Baby Veronica loses her dad

I have followed the Baby Veronica case, and the dad has now lost his daughter. NPR reports:

In an emotional statement on Thursday, Baby Veronica's biological father said he and the Cherokee Nation were dropping the legal fight to regain custody of the 4-year-old girl.

"I know we did everything in our power to keep Veronica home with her family," Dusten Brown said in Oklahoma. "Veronica is only 4 years old, but her entire life has been lived in front of the media and the entire world. I cannot bear for [it to continue] any longer.

"I love her too much to continue to have her in the spotlight. It is not fair for her to be in front of media at all times," he said. "It was the love for my daughter that finally gave me the strength to accept things that are beyond my control."

If you remember, the case — which went all the way to the Supreme Court and involved fundamental questions about parental rights and Native American autonomy — was about a Native American girl who was adopted by a couple in South Carolina but who had been living with her biological father for more than a year and a half after a South Carolina court ruled that a federal law aimed at keeping Native American families together was applicable.

This is just crazy. Brown is the natural dad, he is a fit parent, has a wife and a good home, and he has been rearing the girl for as long as she can remember. And yet he has to give her up to adoptive parents who once got the baby without his approval. This is wrong for many reasons, besides being contrary to the federal law written to prevent babies being taken from Indian homes into non-Indian homes.

It is a peculiarity of American law that a dad can be 1% Cherokee and get help from the federal court to get his kid back. I cannot get help from the federal court, and it seems unfair that he would have a right that I don't. But ultimately he did not get his kid back. We should have laws favoring all dads against adoptive parents.