies... - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-31T10:45:24+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-31T10:45:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/oh-these-babies.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Oh, these babies&#8230;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}