I figured I am usually so mean against adoption agencies and never do anything nice for them. So I figured that I would write a post that makes it easier for women to become birthmothers. See, look at me supporting adoption! Hence, here’s a handy guide on how to become more vulnerable for adoption agencies and ways to ensure that you will place your baby.
Now, it’s considered OK for the potential birthmother to answer an ad, but she cannot place one, because then she is selling her baby. But, in reality she IS selling her child, she’s just not getting a good deal since she is going through the middle man. Yet, as a society we are outraged that a mother might consider getting something monetarily in exchange for her child.
Over and over we hear again, “I wouldn’t have done this if I knew it was so hard”. The intensity of grief is really glossed over. Maybe we can never truly begin to understand this until we live it, but “feelings of peace and contentment” do not come close. Maybe if adoption agency counseling warned of blind, toe numbing, soul clutching waves of grief and never ending tears that you eventually sort of get used to “living with” then we could talk. I have yet to see that on ANY agency website or in their literature. How about we just begin to include BOTH sides of the coin with their “Birthmother Testaments” so considering mothers get an idea of what COULD be the outcome.
So the supply comes from the birthmother producers, the demand comes from the potential adoption parents and then profit and loss comes to the adoption agency who must keep their expenses lower than their fees so they can stay in business. It doesn’t matter WHY you think adoption does or does not need to be here, this is the way it WORKS.
Who do YOU think is behind BraveLove.org? My spider senses are tingling. Of course I always mistrust these places that claim to “provide honest, informative and hopeful communication” and then have a clearly pro-adoption agenda. Plus this one is in Texas, home of the mighty Gladney Center for Adoption.
What the adoption industry counts on is that we won’t bother digging in and finding how they are all connected. It’s really easy to make a nonprofit host one website that links to another controlled website that links to another and make them all look independent. What they are doing is breaking up the whole message into little bits that then get fed to women over and over again, It looks like the message comes from all these different sources that have only her best interests at heart, but all roads lead to Bethany and Adoption and a lifetime of grief.
It is only after the true depth of the loss can be accepted that we see that we made a great error in judgment. There is value in the connection between mother and child that cannot be replaced by monetary things and perceived life successes. There is value in being with our own clans and the biological connections that make us who were are. There is great pain and loss in adoption for both the original family and the adoptee no matter how beneficial their placement is. The adoption industry is just that: an industry and it is often corrupt and money driven.
Rachel signed away her rights to her newborn son in the hospital parking lot under duress, the influence and questionable pretenses. Angels of Love Adoption Agency waited until Rachel was discharged and out of the protection of the hospital and blindsided her in the hospital parking lot was she was trying to take her newborn home.
The Association for Research on Mothering York University Karen Lynn 2001 Good afternoon. This speech is a message from the mothers of the Canadian Council of Birthmothers, mothers who have suffered the trauma of having lost a child or children to adoption and who are learning to understand what happened to us and our children. Much of what I say here is a collection of thoughts shared by the members…
Ruth Arlene Howe; Professor, Boston College Law School February 8, 2005 After enactment of the first “modern” state adoption statute in 1851,adoption in the United States evolved as both a state judicial process and a specialized child welfare service to promote the “best interests” of children in need of permanent homes. During the last quarter of the century, however, developments have occurred which force us to ask whether U.S. adoption…
While the original adoption tax credit was created to benefit the adoptions of special needs children, successful lobbying from adoptive parents and the adoption lobbyists have increased the credit by both the amount refunded and the range of adoptions covered.
The Adoption Tax Credit now covers expenses paid in an unsuccessful attempt to adopt an child before finalizing the adoption of another child can qualify for the credit. The Adoption Tax Credit now applies to domestic and international adoptions.
Loving Land of Gazillion Adoptees “Unofficial” Adoption Blog Week! I got Kevin’s secret message Secret message for other bloggers about the week of February 26th, aka, “Why the adoption establishment annoys the heck out of us” Blog Week. It really wasn’t that secret. I’m liking the idea that if enough of us participate, then it goes from “Unofficial” to “Official” The adoption establishment annoys the heck out of me…
Media Attention of Haiti Adoption Sheds Light on Raw Adoption Truths It seemed like the minute I heard about the earthquake in Haiti, the story was linked to adoption. My poor husband, such a news junkie, started clicking away from the channels when an adoption related story came on. I had to tell him that I would not start screaming at the TV, rather, I knew and expected that when…
Adoption is particularly hard because it is never something we really learn about before we find it in our lives. I know I never dreamed that one day I would grow up, have a baby, give him to other parents to raise and not see him for 19 years. I believe that is true for many adoptive parents as well. Maybe you always felt that you would eventually adopt a child, maybe you were always intrigued, maybe you thought about it long and hard, or maybe suddenly, you just felt that you were thrust into it, maybe you entered it blindly; I don’t know, but I bet, looking back now, you would say that you had no idea what the experience of adoption a child would really be like. That you think now there was no way to have planned for it all. You could not have known
The Family Research Council claims to have conducted MORE research for the Birthmother, Good Mother: Her Story of Heroic Redemption, but after reading the two of them entirely, I believe that this new publication is still coming off of the original study. Both reports use the same copy for the methodology and both have the same research group, with the same number of participants in the same age ranges. I see Birthmother, Good Mother: Her Story of Heroic Redemption as a modified piece that demonstrates the actual twisting of the mind of a women experiencing an unplanned pregnancy. It’s really like a “How to Create an Kool-Aide Drinking Happy Birthmother” guide. It’s really rather frightening. I’m not sure whether women are really that easily manipulative or we are just really stupid for falling for this. Or maybe it’s just all internal and they have managed to tap into it. All I can tell you is that this feels like reading the inside of my brain during the whole adoption process.