PREFACE: If you followed a link here -- or just stumbled here -- this post has been altered from it's original content after being informed that naming my "sources" could result in very serious harm to them. All names have been removed.
As many of you may have read, Adoption Awareness Month was marred for those who use it to promote infant adoptions by two events:
- The arrest of 6 alleged “do-godders’ from Zoe’s Ark for taking 103 children from Chad. Through their website Zoe's Ark received more than a million euros in donations allegedly to save the starving war orphans of Darfur. Instead they took children from the Chad/Sudan border region, that were neither orphaned nor starving and wrapped them in bandages to appear war-torn.
- British Foreign Secretary Milliband and his wife adopted their second newborn infant in just over two years – both FROM the US...confirming the US as the only nation that both imports and exports babies – anything for a buck! The infant was taken from the delivery room, in Texas...very likely Gladney. Miliband’s wife, 46, said: "It was just like doing it myself without having to go through the whole pregnancy and labour...It was our baby from the word go. It was a perfect scenario - an easy and pleasant experience." It was also,she said, "very, very expensive.”
For quite some time, I’ve been corresponding with Roelie Post, author of Romania - For Export Only: The truth about the Romanian 'orphans'. Her latest blog deals with the issue of US exports: The Market of Adoption. Roelie reports that 60 babies have been adopted from the US to the Netherlands.
Through Roelie, I have begun also corresponding with "someone" from Germany who pointed me to emmas-adoption blog with the story of a baby born in Philadelphia and adopted in Germany. All of this is a violation of the Hague, which of course the US has yet to ratify. Will it stop once they do, or just go further underground?
It is believed some of the babies adopted to Germany may be coming from adopt-abroad.com, but that is speculation, although there website does state they will help US citizen who are living abroad adopt US babies.
My German friend asked if I would also speak with "someone else" from India. This person works with unmarried women who are very stigmatized in India. However, as bad as they have it they are given 60 days to decide on relinquishment! Far better than any state here! Once again the US is the worst of the worst. Michael Moore, if you want another documentary on shameful acts of the US, how about: we sell babies...import and export them.
The US, which had to go to war once to stop the practice of buying and selling human beings is back at it in full force. While not as out in the open as slavery was in this country, and most children adopted are treated well or decently – with only a minority of them abused and even killed - we continue to not just look the other way...but to actually exalt adoption as a fine and noble thing. We promote and encourage it with tax incentives and employment benefits and a whole month to "celebrate" it. Adoption is so glorified that people who buy babies talk about it with pride and expect nothing but praise, even though in doing so they turn their back on the more than 100,000 children in foster care who can never be returned to family. Parenting a foster child is noble...buying infants is not. But adoption is so ennobled, such a sacred cow it’s hard to get the truth in print or believed by legislators, many of whom are themselves on the receiving end or know someone who is...just as it was with slave-owners. And both are good for the economy, or at least some segments of the economy, though no one admits that adoption.
I am hopeful that with the Internet bringing together a worldwide community of adoption reform activists, secrets can no longer remain secret. Hoping the truth will set us free, if we shout it loud enough and consistently, unrelentlessly. With the power of all of us together, we will get the word out and expose the corruption and exploitation...the human trafficking. But make no mistake...this too will require a war. Perhaps a war of words, but a war none the less. A war with many casualties -- wounded and dead.
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