It Takes Two to Make a Cold War; Behind Abuse Case Is the Baby Market

It Takes Two to Make a Cold War; Behind Abuse Case Is the Baby Market

LEAD: To the Editor:

To the Editor:

It is astonishing that there has been no serious public discussion of the adoption issues in the case of Joel B. Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, charged in the death of one child they were raising and neglect of another.

Established adoption agencies have been criticized in the last decade for being unable to provide white infants for adoption. The reasons include changing attitudes toward unmarried parenthood, making it easier for women as single parents to raise their children; the availability of legal abortion, and the pressures of large numbers of older and minority-group children in need of adoption.

Added to this is the central issue in the Steinberg case - the buying and selling of infants on the black and gray markets. Available white infants have become a commodity available to the highest bidder.

The professional task in adoption agencies is to represent as fairly as possible, the interests of the child, the biological parent and the adoptive family. Had this been done in the Steinberg case, both biological mothers could have thought through their decision to surrender their children and might have chosen otherwise.

The adoptive parents would have been investigated, and economic class and professional status would not have been the overriding criteria for their selection.

Outrage at this case has been focused on the failures of police, school, protective services and neighbors. But the child abuse itself might have been avoided in the first place, had lawyers not bought and sold Lisa and Mitchell without giving proper attention to the capacities of the adoptive couple to care for them. It is the market psychology involved in this kind of adoption process that requires public attention. CAROL H. MEYER Prof. of Social Work, Columbia U. New York, Nov. 19, 1987