"Despite
your years on this cragged sphere, your many books penned, your many battles
fought, and your countless death threats received, your feminism is now a
draughty hump of nothing and the best you can do to remain of use is to quietly
avoid impeding upon the current agenda.” “Old Women, Shut the Fuck Up!”
I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage,
I've found that just surviving was a noble fight
I once believed in causes too, had my pointless point of view
Life went on no matter who was wrong or right.
Angry Young Man, Billy Joel
I have spent all of my adult life, since the 1970’s
when I was in my late twenties/early thirties until now, in my seventies -
researching, writing, speaking, marching, advocating to reform adoption. I devoted
my life to exposing and denouncing abuses, exploitation, coercion, and
profiteering in the redistribution of babies and children, and advocating to
end antiquated laws that deny adopted citizens equal access to their own
original birth certificates.
In all that time the biggest changes I have
witnessed in adoption are:
·
Fewer American mothers being pressured to
relinquish, while corrupt practices abound deceiving and exploiting indigent
mothers in other parts of the word or out and out kidnapping their babies at
gunpoint or through trickery. While the vast majority of American adoption
reformers will use the phrase “child trafficking for adoption” few, if any, DO
or even write anything about issues beyond the borders of the USA (or even
beyond the borders of their own state).
·
The method of pressuring mothers domestically changed
from shame to promises of openness and the new big lie is that expectant
mothers are in “control” cause they get to “pick” their child’s new parents! They
are lied to, conned, scammed and duped into believing their adoption would be
“open” with no explanation of what exactly that meant and no legal protection
to enforce such agreements.
·
Fathers have joined the ranks of the deceived and disenfranchised
thanks to Putative Father Registries and little is being done to change laws
that so wantonly disregard constitutionally protected parental rights.
·
Despicable practices like pre-birth matching
abound, and even pre-birth CONSENTS to adoption in some states!
·
Child protective services continue to overstep and
not just remove children from suspected harm, but have them adopted out to
strangers even when there are grandparents or other family members willing,
able, eager and begging to care for their kin. Families being destroyed instead
of assisted through a rough patch.
The
bottom line is that the demand for babies has not changed – in fact it has
increased.
Adoptees and birth parents always have and continue
to “get involved” for help with their own personal search and maybe some advise
on reunion, especially if they were found.
Some stick around providing much needed shoulders
to cry. Much needed, but in itself changes nothing. Others become search angels. Another much needed
and appreciated service provided freely. (I too did my share of searches,
facilitating hundreds of reunions all throughout the eighties, risking prison
to do so without the aid of public online records).
Then there are those who stick around to tsk tsk
and write scathing blog posts or share memes on Facebook about the horrors of
adoption trauma, and agree with one another that “Adoption sucks!”
Another group of individuals who I highly respect
are those who get involved in state legislation in their state. I greatly admire their tenacity, devotion,
knowledge and ability it takes to get a bill introduced, through committees,
revised and signed into law. In NJ it took 35 years of dedicated hard work. I
have nothing but the highest regard and respect for those who work tirelessly,
giving up their own personal time.
But at the same time, I am disheartened by the lack
of unity between the states and of course, the slow progress and the number of
states who have compromised on true equality with restrictions.
And then there are outliers, the ones who take off with with grandiose
ideas like petitions to the President. Ideas that MIGHT have a chance if they
were started from a base of a strong national org that we do not have.
We each do what we can. Together I think we could
do a lot more, but that has never seemed to happen.
The tears, the support, feeding the vitriolic anger or facilitating and
celebrating search and reunion are all necessary. But alone
they are ambulances at the bottom of
the cliff, picking up the wounded and commiserating while a
never-ending pack of of lemmings jump or are pushed.
We have never in all my years neck deep in this movement – even TRIED to
do any collective fund-raising to form a cohesive national organization to support
state legislation, educate the public and lawmakers, and prevent future
adoption loss. Nor has there been any effort to TRY to raise money for a lawyer
to sue any state for falsifying our VITAL records!
The AAC leadership is in trouble – AGAIN – and even at its best it is a
self-serving pro-adoption organization that does nothing but USES (exploits?)
adoptees and birthparents to speak – without compensation of even registration
fees – at their conferences which bring in money from aps. Come! Cry and be
angry. Share your stories of grief and shame and loss and hardship and we will
charge attendees to listen. We will DO nothing to change the pain from
happening in the future, cause then we would cease to exist, not unlike
adoption agencies!
As opposed to American
“bastards” who believe adoption is A-OK as long as they get their records at
the age of majority, foreign born adoptees, in largest numbers from Korea, have
formed a very strong adoptee community that is actually doing family
preservation work.
In Australia, too, family preservation is a major
focus. Yet here in the USA the very term “family preservation” is negatively
labeled “anti-adoption” as if being against tearing families apart unnecessarily
to meet a demand for their children is a bad thing. The only real adoption reform “work” being
done here is the state by state efforts to reclaim birth certificates.
In the
end little has changed in all my years. Seven states
according to BN have unrestricted access. AAC lists eight because they include
Colorado which became an access state in 2014, which BN does not (not sure why
not). Two of these access states – Alaska and Kansas - never sealed adoption
records, so really the adoption reform movement achieved unrestricted access in
five states in my lifetime - about 70 years since Jean Paton started the
movement in the 1940s. Another 11 states have partial or restricted access. Not
equality. And all the rest are exactly
where they were all those many decades ago.
I cannot help find it depressing.
Even if we were seeing more accelerated progress in terms of access –
which we are NOT - so what? NO ONE has ever challenged the fact that
adoptee birth certificates continue to be FALSIFIED! And little more than
lip service is given to the continuation of child trafficking for adoption.
The public remains convinced that adoption is a good thing that rescues
orphans and continues to promote and encourage it despite evidence to the
contrary. Obtaining kids by ANY means – adoption, surrogacy, purchased
anonymous eggs and sperm are all considered “choices” or even rights with no
regard for rights the children being produced or purchased.
The demand is not about to go away. Not in my lifetime because same sex
couples have have now joined hetero infertiles vying for their “right” to buy
or create a child of unknown heritage, or with some of their own genetic
material.
Th future seems to be on of children with little or no biological connection to immediate, much
less extended, family or the human race. Yet, ironically, money will continue
to be made by providing DNA testing for those who want to find their biological
progenitors. Back to square one. The
self-indulgent who find their OWN kin and do nothing to stop the proliferation
of others being separated or created and denied their truth.
I’m DONE! Burnt out. Finished.
Done everything I can. Written every word I can write. It’s changed precious
little. I cannot keep spinning my wheels watching more families destroyed to
“build” new ones; children treated as objects to be bought and sold or created
from purchased genetics and rented body parts.
The Bigger Picture
It's not just adoption.
I see so many of the social justice causes I have put my life – my heart,
soul and so much time and effort into - getting worse not better and I feel my
candle burning out in despair.
For Goodness sake there are still segregated schools! A Mississippi school district is still fight integration. IT'S 2016!!! Something as simple as being able to breastfeed in public, that I protested 40 years, is STILL an issue!
I’m too tired to go on beating my tired, worn out drum. I
feel the toll physically of carrying around the angry passion that drove my
life’s works – be it small, local issues or the insurmountable world terrorism
and climate change ones.
I struggle now with
how to “let go” and wonder who am I if I am no longer the hippie, rebel fighter
of injustice and the voice for the poor, the marginalized and stigmatized, the mothers
and babies in crisis.
I thought what I was experiencing was burn-out but I see it
now as more like mellowing and fading out. We are often cautioned to pick our
battles. I now find it more productive
for myself and my body and soul to put into deeper practice the wisdom of
knowing that the only thing I can change is myself and accepting all rest that I
cannot change. I gave it my all and I
know that I changed many lives, reuniting families and supporting mothers in
crisis.
I am not dropping out, or losing my ideals … just stepping
down and accepting gracefully and graciously that I am not indispensable in any
of my areas of service. I step aside and
make room for the next generation, while still here to add my two cents. But,
who I if I am no longer an activist being passionate about the injustices of
the world?
My life is in transition and transitions are seldom easy. I don’t know what lies ahead for me. Time will
tell. I feel no urgency – no burning need to do anything right now. The wind is out of my sails
and I am adrift. A rebel without a cause... Just relaxing and enjoying this
next level of retirement.
I don’t know what will fill the void in my life.
Like a person retiring from a lifelong career or a mother facing an empty nest,
I don’t know what the future holds. Who
am I if not a lifelong adoption activist?
Yet to be determined. All I know is I am no longer – CAN no longer be - that. I can no longer beat my head against the
wall. I am not any more indispensable
than any other. Neither I nor my input will likely be missed.
