An update from this article

Adoption billboards raise ethics questions

                                             

By BRANDON STAHL

Duluth News Tribune

DULUTH, Minn. —

When they found out they couldn’t have any more biological children several years ago, Tom and Claire Halverson decided to adopt. They waited until their daughter was in her mid-teens to start trying three years ago, but after not finding a child to adopt, they became frustrated.

So they took an unusual route to find a potential birth mother: roadside advertising.

The LaPorte, Minn., couple travels to craft fairs, and while on the road they have put up almost 90 signs across Iowa and Minnesota over the past few weeks, including one in Duluth, advertising that they want to adopt a child.

Some in the adoption industry say that approach raises ethical questions. But it appears to have worked for the Halversons: Only a few weeks after putting up one of their handmade 3-foot-by-4-foot billboards, a pregnant woman in Des Moines responded. The Halversons said she is interested in giving them her baby in November.