Adoption News

Assume that all children who have been adopted or fostered have experienced trauma.” says the American Academy of Pediatrics in new guide. read more… →

It was with great anticipation that I waited for The Child Catchers. Sadly, while we can all blog, and self publish, and get memoirs going, the “non biased” pen of the non adoption affected if often needed to bring the anecdotal facts home for the general public. It’s like they can’t believe “us”, probably because they do not want to, and dismiss it as “your experience” believing us “too close” to see the full picture. Making Kathryn’s eyes, her words, like balm on the ever oozing wound.
The Child Catchers- Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption is a must read, must have on any adoption bookshelf. read more… →

So What Difference Does it Make That A Act of Love is a For-Profit Agency?
The bigger question is why this agency has been allowed to be a member of National Council For Adoption. Doesn’t NCFA have a vetting process for its members? Or does it simply enroll agencies that can afford its membership fees? Does NCFA even know it has a for-profit agency in its corral? read more… →

The Michigan Republican’s seem very proud of their efforts per their “news brief” on these adoption bills. Based on the literature, they are claiming to “will help Michigan mothers and children” and of course, how could that be a bad thing? The ( more than) five separate and quite complicated bills are being added in to the already existing maze of Michigan adoption laws on the books under the general heading of adoption. It becomes easy to see how the general public gets confused regarding all the many aspects of adoption and jumbles it up in a happy every after story mess when our leaders are so guilty of the same.

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It’s not the “gay” that makes adoption lesser, for adoption is an equal opportunity loss provider. Children who are adopted, no matter how wonderful their gay or straight parents are, have already experienced a known harmful trauma; the breakage and separation from their original family. It’s not that they are getting substitute Daddy in place of a substitute mommy, or trading a daddy for a second mommy that is adding to the issues. It’s that the mommy and dada that they were born to have been replaced at all: period.

But that STILL has nothing to do with Marriage Equality. Nothing. read more… →

I’ve decided to once again stick my neck out. Because giraffes have such long necks, they always see the “bigger picture” – the bigger picture is that someday no child will have to be separated from their family of origin and no mother feel forced to give up her a child. I’m hoping that those of you who also see the bigger picture will want to become giraffes and join me. If so, think of ways that you can stick out your neck – and help to change an very archaic system. read more… →

Sandy has returned to the Good Fight and is taking her place calling for action! Please join her on the Facebook on the ALARM Network group page challenging the sealed records controversy in the United States. Under her guidance the Alarm network is proposing a Federal Mandate based upon the 14th Amendment and here’s what YOU can do to help! read more… →

Adoption Ark and Christian World Adoption have both announced they are closing their doors and filing for bankruptcy in the span of one last week. Even Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, said he expected that many more agencies would be closing. Burn, baby, burn! read more… →

The simple truth is, if the adoption industry had done their job of informing adoptive families of the real risks of adopting an institutionalized, FAS Russian orphan, then the sensational news stories about returned children would never have angered the Russian government. If they had done their job and screened potential adoptive families better, then we might not have read about so many Russian adoptees abused or murdered by their “loving” adoptive parents. If they provided low cost post adoption services to meet the needs to the community they helped create, then underground “adoptee swapping networks” and places like the Ranch for Kids, would not be needed. read more… →

This year I will be “celebrating” my 25 year anniversary of being adopted affected. I have been a birthmother for 25 years. Smack dab in the middle of all the pro-adoption hoopla is my “Gotcha” day. I usually say that I would just like to sleep through the whole damn month and frequently, I do end up hiding or at least staying off line and NOT dealing with adoption. read more… →

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. read more… →

A Call for Help After Adoption Corruption in San Antonio

I have never endorsed an Adoption Agency, but I am not above helping a good one especially when they are on the side of right. This is one of the cases.

Earlier this year one of Texas’ largest and most notorious adoption agencies went under. Adoption Services Associates, or ASA as it was “affectingly” abruptly shut its doors and claimed bankruptcy in April.  Their websites are all down, but their sad little facebook page still sports their claims to fame:

“Adoption Services Associates of San Antonio, Texas, is a licensed, nonprofit adoption agency offering complete adoption services for domestic adoptions and Home Studies for all types of adoptions.

ASA has been in service since 1984 and has found loving homes for well over 3,500 (1998 figure) children in the Domestic Program and over 1400 children while woking in Russia.

Domestic Adoptions:

ASA is a pioneer in semi-open adoptions, now the most popular choice for both birth parents and adoptive parents. ASA is licensed in Texas, New York, New Jersey, and approved in Connecticut, and has helped families from all over the US and internationally. ASA was founded and is headed by Linda Zuflacht, attorney and a Texas Licensed Child Placing Agency Administrator, and offers full in-house legal services, pre- and post-placement social services, and counseling by professional staff for birthparents and adoptive parents.

Linda Zuflacht is a founding fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys.”

The attorney general has filed charges against ASA and its owners including Linda Zuflacht is a founding fellow of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys. ( just had to bold that one to point out that THESE are the PROFESSIONALS that we are suppose to TRUST!!!) According to our friends at PoundPupLegacy, she also has delivered numerous lectures, served as an adoption panel expert, and appeared on national adoption-related TV shows.

She, along with her husband, apparently don’t pay their taxes, can’t handle money, and have previous involvement in shady adoptions. So, we rejoice that they have closed down.

Of course, there was much to do about the closing and the media covered the despair of the adoptive families waiting who have been bilked out of thousands of dollars:

• Couples Outraged With Adoption Agency
• Adoption agency closing stuns prospective parents
• Closed adoption agency under investigation
• Local agency abruptly closes, leaving adoptions across the country in limbo

The attorney general has filed charges against ASA and its owners, but nobody seems concerned about the disenfranchised birthfamilies. ASA has completed over 5,000 relinquishments since they opened. While they did email the adoptive parents of the closing, no one bothered to tell the birth families. As ASA only did “semi” open adoptions, the agency handled all the middle man control- they were the contact and now all these families have no hope of receiving promised updates or read more… →

A Brief Second Before I Was a BirthMother

I remember this picture being taken like it was yesterday.

It doesn’t matter that it was almost 25 years ago. I know exactly where I was November 16th, 1987. I was my final moments, holding my newborn son and saying good bye.  I can tell you where I bought that ugly shirt. I can tell you all about my armful of bracelets. And by just lookign at this image,  the flood of emotions can bring me right back to the worst minutes of my life.. having to walk out that hospital door without my baby.

That image was for me to remember. Back in the days when I thought I could forget and move on like they said.

Twenty Five Years Later

I never expected that it would be news. I never expected to see us on the front page of Yahoo news.  Yet, here we are. Yup. Adoption was supposed to be the thing that let me move on with my life as if I was not a mother. As if none of this had happened.  Funny how that didn’t happen like the “nice” adoption agency said it would. Yeah, you can read all about us on Yahoo.  *** Don’t Miss Adopted or Abducted by Dan rather Reports: on HDNet Available from major TV providers across the U.S. including:
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Dan Rather Investigates Adoption & Coercion

Yesterday, April 6th, 2012, I was interviewed by Dan Rather.

I usually don’t like writing these kinds of “I’m going here and doing this” kind of thing because it feels insanely self promotional and I end up feeling like a show off and that’s not my intention. However, enough people know and will ask me about it. The one thing I love about blogging is I only have to tell a story once and then just link to. Plus, my hope is to share the how’s and whys and what it is like so that other’s realize that it’s not such a big deal and hopefully more can speak out as well.

Adopted or Abducted?

In case, you have missed it. Dan Rather is out new champion in adoption land. No longer with CBS, but still an investigative journalist heading Dan Rather Reports on HDNet.com. From what I now understand, they were already keen about doing a piece on adoption based on a phone call a while back, but the timing of the Australian Adoption Apology, has them going full bore. If you haven’t read Adopted or Abducted?  please do so you see what I mean. They get it.

I’m still kind of in shock for many reasons.

What Does the West Australian Adoption Apology Mean?

For so many years, we have turned and looked to Austria as a model for adoption. Australia opened their records. Australia changed adoption practices. Australia does not nearly have the same number of domestic infant adoption as the US does proportionally. Australia honors the mother and child, their bond, values motherhood.

So very far ahead of us in America, and yet, the mothers in Australia kept on pushing for more. Records open; they can find their children that were lost to adoption. Laws change; they have effectively closed the doors to the sad birthmother club and take no new members. Not enough, they wanted more. They wanted the government to admit that they did them wrong. They wanted an official apology.

Mother’s drugged, physically restrained, parental rights stripped and no one cared. The same Baby Scoop Era adoption practices went on in Canada and the USA before they repackaged adoption into “new and improved” open adoption that we have today. Canadian mothers want more too. And so do mothers in the US.

I Didn’t Deserve Their Apology

For me, I didn’t think it mattered. I understood and supported what our other mothers felt they needed, but I have to admit that I fell under that adoption trance again.


It’s not me. That’s not my story. I am not like them.

I forget, or maybe I just still WANT to forget, that the things that makes adoptions seem different from one generation of mothers to another were created by the industry to do just that: make us seem different. The key word here is seem.


I was taught that the way I relinquished was different than the mothers that went before me and it was. Adoption was presented to me as, yes, a story of her redemption. Yes, I am different and in my head, our senior mothers have a right to this demand, this righteous anger, that I do not have. For in ways, in my heart, I know I am not worthy of that anger

It’s not me, that’s not my story. I am not like them.

Just like I was taught by the Adoption Industry that benefited from me thinking Adoption was cool.

They kicked and screamed. I was tricked and chose. Drugged and tied, kept and smiling. Unwed and shamed like dirt or elevated to the strong selfless birthmother. How much of what I feel is still only because it is how I was taught to feel? Adoption was in the stages of being “repackaged” in the mid 80′s and I bought into the program. The apology was not for me. The other mothers deserved it, not me. They suffered where I was stupid.

Formal Inquiry Into Poast Adoption read more… →