Fox 13 Investigates: The 'wild west' for adoption?

Utah legislators exploring tweaks to adoption

laws criticized as exploitative…

By: Taylor Stevens

“On a recent Saturday afternoon, a group of volunteers with Utah Adoption Rights gathered outside a Layton apartment complex that they’ve heard houses women from other states during their pregnancies.

Over the next few hours, they spread brightly colored flyers on doorknobs across the complex, in hopes of reaching these women with information about their adoption rights in Utah.

“I think the expectation is that the adoption professionals they’re working with would tell them these things,” said Ashley Mitchell, a birth mother and co-founder of Utah Adoption Rights. “But in our experience, they are not getting all the information they need to make an informed decision.”

“I think it’s very important that our local community and the state of Utah cares about how these adoptions are happening and what that’s going to look like,” Mitchell said. “Because at the end of the day it’s, ‘Did we walk alongside them in our own state, whether they stayed here or not?’ And I think that matters.”