Where do I start? Do I celebrate that Jerry Sandusky's reign of terror on boys rendered vulnerable via foster care including those he adopted has finally been stopped and his Angels in Adoption Award has been rescinded? Or do I continue to worry for all the children like Masha Allen suffering similar fates, having been too easily adopted by pedophiles and all those in homes approved by slip-shod home studies, their adopters praised and hailed as heroes?
Do I celebrate the more than 226 children who have been killed by those entrusted with their care through adoption? Or the thousands more who survived unthinkable abuses like the recently exposed abuses of seven children adopted from Guatemala by the Barretos who killed one and tortured them by tying their hands and feet to the cribs, dunking them in barrels of water until they lost consciousness, and put hot peppers into the kids' mouths to make them stop crying.
Photo: Loyda Rordiguez holding photo of her missing daughter during a hunger strike in Guatemala to bring attention to her case and others like her.
Or, perhaps I should celebrate the apology issued in Australia for their forced adoptions during the 50's, 60's and into the 1970s while my nation continues to allow such abuses to go on and on with little regulation? Celebrate that mores have changed and single parenthood is less of a stigma and less US mothers are yielding to the pressures to let go of their children with promises of openness...promises that are unenforceable and far too often broken leaving mothers I despair and betrayal.
Do I cheer with joy that People magazine is featuring a story of Black Market adoptions on Thanksgiving day... about Seymour Fenchel adoptees and their quest to find their parents.
Do I celebrate another "victory" as another state "allows" their adult adoptees a right that never should be denied any adopted person anywhere while in the majority of states they are still discriminated against and every day children's birth certificates are being wiped clean, erased, hidden from them and new falsified birth certificates are issued in their stead?
Am I filled with joy that the story of more than 300,000 babies stolen in Spain's has been uncovered or sickened that it happened? Glad that people like E.J. Graff, and Erin Siegel, two objective, credible, respected "outsiders" have picked up the mantel and are joining us in exposing the ugly truths of adoption?Perhaps I can celebrate at the grave of my daughter or her empty chair at our family Thanksgiving.
The US "celebrates" adoption. Business as usual. Keep the babies flowing. Hooray! Our gvt. encourages and promotes it with tax benefits that are supposed to help the kids in foster care who could be adopted, but most of goes to continue the scourge of international trafficking in children, exploitation, coercion and commodification of children.
Angry and Bitter?
My right to be an angry truth-teller began long before my daughter's untimely death. It came from having been brainwashed into believing that my daughter, my previous baby, my flesh and blood would be "better off" if I signed her life away to total strangers who were somehow more "deserving" than I when I had done no harm to my child - just given her life. How bizarre a concept is that? And I was further made to believe that I would be the selfish one for trying to keep my own child, not those who sought her.
Those who took my baby from me took so much more. They took my soul and they took future. For despite going on to marry (despite being told that if I ever told anyone, even the man I planned to marry, I’d be scorned and he wouldn’t want to marry me), having 3 more kids, becoming PTA VP and scout leader and everything else one is "supposed to” do...I never forgot. Not for one second. It gnawed at me and replaced any self-confidence I might have had with shame and guilt. I lived hearing that "any dog can be a mother." And when I was blessed to find I was not the only woman in the world to have done such a horrid thing as give away my own child, I found more horror than I thought imaginable and feared for my daughter's well-being. I quickly learned that there is no guarantee of a "better life" - mothers I knew found that their children had died and they were never told; others found their kids were abandoned by their adopters - some were able to adopt their own children! I learned of adopted children being beaten, starved, caged, sexually abused....My insides scream every day for the horrors of the unregulated crap shoot that is adoption!
And now, in the end, I live eternally wondering if my own precious daughter would be alive today had I not yielded to the pressure to sign her life away. And I will never know...........Bitter? Angry? I think I've earned the right. Happy, happy happy adoption month? NOT! Adoption is not sum zero win-win. It is very much a win-loose. It takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It exploits poverty and powerlessness.
It's all smoke and mirrors and it is upside down and... backwards. They convince you that black is white, that evil is good and good is evil. They play on our weaknesses – the mothers who take and the mothers who loose - the middlemen of flesh peddlers. And, like all good sociopaths they come to believe their own lies feeling smug about doing something "righteous." Like politicians who label bombs "peace keepers" they sugar coat their destruction with words of "rescue" and label children with families "orphans" to justify the madness that feeds them and fattens their wallets.
We must do more than eloquently express our righteous indignation. We must go beyond sharing and commiserating with one another. Australia apologized and changed its ways! The Grandmothers in the Plaza are being heard at LONG last! And countries are closing down IA. We must keep up the pressure and never stop until we weed out all the baby brokers and put some regulations in place....and for God sake, allow adoptees their birthright and stop falsifying birth certificates! Get the lies and secrets out of adoption!
How can any adoption be called "ethical" when it starts with a falsified birth certificate? We must hold EBDAI and others who claim to want adoption made ethical to that moral standard and accept no less. Taking away a person's identity and heritage is what was done to Africans brought here on slave ships, who like adoptees were held up and priced by their health and strength; their age and gender. How can we call ourselves a nation who has evolved if we are still today doing the same thing to human beings and calling it "rescuing" them and admiring those who benefit from it?
I do not celebrate adoption day or month. I do no celebrate adoption. I do not celebrate adoption I deplore the destruction of families to meet a demand. The eradication of reality. I MOURN and I commiserate with all for whom it is a sad reminder of all they've lost because of adoption and the pain and grief we suffer. I can no more celebrate adoption than I would celebrate any war, genocide or natural disaster that took lives and left untold numbers wounded and bleeding...bereft of family.
We as a society do not celebrate or encourage divorce without just cause, even though many divorces lead to reformed marriages and families. And when a marriage fails, it is mandated by law that the custody of the children be shared. Unless a parent is declared unfit their right to visitation is protected and inference with it is a felony - recognizing the sanctity of motherhood and fatherhood and right of a child to his heritage and origins. Not so in adoption whihc destroys all reality, wipes the slate clean, leaving a void.
My prayers to every new family unnecessarily torn apart because of social mores, poverty, and worst of all - to meet a demand! May every person who has in any way contributed to destroying lives via adoption meet their justice in hell!
5 comments:
So true and powerful for the millions affected by these laws. Thank you so much for writing and bless you.
" when I had done no harm to my child - just given her life"
Wow! That puts it so succinctly. That's all my mother did, too. And all she wanted to do was to love me and take fabulous care of me.
And all the pain my mother and I both suffered unnecessarily. Unconscionable!
Bravo! Especially your last sentence.
Fabulous Post!
Great post Mirah.
Australia has so far apologised to The Stolen Generation, The Forgotten Ones and The Child Migrants.Next is the turn of The Invisible ones, the adoptees of forced adoption.The Inquiry into forced adoption is going well with many,many more adoptees coming forward than expected by te Senators.
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