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Robby DeBoer contracted an infection on her honeymoon, had a hysterectomy and so cannot have children of her own. She heard about Cara through a friend in Iowa and began negotiating to adopt the baby. After Jessica was born on Feb. 8, 1991, Robby and her mother drove from Ann Arbor to Iowa through a fierce snowstorm to see the child and set the proceedings in motion. They got signed parental-rights releases from both Cara and Scott, and the DeBoers' joy was complete. They were now Jessica's legal custodians, and in six more months, the adoption would be finalized. Cara wrote them a letter: "I know you will treasure her and surround her with love," she told them. "God Bless and Keep You All."
But within days, it all began to unravel. Cara saw her ex-boyfriend Dan Schmidt at work and told him everything -- that the baby she had just given up for adoption had been his all along. She began having second thoughts. She went to a support-group meeting of Concerned United Birthparents and heard other mothers' stories of the sorrow they felt at giving up their babies. On March 6 Cara filed a motion to get her daughter back, and a week later Dan did as well. Cara went out shopping for baby clothes.
The DeBoers were struck by lightning. They had done the miraculous, had found a healthy newborn to adopt, had followed all the rules, signed all the forms -- only to find that they might lose the baby. It was nearly six months before genetic tests indicated that Dan was indeed the real father; since he hadn't signed away his rights, the entire adoption proceeding was voided by an Iowa court two days after Christmas in 1991. The DeBoers were ordered to turn Jessica over.
But they decided to fight instead, and a legal stay permitted them to keep Jessica while the appeals proceeded. They argued that Dan was not a fit parent; why was he so intent on being a father to Jessica, they asked, when he had two other children by two other women whom he had made no effort to help raise? Robby wrote letter after letter to children's-rights advocates around the country. She talked to reporters. In January the Iowa Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but the appeals process dragged on for months. Dan and Cara got married -- and waited to bring their daughter back home. That seemed all but assured when the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the lower-court ruling and said that while Dan's fitness as a parent was questionable and the court was tempted, for Jessica's sake, to leave her with the DeBoers, Dan's rights had priority over the baby's and so she belonged with the Schmidts.
! After losing in Iowa, the DeBoers tried to move the case to Michigan, and won their first victory. Last February, Judge William Ager of the Michigan Circuit Court, concerned that Jessica might never recover from losing the only parents she had ever known, ruled that she should stay where she was. He told the Schmidts that he understood their pain -- but that "prolonging this battle is going to have a terrible effect on this child." If they gave her up, he told them, they would be heroes, sacrificing their heart's desire for the sake of their child's well-being. They refused to concede.