“How open do you want your relationship with the adoptive parents to be?” I ask after some more small talk.

She shrugs. “I’ll figure that out later,” she says. “I’m talking to two other families. One keeps drunk texting me that they want a girl. They want a white baby, which this is.”

I expect her to look at her stomach but she doesn’t. I realize that she has no idea how many boxes we’ve checked for our desired child. We have checked African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Caucasian, Middle-Eastern and 30 other boxes that create astounding combinations. In any case, I have trouble believing anyone would text a birth mother, drunk or not, to demand a white girl baby.

“My Bridge to Nowhere.” — Jennifer Gilmore, New York Times Opinionator

See also: “In a tiny town just outside Joplin, a landmark adoption case tests the limits of inalienable human rights.” Riverfront Times, Oct. 20, 2011