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| Lorraine |
So goes a story the other day in The Washington Post about a couple who gave birth to a set of triplets from adopted embryos. What made the story stand out is that the couple are white missionaries and the triplets are African American. Aaron and Rachel Halbert already had adopted an African-American boy and a biracial girl in Mississippi, and wanted to add to their family. They did it this newfangled way "with the deeply held conviction that if the Lord wanted us to have a fully Caucasian child my wife would conceive naturally."
He apparently did not want them to conceive naturally, even though they have been living and working as missionaries in Honduras for the Presbyterian Church in America purportedly doing His work.
What caught our attention is not the color aspect, but that they decided they wanted to adopt while they were still dating. It is this religious fervor to adopt that creates a bull market for babies, and increases all around pressure to find, i.e. create, more babies to adopt.
Adoption creates the perfect potpourri for evangelicals: Taking care of poverty and justice, blended with their anti-abortion stance and a claim that indeed there are enough homes in the world for the children they encourage women to have in order to avoid abortion. It's the final end to the "Adoption Not Abortion" trope that presents a happy, and altruistic, picture to the world.
Nothing is said about what happens to the women who this religious fervor encourages to have babies and give them to others, and there's the problem. Read in Kathryn Joyce's The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption and you find the religious upset that they cannot find babies to adopt! Instead of rejoicing that mothers are keeping their babies, they are sad there are not enough to go around for anyone who wants to adopted.Aaron Halbert, who wrote the opinion piece under "Acts of Faith," explains it like this:
"We see protection of children not as charity, nor as part of a political agenda, but as something near to the heart of God. Because every human life bears his image, all life –no matter how young or old, no matter the stages of development — has inherent dignity and value. The Scriptures testify that God has always pleaded for the protection of his most helpless and needy image-bearers. Another prevalent theme of the Bible is that God adopts believers into his own family. When we adopt, we are echoing his own compassionate work, giving the world a glimpse of the truth and beauty of the gospel."And of course proselytizing religion. Their rewards are not only earthly--having the children--but surely they will be elevated in the afterlife for their good deeds here on earth. And since God adopts "believers," they have created five more for him to adopt.
The couple adopted two embryos from a National Embryo Donation Center, a Christian embryo bank, where one assumes no embryos are destroyed, and thus the logic goes, all those embryos created by science need to be turned into people. One of the embryos split, thus the triplets. All are girls. On Facebook, and in the photo on the WP website, they appear to be a happy, healthy family.
It's the mothers we think about here at First Mother Forum. Where are the biological/natural mothers of these five children? The embryos don't have "birth" parents, but they do have biological parents.
If you donate an embryo, don't you wonder how the children will turn out, what they look like, what they have inherited from you? Do the children wonder about siblings? The biological parents? A quite perusal of the more than 1,600 comments did not discuss our issue about the adoption per se, but mostly the race aspect.
I give them credit for not adopting Caucasian children--or embryos--as Aaron rightly notes there are plenty of people waiting to do that. But as we know, being black. or biracial, in a white family is not a state to be condition to be so easily dismissed. Though Aaron doesn't quite say it outright in the piece, he hints they chose to adopt black embryos so that the two adopted children would feel more comfortable with their new siblings. Though the children unwittingly become part of a large social experiment, it may be that racial prejudice will not end until we are all brown. What bothers me most is the creating of human life in an already crowded world.--lorraine
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SOURCE
The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption
"This is an incredibly eye-opening book about all that's wrong with international adoption. The main argument of the book is that western demand for children, and/or for a heroic Christian adoption experience, has a distorting effect on the number of "orphans" available for adoption in developing countries. If you build it, they will come--that is, orphanages attract desperately poor parents to drop off their kids. Highly paid adoption workers get parents to relinquish kids, without their fully understanding that adoption is permanent. What is needed is often not adoption but assistance to whole families. In other places, the problem is not so much poverty but the stigma attached to single motherhood. That's it in a tiny nutshell--there is a massive amount of information in this book, and it's not easily summarized."--Amazon reviewer
THANKS FOR ORDERING FROM FIRST MOTHER FORUM. THINK OF IT AS OUR TIP JAR.
I am not religious, so the God argument is lost on me. I am a natural mother, as well as the adoptive mother of a son of a different race from my own, and I cannot stomach the arrogance and presumption of this couple. They know what God wants? For a woman to go through pregnancy and birth only to lose her baby to this Christian couple? I would find it difficult to believe in a God who deliberately put babies into women's wombs with the intent of placing those babies with strangers. Adoption should be the last resort for children whose parents are either absent or a danger; it is not the answer to abortion. The decision to abort comes long before a potential baby is born. Once that child is here every effort should be made to keep mother and baby together--for both their sakes. It shows a lack of understanding and knowledge about the importance of maternal-infant bonding, which begins in utero, to think babies can be passed around like collection plates.
ReplyDeleteAmen.
DeletePerfectly stated. Thank you.
DeleteI can't believe that God places a baby in one mother to give to another. It's barbaric. In fact, I said so in Joyce's book.
DeleteGod has nothing to do with it. Human beings have sex, hence a baby is created. Adoption agencies are run by humans, and some are not at all ethical. God neither places babies in wombs nor arranges adoptions. Lets put the responsibility where it belongs, no Deus Ex Machina needed.
DeleteMaryanne, God has everything to do with it. He said, "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee..." It is MAN that has intervened with his own twisted design for adoption, a type of Greek tragedy for which Deus Ex Machine was coined.
DeleteFirst mothers became the Machine to which you refer and pushed out newborn babies for the more powerful, affluent, married women desiring newborns. It appears the Machine has been drawn by a dragon with an insatiable appetite for newborn flesh. The privileged gods of power, influence, and status have been driving the adoption cart/machine for quite a long time. Love your Machine analogy !
You are quick to jump on the chastisement wagon, but you frequently and hypocritically are guilty of forgetting that you once were also once gobbled up by the same Machine as other first mothers and tend to use your broad brush quite often yourself in dismissing others' opinions in your condescending lecturing.
Oh dear, yes. The "wrong tummy" mindset is very insulting to God. That is unless he's a very stupid disorganized God. Or an evil one, out to cause trouble.
DeleteOf course it could also be that God, if he exists at all, is not some white bearded old micromanager in the sky but an agent of chaos. So could not make mistakes such as putting babies in "wrong tummies". Chaos and mistakes don't equate.
Indeed, such a scenario that would make it easier for narcissistic Great White Saviour types like Aaron Halper to attempt to impose order onto chaos by imagining themselves as "doing God's will." Just as they have made God in their image, so they can make themselves into the image of God. Instead of "Thy will is my will", the distinction between God and man is collapsed. The Greeks called it "hubris"- and of course they were pagans too.
Here's an insight into what certain of the over-the-top Fundy persuasion think about embryo adoption:
http://aaronandjennwilson.blogspot.ca/2010/01/heavenly-implications-of-embryo.html
Just to clarify, I can see how deeply religious people might feel that their prayers are answered by finding a child to adopt, or that their religious convictions led them to adoption. I can not condemn their thanking God for their good fortune. What is problematic is the idea that God created a specific child just for them to adopt, and that the natural mother of that child was just a vessel to fulfill their wishes. The whole idea that God "put the baby in the wrong tummy" but it was meant all along for them. As to embryo adoption, the theological and psychological implications of that are more than I could begin to understand or address. Brave new world indeed!
DeleteCatherine, expressing an opinion and "condescending lecturing" are in the eye of the beholder, and your words could be viewed the same way you have viewed mine. We each have our own writing style and sometimes the way it comes across to others is not the way it is intended.
DeleteI never forget for an instant that my son was gobbled up by the adoption machine, and in fact have used that metaphor in poems about the experience. I try not to use a "broad brush" when writing about adoption experience, and would urge others to do likewise. My religious convictions and spirituality are private and my own, but I do not take the Bible literally.
You do not have to view your experience the way I view mine, nor do I have to see the world the way you do. Adoption has caused us a both a lot of suffering, but we have reacted differently and express ourselves differently. There is nothing wrong with that.
I would not use a term I do not know, yes, I know "Deus Ex Machina"( God in the Machine) came from Greek tragedy, I did take Drama 101 back in the day. Like Lisa, I am just suspicious of the hubris involved when humans think they are Gods or take their will for God's will.
Lisa--I looked up the link. I couldn't read all of it. Thanks for including it here.
DeleteThank you Pam. I couldn't have said it better. The thought comes to me, that thru their arrogance and presumption, just what are those people trying to prove? because I just don't get it. Total ignorance and lack of understanding on their parts in my mind. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI read this article yesterday and it made me ill. They are not adopting children in need of a home, they are creating a family situation that satisfies their selfish fascination: "Let's grow black babies because we love the African-American / biracial hair, skin, whatever; they look so cute and we love the attention we get when we go out with them!" These are not children to them, these are dolls with the added bonus that apparently God will give them extra credit for what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteThey are in fact playing God with innocent children's lives, children who have biological parents and a culture they are not privy to, only because they have decided it is some sort of message of brotherly love to show society: "Hey, us white folk birthed black babies!" Yes, African-American children can sometimes be hard to place with African-American families, but I didn't know God was calling upon Caucasians to save African-American embryos in need! I also question the circumstances of the adoption of their two older children.
I agree with your concerns, Lorraine, about adoption being fueled by religious convictions. I wish there was a little more thought to the children impacted by these dangerous games.
Well said, Jay. I absolutely agree.
DeleteI read the article and it seems like they are trying to prove "something", but not sure what. As for God's plan, it is unlikely that he reveals his particular plan to some, and not to others.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to find words for adoptive parents, but it's really hard to find (kind) words for the "churchy", pious, do-gooder adopters. Were the adopters hypocritical enough to think they were deserving of someone else's children, or did they believe they were doing good works by saving children that might get them into heaven someday (as some religions believe through acts of good works)? Hard for me to imagine how a Christian woman could buy another woman's baby and claim as her own and as if she gave birth to.
ReplyDeleteI don't think God intends for childless couples to have children. I think it is His will that some people will get pregnant and others will and should not. Why can't childless, barren, infertile people just accept that and go get a lovable pet from the pet store or animal shelter? I will never understand why Christian people use unChristian tactics to get someone else's child. Why can't childless couples just accept the hand they have been dealt?
God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes (like putting a baby in the wrong womb). I don't believe it was God's will that one woman's loss (of her baby) was pre-destined to be another woman's gain. I also don't believe that God intended for one mother's loss, sadness, and grief to happen so another woman could experience happiness, fulfillment, and joy as a falsified, man-made "mother".
I don't believe it was ordained, willed, or destined by God for an infertile woman to buy another woman's baby. The Bible says Thou shall not lie, but adopters are comfortable with living the lie of an amended birth certificate. The Bible also says Thou shall not steal. Many babies were stolen from their mothers through coercive, manipulative tactics. Not only are babies (legally ?and illegally) stolen, but the heritage, original identity, and history of our babies were stolen as well. The Bible also says Thou shall not covet. Childless couples need to stop coveting another woman's baby and just get over themselves.
Yep, adoption is full of unChristian principles and tactics which are most certainly of man's doing, not of God's. Most about adoption is an evil sin and not very God-like.
Cindy,
DeleteWhat do you believe is "God's" will and purpose for leaving people unable to have children?
Like Lorraine, I have a problems with those that think adoption is a holy cause. I'm most uncomfortable with fertile couples who choose adoption under the misguided belief--at least with domestic adoptions-that they are saving a child. What they are doing, at least indirectly, is putting pressure on vulnerable mothers to give up their children. They are not saving a child since there are many more people who want to adopt than there are children available. As Lorraine wrote in an earlier post, adoption does not prevent abortion.
ReplyDeleteWith embryo adoptions, though, it's different. The children would not exist if they were not adopted so there is no coercion of mothers to give up their children. The choice is not bewtween adoption and languishing in an orphanage but between living or not. The bio-parents allow them to be adopted because they can't use them but don't want them destroyed and may not be able to pay the storage fee of a $100+ a month.
The race issue cannot be ignored. The National Embryo Donation Center may do open adoptions. Some centers do. The owners of the embryos may have selected the "adoptive" parents and purposely chose white parents. If this happened in this case, well and good.
It seems unlikely that the embryos were thrust upon the Center and it had to find a home for them. If, however, the children were placed without the opportunity of the genetic parents to select the family, then I do have a problem with NEDC placing these black children with white parents. I've read too many adoption stories by dark-skinned children placed in homes with light skinned parents to know that it's not all smooth sailing. The problems that occur from being adopted are more egregious when a child is placed in a home with parents of a different color.
Now it's possible that the genetic parents wanted the children adopted and gave the NEDC discretion to select the adoptive parents. There may not have been many takers for a dark-skinned child, let alone three. It was a happy circumstance that the three sisters stayed together.
Another disturbing issue in this case is that the girls may have full bio siblings being raised by their bio parents. At some point the girls are going to realize that this is most likely. The girls may come to resent their parents keeping their siblings but not them.
While I agree with you in general about it seemingly being creepy that white parents chose to give birth to black children, and that the Halberts have created a situation where it is likely there will be more problems for them than if they had white children, given today's world, it may be the racial prejudice will not end until we are all brown. So I don't have agita over their choice of embryos.
DeleteI do think the brown siblings will make the two brown adopted children feel more like a part of the family.
The article made my skin crawl as is usually my reaction to those so sure that God's will and theirs miraculously coincide. How about a bit of humility that one cannot know the mind of God, but can only follow their conscience and do what they believe to be right, admitting that sometimes that turns out to be wrong? How about admitting there is human agency and the possibility for human error in any serious life choice, whether one is religious or not?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think we need to take out of the discussion from both sides is the notion that adoption in and of itself is either always an altruistic good or always intrinsically evil as some have suggested. Adopting is a choice some people make, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad ones, whether fertile or infertile. The majority of children of color are not in foster care or removed from biological families because anyone wants to adopt them; they would be there and age out of state care even if there were no adoption at all. There are huge problems of racism, poverty, the whole way our government treats minorities and the poor that have nothing at all to do with adoption or people wanting to adopt when it comes to older, disabled, sibling groups who are also minorities. The healthy white newborn market is another story, but that is not what this is about.
I do not think it up to me to say that it is "God's will" that some are infertile, and they should just accept that and not adopt, any more than it is God's will that some get cancer; that some babies are born with horrendous birth defects. These things happen, to attribute them to an all-knowing deity posits God as a cruel monster. Deciding to adopt, and in this case deciding to adopt embryos, something I have a really hard time envisioning, is a human choice with human consequences. Putting it all on God rather takes the human responsibility out of the equation. I am really afraid of those who think God talks directly to them and directs their actions as if they were robots.
I wonder what these Godly people will do if any of their children turn against their fundamentalist religion when they are older? What if one of them is gay or transgender? How will they deal with real racism that cannot be explained away with "that's ok, God loves you" when maybe the white cop with a gun does not? The people in this article strike me as almost simple-minded and ill-equipped to deal with the challenges they have taken on.
I do agree that it's not up to anyone to tell someone else that this or that in their life is "God's will". I also think it's as cruel and dismissive to say that "childless, barren, infertile" (redundancy much?) people should suck up their situation as God's will and get themselves a "loveable pet" instead, as it is to tell women who lost a child to adoption that they should simply suck it up and get on with their lives as if nothing ever happened. Or to tell adopted people that they should think one way or another.
DeleteIf people are willing to say that it's "god's will" that they adopt (or carry donated embryos), then I think it's just as valid to argue that it's "god's will" that they actually remain childless.
DeleteIt's the whole "science can fix anything" attitude in today's society, and I simply don't agree with it.
Neither side should invoke "God's will" for human choices. Neither argument is really valid for all. Infertility is a medical problem that science sometimes can fix, sometimes not. Adoption is a choice for those who want the experience of raising children; it is a right choice for some, wrong for others.
DeleteKaye, I'm with you. It is ability to "fix" whatever is lacking in your family that has changed attitudes. Before women might have been pitied or felt sorry for because they were childless, but today, I'm sure that everyone is suggesting they try the next new thing, so everybody has an opinion about what "can be done." Childless--try IVF. Husband sperm count low? Go to the sperm bank. Too old to carry a child? Hire a surrogate! Need an egg? Buy one from a college student! Can't produce embryos? Go to the embryo bank! Don't like that? Adopt! Can't get a child in the US? Go to Africa, South America, Somewhere! It must be endless and exhausting.
DeleteThe god's will idea is actually becoming passe for a huge percentage of people today. Churches all over America are being shuttered. Two in my small village have been turned into homes, a third is covered with plastic because the owner ran out of money and there sits a gorgeous Presbyterian church, with a beautiful carved wood altar, denuded and in disarray. God's Will?
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DeleteFYI--WE are not publishing comments that also contain personal attacks. We would have published a comment disagreeing about the religious aspect if it had not also contained such an ad hominem attack. If you wish to resubmit without the attack, fine.
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ReplyDeleteThey were frozen.
DeleteYes, the statement that they were fertile, but then could not conceive on their own makes no sense. It sounds like they had some testing, and no clear reason was found for them not to conceive. But as written--nonsensical. Some editor should have caught it!
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DeleteTo address the positive side of religion and unwed mothers, I went to an event at a church yesterday that was a baby shower for mothers with crisis pregnancies and their babies at a shelter. Yes, the woman who started it is vehemently anti-abortion, but nowhere in her talk or in any of the presentation was adoption even mentioned. The women who go to her shelter overwhelmingly keep their babies, and are given lots of help to do so. Mom and baby can stay there technically for a year, but they said some stay much longer if there is a need. They are helped to finish school, get job training, reconcile with family where that is possible or find an affordable living situation once they leave the shelter.
ReplyDeleteOne of the moms with her very cute 5 month old baby were there; she had been living in a train station for several months after her parents threw her out, before she found the shelter and was taken in. People donated a ton of baby stuff, all for moms who are keeping there babies. It was truly heartwarming.
The downside for some is that they are very religious, have daily prayer and advocate abstinence for the moms once their babies are born, and of course they are against abortion. However, they do not deceive their clients about where they stand, and they will take any mom or any religion or none and any race as long as they are pregnant and need a place to live and some help. And they really do help. I wish something like this had existed when I was pregnant, saying a few prayers would be a small price to pay for keeping my son and getting things straight with my parents. They are Several Sources Foundation in Ramsey, NJ, they have several mom and baby shelters and also a day shelter for any homeless woman, not pregnant, in Newark where the nightime shelters turn them out in the streets during the day. Their shelters are no way affiliated with any adoption agency and one of the house mothers said to me," no adoptions, these moms desperately want to keep their babies."
Now, this is probably the most positive thing I have heard Christians doing, for once...wasn't it more like this before the "Baby Scoop Era", when Christians actually made themselves useful, instead of now cloaking their baby lust in the claim of "saving the fetuses"? (I mean, before BSE)
DeleteHi Danni, when I surrendered in the 60s Christians(and Jews) did nothing for unwed mothers but send them away to unwed mothers homes and adopt out their babies, usually through religious agencies of each denomination. If you wanted to keep your child, which you were told was selfish and wrong, you were on your own, no services provided. They all advised you to never mention the lost child to anyone, and to forget you ever had child. Part of your penance as a Catholic mom was giving up the baby. Getting pregnant out of wedlock was a visible sign of sin in the Catholic Church that I was raised in, and also in Protestant denominations. Jewish homes for unwed mothers and agencies were no better, but the Reform homes had a more psychological bent; you were not so much a sinner as neurotic and unfit to raise your child. The end result was the same, mom and baby separated and baby "reborn" as an adoptee.
DeletePerhaps in the distant past there was some aid to keep mothers and babies together, especially before there was safe infant formula and babies without their mothers for the first year often died. But even then, religious institutions stressed sin and shame, both for the "sinful" mother and the bastard child. Neither would ever again be fully accepted as part of "polite" society. The Scarlet Letter was based on reality for unwwed mothers and their children well into the early 20th century. There was no golden era of mothers and babies together.
No religions had any help at all for moms who wanted to keep and raise their babies. It was only after abortion became legal that religious groups reached out to unwed mothers at all. Their initial impetus was to prevent abortion. This was not driven by "baby lust" but by sincere conviction that abortion was wrong. Some of these pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and homes later hooked up with adoption agencies and became a conduit to pushing moms along the adoption conveyor belt whether that was what they really wanted or not. Some also lied about their true purpose in order to get pregnant women in through the door, posing as health facilities which they were not. This is still a big problem in many places.
There were some honest pro-life people who realized that the real choice for moms was not between abortion and adoption, but abortion and being able to raise their child. They saw that adoption was a not a good choice for many moms, and that they were choosing abortion rather than bear a child they could not keep. They started trying to provide services like Several Sources does to keep mom and baby together, and to help mom and baby have a good life together. While I do not share their absolute opposition to all abortion, I believe these people are offering a real service to moms and babies and should be given credit for the real help they provide whether one shares their religious convictions or not.
I would love to see pro-choice groups open non-religious shelters for moms and babies and help to stay in school, get a job, learn child care skills, and have a safe place to stay both during pregnancy and for some time after until they can get their life together. I do not see this happening any where so far, even though it is the only way to offer REAL choice, not just abortion or adoption, to women with crisis pregnancies.
I dislike the term "embryo adoption" because I do not consider embryos to be people (that is to say, babies or children). Even the American Society for Reproductive Medicine does not recommend the term "embryo adoption" but instead uses "embryo donation". Embryo implantation is a medical procedure which has nothing to do with the legal adoption of children. I also believe that adoption and guardianship properly exist to provide homes and families for people (children) who would otherwise have to grow up without them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I guess if one were to believe, as many devout Evangelical Christians as well as Catholics do, that frozen embryos are souls trapped indefinitely in an artificial limbo, it would be logical to suppose that by being implanted and eventually born, these souls are set free to fulfill the destiny that God ordained for them at conception. The saviour womb becomes a direct conduit to heaven for those implants that don't survive, and those that do make it through to being born get to live their lives and will gain entrance to heaven when they die.
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Delete2or3 embryos are usually implanted at the same time to increase the odds for success.
DeleteIn this case they had 2 implanted and one split, making twins. That's why they had three.
I agree there's a certain amount of denial going on like how they chose to their infertility as a sign that God wanted her to be implanted with embryos of a black couple. But I also think they truly do believe that what they did is a way of saving souls from eternal limbo (see Lorraine's link)
All religion is malleable to some extent and allows a bit of creative wriggle room for its more determined adherents. It looks to me like that's part of what happened here.
If you check out the link in my earlier post you will see that this other couple also believe "This being the case, we believe that God has a plan for each frozen child who is currently sitting in a storage container. That plan is either being birthed to a loving, adopting family on this current Earth or eternal life with a loving, adopting God in Heaven and on the New Earth yet to come."
And "We pray and hope and think about our adopted babies experiencing birth, but what about the ones that God may have predestined for death during the transfer? Well, their entry into Heaven is dependent upon us reaching out to them and going through with the transfer."
Which makes a woman's womb into a conduit to heaven.
Personally I find this kind of thinking downright scary in that it goes way beyond mere bioessentialism, which can be bad enough. Making a woman's reproductive organ into some sort of spiritual vehicle necessary for the salvation of souls diminishes her humanity and lays her open to religious and other abuse. A friend of mine said it best when she called it medieval witchcraft. I'll buy that. It's not science (which, by the way, I completely agree with you, is not separate from nature but a part or extension of it, and like nature, neither intrinsically good nor bad in itself). It's mumbo jumbo.
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ReplyDeleteI am so sorry that you've been unable to have the kids you wanted so much. That's hard.
ReplyDeleteYou are quite right that multiple embryos can cause all sorts of problems - for the children born from them as well as the for mothers. Irresponsible fertility doctors have a lot to answer for (Nadya Suleman's doctor, who was quite rightly bumped from the profession, comes to mind).
I just read on Wiki that the "usage of single embryo transfer is highest in Sweden (69.4%), but as low as 2.8% in the USA." Sweden seems to be way ahead with trying to come to terms with the ethical problems that are being posed by ART.
As a coerced birth mother, I have to say I am quite disappointed in the flippant attitude that I find among other birth mothers' attitudes towards abortion. As if abortion is an easy, compassionate, forgettable alternative. I know plenty of post-abortive women. An industry ripe with it's own perversions of coercion and lies. The pious acts of some adopters makes me suspicious, but these were all children that already existed in a supposed "overpopulated" world. They just happened to be in different stages of development. Embryos exist. Embryos are humans. The adopters had nothing to do with their creation, but I applaud them for continuing their lives as opposed to throwing them out as if they're common trash. I'm really starting to get turned off by the scorned birth mothers group that I strongly identify with. There seems to be a throw the baby out with the bath water mentality. An all or nothing hatred of adoption. There are genuine orphans. There always will be. There will always need to be those adopting so that these children aren't institutionalized. Does adoption have a dark underbelly of coercion? Absolutely. I've lived it. Is every case immoral? Absolutely not. Are children better off destroyed in a Petri dish or dismembered in the womb? Hell no. I would bear this pain of coerced adoption another lifetime rather than to have aborted my child from existence. As if that is some easy fix. Its just trading one soul crushing pain for another. I am a birth mom. I am strongly pro-life. I am all for helping bio moms keep their children. I will never condone the murdering of children, no matter what stage of development, a better alternative to adoption.
ReplyDeleteBobby, you say you would bear the pain of a coerced adoption rather than abort a child. Of course, once you've had the child, you would hate to think of having aborted it. But, honestly, having endured coercion and duress as a birth mother, if I had known this would take place, I would rather have aborted. I am not in any way saying that the person that exists now, I would rather she not have been here. It's different once you have already known or known of the person. I don't know if I can explain that quite right. There are many times that I wish I myself had been aborted. Life generally sucks. If I had, I would never have known and wouldn't be mourning my life and neither would anyone else. Adoption is horrible and although I understand sadness over abortion, it is far, far different than for someone who has actually MET the child, at birth, and/or later.And then lost them. It is something like, "an idea" vs. "a real live experience." Maybe some people have more vivid imaginations than others, esp. when it comes to having a first child, when you have never experienced that before. With some having a strong conviction for pro-life, of course abortion sounds horrible, and I in no way agree with abortion in the later trimesters, personally. Flippant? Not at all. Both situations are very grave. But, I would never do it (have a child) again. At least, if I didn't abort I would definitely leave the country and have my kid somewhere else where there are not greedy lying doctors/agencies/lawyers.
DeleteThis blog and most of our readers have clearly different attitudes toward abortion. I also know many women who have had abortions, and the impact on their lives going forward is minimal, if anything at all. If you cannot care for your own child, do not have it. A different world view, Bobby.
ReplyDeleteWe will never change your mind, nor you ours, but I suggest that you read some of the past posts about the lifelong physical and psychological damage giving up a child does to a woman.
Our neighbors have a freezer full of embryos somewhere. They want no more children after the twins they had, because they feel that they will be challenged to give them the best they can. Leaves a bunch of embryos that can be destroyed, just kept in limbo or go to someone else. Will they be sold? Donated? Who knows. But, yes, there is a market for them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someone will like "Starbucks", subject of a movie, seek out all offspring. But these people, with sibling and friends having done the same, seem to have no problem with the idea of having children out there with no contact. But then the same goes with many mothers who gave up their children years ago too. Different points of views.
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ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea, Kaisa. The Snowflake and Regular agencies should get right on it and start recruiting the right-to-lifers to carry these babies. Think of all the money these agencies can make while meeting the needs of the infertile.
DeleteGuys, I realize you were being sarcastic, but this really doesn't sound like a bad idea. Or, at least, someone should do what that white couple did, but stick with their own race. That would save mothers from being coerced to give up their kids that are already here. I guess they would just need the full biological info and permission from the donors. I suppose, though, that might cause more legal problems than anyone would want to deal with...you know, I think there are groups out there already promoting this. I haven't heard much on it lately, though.
DeleteBut Danni, that totally makes it so damn selfish--without any concern for the biological connections of the children so created--it is wrong on a million levels.
DeleteYes, I suppose that is true. I wonder if it would be any better if they made the biological donors get involved with the adoptive family somehow so they wouldn't be without the connections they needed? It's kind of creepy to think about all of those frozen embryos---I mean, will they be sitting there frozen indefinitely? I hope no one decides to use them for experiments, that opens up a whole new can of worms about ethics. I kind of wish people weren't so desperate to have children that they have to come up with these bizarre scientific methods to be able to give birth. That door should never have been opened. Anyway, that's just my opinion.
DeleteThis story made me so angry/sad. It was also posted in adoptee forums. Many of us transracial/international adoptees found it perverse. White parents adopting non-white children doesn't reduce racism, it just perpetuates white privilege that the kids will never be able to get their hands on...but our white parents will never understand the loss of culture, ethnicity and shared race. Being a racial minority in your own family is horrible. I can't imagine what it would be like for these children. They don't even have a biological mother out there who may have wished she hadn't been forced to relinquish them. I feel so sad for them.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to Bobby, some adoptees wish they had been aborted. I know my birth mother wouldn't have aborted me as it is against her beliefs, but I have to live the life of an adoptre with all its effects...I hacent suffered terrible abuse or anything like that, but there are certainly many days I wish I was aborted so I could avoid the effects of adoption and I know other adoptees out there who feel the same. Im not a fan of abortion, but I'm a fan of it when the child's life would be so difficult that it would cause them lifelong pain. That's what adoption does.
So appreciate the fact that you are posting in first parent forums.
Delete"They don't even have a biological mother out there who may have wished she hadn't been forced to relinquish them. I feel so sad for them." While they do in fact, spring from somebody's genes, it doesn't follow that the existence of said person is a boon - rather, it seems as if ruminating on a someone "out there," "forced to relinquish" is a way of reliving trauma and dissociation, why would you feel sad for an apparent release from that condition?
Are there times you do feel glad that you weren't aborted? Is it possible to build on that narrative? Would your own children, if you have any or choose to in future, appreciate that you choose to honor life and give them life? I wonder if these are questions that could ameliorate the pain.
Thank you for sharing.
GEMs Mommy:
DeleteYou are now in lala land. Your question might as well be, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? She is dealing with the reality of her feelings, you are selling a version of life that cannot be answered. Say she was aborted but her mother was able to have a child that she kept and did not have the questions and feelings of an adoptee.
But that child was never born.
Approximately a third of the women who give up a child never have another. How many children were not born because sperm was, er, wasted?
EXCEPT IN VERY RARE OCCASIONS WHEN SOMEONE NEEDS HELP, WE DO NOT CONTINUE DISCUSSIONS ON POSTS MORE THAN 30 DAYS. This is not one of those.
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