OUTRAGE: Fathers sue Utah over law allowing mothers to secretly give up babies for adoption.

A dozen men are suing the state of Utah in federal court because of a law that allows mothers to put their babies up for adoption without the biological father’s consent, or sometimes even knowledge. The civil rights lawsuit claims the Utah Adoption Act has resulted in what amounts to “legalized fraud and kidnapping.” . . .

Court filings in the civil rights suit charge that Utah’s laws have prompted women from all over the country to move to Utah so they can give birth and secretly place the baby up for adoption.

The chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court warned of just such a scenario in a 2009 case in which the biological father lost his bid to gain custody. In a dissenting opinion the chief justice wrote, “Utah risks becoming a magnet for those seeking to unfairly cut off opportunities for biological fathers to assert their rights to connection with their children … not every unmarried biological father is indifferent to or unworthy of such connections.”

Plaintiff and Army veteran Christopher Carlton said that in 2010, his girlfriend told him their son had died shortly after birth. She would not tell him where the child was buried. After he sued to find out, the Pennsylvania mother admitted she had traveled to Utah to give birth and give the baby up for adoption. Nearly a year later, she told Carlton the baby, now living with an adoptive family, was actually a girl and not a boy. . . .

The suit also alleges that some Utah adoption agencies coach women on how to keep the adoption secret from the biological father. Among the evidence cited are secretly recorded phone conversations between adoption representatives and a woman posing as the sister of someone who wants to give her baby up.

In one call, a female adoption representative at the Adoption Center of Utah tells the caller, “Utah has the best adoption laws because you don’t have to say who the father is. Even if the father doesn’t sign the papers, you can still put the baby up for adoption.”

In another, the undercover woman asks, “Do I have to tell him I gave the baby up for adoption? Could I just say we had a really bad accident?” The adoption representative responds, “You don’t have to tell him anything.”