She says she will take her family law fight all the way to the Supreme Court. She argues that she is the only mother that "Baby Vanessa" has ever known, and she wants to keep it that way. An adoptive mother in California has spent the last two years raising her adopted daughter, whom she adopted from Ohio.

The fact that "Baby Vanessa" came from Ohio is a key element in what has become a big, complicated child custody dispute. The biological father of the child is fighting to regain the parental rights he claims were violated when the adoption of "Baby Vanessa" didn't follow Ohio's Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children Law.

He argues that he's been fighting for custody of "Baby Vanessa" since soon after her birth and that she was adopted out of the state illegally. The father has other children but doesn't have custody of any of them; two of his daughters have been raised in the custody of his mother.

The Ohio father isn't the only one fighting for "Baby Vanessa." Along with raising her son's other daughters, the father's mother also wants custody of this young girl. Perhaps the party who feels she has the most to lose in this family law dispute, however, is the adoptive mother.

Having raised "Baby Vanessa" over the past two plus years, the 46-year-old adoptive mother is in great fear that she will have to say goodbye to her adopted daughter after already living as a family. Of course, she asserts that she does not plan on ever giving up on "Baby Vanessa" and will take the case as far as she can in order to remain the child's mother, which she believes is in the best interest of "Baby Vanessa." According to reports, the child's biological mother is on the adoptive mother's side in the child custody dispute.

Advocates for adoption worry that this case will scare prospective parents away from the brave, giving choice to adopt. They feel that adoption laws in the U.S. need to be altered in order to treat children as the vulnerable human beings they are and not as mere property.

Source

Dayton Daily News: "'Baby Vanessa' custody battle may end in U.S. Supreme Court," Mary McCarty, 6 Mar. 2011