A U.S. woman accused of abducting twin toddlers has been trying to get them back since less than a day after she gave them up for adoption, her lawyer said in Ottawa Tuesday.

'Why, short of being depressed post-partum and being physically and in mental anguish following a difficult birth, would any woman who's gone through that want to give up her babies? It doesn't make any sense.' —Lawyer for Allison Lee Quets

Allison Lee Quets, 49, of Durham, North Carolina, has been in an Ottawa detention centre since Dec. 28, when she was taken into custody after U.S. authorities issued an arrest warrant. She is accused of taking the twins that she gave birth to 17 months earlier from the North Carolina couple that adopted them.

Allison Quets gave up the twins for adoption after a 'horrific' pregnancy with life-threatening complications, her lawyer said.
(FBI)

Her lawyer, Jeff Schroeder, said Tuesday that Quets has been trying to regain custody of the twins through the courts since 12 hours after she gave them up for adoption.

Schroeder said Quets conceived the twins by a "lengthy and painful and expensive" process of in vitro fertilization and endured a "horrific pregnancy" with life-threatening complications.

She gave the twins up for adoption immediately after the birth — only to realize within hours that she had made a mistake, the lawyer said.

"Why, short of being depressed post-partum and being physically and in mental anguish following a difficult pregnancy, would any woman who's gone through that want to give up her babies? It doesn't make any sense," Shroeder said outside an Ottawa courthouse.

He added that Quets feared the children, Tyler Lee and Holly Ann Needham, would move away from North Carolina with their adoptive parents.

The lawyer made the comments after a judge in Ottawa decided Tuesday that Quets would have a bail hearing on Thursday and would remain in a detention centre until then.

'Next to impossible' to withdraw from adoption: advocate

Several members of Origins Canada, a group that supports parents and children separated by adoption, attended the court proceedings.

Spokeswoman Sheri Sexton said natural parents can rarely regain through the legal system the children they put up for adoption.

"Unfortunately, many women have felt the desperation that she feels," Sexton said. "They're given false hope that they can withdraw [from the adoption process], but it's next to impossible to do once the ball gets rolling."

Christian Girouard, a spokesman for the federal Department of Justice, said Quets can be held in Canada for up to 60 days while the department awaits an extradition request from the United States.

Quets has been charged in the U.S. with two counts of second-degree kidnapping in North Carolina and one federal count of international parental kidnapping.

A custody agreement allowed Quets to take the children on a visit from Dec. 22 to 24, but authorities were alerted after they did not return.