Pushing for More Babies to Meet the Demand

There is so much misleading, inaccurate and just plain WRONG with “Should Adoption Be a Reproductive Right?“ it is difficult to know where to begin.

The author, Cristina Page is Co-Director of Spence Chapin's Adoption Access Network has an obvious vested interest in promoting adoption as an option. She is in the adoption business. It is how her salary is paid. Her advice is thus as valid as bankers addressing mortgage bailouts.

Page says: “With abortion, a woman almost always puts the decision behind her, and moves on; with adoption that can be considerably more challenging.” More challenging to put a living child “behind” you?   Fact is, losing a child to adoption creates a limbo loss with no ritual or closure, that has been recognized as being lifelong and irresolvable, creating increased risk of secondary infertility and post traumatic stress disorder. The grief, pain and anger do not lessen over time.

She also says, “Adoption can be a painful choice but much of the difficulty is unnecessary.” Well, that’s true because losing a child to adoption is most often unnecessary – a permanent solution for a temporary problem. Providing mothers in crisis the resources they need to keep their families intact would prevent many unnecessary losses.

Sharon Kaplan adds to the misinformation by claiming “"Birth mothers gradually learned that babies for adoption were needed so desperately that they could have more control than ever before over the adoption process.”  Needed?  Really?

It is not surprising that pro-adoption page while speaking of expectant mothers – who she calls birth mothers – needing and having s right to accurate information, gives inaccurate information on open adoption claiming: “Only 24 states enforce open adoption agreements. So, in the remaining 26 states, the birth mother has no legal recourse if the day after the adoption is finalized the agreement is completely ignored” without stating that the so-called “enforcement” translates to mediation that cannot be enforced. Any woman thinking open adoption is the ideal solution it is presented to be needs to read the Mothers of Open Adoption Fraud page on Facebook. gthere one can meet mother after broken hearted deceived mother who fell for the lies of adoption buisness that use open adoption as a procrument incentive.

Two things Page got right:

First, the conflict of interest inherent in legal representation for relinquishing mothers. Her solution is reproductive rights attorneys providing pro-bono services. While that might help, it would be far better to outlaw the practice of adopters paying for the attorney that represents the mother and instead have those funds placed into a state pool to pat attorneys without the conflict.

 The other things she got partially right is the information on so-called “safe haven” baby dumps, also known as baby hatches which The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is calling to be banned because, in addition to the problems Page raises, the practice of legalized abandonment, safe havens violate children's right to identify their parents. They create adoptees with no way of ever tracing back their genealogical heredity and thus medical history.

BOTTOM LINE: Suffering the loss of a child is in no way a "right" - it's a tragedy. And most often a preventable tragedy. Those who fight for reproductive rights, womens rights, need to fight for the rights of mothers and fathers to not be duped, decieved, pressured, coerced or exploited out of their children to meet a demand.

Anything else is unacceptable.