A Father's Struggle to Stop His Daughter's Adoption

Article here. Excerpt:

'Emanuel’s girlfriend repeatedly promised him that she would never put their child up for adoption. But he couldn’t erase the possibility from his mind. So he posed the question to her, “If you ever had to give your baby up for adoption, you’re going to give it to me, right?” She said she would, but insisted that she had no plans to give the baby away. He says they made plans for her to move in with him permanently at the end of the year.
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After the encounter, Thomason started researching paternity rights on her own. That’s when she learned about the South Carolina Responsible Father Registry, which, according to the state’s Department of Social Services, “gives a man who has fathered a child with a woman he is not married to the right to be notified when an adoption or a termination of parental rights action occurs.” Without the registry, his girlfriend could put the baby up for adoption without telling Emanuel about it. Registering with the state wouldn’t guarantee him custody of Skylar, but at least he’d be notified and have a say in court.
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In the end, this omission was all that mattered. The majority pointed out that the registry had been designed specifically for cases like Lehr’s: to allow biological fathers to “demonstrate [their] intent to claim paternity of a child born out of wedlock,” entitling them “to receive notice of any proceeding to adopt that child.” The Court noted that he could have registered “simply by mailing a postcard.”'