I Choose Adoption. Not.

I thought you would all like to see a letter that my friend Linda Bolton sent to the advertising genius who came up with the advertising campaign for the website: I Choose Adoption. Linda--the brilliant person who came up with Firstmother Forum--will be joining us soon as a contributing writer, but in the meantime, read and enjoy:

Mr. Floyd:

A fellow birthmother forwarded the wane.com feature about the ichooseadoption.org web site. I am certain no one on your seven member crackerjack team is a member of the adoption triad, i.e., no one is a birthmother or adoptee, because they would know that adoption sucks. The budget’s spent, your client’s happy. But I’m appalled by this campaign.

I just scanned the web site but couldn’t bear the lies. I’m sure that if you did thorough research on adoption issues then you know that adoption is a relationship based on loss—a biological mother loses her child, a child loses their biological mother, and more often than not, an adoptive mother wrestles with the loss of the biological child she was unable to conceive.

Your brilliant campaign contributes to the moneymaking machinery of adoption. You yourself said you’ve developed a consumer brand. Babies are not luxury cars or large screen TVs Mr. Floyd (though the adoption industry has turned them into commodities), they’re flesh and blood and emotions. Shame on you, Mr. Floyd, for capitalizing on heartache.

Why not promote education for preventing unwanted pregnancy instead? Why not create an advertising campaign that supports keeping families intact by providing necessary social and financial resources? Even today, in 2008, a woman is considered selfless and demonstrating her ultimate love for her child, the child that has bonded with her over the course of nine months, by relinquishing to a loving family, i.e., a Christian husband and wife with substantial financial means. Fast forward to 18 years from now when that child is now an adult, and wants to know her history and is struggling with her sense of self—how and why is she walking the planet, and why didn’t her first mother raise her herself? Those black holes are never filled, and the adopted child, and biological mother, go through their lifetimes feeling incomplete.

The centerpiece of your campaign, "sometimes choosing adoption is being a good mother,” left me seeing red. I couldn’t walk off my anger last night, and I awoke this morning with a headache and very heavy heart. Mr. Floyd, I’d like you to do me a huge favor. Let me give you my estranged daughter’s address, the same daughter, my only child, who contacted me January 19, 2001 with the phone call I waited 23 years for while I essentially slept walk waiting to be reunited since the moment I signed the adoption papers, the same daughter who hasn’t spoken to me in three years or told me she has two sons—my grandsons--because in her eyes I gave her away. Please explain to my daughter that I chose adoption because I was a good mother.

Mr. Floyd, 99.9% of the time, we birthmothers did not choose adoption, adoption chose us.

Linda J. Bolton