Search Results for choice

AGC a COlumbus Ohio Based Adoption Agency with a bad reputation

The Adoption Industry, Unethical Ohio Adoption Agency November 12, 2014

Adoption by Gentle Care; A History of Unethical Choices

I personally am rather tired of having to explain to people that Carri and Camden’s case is not an isolated incident, but rather only part and partial of a long history of poor choices made by a greedy and unethical agency who has made it their business model to use, and abuse or ignore when it suits them, the current Ohio adoption laws to their personal advantage. If we are not so easily able to dismiss “just that one experience,” then I think it is clear that for Adoption by Gentle Care, this is not their first unethical rodeo by any means. This is how they do the business of adoption.

A Birthmothers Life, Rants and Raves January 22, 2013

Blog for Choice 2013 Lame Style

If you don’t believe in abortion, then don’t have one. I promise I won’t force you, but please don’t force my daughter to feel shame or cross state lines for wanting to control her fertility. Don’t give our countries women fake choices and then blame them and shame them for doing what they must. Don’t make them endanger their lives or be slaves to their bodies. Don’t let sex become something only the rich deserve. Don’t feed the adoption machine at the risk of women’s lives. You decide your moral code for your body and I will decide the moral code for my body.

Choices of the damned; Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Before Making an Adoption Plan, Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Cultural Views on Adoption, Relinquishment March 9, 2006

The Choice of the Damned

Yes, I “decided” to lose my child. Yes, I was “very sure”. Yes, technically, I had ‘other options’, but in my heart, in my head..there was no other option just this thing that I must do for us both. I believed what I was told. I wanted to believe it since at least believing it gave me some hope. Of abortion, of parenting..both were dark and cold as seen by me. My views were skewed. Our lives at stake. And I was in no position to make this life long decision. Yes, I needed to be protected from myself.

A Birthmothers Life September 27, 2019

The Department of State’s International Adoption Symposium

“You know how we can improve the lives of birth parents in International Adoptions?
Stop taking their children across the ocean to the United States.
Let me make this statement very clear: On behalf of birth parents around the world, adoption hurts us. Relinquishment hurts us. Being separated from our children hurts us.”

A Birthmothers Life, Reunions & Support, Searches March 9, 2017

Reunion Flashback

I wrote this some time ago as a submission to some contest some place. I have been holding on to it until today. It was ten years ago today that this happened. Last Hours of Cold She couldn’t find a freaking parking space to save her life. After all the meticulous planning and her careful timeline, she was going to be late because she couldn’t find any  visitor or public…

A Birthmothers Life, Cultural Views on Adoption, Reunions & Support January 2, 2017

Between the Extremes; Complexity of a Birth Mother

Yes, it is complex being a birth mother. This one act involves a duality of polar opposites. How can I be a victim of an industry, yet I made a choice? How can I be selfless and selfish at the same time? How I can I be a survivor, yet completely broken? How can I do the unthinkable, and then manage to carry on? How could I have been so weak as to lose my child, to not fight for him, and then so strong as to breath into another day?

The very act of giving birth creates a mother even if legal paperwork or extenuating circumstances leave her unable to parent.

A Birthmothers Life, Cultural Views on Adoption December 30, 2016

Universal Motherhood

There is not a “birthmother” gene. There is not a nerve that is cut. There is not a build up around her heart. She will give birth like every other mother has before her and every mother after. The very act of giving birth creates a mother even if legal paperwork or extenuating circumstances leave her unable to parent. There are no lines separating us here, no boundaries, no differences in race, country, or in time. There are no lines, either, separating a “normal” birth process from one that ends up as an adoption. One cannot just turn off those bonding hormones no matter what legal paperwork might be later signed.

Before Making an Adoption Plan, Birthmother Regrets & Lessons, Finding Christopher Finding Myself April 13, 2016

If I Knew Then…

By Susie More thoughts from the American Adoption Congress Conference: After I had agreed with Suz to participate in her “Mitigating and Managing Collateral Damage: Impact of Adoption on the 1st Family” presentation, I thought of many examples of the collateral damage in my life. When it came to the “managing and mitigating” part, the only thing I could come up with was to not lose a child to adoption…

when the thought of your adopted child finding you freaks you out.

Reunions & Support April 7, 2016

For the Birth Mother Who Doesn’t Want Contact with her Adopted Child

You are a mother. This is your child. You do owe them and they have a right to truth, reality and to know the person who gave them life. Yes, a right, I said that. The adoptee has a RIGHT to know where they come from. No adoptee should not have to be a banned as a dirty little secret their whole life. No one should have to have their very existence denied to protect another’s feelings, even their own mothers.

March 24, 2016

Facts About Adoption in the USA

 No Excuse to be Ignorant about Adoption Willful ignorance is the state and practice of ignoring any sensory input that appears to contradict one’s inner model of reality. At heart, it is almost certainly driven by confirmation bias. It differs from the standard definition of “ignorance“ — which just means that one is unaware of something — in that willfully ignorant people are fully aware of facts, resources and sources,…

Cultural Views on Adoption March 23, 2016

How the Real World Sees Adoptees, Adoptive Parents and Birthmothers

In the adoption community there are tons of conversations about “educating” the general public about adoption. Depending on how you are adoption affected, what you think needs to happen will be very different.

The Adoption Stereotypes; Limiting and Hurtful, also Untrue

Adoptive Parents want people to accept their families built by adoption and complain about the stupid questions people ask like “Where is her real mother?” Adoptees are suppose to be happy and grateful that they were somehow saved from either “ending up in an dumpster” or “from being aborted”. Adoptees are “lucky”.The general public likes to blame the birth mother’s pain on her own irresponsible choices. She is punished for her fertility and the sexual drive that got her pregnant in the first place.

Basically, unless you are actually adoption affected, and even then, only if you have done your own research and homework, most people have no clue about adoption.

A Birthmothers Life February 6, 2016

7000 Words for the Last 6 Months

In my zeal to help, in my desire to carry the load and rid others, I managed to lose myself. I needed to physically separate myself from all of you so that I could being to understand how *I* felt about adoption and how it was actually affecting my life. I think I literally had no idea what my own emotions were anymore because I was all entwined with everyone else. The anger was most notable absent, but what else was there? This kept me busy for weeks, months. See what I mean about a massive identity crisis?

Get Your Facts About Adoption, Mirah Riben on Huffington Post, More Adoption Blogs from Adoption Bloggers December 30, 2015

Infertility: The Important Missing Piece in Health Education Classes

By Mirah Riben Why would adolescents need to be concerned with infertility, one might wonder? The answer is that, since fertility is precarious, decreases with age, and is negatively impacted by common adolescent behaviors, it is important to be cognizant of these risk factors to avoid than anguish of infertility. “Abstinence Only” sexuality education curriculum is mandated in order for American public schools to obtain federal funding. Opting out of…