My Dear President,
First, I must thank you. For the first time in long 8 years, I can admit that I do again have a president. I like that I can feel proud to be an American again. We have been waiting for you.
Now I know you have too many things on your plate right now and in the scheme of things, what I ask from you probably will have to wait until more pressing matters are at hand, but I have to speak up now, if only because you brought it up. I have concerns about the speech you gave at Notre Dame. Overall, it was very good. Overall the message was clear and sound. Overall it was a good speech.
It’s just one little line that makes me want to scream and pull my hair out. You said:
“Let’s make adoption more available.”
Oh, my President, my dear hard working president, you do not know what you are talking about. More adoption is NOT the answer to abortion.
I know that many people in government have said the same line as an answer to abortion. I know it has gained in popularity and seems like a sensible choice, but adoption as it is practiced in this country is corrupt. Adoption is coercive.
Adoption is, like you said in the same speech, “The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice”.
A woman experiencing a crisis pregnancy is in a very vulnerable and weak state. She has essentially TWO choices: abort or carry the child to term. If she decides to carry the child to term then she is a mother.
That is physiological, hormonal, biological, instinctual, and completely unavoidable. No matter what he life’s situation, no matter what logic is applied to her age, her social standing, her financial capabilities, she will still undergo the mental, emotional and physical changes that birth brings about.
Approximately 13,000 to 15,000 women a year in the US voluntarily relinquish their newborn infants to adoption.( not one agancy keeps track!) These are not mothers who have children removed from them due to neglect nor abuse. These are not situation where child protection is the motivating force.
These are the women who have what is in great demand in this country: newborn infants. They are young. They are economically underprivileged. They are not in the place in their lives where they think they are ready to be a mother. They are scared. They have doubts and they have no support.
It might make sense to think ”Ok, this woman is not wanting to have a baby, but then these other people are all dying to have a baby, so we give the people who really really want the baby ( and have everything they need to pay for it) the baby, and the woman who doesn’t want the baby can go off and have her life back”.
It’s simple. It’s logical. It would make sense, but, to quote you again: “part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man’” . Human nature and our emotions don’t always listen to the logic and adoption just does not work out the way we would like it too.
The bottom line is that you should know: Adoption as practice in our country is profit driven and wrong.
The lawyers and agencies exploit loopholes and the different laws in the states to make it easier and faster to adopt. The lobby groups like the National Council for Adoption are paid for by the agencies to make the laws easier. Women are brainwashed and signing away the rights to their natural motherhood (pursuit of happiness) while still medicated and in their hospital beds meanwhile national disability law recognizes that a normal birth take a full six weeks to recover from. Pregnant women are lied to and sold false promises with no facts given about their expectations and the risks to themselves and their babies. Open adoption is used like a carrot in front of their nose and most states do not legally enforce the agreements. Adult adoptees in this country are the only group of US citizens aside from the witness protection program that are denied their birth certificate.
It’s broken. It’s wrong. And it seriously needs a major overhaul; to make domestic infant adoption somewhat ethical and fair.
Please don’t endorse a system that is so broken and corrupt.
I have been waiting for someone to maybe care about it enough to fix adoption in the US. I don’t think you can get to it now, but please put it on the back burner and sometimes, when you get sick of bailouts and war and healthcare, do some reading on it. I’ll be sending you some more facts and supportive information. Maybe someday a staff member who reads this will understand enough to bring it to your attention.
Until then, despite the fact that people have been feeding you garbage and non facts, I will continue to be hopeful.
Thank you.
Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy
www.musingsofthelame.com
Great letter. I’d just like to add that not all surrendering parents of older kids lose their kids because they were neglecting or abusing them.
1. Some parents surrender older kids because of genuine economic need. This is where a lot of the fraudulent third-world adoptions come from: the parents think they are merely sending their kids off to school in the States. In other cases the parents know what they are doing but their economic need is the sole factor influencing their decision to surrender. In other words they were economically coerced. No one is helping the family, they are just “harvesting” the kids.
2. Here in the states when parents lose older children, sometimes the question of whether neglect or abuse was present is entirely a matter of opinion–he said/she said between divorcing/separating parents, or between social worker and parent(s), or between dogmatic judge and parent(s), or between extended family (frequently grandparents) and parent(s).
I knew of one woman in Memphis who lost her daughter because the daughter’s paternal grandmother was all bestest buddies with the judge making the decision (literally, they knew one another outside the courtroom). It was presented that the mother was unfit for practicing an immoral lifestyle. She was polyamorous and sharing a home with her legal husband and his best friend, who also happened to be her lover with the consent of everyone involved. But unlike the grandmother she was not made of money to carry on a protracted fight. Later she rationalized that since she had faced serious poverty early in her daughter’s life and her daughter was now in a position to be able to obtain a pony and go to summer camp, that everything worked out for the best for all involved. My heart just bled for her.
I’ve heard of other parents losing kids because the kids were disabled in some way that was not clear to the social worker.
I’m convinced in my situation that I lost my son as much out of my in-laws’ desire for revenge as for any other reason: I put their son in prison. Never mind that I had had no other option, I had put him in prison and was not contrite about it afterward. The fact that my son had an undiagnosed learning disability was completely beside the point but made a convenient excuse nonetheless. I only recently realized they must have made him go three years without a full-fledged speech eval–my mind wouldn’t even go there because part of me still wanted to believe I was a scumbag. It is that pervasive: if you lose custody of your child you are evil. That is what society tells you, regardless of the reason your child was lost.
http://www.beyondmarriage.org
I think that site was put up in response to the LGBT marriage rights issue but it can apply to adoption as well. There is NO EXCUSE to break up families like this in 99 percent of cases. In 99 percent of cases the child(ren) can still know the parents and here’s a shocker, even grow up in the same household with their parents. But we have to start looking at helping THE WHOLE FAMILY rather than seeing it as an economically productive unit that outputs children for consumption by other adults.
A woman facing a crisis pregnancy is not a defective factory that produced product before receiving a proper product order. A family facing poverty is not a defective factory that produced product before receiving that product order. A family with a learning-disabled child is not a defective factory that produced a defective product. We’re talking about people here, and families. And until the powers that be figure this the f?!k out, we will continue seeing families destroyed and good people like Obama endorsing this destruction because they honestly haven’t thought it through and don’t know any better.
I could not have said it better. I wonder if we write and call and campaign our asses off we will get some attention drawn to this issue. Something has to happen, and soon!