Losing Jessica
by By Deboer, Robby
Category: Biography & Autobiography , General

Beyond the headlines, Losing Jessica is Robby DeBoer's personal and very moving account of the battle to keep her baby daughter.On August 2, 1993, Robby and Jan DeBoer were forced to give up the little girl that they had raised, since infancy, for two and a half years. In a decision that shocked the entire country, the courts ruled that Jessi DeBoer was to be taken from the only parents and the only home she had ever known and given back to the biological parents who were virtual strangers to her.How do you say goodbye to your daughter?Losing Jessica is more than the story of a court battle. This is Robby's own story - of the hopes and dreams with which she and Jan began their marriage, and of the tremendous struggles that followed. Robby eloquently describes what it was like to meet her daughter for the first time, after years of trying to adopt. We feel her elation at the moment when she and Jan are awarded custody of the baby at the termination hearing, and we feel her pain and distress when she learns that the man who had signed the adoption papers might not be Jessi's biological father after all. Robby's story highlights the complications and inequities of a legal system that places the biological rights of birth parents above those of the adoptive parents - and makes decisions without regard to the best interests of the child. Above all, Losing Jessica is the story of a mother's unequivocal love for her child, the strongest, most compelling, and most unbreakable human bond of all.