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| Lorraine |
In the past we've posted here at First Mother Forum about the gross negligence and crass commerce that is involved in some adoptions from foreign countries. Parents take their children to orphanages during the harvest season, thinking they can go back and get them when it is over, only to find the children gone and adopted in a far away land. Parents are duped into thinking their children will get a good education in America, and come back to them prosperous, and take care of them. But of course they never come back. Or if they do, they are such changed people that even communication is impossible without an interpreter.
The baby flow out of Guatemala was finally staunched after the government there did their own investigation and discovered that fully half of the adoptions during a ten-year period were corrupted with kidnappings and murders, falsified birth certificates, and fake relinquishment documents. As soon as corrupt adoptions from one poor country are shut down, they pop up in another. Religious organizations are often involved, giving the business a healthy sheen of benevolence and good works.
Carlson of course mentioned none of this. His point was straight-forward: Amy Coney Barrett and her husband, as do all adoptive parents who adopt poor children from a foreign country, have near sainthood status. I don't know anything about the circumstances of the children the Barretts adopted. How carefully the backgrounds and extended family of the two children were checked. If adoption was truly the best option because, after all, it requires taking them from their native culture and dropping them into ours. All may check out for the Barretts and I am not passing judgment on their decision. Their faith appears to be a guiding force in their lives, and indeed they may have rescued children who needed rescuing.
Rather than the personal defense of Amy Barrett's decision to adopt twice--once shortly after she discovered she was pregnant--that was irritating, it was Carlson's enthusiastic support of all such adoptions, and the sanctified glow that it gives all adoptive parents. Surely some deserve it. There will always be babies that need homes and parents other than the ones they were born to. But Carlson's pro-foreign adoption rant reminded me once again that adoption is still seen by a large percentage of the population as an uncomplicated act of charity, without all the questions and difficulties that lie under the surface for so many of the adopted, and yes, in some cases, the bewildered parents who never intended their children to be adopted.
Numerous memoirs belie the falsehood of such unthinking support of such adoption. Recently I write an essay--actually two--for a new book by the Vance Twins, Janine and Janette, who have chronicled not only their own story about being adopted from Korea, but brought to light numerous heart-breaking tales from children adopted from many cultures. Tucker Carlson should take a look.--lorraine
On a personal note, I expect to have the second edition of hole in my heart finished soon. My husband had a knee replacement this summer, I'm involved in a local community project, and...I just let myself get distracted from finishing. But it's coming soon!
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ALSO FROM FMF
This needed to be revealed. Thank you Lorraine.
ReplyDeleteChrist forbid if these damn Christians would even check to see if these "orphans" had other relatives they could live with AND give them money if they are poor. America is a narcissistic county, looking down on everyone else, always thinking it is better and the same is true of Christians. Their attitude to TAKE from the poor (ie: their children) RATHER than give to them so they can stay together like biological American families would want that have nothing to do with adoption is a form of mental illness. It's also a form of disgusting vanity. Christians involved in adoption are irrational and unsound, just like infertile women are. Their entire mindset about adoption is totally backwards. I'm disgusted that Barrett has been put on the SCOTUS because once again adoptee rights will be flushed down the toilet and the (un)holy Adopter reigns supreme. Trump is also a fool to listen to his stupid evangelian liars, but since they both worship money what else could we expect.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading your collective thoughts for a couple years. I'm an interloper here, seeking a broader understanding of your unique perspective.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I find your posts & comments to be honestly helpful and candidly raw. Some have been so raw...I have been forced to GROW through them. Isn't it peculiar how adverse opinions can help us grow?
Your Tucker Carlson post has occupied my mind since I first read it. For some reason, I feel compelled to weigh-in. Politics aside, TC is an odious man! Yet, I side with him on these issues.
IMHO, ACB's family is off limits. She has FINALIZED adoptions for minor children. They are a FAMILY. They deserve the same level of privacy & respect afforded to any other natural family. The welfare of these children remains the unequivocal priority, so absent any CREDIBLE EVIDENCE of abuse or neglect...I think they are OFF LIMITS!
Also, IMO, adoptive mothers do deserve 'near sainthood' status. I think it's a sign of respect. A certain percentage of us know and understand the level of care and commitment involved in the raising of one's own children...so...when someone STEPS FORWARD to rescue a child...we honor them.
What's truly shocking is this particular groups thinly veiled animus toward those that step forward. One would think, given your previous need of them, your group would honor them, too. After all, if not for them, whom would rescue the child when their first mother stepped back?
So...yes, there are some documented cases where international adoptees have suffered the injury of conjoinment with serious crime, and it is commendable that your groups efforts have leaned toward advocacy for more perfection within the process, but, I would gladly argue...not all international adoptees are dejected to have been raised in America. Fully cognizant of what my own personal fate would likely have been, I for one, am grateful that my 'near sainted' mother brought me here.
Allow me the liberty to add...gross negligence and crass commerce are insidious forces not isolated to one side of the adoption equation...any parent who elects relinquishment of a child in exchange for 'magic beans'...well?
Some of you may be curious as to what brought me to FMF. Upon entering the graceful age of reflection, and knowing my own marrow-deep maternal instincts, I became curious to learn what sorts of heinous misfortunes might have forced me to sever those bonds...and by proxy the bonds of my own biological predecessor.
Anon, I appreciate your thoughtfulness and effort to understand adoption from the perspective of mothers who lose their children to adoption.
DeleteI do take great exception to your statement that "What's truly shocking is this particular groups thinly veiled animus toward those that step forward. One would think, given your previous need of them, your group would honor them, too. After all, if not for them, whom would rescue the child when their first mother stepped back?"
Many of us did not step back; we were pushed back. I certainly would have and could have kept my child but I had been brain-washed by the media, advice columnists, child "experts" and the like to believe that no matter how hard I tried a woman selected by an adoption agency would be a better mother.
Ironically, while single pregnant women thought they were giving a wonderful gift to a woman who could not bear a child, the women taking these children thought they were doing a great favor to the child's mother. Then to add salt to the wound, they thank the mother for her selfless decision. The adoption industry has been masterful at spinning these and many other fictions about adoption. Social workers learn how to talk one woman out of her child while taking another woman into taking the child. Both women are victimized; the first mother loses her child and the adoptive mothers does not get what she really wants -- her own child.
While you are grateful to the sainted mother who brought you here, you must also realize that the money adoptive parents spend acquiring a child from abroad could help many more children stay with their original families.
If the family of a public figure is off limits, tell that to Amy C. Barrett who paraded them as part of her soft selling pitch. It started with her, look at my big family, see that we are such good people, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe adoptive family of my daughter was welcoming...because she had epilepsy.
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DeleteEntering somewhere in between this discussion between Jane and Anon, I know a rather famous adoptive parent who helped her daughter find her mother when she was in high school. My acquaintance said, actually, I think people ought to adopt (or take in) both the mother when they are young and the child.
ReplyDeleteAs for your comment that throughout FMF we suggest that women who want to adopt simply support women don't keep their children because of poverty...that's nothing I recognize. You have connected dots that do not exist here.
We have taken down part of the discussion above as it contained false statements about FMF. While we rebuted them, we realize the falsehoods could be taken out of this context and used against us. Adoption, and our point of view, is personal and political. We cannot edit, cut or alter in an way comments; we either post the whole comment or not at all. In this case, we chose to delete the comment containing a falsehood.
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