I don't think the answer is, or should have been, to adopt Dannielynn. You're assuming that she would have "lived happily ever after" with adoptive parents, not knowing what her background was.
Every child has a right to know who his/her biological parents are. Do you think adoptive parents should pretend to be the biological parents? In other words, it's better to LIE when she starts asking questions? I don't a child should be lied to.
I have a friend who gave birth many years ago....out of wedlock. She immediately gave the child up for adoption. The father was a thief, and I don't know what else he did, but he served time in prison. The child would be around 41 now. I've asked my friend why she has never had contact with her child. She said she never wanted the child to know what the child's father was all about. But yet my friend is beautiful, very successful, and married well. She never had another child. I always wonder if her child spent a life seeking answers.
I personally know adoptive children who have lived their entire lives wondering who and where their parents are....what their medical background is, etc. When I was in nursing school many years ago, I will never forget a 19 year old student who was desperate to find her parents. She had little money, but hired a private detective to help her. She devoted so much time to it, that she had to drop out of school. It consumed her.
I'm so sorry about your sister. My daughter's husband died suddenly, too, and left her a widow and my 6 year old grandchild fatherless.
I believe that it's not what happens to you, it's what you do about it. Anthony Robbins teaches, "It doesn't matter what advantages or disadvantages you were born with. It's not the conditions or the "externals" of your life that will determine your destiny. What matters is what decisions you make about how your life is going to be...the decisions that will write the story of your destiny. We must rise above whatever life hands us."
There are always two sides to the adoption story. My sister's car accident was a suspicious "accident." Long, long story, but there is a better chance than not that she was murdered by this creep. Now, twenty years later he is up for murder, having shot a fellow in the back seven times. They are dragging a pond for another victim and may very well exhume the body of a third victim. Our "daughter" was raised beautifully, a stand-out college level athlete, moderately good grades, no problems. But these recent events have completely devastated her. I just wish the courts would have severed all the ties he had with her, BUT as we know the system, they allowed visitation, etc because she had the right to know her parent........well, she does know him now.......