Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Times They Are NOT Changing

Many days I feel as if social attitudes around family and adoption have ground to a halt. Stopped dead in their tracks in the 1950s and not progressed one iota.

Oh there are the politically platitudes about gay rights and a win now and then - then a set back. there is the lip service to "birthmothers" rights - i.e. the right to chose parents to take her child (kind alike the "right" to chose your on firing squad) and promise her the moon and sun and also their right to break those promises...

All those niceties aside, when push comes to shove - women who even THINK about surrendering a child to adoption are, in the real world, not unselfish, honorable, sacrificing, saints.

Take for example 22-year-old Casey Anthony indicted for the murder of her missing 3-year-old daughter. Caylee. Circumstantial evidence such as her not reporting the child missing for a month point very suspiciously at the young mother. But also thrown up is the "fact" that she allegedly had thought about surrendering custody of the child. Maybe she did consider this option as single parenting became more difficult than she had imagined. Are we now tried and found guilty based on our thoughts? If so, every parent in the world would be found guilty of having a momentary wish their kid would simply disappear! How many teens have screamed in anger at a parent: "I wish you were dead!" Do we lock them up bade on that?

In our society, the very worst thing a mother can do, is even engage in the possibility of giving her own child away!

This is as true today as it was in the 1960s, shortly after I lost my daughter, when all I heard every day "at the water cooler" and on the subways and streets of NYC was : "Any dog can give birth!" said with clenched teeth and veins of utter DISGUST and repulsion popping about the sheer AUDACITY of one Helen Scarpetta attempted to regain custody of her daughter, "Baby Jessica" who was illegally adopted by the DeMartinos. Not one shred of sympathy was given this mother as the DeMartinos fled the state and never returned her KIDNAPPED child!

Joel Steinberg, the murderer now free, was never charged with kidnapping Lisa or Mitchell and Dr Sarosi who negotiated the "deals" of both children was given a slap on the wrist for what was called "illegal adoption" and was in fact kidnapping - except for the fact that the mothers involved were led to believe their child was being adopted and would be well cared for.

Dredging up all this ugly past is not just Casey and Caylee Anthony.

It is also reading blogs against the Indian Child Welfare Act (IWCA) - and basically against the sanctity of the family, and those who support and sympathize with the couple de jour who has to return an illegally adopted child. This time it's Clint and Heather Larson returning Talon to his mother, father and siblings.

The pity spewed for the 30 days of "bonding" this unrelated person had with this child just totally override nine months of pregnancy! Her longing, desire, hopes and dreams have been dashed! Often I read of people crying over an empty nursery that never even held "their" child that they planned to adopt! And the sympathy - Oh my God, the sympathy. Yet we mothers who lose our kids get zero, zip, none, nada. We made our beds! Never mind much infertility is preventable - especially when childbirth is delayed into ones forties...but they are blameless and pure and we are evil witches.

Never mind that no adoption is final until it's final stuff happens. People wait and plan to have a baby and have a miscarriage. Children who mothers have held and loved die. Deal with it!

But not only do Casey Anthony's alleged thoughts make her a bad mother - they also go to point put that far more single mother should give their babies to far more deserving waiting couples, because "see what happens." Single mothers are killers - based on one case and in total disregard for the numbers of adopters who longed, and desired, and waited and PAID and thn MURDERED the child entrusted to them!

And let's be clear hereabout this discrimination. this is not discrimination across the board for all single mother. Oh no! If you are single an can AFFORD to adopt - or have IVF or a surrogate - then you have rised above all other criteria and then single parentage will not be an undo strain or your child -- because of course, you can AFFORD a nanny!



10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is sad postscript to the famous "Baby Lenore" case. Not the outcome we hoped for or predicted, Lenore grew up to hate her natural mother Olga Scarpetta and to feel her adoptive parents the DiMartinos "rescued" her by fleeing to Florida. So much for "some day the adoptee will be angry at what happened" Read it all here:

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1995/08/20/1995-08-20_custody_fight_left_scars_paw.html

AdoptAuthor said...

Thanks for that very disturbingly, depressing update. I always wondered. Guess that's been there since '95.

Anonymous said...

Yes, very depressing. I was very sad to read this, although I had heard about it some time ago. Poor Olga.

AdoptAuthor said...

It horrible for Olga but also bad news for ALL of us, especially those in contested adoption.

I have often commented on blogs that support the adopters in these battles telling them their kid might not be so happy with them for keeping them from family. I will consider this an exception. They are still taking a huge RISK of being hated for it! baby Jessica and Richard both hav stated they are happy having been returned.

She sounds like the quintessential "good adoptee." Her parents - and the press - did an excellent job of pathologizing her mother and brainwashing her against her mother.

Anonymous said...

Mayeb the feelings of Lenore who grew up with adoptive parents and Jessica/Anna and Richard who were returned and raised by birthparents are just due to being satisfied with how they were raised and the people who raised them, and unable to imagine it being otherwise. Some adoptees might be angry, others would not.
And of course the winning parents would portray the losers as ogres and the kids might tend to agree.

All those contested custody cases should have ended with returning the baby immediately when the mother asked, soon after surrender, but they were dragged out into the horrors they became.

AdoptAuthor said...

Totally agree.

All contested adoption need to be resolved QUICKLY - without the delays...AND visitation MUST be liberal during the BRIEF decsion-making period!

The Improper Adoptee said...

You know, one thing that is NEVER talked about, especially amongst the Pro-Adoption Barren Women community, is that alot of barren women had abortions in college and in their early 20's. Abortion PREVENTS fertility later on, and causes miscarriages. They they want to Adopt...Of course they keep this their dirty little secret....

AdoptAuthor said...

Improper...

Abortion, STDS and dleayed childbearing are all preventable cuase fo infertility. However one cannot accurtely state that:

"Abortion PREVENTS fertility later on, and causes miscarriages."

It ca be a contributing cuase of infertility problems...especially multiple abortions. But clearly there are many, many women who have had a limited number of abortions and experienced successful subsequent full term pregnancies and deliveries of healthy children.

I am a proponent of having all of this knowledge of the preventable causes of infertility taught in health classes in HS so women don't put it off indefinitely, have multiple sex partners, risk STDS etc...and then are heartbroken at their inability to conceive or carry a pregnancy to term.

Too many women think they can play and play and NOT pay! Old cartoon - "OOOPS, I forgot to have a baby!"

Cafe press has it on shirts and coffee cups:

cafepress.com/oopsforgotbaby

More serious coverage of the issue:
http://tinyurl.com/9bnssd

Anonymous said...

Wow, you talk about blaming birth mothers and then you blame women for being infertile, calling them the barren community. I'm infertile. I didn't find a decent man to marry until I was over 30. It just didn't happen. I didn't have abortions or multiple sex partners. So it's okay to cast aspersions, to name call and to blame me? Superior much? You're just as judgmental and horrible as the people who would assume all birth mothers are trash. Take a look in the mirror. You're horrible.

AdoptAuthor said...

Madam, I regret your infertility, however nowhere in the post you are commenting on is that word even mentioned, much less blamed.

I have factually reported in other writings that much of infertility - including delayed childbirth - is PREVENTABLE. That is not at all "blaming." Some forms of cancer are also preventable by changing lifestyle habits, but that doe snot "blame" cancer victims to stress the need for prevention.

Bottom line: infertile of not, no one has a right or entitlement to another's child! There is no right to adopt. it doesn't exist. A right to parent one's own child does, and should be a bit less taken for granted.

RussiaToday Apr 29, 2010 on Russian Adoption Freeze

Russi Today: America television Interview 4/16/10 Regarding the Return of Artyem, 7, to Russia alone

RT: Russia-America TV Interview 3/10

Korean Birthmothers Protest to End Adoption

Motherhood, Adoption, Surrender, & Loss

Who Am I?

Bitter Winds

Adoption and Truth Video

Adoption Truth

Birthparents Never Forget