Today, Allison Quets will sit in an Ottawa courtroom, thousands of kilometres away from her twin toddlers but closer than ever to facing years in jail for kidnapping the children she once gave up for adoption.

At the bail hearing for the 49-year-old Florida woman, the court will hear arguments from her lawyer arguing how a loving mother was coerced during the throes of a postpartum illness to give up her babies.

The court will also likely hear arguments to send the computer engineer back to North Carolina to face state and kidnapping charges.

The fate of Allison Quets remains murky and uncertain, much like the questions her case has raised about what's best for babies and the women who give them up.

After conceiving Holly and Tyler Needham through in vitro fertilization, Quets signed adoption papers for the twins six weeks after their birth but changed her mind 12 hours after her fateful decision.

7-DAY WAIT

In Ontario, birth mothers have a total of 28 days to revoke consent on an adoption, including an initial seven-day waiting period immediately after the birth.

For decades, lawmakers have debated the most appropriate length of time birth mothers should have to reconsider the adoption of their baby.

"It seems the best interest of the child is to create stability as soon as possible, to encourage bonding with the new family," says Veronica Strong-Boag, professor of education and women's studies at University of British Columbia.

But legislators also try to give birth mothers a reasonable length of time to make sure they've made the right decision, adds Strong-Boag, the author of Finding Families, Finding Ourselves, a history of adoption in English Canada over the last 200 years.

Ottawa adoption lawyer Paul Conlin notes that in most adoption cases, the birth mother has planned to give up her baby from the early stages of pregnancy.

"Sometimes, it's a decision made after the child's birth, perhaps on the spur of the moment and the legislation doesn't catch all of the cases but in the great majority of cases, there's been a lot of planning for eight or nine months," says Conlin, who oversees 60 adoptions annually as a provincially-approved adoption licensee.

Quets' case has garnered international attention and won the support of many who feel the adoption system is rigged against birth mothers.

"Ninety percent of the women we see ... feel they were completely and totally violated when they surrendered the rights of their children," said Sheri Sexton, director of the Ontario branch of Origins Canada, an advocacy group for mothers who lost children through adoption.

"Most of the women we deal with don't feel like the choice was theirs," says Sexton, saying "unscrupulous" doctors, lawyers and adoption agencies convince some birth mothers that giving up their babies is the only alternative.

"I don't think I've ever heard of actually a woman having a lawyer present and provided for her when she signed," added Sexton.

However, Conlin says Ontario law requires a birth mother to have a third-party lawyer and a social worker to advise her of her rights and prevent fraudulent or coerced decisions.

Conlin rejects the idea that adoption agents like him are taking advantage of vulnerable mothers with a precious commodity -- a new baby.

He says birth mothers make the first move by contacting an adoption agency like his.

POSITIVE STEP

Many adoption experts believe "open adoptions" -- where birth mothers keep in contact with the adopted child -- is a positive step in situations usually marred by what Strong-Boag calls "competition and bartering,"

"It seems to be a very sensible and healthy way but it takes incredible good will and generosity," said Strong-Boag.

Forthcoming provincial regulations will soon grant these agreements legal status.

More openness is a win-win for the adoptive parents, the birth mother and the child, says Conlin.

"It creates an atmosphere of trust. The child knows their biological origin and knows that he or she hasn't been abandoned by the birth parents, that there was a good reason for the adoption placement and it was a decision made out of the child's best interest," said Conlin.

Strong-Boag calls the Quets case a tragedy whose details will one day be shared with the now-oblivious toddlers.

"... It's children's lives that these adults are playing with and during the course of their lives, the adoptees really want to know how it happens and how they ended up the way they did," says Strong-Boag.