The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight full coverage of the birth of seven babies to an Iowa couple; a look at a brand new law on adoption; a report on an effort to unionize apple pickers in Washington State; a dialogue with Joseph Ellis, winner of the National Book Award for Non-Fiction; and a poem by the poetry winner, William Meredith. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: An Iowa woman gave birth to seven babies today. It's only the second set of septuplets ever born in the United States. Six of the babies are in serious condition, one is critical at a Des Moines hospital. They range in weight from two pounds five ounces to three pounds four ounces. Maternal grandfather Bob Hepworth spoke on behalf of the parents, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey, after the delivery.

BOB HEPWORTH, Grandfather: Bobbi and Kenny and their family invite you and, indeed, the world to join us in praise and thanksgiving to God for this marvelous work he's done! The babies delivered safely--they were delivered at 12:48 to 12:54. And, as was said, I'm probably one of the proudest grandfathers in this country at this moment.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. President Clinton signed a bill today aimed at increasing the adoption of babies. At a White House ceremony Mr. Clinton said it would speed up adoptions and make it easier to remove kids from abusive families. We'll have more on this story later in the program. Secretary of State Albright headed to Geneva today to discuss a diplomatic solution to the crisis with Iraq. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright cut short her visit to India in order to attend a pre-dawn meeting tomorrow in Geneva, Switzerland. There she will discuss the plan that could lead to the end of the weapons inspections crisis in Iraq. Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov arrived in Geneva earlier today, carrying the proposal worked out Tuesday in Moscow with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz. Primakov hasn't released specific details of the plan, except to say it would "avoid the use of force and achieve a settlement." Iraqi President Saddam Hussein discussed the plan today with his cabinet in Baghdad. Meanwhile, in New York, the United Nations Security Council reiterated its demands that Saddam Hussein first comply with UN arms inspections before any deal is reached. And at the White House President Clinton said that remains his position as well.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Iraq must comply with the unanimous will of the international community and let the weapons inspectors resume their work to prevent Iraq from developing an arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The inspectors must be able to do so without interference. That's our top line; that's our bottom line. I want to achieve it diplomatically. But we're taking every step to make sure we are prepared to pursue whatever options are necessary.

KWAME HOLMAN: Those steps include more Stealth fighters and B-52 bombers en route to the Persian Gulf. They will bring to 300 the number of U.S. warplanes in the region, both on the ground and aboard the aircraft carrier's Nimitz and George Washington, which is expected to arrive by the end of the week.

JIM LEHRER: The State Department issued a worldwide caution to American travelers today. It advised those visiting or living abroad to take extra precautions against a growing threat of anti-American violence. The recent conviction of two foreigners in U.S. courts were cited; so were troubles with Iraq and continued turmoil in the Middle East. White House Spokesman Mike McCurry spoke about that advisory.

MIKE McCURRY, White House Spokesman: Remember that under longstanding--the United States Government policy--any time that we effect any security changes at our own diplomatic establishments around the world, we automatically tell the American public of that as well, so that there's no duel standard in the information that's available.

JIM LEHRER: The space shuttle Columbia was launched today from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its six member, multinational crew will spend 16 days in space on a science mission. It will include a space walk and the deployment and retrieval of a satellite to study the sun's outer atmosphere. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the septuplets, a new adoption law, an apple worker's story, and two National Book Award winners. FOCUS - MIRACLE BABIES

JIM LEHRER: The birth of seven babies and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: In six minutes' time seven babies were born at the Iowa Methodist Medical Center, and all are healthy.

SHARON SIMONS, VP, Iowa Methodist Medical Center: Today is an unprecedented day for many people; most of all for the McCaughey family, who is welcoming seven new babies into their family.

PHIL PONCE: Once the mystery of Mother Nature, these days the miracle of birth is sometimes manipulated and multiplied. Twins are no longer unusual; triplets are not the rarity they once were; and dozens of quadruplets are born each year. But the field narrows as the number of babies in on birth rises. To date, there are only 47 sets of quintuplets, five babies born at the same time, in the United States. Among those 47, the Guttensohn Boys. Last year, Eric and Amy Guttensohn gave birth to five sons: Parker, Hunter, Mason, Tanner, and Taylor.

AMY GUTTENSOHN: I mean, the fact that I have five children, apart from the fact that they're quintuplets, blows me away. And, you know, everything's just mind boggling, but, you know, you just take it a day at a time, and actually you take it an hour, a minute at a time. And otherwise you get overwhelmed.

PHIL PONCE: In 1993, the number that held the nation's attention was six. That year Keith and Beck Dilly of Indiana gave birth to the country's first surviving sextuplets, six babies born at once. But even the Dilly babies have company; the Haynor sextuplets. Last March, these six brothers and sisters celebrated their first birthday in Albany, New York. And that same month first-time parents Beverly and Rocco Boniello gave birth to the country's third set of sextuplets, four girls and two boys. The parents decided against a so-called "reduction," in which one or more of the fetuses would have been aborted to increase the survival odds for the others.

ROCCO BONIELLO: We had discussed reduction, but once we saw the heart beats on the ultrasound we couldn't turn back.

PHIL PONCE: Multiple births have quadrupled since the 1970's, with the development of fertility drugs and high technology intervention to help couples have children.

DR. GLADYS WHITE, Ethicist: In the United States today 1/3 of the twins, 3/4 of the triples, and virtually all of the quadruplets and above babies are born as a result of assisted reproductive technologies.

PHIL PONCE: Fertility drugs increase a woman's chances of multiple conception because they stimulate the release of more than one egg at a time. Other techniques include in vitro fertilization. A woman's egg is fertilized in a laboratory and transferred to the uterus to develop naturally. Usually two to four embryos are transferred in each cycle. Karen and Steve Puey wanted a second child and turned to in vitro fertilization. They conceived triplets. Like almost all multiples, they were born premature and underweight and are developmentally delayed.

STEVE PUEY: There has to be something there that could prevent--someone who wants a baby, they don't want sextuplets--they would like another baby. The science has to improve.

PHIL PONCE: Perhaps the most famous case of multiple births, though, was not an act of scientific intervention but of nature. Canada's Dionne quintuplets were born in 1934 and became the focus of international attention through much of their lives. The last set of septuplets--seven babies born at once in this country--was in 1985 to the Frustaci family in Orange, California. One was stillborn, three died within weeks of their birth, and the remaining three suffered medical and developmental problems. Today's babies were born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey, who already have one child. A team of more than 40 doctors assisted at the births. At a press conference late this afternoon doctors reported on the babies' condition.

DR. DAVID ALEXANDER, Iowa Methodist Medical Center: Six of the babies are now listed in serious condition and one baby, that's Joel, is now listed in critical condition. All of the babies are being assisted with mechanical ventilation at this time. And I will also add that Mrs. McCaughey, Bobbi, has been reunited with the rest of her family and is visiting with the children now in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Children's Hospital.

DR. PAULA MAHONE, Iowa Methodist Medical Center: From observing this on the first day we met Bobbi I would consider this a miracle and that all the babies are so well grown, so well developed, that this patient did not develop preeclampsia or toxemia; that she had no other medical condition, and it just strikes me as a miracle.

PHIL PONCE: For more on the septuplets and the questions they raise in medical minds we're joined by Dr. Marian Damewood, a reproductive endocrinologist at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She serves on the board of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; and Dr. Tia Powell, director of clinical ethics at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. And, doctors, welcome both. Dr. Damewood, you just heard Mrs. McCaughey's doctor refer to today's birth as a miracle. Do you agree with that?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD, American Society for Reproductive Medicine: Yes, I do agree. It is a miracle, Phil. Basically, as many of us in fertility specialities feel, it is pushing nature's envelope somewhat because women are really not made physiologically to have these large numbers of multiple births.

PHIL PONCE: And what will doctors be on the lookout for in the next couple of days as far as the condition of the babies?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Many of the things that they'll be looking at will be respiratory to make sure that their lung function is favorable. They'll be looking at the circulatory system, and later on for developmental problems or neurologic issues.

PHIL PONCE: And again at this point and the latest information is that six of the babies are in serious condition, one is in critical. How risky is to have this many babies at once?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Well, it is very risky. Fortunately, the patient appears to be very well managed and her pregnancy went uneventfully; however, it is very risky for the fetuses and the newborns at present with respect to breathing and neurologic development. And that's the concern that we have at this time.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, some of your concerns about the risks involved in multiple births like these.

DR. TIA POWELL, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center: (New York) Well, there are a number of risks. I think I too would call this a miracle, but it makes me a little nervous that we use that kind of language. We get very excited about the birth, this wonderful birth of all these children. I wonder how many people will follow the story a year from now, ten years from now, as these children struggle on perhaps, potentially with some serious problems confronting them.

PHIL PONCE: Is that very common, for there to be some latent problems months or years after a multiple birth?

DR. TIA POWELL: Well, it may not even be so latent. All of these children start out with assisted ventilation, and I hope, as does everybody who is directly involved in their care, that they will go forward and thrive. But that will--that remains to be seen. They do have certainly a difficult road ahead of them now since six are in serious condition and then the seventh, of course, is in critical condition.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, are you concerned that other couples might see the experience--so far a fairly positive one in Iowa--are you concerned that other couples might see this experience and might be encouraged to, what, take a risk in also having this kind of a pregnancy?

DR. TIA POWELL: Yes. I hate to admit it, but I am concerned that people--people love children certainly. Having children has been an enormously important experience in my life. And I would hate to deny such a thing to somebody else who wants that, but I do think we also love technology. We are a very optimistic country, an optimistic people, and sometimes we are inclined not to weigh as heavily as perhaps we should the risks involved.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, in the normal scheme of things, how often do multiple births happen, and how can they be--how can they be manipulated, so to speak?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: I thought you were asking me. Well, multiple births do occur in about 3 to 5 percent of the population in general. The vast majority are twins and a small percentage are triplets; however, as we just saw on the news a few minutes earlier, the large number of multiple births--triplets, quadruplets, and quintuplets--are due to fertility technology.

PHIL PONCE: And to what extent can these technologies actually come up with a specific number? Do people have--is there that much control available right now in terms of the number of fertilized eggs say?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Yes, we can control the number of fertilized eggs placed back in an in vitro fertilization patient, for example. Some countries actually have legislation regarding this, such as Great Britain, where only three embryos are allowed to be placed back into a patient to avoid these types of problems; however, the patient here in Iowa had fertility drug therapy without in vitro. There really wasn't as much control as to how many eggs were released in this lady.

PHIL PONCE: So in the case when somebody is getting fertility drugs, as was the case with Mrs .McCaughey, there is less control, and what is the advantage of fertility drugs over in vitro?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Well, there is less control. That is a disadvantage. The advantage of fertility drugs over in vitro fertilization is that it's the step before in vitro fertilization in couples that have normal fallopian tubes, and it basically is less risky in general. There's no surgery involved, et cetera; however, the risk of multiples sometimes cannot be controlled. And that's what happened here.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell--now I have it straight where you are--excuse me. Do you think couples get enough counseling in terms of the risks involved and the probability of having multiple births when they're going through either in vitro or fertility drugs?

DR. TIA POWELL: I think across the board counseling has certainly improved over the years, as has our ability to do more new and different things. But it is variable. And it's also very difficult to do. For one thing, doctors notoriously will often use very technical language, and the same is true sometimes of counselors. And for the second thing, people who come to an assisted reproduction specialist desperately want to have children, and they may--even with the best information and the best effort--really only hear what they want to hear. If the McCaugheys--I think the McCaugheys have very likely made a principled decision to continue on with all seven pregnancies, and so far, their luck is holding, which is really wonderful. I'm not sure that every one who is faced with such a large number of multiple births has all the information they need in this very emotional crisis to decide which is the best decision for them to live with and for their children to live with for many, many years.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, you alluded to the issue of selective termination. How tough of an issue is that for people to handle?

DR. TIA POWELL: Well, I can't imagine really anything tougher. Here are parents who have desperately wanted to have a child. Finally, after getting access to this wonderful new technology, they do get pregnant, only to find that they have--no matter how much you want to parent-- probably too much of a good thing--and there is the option of terminating some of the pregnancies. That does increase the probability of survival for the other children, but it's a terrible choice. I think no matter how strongly pro-choice a parent is, it is a terrible thing to feel that you've had to select to allow some of your fetuses to survive at the expense of the loss of others. I can't imagine a worse decision that somebody would have to make.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Damewood, you had a patient who recently had quintuplets. How did you address this issue of the possibility of selective termination, and what's the nature of that discussion between a doctor and a patient?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Yes. As Dr. Powell alluded to, selective termination is a very difficult decision for most patients. And, for example, in the couple that had quintuplets they made it clear from the very beginning that even if they had a large number of multiple births that this would not be an option; therefore, in this particular case we selected a low dose of fertility drugs, but, indeed, this happened anyway, the multiple births of quintuplets. But there are couples that will elect to have selective termination. It's, again, a very difficult decision. It's traumatic to the mother, to the husband, and to the fetuses, and also can result in some complications in pregnancy as well, such as increased bleeding and abdominal pain.

PHIL PONCE: By the way, in the case of the patient you alluded to, how are the five babies doing?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Well, everyone's very fortunate. The five children are beautiful children at two and a half years old and doing very, very well.

PHIL PONCE: Are there any medical guidelines that doctors or ethicists, Dr. Powell, can turn to and have a--form the basis of a discussion with patients regarding the number of babies they should attempt to have?

DR. TIA POWELL: Well, it's really not. As Dr. Damewood would suggest, and it's actually ver hard to control if you're using fertility drugs how many pregnancies will result. So it's really not something that you could legislate. I suppose we all wish that you could. But even though we have so many advances in technology there is still an amount of lack of control in getting pregnant by this way, and, indeed, in every aspect of raising children. It is different when you choose to impact eggs, when do in vitro fertilization, and there are other countries, as was noted before, that legislate that. Maybe we should do that. I think in any case the number tends to be dropping in this country without legislation. As our techniques get better, as we are more likely to be able to carry through a pregnancy, I think people are less inclined to implant five and six and seven embryos because most parents really do not want so many children all in one fell swoop.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Damewood, how about the issue of guidelines?

DR. MARIAN DAMEWOOD: Yes. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine is currently working on guidelines for possibly limiting or suggesting the limitation on the number of embryos to three or four in certain circumstances, and that's being looked at right now in Birmingham, Alabama, where the headquarters is located. I think it's an important point for many in vitro specialists to note that we're not only setting a patient up for multiple births in certain circumstances but also a vast change in the quality of life of the parents, which they may not expect at the time of the positive pregnancy test. But when these fetuses are born, then the change begins.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, how about that, even in a situation where everybody's fine, all the babies are healthy, some quality of life issues that need to be addressed?

DR. TIA POWELL: I don't know how really best to answer that question. I think it is very difficult for any parent to know ahead of time what that will be like. It is certainly a very educational experience. I am certainly reluctant to judge parents like the McCaugheys, who choose to go forward with multiple pregnancies. I think my guess is--not knowing them--that they would say they would prefer to love these children, to bring them forward, and that that to them is a far better option than terminating them before going forward, before they could even be born. So I don't know how to answer the quality of life question. It's probably--certainly from a parent's point of view--easier to raise few at a time, but I think for people who do not believe in selective termination or any kind of pregnancy termination, they would feel clearly better off carrying however many pregnancies they have forward.

PHIL PONCE: Dr. Powell, Dr. Damewood, I thank you for being here. FOCUS - FOSTERING ADOPTION

JIM LEHRER: And speaking of babies, to new adoption laws and to Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Over half a million American children are in foster care today- -twice as many as a decade ago. But the number of adoptions has remained steady, at about 20,000 a year. Today President Clinton signed a bill, which had been overwhelmingly approved by Congress, aimed at speeding up the adoption process for foster care children. The legislation modifies a 1980 adoption law, which required states and child welfare agencies to make "reasonable efforts" to reunify foster children with their biological parents before pursuing adoption. Only after children had been in foster care for 18 months could the adoption process begin. The new law retains the "reasonable efforts" provision but allows states to identify "aggravated circumstances," where reunification efforts need not be pursued. The safety of foster kids, not family reunification, should be of "paramount concern." And the law allows adoption proceedings to be begin after 12--not 18--months. President Clinton praised the bill at a White House signing ceremony earlier today.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: With these measures we help families stay together, where reunification is possible, and help find safe homes for children much more quickly, when it is not. We've come together in an extraordinary example of bipartisan cooperation to meet the urgent needs of children at risk. We put our differences aside and put our children first. We have put in place here the building blocks of giving all of our children what should be their fundamental right- -a chance at a decent, safe home, an honorable, orderly, positive upbringing; a chance to live out their dreams and fulfill their God given capacities. Now, as we approach Thanksgiving, when families all across our country come together to give thanks for their blessings, I would like to encourage more families to consider opening their homes and their hearts to children who need loving homes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Joining us now to discuss the new law and its implications are Gloria King, the executive director of the Black Adoption Placement & Research Center in Oakland, California, and William Byars, a family court judge in Camden, South Carolina. At the White House today he received an award for improving the nation's child welfare system. Thank you both for being with us. Judge Byars, what were you seeing in your courtroom that made you press so hard for these changes? What was wrong with the system before?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS, 5th Circuit, South Carolina: In South Carolina, we ended up having children in care for an average of 40 months. We had--we figured we had--they were not going to new homes. They were stuck in the system that we had designed, that we were implementing at that time. And children--it just came down to a belief of need to look at the system through the eyes of a child. That's the person who was the victim. That's the person who was being hurt. Every child deserves a family, and that was what our effort is based upon.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Gloria King, you also favored these changes. What have you been seeing that made you favor them?

GLORIA KING, Black Adoption Research Center: Well, any time that we put the child's safety first, then we're headed in the right direction, and we want to make sure that we have the right family for that child. We were pleased about that. We were also pleased that the time for children to reunify with their families has decreased because children deserve earlier in their life a chance for permanency.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Ms. King, why are there so many more children in the foster care system now than there ever have been? I read it's up 89 percent since 1982.

GLORIA KING: With the increase of drug abuse by parents, incarcerations, things that are beyond the child's control, we will see an increase. Many of the children are coming from poverty, and with that, comes all of the ills of society. And until we really address those issues, I think we will see that number continue to increase, unfortunately.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Judge Byars, the new law really represents a change in child welfare philosophy, doesn't it?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: Yes, it does.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Explain that for us.

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: Well, under the old rule that the primary thrust of the law was to reunite the family, oftentimes we spent a lot of time trying to get the parents to grow up to become parents. Meanwhile, the child just sat in the system. They were taken from one foster home into another, to another. They're the victim, and yet, they were on a time frame that was designed to help the perpetrator of the ills against them. This law says the first thing you do is you protect the child. You take care of their health and safety. And once you do that, then you work with a reasonable interest in most circumstances to get the parents into being good parents, but if they don't do that on a child's time frame, if they don't do that within the period of a year, the child can't wait anymore, and we want to find that child a family that will love and protect it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But, Judge, am I right, the majority of kids will still go back to their families, right?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: The majority of children--that part has not changed--the majority of children now will go back to their families. It doesn't really try to affect that. What it does try to affect is the 100,000 children in the United States that are stuck in the system going nowhere.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell me, how will it affect what you do? You have an agency that places children who are currently in foster care, right?

GLORIA KING: That's correct.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And I might also add you just told me that you yourself had over 100 foster sisters and brothers in your own family.

GLORIA KING: That's correct. My--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So this is something you really know about.

GLORIA KING: That's right. My family--my parents dedicated their life to helping foster children, so for the 14--I'm sorry--for the 19 years that they did foster care I wasn't only a natural sibling to nine brothers and sisters; I was a sibling to a hundred and fifty children. And that's really what attracted me to this bill because I know that dedicated parents are out there, and we can make a difference, especially the African-American community, because across the states it's our children that are disproportionately represented.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us the proportion.

GLORIA KING: In California there is over 100,000 children in foster care and African American children represent over 40 percent. In Alameda County locally here in California the number is even higher. It's 67 percent. So everywhere that you look our children are the ones that are disproportionately represented, and so we must sound the alarm that good families are needed, and we need to do this quickly.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How will the law help you do that? How will it help you place these kids, get 'em from foster care into families? And some foster care families are fine, I know, but where you want to get them out of foster care and into an adoptive home, how will this help?

GLORIA KING: This law really helps us when the plan can't work for reunification; that it will expedite the time frame, so instead of waiting for 18 months, it will be decreased to 12 months. And in the case where families already have children in the system it will be less time than that. And what that does is opens up an opportunity for forever family, sooner for a child.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Judge Byars, how will it work for you specifically? Give me an example of how this will change what you do in your courtroom, for example?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: Well, in South Carolina, we've already changed our law. We've shortened it down to a one-year time frame about a year ago. What you end up having to do is you have this backlog of kids that haven't been addressed, and now the time frames are shorter, so you've got to move forward and do more on the new cases coming in and more on the old cases that were already there. It requires then a great deal of effort on the Department of Social Services, the Guardian Ad Litem programs, and the judges. And in South Carolina we got that as a united effort from the judiciary, from the Department of Social Services, and we have managed in a period of two years to double the number of adoptive placements in South Carolina. That can be replicated all across the country.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you've had this experience already. What problems did you face in South Carolina even with the changes that you already made? There was some resistance, for example, to taking tips from their families that soon.

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: The children really are already from the families, and we found that about 90 percent of the families did not fight the termination. The termination is a hard thing for social workers to recommend. It's a hard thing for judges to do, and it just floods the court, and the courts have to devote the resources to move these children. We've got to realize that getting a child into a safe environment with a permanent family is very, very important. There are no cases more important than taking care of a child who's been abused and neglected. That's our job.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what about in your experience, do you think that this law will really propel the process forward, or do you think there will be some resistance? Is it going to be hard to implement?

GLORIA KING: I think it will be somewhat hard to implement until we re-educate social workers, so our practice has to change. We do not want expediency without competency of understanding the cultural issues that face many children when terminating parental rights.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you mean? Tell me what you're talking about here specifically.

GLORIA KING: What I'm talking about is that at child protective services usually the organization that will separate a child from its birth family. The individuals that make that important decision need to understand how to assess family's strengths and needs, and they need to understand the families that they're working with, and across the nation, even though the disproportionate number of African-American children, less than 10 percent are African-American social workers, so we need to do a lot in terms of educating those that make the decision, so that the family is right, when we make the decision for permanency.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Judge, there are more than half a million kids in foster care right now in this country, as I understand it. What more needs to be done? Where do you go from here with your efforts to reform the system?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: Well, I think as she was saying, one of the things we've got to realize is that Americans will adopt the children. One of the things that I've heard is these children cannot be adopted, and yet, Americans--we're people with a great deal of love in our heart. Our people go all around the world to Korea, to Nicaragua, to Bulgaria, to Romania, to Africa, to adopt children, and yet we have 100,000 of our own children that we have not allowed to be adopted. We will adopt those children. There are people out there who will do that. We just have to make it possible. Every state has got to go back and look at its law, look at the new law, bring 'em in line, look at bringing the judicial resources and the DSS resources to bear on this problem, and we can free these children up, and we can place them in homes, and we don't need to go all around the world to adopt. Our people will adopt within our own country, take care of our children.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Judge, you're using the figure 100,000. Is that the number that are now ready to be adopted, as opposed to the 1/2 million which are in foster care?

JUDGE WILLIAM BYARS: That is the estimate of the number of children who are in foster care drift. In other words, they really are not headed back home, and they're not headed to a new family either. You have to do TPR, termination of parental rights, and a lot of folks view that as the death of a family. It is hard to do, but yet, TPR is really the birth pains of a new family that has to be done before these children get a new mama and daddy.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Ms. King, where do you think we have to go from here?

GLORIA KING: I think we have to do a lot of education. We have to do more recruitment of families, but we also need to explain the profile of the children, so that families know that it takes more than love. It's going to take skill, patience, understanding the child's identity, preserving where the child comes from, because when we put children first, we have to remember, they come from families, and until we look back at the families, we really haven't resolved the problem. This is just a first step in the right direction, but there is much more work to be done.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you both very much for being with us.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a union organizing story and two national book award winners. FOCUS - PICKING A UNION?

JIM LEHRER: The drive to unionize apple pickers in Washington State. Rod Minott of KCTS- Seattle reports.

ROD MINOTT: Workers at the Stemilt fruit packing plant in Wenatchee, Washington, recently gathered to air grievances.

CHUCK DORN, Stemilt Worker: We have no seniority rights. We can be fired at any time basically. It just depends on whether the boss likes us or not.

ROD MINOTT: These night shift employees are among hundreds of workers now locked in a bitter labor dispute with the state's giant apple industry. They listened as members of the Teamsters Unionupdated them on efforts to organize apple workers.

CHUCK DORN: I believe that our only hope is to organize, join forces, and try to change the industry.

APPLE VIDEO SPOKESMAN: This is where the best apples in the world come from, the fertile valley of Washington State.

ROD MINOTT: The labor action comes at a time of unprecedented prosperity for apple companies. Apples are now the state's top produce--a billion dollar a year crop that's aggressively promoted worldwide through industry videos such as this:

INDUSTRY VIDEO: (song) Washington apples, ripe from the sun--

ROD MINOTT: Organized labor says that success has come at the expense of apple industry workers.

TEAMSTERS SPEAKER: Apple exports have increased 500 percent over the last 10 years. Apple workers are more productive than ever, but the industry refuses to share their success with the workers who made that success possible.

ROD MINOTT: Unions have staged protest rallies to voice their anger. Key issues in the apple campaign include working conditions, job security, and wages. As an example, the average apple warehouse worker, who sorts and packs fruit, earns about $8 an hour. According to union activists most plants do not offer medical benefits, or they offer health plans that require employee contributions, a cost few workers say they're able to afford. These demands by big labor are not new--but the strategies have changed.

SPOKESMAN: Hello Teamsters.

ROD MINOTT: In one of the largest unionizing drives now underway in the nation the apple campaign has united former rivals--the Teamsters and the United Farm Workers. Their target: the 55,000 workers who pick and pack Washington State apples. It's a dramatic turnabout from the bitter feud that played out between the two unions in the 1970's in California. At the time the Teamsters and UFW were competing over the right to represent farm workers.

TEAMSTER GUY: (shouting) Commie bums you stick, you smell, you're a lousy bunch of commies.

ROD MINOTT: When some California growers signed labor contracts with the Teamsters, it triggered angry and bloody clashes between the rival unions. The violence resulted in passage of state legislation that gave farm workers the legal right to organize and set up a labor relations board to mediate future disputes.

LUPE GAMBOA, United Farm Workers: These are the action plans that we developed on the apple organizing campaign.

ROD MINOTT: Lupe Gamboa of the United Farm Workers heads the drive to organize Washington State's 40,000 apple pickers.

LUPE GAMBOA: We're coordinating with the Teamsters. They have their own organizing campaign in the apple warehouses, and we're organizing in the orchards, and the reason that we're doing it is because, you know, in unity there's strength. We're finding out that it's working very well.

ROD MINOTT: David Olson, a labor expert at the University of Washington, agrees that both the farm workers and Teamsters benefit from a united campaign.

DAVID OLSON, University of Washington: One of the most important is that the Teamsters, the largest trade union in the United States numerically, is losing membership, and their incentive is to increase their membership. The United Farm Workers, on the other hand, have fought some very bitter, very difficult struggles and have not been as successful as they would like to be. They see the resources that the Teamsters Union bring to the alliance in the form of money, strike benefits.

ROD MINOTT: Much of the battle over apples is being wages in the Central Washington City of Wenatchee, an agricultural community of 60,000. Wenatchee claims to be the apple capital of the world. Orchards here help provide about 60 percent of the nation's fresh apples. For seven years, Mary Mendez has packed apples for Stemilt growers in Wenatchee, one of the largest apple packing and shipping houses in the region.

MARY MENDEZ: (speaking through interpreter) In 1995, I earned $18,500. In 1996, I made $13,500. Now, the cost of living is going up. But when there are raises, either they're very small, or, in some cases, we're actually making less money. We're going to be finishing up the year now, and to date, I've made $12,000. My rent, my expenses, and food aren't going down; they're increasing.

ROD MINOTT: Mendez thinks workers would benefit by joining the Teamsters.

MARY MENDEZ: More than anything we need a union for job security because the rules state clearly right now that we can be fired any time with or without a reason.

ROD MINOTT: Even so, some Stemilt workers like Mary Marker say they don't want a union.

MARY MARKER: Well, I don't particularly care to have somebody speaking for me when I can speak for myself. You know, I work hard for my money, and I don't feel that I should give another person the money just to speak for me.

TOM MATHISON: You know, getting the product to the market and getting a fair return is what we're about, and packing, and storing, and all the other things are just part of it.

ROD MINOTT: Stemilts' owner, Tom Mathison, says apple owners are not exploiting workers to make profits. He says his employees are among the highest paid workers in the industry earning an average of $8.50 an hour.

TOM MATHISON: For them to say that there hasn't been improvements is not true; there's huge improvements that have been made in wages and benefits, and they will continue to accrue as our efficiencies increase, as we learn to work together and improve our product and be able to compete better, they will continue to improve.

ROD MINOTT: Stemilt is one of the few apple companies that offer benefits, including medical and retirement plans. And even though apple industry revenues have tripled in the past decade, Mathison says the profit margin for companies like his remains slim and says effort to unionize family-owned apple companies like Stemilt pose a threat to staying competitive.

TOM MATHISON: Huge volume of product coming from dozens of other countries, a lot of emerging countries, third world countries, where prices and conditions and working conditions and wages are a lot lower, we have to go head to head with those; we have to have efficiency; we have to have quality of product; we have to have all the factors that involve competition in order to compete in those markets; and the only way we can get that and do that and succeed is by working together, and if we work against each other, we're bound to fail.

LUPE GAMBOA: These are golden delicious--they're very difficult to pick because they bruise very easily. And this is a bin that holds about a thousand pounds of apples, which is over 2,000 apples. A good worker can make four, five, six bins a day, which is, you know, from $40 to $60.

ROD MINOTT: Out in the orchards, Lupe Gamboa says wages for apple pickers are even worse than those for warehouse workers.

LUPE GAMBOA: It's gotten pretty bad, the average wage for orchard workers is a little under $6,000 a year, according to a study that was done by Employment Security in 1995, and it's very tiring, very hard work, and there's real problems. You know when the wage stays the same--at the same time thatthe cost of living just keeps going up and up.

ROD MINOTT: Despite the alliance between the United Farm Workers and Teamsters, labor expert Olson believes the effort to unionize will still be a long, uphill fight.

DAVID OLSON: I think that organizing farm workers or warehouse workers is one of the most difficult occupational sectors to organize. You're dealing with a group of workers who tend to be on the lowest end of the salary scale, some of whose residency within the United States is constantly being questioned by law enforcement officials. You're dealing with a work force that is traumatized in many ways by the environment within which they exist, so you put that on top of all of the other difficulties of organizing workers and the answer to that question is: this is a very difficult campaign.

ROD MINOTT: Both sides say they're bracing for a long battle, one that could last years and may eventually include strikes and a nationwide boycott of Washington State apples. FINALLY - WINNING AUTHORS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, two national book award winners. They were announced last night in New York City. The non-fiction winner was Joseph Ellis, author of "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson." He's a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. David Gergen had a dialogue with him about the book in August. Here's a second look.

DAVID GERGEN: Prof. Ellis, in your new book about Thomas Jefferson you say he has become the great sphinx of American history. When you think about Jefferson, what man comes to your mind?

JOSEPH ELLIS, Author, "American Sphinx": Well, probably six foot two and a quarter, burnished, burned complexion, hazel eyes, reddish blond hair about the color of my hair, but a person who can convey to a variety of different people a set of images which different groups see differently. And so the sphinx title is an attempt to get at the fact that Jefferson is the most elusive and perhaps promiscuous President in American history.

DAVID GERGEN: Promiscuous in the sense that--

JOSEPH ELLIS: Promiscuous in the sense that what people believe he represents is so different. The North thought that they were fighting for Jeffersonian principles in the Civil War; so did the South. Herbert Hoover thought that Jefferson had the answer to the Depression, so did Franklin Roosevelt and conservative Republicans like Reagan have embraced Jefferson, and so have liberal Democrats like Clinton. So it's his--what I try to say is he becomes a kind of Rorschach test for Americans, and he becomes a kind of every man, and part of my effort is to explain how one becomes an every man. It's just not any man who can become every man.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, let's explore that just a bit because you say that he was a visionary.

JOSEPH ELLIS: Yes, indeed.

DAVID GERGEN: And at the same time he had a realistic side to him too, so much of his writing had a visionary quality to it, and that's where people could often find--

JOSEPH ELLIS: True. I think that he's good at projecting onto a screen or above us in some kind of upper region, a set of attractive notions about what's possible, and what the future could be like. I try to say somewhere in the book that he's sort of like that dirigible at the Super Bowl that floats above the football stadium and flashes inspirational messages to both sides.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, what is at the core of Jefferson then?

JOSEPH ELLIS: One thing that's at the core is a--and I think that this is something that is becoming a more potent force in American politics of the last decade or so--is a fundamental aversion to federal power or aggregated, or what he would say consolidated political power of any sort. Now, in certain international contexts, this makes a lot of sense. If you're standing in front of tanks at Tiananmen Square, if you're trying to rally the troops in Gdansk, or participating in the Velvet Revolution in Prague, boy, you want to have Jefferson on your side because Jefferson is a person who can really be a useful tool in beating down totalitarianism, despotism, tyranny in all forms. That's really true. But for modern Americans I think that the evil empire that we've come to regard as our major enemy is the federal government, the inside-the- beltway world of Washington, D.C., and that's very Jeffersonian, the notion that you can't trust people who have political power, who are far removed from you geographically; that Jefferson is a firm believer that the less political power the better, and I think we're--since the end of the Cold War and since the Cold War ended and before that World War II and before that Depression, the Depression allowed us to justify or to believe that emergency powers at the federal level were necessary. Now, those threats recede, and the natural Jeffersonian strain comes back again. In some sense, it's the point of view of the right wing of the Republican Party, but it really goes beyond party labels. It's a deep primal feeling. And it's Jeffersonian.

DAVID GERGEN: The primal feeling about the less government--

JOSEPH ELLIS: That's right.

DAVID GERGEN: We should be left alone. You think that's--Jefferson is coming back today, in effect, because the Cold War is over.

JOSEPH ELLIS: In that way--if one said why is he coming back, I would say it's because he speaks to that part of our political life that has come into existence since 1989. The notion that we've had a suspicious attitude towards federal power, that's back.

DAVID GERGEN: Right. Well, just as Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan are all claiming Jefferson, there are others in the economy in particular who have been knocking Jefferson a lot. Why is that?

JOSEPH ELLIS: Primarily because over the last twenty to twenty-five years, race has become one of the major windows through which people looking back at American history are trying to see things. And if you start looking at the issue of race and you look at Jefferson through that window, things are not going to look too good. Jefferson wrote there words that we are the magic words in American history, the ones that begin "We hold these truths to be self evident," that in some sense are responsible for the most liberal reforms, including the end of slavery, civil rights movement, the suffrage of women. But Jefferson, himself, didn't intend those words to mean all of those things, and on the issue of slavery, Jefferson remained a slave owner his entire life. He owned about 200 slaves throughout most of his life. And he really didn't believe that blacks and whites could live together in the same society. And I think that's what really upsets people in a world in which integration and multi-cultural values are the national norm, and we remain committed and wedded to the possibility of that kind of society, Jefferson doesn't quite fit. And there are those who even argue that we should tear down the Jefferson Memorial on the tidal basin, take his face off of Mt. Rushmore, and I think that that's the major reason that he is vulnerable. I think within the academy too there is--there is a more general aversion to patriarchs who are dead white males, and he's one of the deadest, whitest males there is. And so there are people wanting to go back and, in effect, bring him back into the present as a kind of trophy in the culture wars.

DAVID GERGEN: Part of Jefferson's elusiveness that you point out in the book is that he could walk past the slave quarters at Monticello and be thinking brilliant thoughts about human liberty and human equality.

JOSEPH ELLIS: Right.

DAVID GERGEN: And you have this sentence in your book that I'd like you to address, if you might. You say, "He had the kind of duplicity possible only in the pure of heart."

JOSEPH ELLIS: Jefferson was not a hypocrite, in my view. Jefferson didn't conceal from us or from his peers his deeper thoughts about slavery, for example. He had almost separate chambers in his psyche, where he could put things and seal them, where you didn't have to--he didn't have to confront them. I think, for example, both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are capable of analogous forms of political behavior, Clinton walking into a room and being able to read that room and understand what people want and tell them what they want to hear, Reagan believing that he did not endorse any arm sale to the contras. And I think that political success at the national level has come to require a lot of the same psychological skills that Jefferson possessed naturally. Jefferson wasn't what we would call a spinner. He wasn't a person who sort of did this in a calculating way. It came to him quite naturally, who he was, because he didn't like argument; he didn't like conflict. He didn't like debate, and he wanted this to always come out nicely, and, therefore, he would tell you what you wanted to hear.

DAVID GERGEN: Prof. Joseph Ellis, thank you for telling us about Jefferson.

JOSEPH ELLIS: My pleasure.

JIM LEHRER: Professor Joseph Ellis won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction last night. Now a winner of a poetry award was William Meredith. Now 78 years old, Meredith's first book of poetry was written while he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He has won numerous awards since, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. In '83, Meredith suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to speak for several years. His new book is appropriately titled "Effort at Speech." We asked poet laureate Robert Pinsky to read a Meredith poem.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate: The title of this poem by William Meredith happens to be appropriate for this particular news day. The poem is called "Parents." "Parents" for Vanessa Meredith and Samuel Wolf Gizarez: "What it must be like to be an angel or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. The last time we go to bed good they are there, lying about the darkness. They dandle us once too often, these friends who become our enemies. Suddenly, one day their juniors are as old as we yearn to be. They get wrinkles where it is better smooth, odd coughs and smells. It is grotesque how they go on loving us; we go on loving them. The effrontery, barely imaginable of having caused us and of how. Their lives--surely we can do better than that. This goes on for a long time. Everything they do is wrong, and the worst thing--they all do it--is to die, taking with them the last explanation how we came out of the wet sea, or wherever they got us from, taking the last link of that chain with them. Father, Mother, we cry, wrinkling, to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren." RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, an Iowa woman gave birth to septuplets, the second set to be born in the United States. Secretary of State Albright headed to Geneva to discuss a Russian plan to win the crisis with Iraq, and at Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off with a six-member, multi-national crew. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.