The Sad Depressing Proof from the CUB Video Archives

I think I literally hear it or read it at least once a week, “But adoption is different now… those horrible things don’t happen anymore” or something along those lines.

It goes along with the thought process of “Sorry you had a bad experience, but not all adoptions are like that.” Granted I am an eternal optimist, but these statements are really just wishful thinking often used to dismiss another’s reality so the speaker can continue to hold the view that works well for them. In other words,  I call BS.

While due to the many voices and stories being told and with much credit given to books like The Girls Who Went Away and films like Philomena, there has been great progress in having people accept that there were indeed forced adoptions in the past.  Maybe enough time has passed that the general public feels safety in admitting that perhaps the way mothers were treated during the Baby Scoop Era was wrong or that society wasn’t being “nice” when forcing moms into maternity homes, laboring with no support, and almost literally ripping newborns out of their wombs? It seems to have gotten somewhat accepted that adoption “was” sometimes/ often “bad” or that mothers were treated sometimes/often cruelly in the past, but the keyword there is  PAST. We have to believe that things are different now and adoption has changed. Never mind that the foundation of the institution itself and all the accepted adoption practices of the past were built on the forced cruelty, the world has strong vested interested in keeping adoption’s reputation as pure and innocent of any wrong-doings.

• It doesn’t happen like that anymore.
• Adoption is different now.
•  Those days are in the past.

Yeah right.

40 Years Post Baby Scoop Era; Stagnate Adoption Practices

OK, yes the Baby Scoop Era is definitely over. Most will give the end date there for the passing of Roe V Wade (even if there are all too many instances of forced adoption post), but has adoption actually improved since then?  Like many, I would like to think so and there have been many times when I have, again, the eternal optimist, though yes, we HAVE come a long way….at least with public perception? With getting the word out? With education?  Right? I mean so many have been working for so long…some progress has had to have been made! And then, I offered to help Lee Campbell with the  Concerned United Birthparents‘ videos.

And I got really really depressed. I’ll tell you why in a hot minute, but first abut these videos…

A Video Glimpse into Adoption History

There are four of them; newly added to the CUB | Concerned United Birthparents channel on YouTube.

It’s actually pretty incredible to witness, however belated and after the fact, the very first appearance of a real-live-walking-talking-self-outed birthmother on national TV. It really is important adoption history. It’s 1979, only three years after founding CUB and Lee Campbell appears all alone as a guest for Phil Donahue. Did I mention she sits alone on stage? Can I gush here a bit? Back in the day, Donahue was one of THE major shows on TV. We’re talking pre- Ophra, pre- cable, pre-everything; so everyone watched Donahue. It was nationally televised, watched by millions. And here it was, a whole hour demystifying adoption with a real live birthmother who refused to stay under the veil of shame and secrecy to tell her story. Alone. Now that’s courage.

I think it is REALLY VERY IMPORTANT to know our adoption history. In some ways we tend to be more of a transient community. Yes, there are people, like Lee Campbell,  that have been “here” forever, but many folks do leave and go back to the non adoption world. Some go forever and some take breaks, but new people come in all the time. New adoptees growing up and deciding to search, new birthmothers, more new and hopeful adoptive parents; we are constantly adding to our pool of people, but they are only taking the first steps and have no idea what went before them. And many tend to do the same thing; newly outraged, or wanting to DO something e say “we need to get on TV, we need to get the media, we need people to understand, to know, to get it”, without seeing what has gone on before.  Maybe it’s human nature to think that our ideas have never been tried before, but sometimes it seems to be a case of reinventing the wheel. Not that more isn’t better and certainly, we cannot rest on exposure, however fantastic, that is almost 40 years old, but even I have to remind myself that I am NOT, by far, the first one to come out and say these things about adoption.

And that’s the main reason why these videos are just so upsetting to me.

Yes, the fashions clearly scream another decade, but if you close your eyes and just listen; these shows could have aired yesterday. It was groundbreaking then, but for me, it says that we have been repeating ourselves for the last 40 years.

Adoption; Nothing Has Changed

In March of 1980, Lee returned to the show to talk about searches and heartwarming reunion stories. And while Donahue does  go for the tear jerking ratings and facilitate a reunion on air, truthfully, he does so with so much more compassion and allow for privacy, then what we see now on TV.

But the need and desire to know ones roots isn’t new or changed. Even watching this one adoptive mother really trying to control her grown daughters reunion isn’t new as that happens all too often still. The adoptive mother, however well meaning, is the gatekeeper of her daughters information.  Information that in the days of a closed adoption should not have been known, but we see still, the connections, the leaking of the supposedly “confidential privacy” , and the “threat” that the original family poses to the adoptive mother.

The third CUB video really takes the cake and ran chills up my spine.

It’s 1981 and it’s all about birthparents revoking their consent and trying to get their babies back.

The first couple might as well be a carbon copy of today. I mean it almost is practically the exact  SAME situation that was the cause for Carri’s case in Ohio.  Then more mothers being rooked and having to fight. And then, just like today, a father fighting for his rights to his own child.

Back in nineteen eighty one.

Adoption; Nothing Learned, Same Old Coercion, Different Decades

It literally blows my mind that these episodes were on Donahue way before I even relinquished in 1987. I could have very well watched these on TV, but I do not remember and obviously, nothing good from them sunk into my brain if I did. Not that I was a huge fan of Donahue or daytime TV at age 13, but it  KILLS me that this information WAS out there before.  Oh woulda, coulda, shouldas mock me.

And then there is this great call in from a former “adoption counselor“:

“If we don’t find babies to be placed we don’t get paid and the one thing that I wanted to bring up here; in three separate occasions counseled unmarried women on how they could keep their babies because I felt that would be the best things for them and their babies and I was fired from my job for doing that.”

Proof that even then, the ground work was laid that the JOB of “a adoption counselor” for an adoption agency was to GET MOTHERS TO RELINQIUSH.

Then in April of 1984  Phil Donahue focuses on whether birthmother can “change her mind” and “get the baby back” after signing a relinquishment consent to adoption.

Donahue speaks to birthmother Barbara Landry who relinquished her daughter for adoption to the Gladney Center for Adoption in 1984 and immediately revoked her consent. She then had to fight legally to get her baby back. Birthmother Patricia Bennett who relinquished in 1983 who sued to revoke consent after relinquishing her child to adoption.

Now mind you, the revocation timeframes during these years was most likely LONGER than what we have now. That part is also hugely distressing. I mean, here we have better laws on th behalf of the rights of birthparents and even then, there were issues, but the professionals and adoption lobby didn’t heed the issues and pushed to get revocation periods shortened even more to “make adoption easier”.

History Repeating; Choice, Money, Ethics and Adoption

We also can hear a strong basis of pushing all the responsibility onto the mother and her “choice“. Austin Foster PhD, as a representative from Gladney Center for Adoption, provides the emphasis as adoption being a “choice” which one has “nine months to decide.”  Which is just crap since a mother cannot really decide until AFTER she gives birth, but we know that Gladney likes to lock moms in quick.

Lee Campbell  might as well be the prophet of doom as she speaks about how the pro-adoption stance is growing and how the demand for adoption has begun to increase the stories of forced adoption, unethical practices, and unnecessary separation of families. She calls it.. right on the nose.. THIRTY YEARS AGO.

Then we have the late Bill Pierce, founder of the National Organization of Adoption, later the NCFA, who also joins in and must defend against Phil, that “there is money in this.. adoption” and tries to put the focus on birthmother counseling with an agency as better than a private adoption.

The discussion, though happening in 1984,  tells the same stories that we hear currently.

“…A couple things should get on the record here;  the Gladney Home is, not surprisingly, professionally interested in this case because if they lose they face the very real problem of no one in the future for trusting the Agency –  whose baby will be retrieved after it’s been adopted?  The other point, Dr. Foster, is that your observation about the safety net young women in as Barbra’s circumstance doesn’t seem to account or respect the primacy mother child relationship and the fact is also true that an awful lot of wonderful people have been raised in mud huts. And that while your point is not to be discarded, it does it presumes a kind of paternal conservative “we know what’s good for you” added to which collectively results in a bias on the part of your agency and others, without malice, against this woman and others whom you serve …”      Phil Donahue

Phil Donahue.. god bless him.. asks the right questions. It’s so obvious that he can see through this all, yet, still the wheels kept on turning and the status quo is, if anything, worse, not better.

Interesting fact: Dr. Foster says that the cost of adoption at the Gladney in 1984 was $5,000. The base price to adopt from Gladney now is 50K.  So in 30 years, the cost for a “normal” adoption was increased 100 times over.

So that’s changed. There is definitely MORE money in adoption now. Granted, everything cost more, but just for fun, I used an inflation calculator to see what a 5K adoption SHOULD cost now and it is  only a 129.4% increase to $11,469.83 based on general inflation not five times that amount.

Other than that, sadly, not much has changed in adoption. The proof is in the CUB Video archives. I strongly suggest you watch them all so you too can know your adoption history and understand that we have a very long way to go. No adoption is NOT different now. It just costs more money and the same horrible practices of adoption coercion DO happen every day.

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