National Adoption AWARENESS Month: Myths and Facts

Lauren Casper is an adoptive parent whose National Adoption Month blog post, It All Starts With Ashes, exhibits her sensitivities to the losses that precede adoption.

Recognition of the loss, pain and trauma that precedes every adoption is a very good FIRST STEP. Reunification with original family, whenever possible, is a far more important step for adoptees and the families they are born into. 

But, we cannot simply recognize the losses of adoption and continue to perpetuate them. All of us who have become enlightened have an obligation, I believe, to educate others to PREVENT as many future losses, pain and suffering as possible. 

We can either be part of the solution or part of the problem.  To see wrong and not do right is to be party to that wrong.  Far too many adoptions begin with good intent on the part of the adopters, but are accomplished with corruption, coercion and exploitation on the part of those meeting the demand for children for adoption - unbeknownst to well-intentioned adopters.

We who are enlightened about the truths of adoption need to educate those who are still in the dark. 

What better time than National Adoption Awareness Month to help dispel the myths and bring light to the lies perpetrated by the adoption industry and its practitioners whose livelihood depends filling a demand for children. Adoption is romanticized and glamorized (as smoking once was in our society!).  It's encouraged, promoted and supported by laws and policies including tax breaks. Yet, by and large the children used as the face of those in need are left behind as adoption serves its paid clients' desire for young babies, or children from overseas. 

MYTH: Adoption is a win-win. It matches unwanted children with families who want them.

FACT: Unplanned is not unwanted, nor is being pressured to relinquish your rights, or coerced to.  No woman - American or foreign born - dreams of conceiving a child, carry and birthing that child, and giving it away. The vast majority of adoptions are a result of the exploitation of a temporary crisis, most often poverty that could be resolved in ways that help the entire family and allow them to remain intact.

“Unwanted” is a euphemism applied to children and their families who are too poor and have too few social supports. The making of money as a prerequisite for parenthood in a society that privileges the White heterosexual individual is a key component of the continued disenfranchisement of the least powerful. Trading in Babies by So Yung Kim, Aug. 13, 2009, Conducive Magazine

FACT: Worldwide adoption exploits natural disasters, war, and unstable governments.

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .” The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

On an individual basis, adoption exploits poverty and ignorance, taking advantage of people's inability to read or understand english to even the concept of adoption as permanent. Parents are lied to and deceived to believe their children are coming to the US for an education and will be returned to them.

Domestically, mothers are given unenforceable promises of open adoption and are pre-birth matched getting them enmeshed in relationships with those vying for their child in ways that make them feel indebted and obligated.

MYTH: There are 140-150,000+ orphans available for adoption.

FACT: Nearly ninety percent (88.7%) of the children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one living parent and/or extended family.  Families in many nations use orphanages to provide services for their children such as education and medical care that they cannot afford but have no intention, however, of having their child taken for permanent adoption. Nor are these children available for adoption.

"...95 percent of orphans are older than 5. In other words, unicef’s “millions of orphans” are not healthy babies doomed to institutional misery unless Westerners adopt and save them. Rather, they are mostly older children living with extended families who need financial support." E.J. Graff. The Lie We Love, Foreign Policy, Nov./Dec. 2008

The numbers of 'orphans' are intentionally inflated by the adoption industry which uses terms such as "half orphan" or "social orphan" to tug at heartstrings, and encourage religious and humanitarian adoptions.  A half orphan in the industrialized world is a single parent, who ironically can adopt!

"Defining the child as an orphan is frequently done by people who have a vested interest in the final outcome." In an Era of Reform: A review of social work literature on Intercountry adoption, Rotabi and Bunkers

FACT: If there were truly so many children in real need of adoption placement, why do nations such Guatemala, Vietnam, Russia, Nepal, Ethiopia stop International adoption (IA) because of corruption, specifically child trafficking for adoption to meet a demand? Worldwide, babies and children are abducted by child traffickers and passed off as abandoned to foreign orphanages. Consumers - and even reputable US adoption agencies - have no way of verifying that children being offered for adoption have not been stolen, kidnapped, or coerced from unwitting parents.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

FACT:  When nations have shut down their IA programs the number of orphans has not increased indicating clearly that demand creates the "supply." Adoption is market-driven and serves those who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a child, not the children in need who remain behind in orphanages and US foster care.

FACT: The average cost of an adoption is $40,000. If your goal is altruism, there are many better ways to help orphans rather than plucking them one at a time from their homeland, their culture and heritage while leaving their siblings behind in the same conditions. Donations to organizations such as save the children, Christian Children's fund and UNICEF provide much needed medical provisions, wells, schools and school books.

"...overseas adoption is a kind of child abuse by the state. ....Overseas adoption is the forced expulsion of children from the society where they are supposed to live. In this sense, overseas adoption is a social violence against children. As humans, we exist as part of a gigantic ecosystem. The existence of the biological parents of adoptees can never be annihilated nor denied."Overseas adoption is a forced separation of children from their natural ecosystems, as well as a way of forcing them into compulsory unity with settings different from and unnatural to their genetic and original social systems. Through this forced separation and compulsory unity, not only the adoptees, but also their biological parents, adoptive parents and their family members suffer trauma." Pastor Kim Do-hyun, director of KoRoot 

MYTH: Children who could be adopted from foster care are likely to be "damaged" in some way.

FACT: There are half a million children in US foster care. More than 100,000 of those have no identified family to be reunified safely with and could be adopted. While these are in fact "older" children and some may have disabilities, the same is true of children adopted internationally although the truth of IA child's developmental problems are far more likely NOT to be revealed truthfully or fully.

Many development delays and behavioral problems are not evident until after international adoptions have been finalized. Any child who has been institutionalized is "damaged" and many of the children form Eastern Europe suffer fetal alcohol syndrome. Utilizing foster-to-adopt programs prospective adopters can live with a child before making a lifelong, permanent commitment and it is also easier to obtain family medical histories which are non-existent on children claimed to have been abandoned.

"There is an almost inexhaustible demand for very young children to adopt. People looking to adopt are generally looking to adopt children under the age of three, and preferably under the age of one. That's your essential problem. In America, which is the biggest importer, if you like, there are 23,000 children in the foster system waiting for adoption, but most of them will be aged five to 16. There's a very rich, powerful and well-resourced inter-country adoption lobby in the United States."  Andy Elvin, of Children and Families Across Borders

MYTH: Adoption is the same as if the child were born into his family.

FACT: While the system was aimed at creating and perpetrating this myth, even falsifying birth certificates to list adoptive parents as parents of birth, it is not the same. Adopted children have their own heredity and genes that effect their physical appearance and health as well as their psychological development.

Even legally, adoptees are not equal to children born into their families as the vast majority of US states deny adopted persons access to their own birth certificate for all or part of their lives.

MYTH: Adoption provides children a better life because those who adopt are highly motivated, of higher socio-economic status and better educated, etc.

FACT:  Adoption is a trade-off which usually provides more material "privileges" in exchange for a loss of heritage and genealogical connectedness, often with feelings of abandonment and rejection.

"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE 

FACT: Adoptive parents die and divorce at at least the same rate as all parents and this often leaves a child in a single-parent home with the same disadvantages that brings.

FACT: Because adoption in the US today is privatized, and entrepreneurial, home studies are paid for prospective adopters and are less than thorough. Children have been adopted by pedophiles and other abusers. Children have been beaten, caged, burned, starved, tortured, sexually abused and murdered by adoptive parents.

FACT: Adoptees suffer a disproportionate rate of substance abuse, are disproportionately seen in all types of treatment facilities, and suffer a higher rate of suicide than non-adoptees.

Read about "Post Adoption Issues" in Impact of Adoption on Adopted Persons from the US government's Child Welfare Information Gateway here.

FACT: Approximately 10-25% of adoptions fail and adoptees are abandoned or given to total strangers as detailed in a 5-part Reuters investigative report, Sept, 2013.

The FACT is that every adoption starts with a tragedy - a family who failed to find the resources they needed to remain together.  To promote or encourage more loss is immoral. Chemo helps many people survive cancer, but we don't stop seeking a way to prevent this horrible disease and simply put more and more people on harsh drug, and radiation therapies or expose them to surgeries.

Humane societies need to regulate adoption so that it is safe for the most vulnerable of their citizens and enact Family Preservation measures to reduce the number of children redistributed.

"The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guides UNICEF’s work, clearly states that every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. Recognising this, and the value and importance of families in children’s lives, UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for him or her...." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption

The FACT is that adoptions based on lies and government committed fraud to promulgate those lies in the form of falsified birth certificates and denied access to the accurate vital record of the birth, are a violation of human and civil rights and need to be outlawed.

How can any society promote what amounts to indenture and laws that discriminate, applying only to SOME citizens and not others, based solely on what was done TO these people without their knowledge or approval? 

"It should matter to everyone that adopted people, on reaching the age of majority, cannot automatically obtain their own original birth certificates like the rest of us. We should care, and we should feel outraged, for the same reason so many men supported suffrage for women and so many white Americans joined the civil rights struggle -- because we should find it offensive when any minority group in society is deprived of equal rights." “A Civil Right: Adoptees Should Have Access to their Birth Certificates” by Adam Pertman, The Huffington Post, 1/12/11 

RESOURCES:

• Profit, not care: The ugly side of overseas adoptions  
  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/profit-not-care-the-ugly-side-of-overseas-adoptions-2293198.html
• Adoption as Supply-and-Demand for Infertile Couples  http://www.americanmamacita.com/blog/adoption-as-supply-and-demand-for-infertile-couples/
• Profit not care: the ugly side of overseas adoptions  
  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/profit-not-care-the-ugly-side-of-overseas-adoptions-2293198.html
• Orphaned or Stolen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/orphaned-or-stolen-the-us_b_825451.html
• Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/
  Duped-by-Indian-adoption-agency-US-family-cautions-couples/articleshow/5964751.cms 
• Julia Rollings story at: http://bittersweet-story.blogspot.com/
• The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/11/the-lie-we-love
• The works of David Smolin on child trafficking: works.bepress.com/david_smolin/1/
• The Child Catchers by Kathryn Joyce
• Finding Fernanda by Erin Siegal
• Romania: For Export Only by Roelie Post
• The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka
• Outsiders Within by Jane Jeong Trenka
• Fugitive Visions by Jane Jeong Trenka
• The STORK MARKET: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry by Mirah Riben

Many good articles exposing the underbelly of adoption are published at DissidentVoice. To see a complete list, use this link.

RE CHINA:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/10/world/asia/china-baby-trafficking-twin-girls/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2012/06/17/344625/China-sentences.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8939661/Chinese-police-rescue-178-children-after-mass-child-trafficking-ring-bust.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/

http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased 

http://livingwithdeadhearts.com/

Re ETHIOPIA:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201208061002.html

 http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6211026n

http://www.ethicanet.org/ethiopia-to-cut-foreign-adoptions-by-up-to-90-percent

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rani-hong/human-trafficking-prevention-month_b_1199395.html

Inside Ethiopia's Adoption Boom  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577368243366708110.html

"To focus on these children without focusing on their families or communities thus becomes an ignoble hypocrisy; as if to say, 'give us your huddled masses–but only if they are cute children and can be indoctrinated from an early age'.” 

http://www.necn.com/11/07/13/Ethiopian-girl-lands-in-Maine-after-long/landing.html?blockID=857139&feedID=11106

RE RUSSIA:

Nineteen Russian children have been MURDERED by American adopters.

http://adoption.about.com/od/adoptionrights/p/russiancases.htm

Politicizing Adoption

UPDATE: 12/21 Putin HAS banned Russian-American adoptions, but for all the WRONG reaosns!

The Russian government has made many threats to shut down adoptions to the U.S. since 2009.

In the wake of SIXTEEN of their children winding up MURDERED by their US adoptive parents, many sent off to the ranch in Minnesota and countless other enduring unthinkable abuses, and one seven-year-old sent back to Russia on an airplane alone.....they have made demands for follow-ups on their vulnerable children placed in American homes.

They demand. They threaten. But it all seems to be a big act to APPEAR concerned.

Now, they are threatening again, this time not for the welfare of the children but as retaliation!

An amendment to a Russian bill has been proposed banning adoptions to the U.S. as re result of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S., which imposes sanctions on Russian human rights offenders. President Obama signed into law on Friday. The Russian bill is expected to be introduced on Wednesday and the entire package could be approved by the end of the month. Read more here.

The bill is supported by Russia’s children’s rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhav, who correctly noted such a ban should have been enacted years ago.

Russia’s human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin disagreed however, calling the proposal “shameless.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov likewise slammed the proposed amendment, calling it “wrong” and adding that international adoption was a legal right. He called on lawmakers to come to a “reasonable decision.”

If nations are judged by how they treat and care for and about their most vulnerable - orphaned children - neither Russia nor many other nations including the U.S., will not fare well. History will write a very negative legacy of the immoral way children have been bought and sold as commodities.

Using these most innocent victims in need of care as a political rallying call to garner supporters is despicably done in Russia as here.  Without knowing the facts it might appear to the average Russian citizen or citizens of the world unfair to deny children an opportunity to be adopted into a loving family, even if half-way around the world in another culture speaking another language.

But when you look at the rate of disrupted adoptions amongst international adoptions, and then focus in on particularly Russian adoptions in the US, you see that you are not exactly providing assurance of a "better life" through adoption, but rather are clearly Russian Roulette with the lives and well-being of these innocent and vulnerable children.

Russian officials have made repeated loud demands for adoption follow-ups. In light of past atrocities such a demand seems more than fair but it will never happen.  US adoption laws treat finalized adoptions with a big fat lie pretending the child is exactly the same "as if" born to the adoptive parents and issues a "birth certificate" that says so!  Except of course if your name is Tori Hansen then you continue to fight the court order to pay support for the child you took as your own and sent back.

No Follow-Ups

There are no follow-ups. Period.

Masha Allen, one of several Russian children adopted by American pedophiles to be used and abused and exploited on the Internet, was placed in the home of a single man who not only had bedroom for her - he didn't even a bed other than his own, in which she slept!  Day after day and night after night as she endured his molestations, she prayed for someone form the adoption agency to come and check up on her...to call and see how she was doing. but it never happened. Masha was only found and removed as a result of a sting on Internet child pornography!

Politicians in Russia and here who think that adoption is a warm fuzzy that always is a good thing and they cannot vote against it, need only to heed the words of the United Nations to know that International Adoption should always be a last resort.

As defined by International Law/UNCRC and the Hague Convention "International Law says that Family Preservation should come first, domestic adoption second and international adoption as a last resort. What we have today is the complete opposite where international adoption is used as the go to solution in separating children from their biological families."

Russia - show your love and care and concern for your tiniest in need!  Encourage domestic adoption and invest in your orphanages for the ones left behind...not wanted...

Stop putting price tags on the heads of your orphaned and disabled children and sending them off to be someone else's problem...sending them off into an abyss of abuse.

• You are sending children to a nation that has more than half a million of its own children in unsafe foster homes.
• You are sending your children to a nation that is gun crazy, where kids get shot at elementary schools.
• You are sending your children to a country that exports some of its own kids foir adoption!
• You are sending your children to a country that sits in blatant violation of multiple international treaties ignoring Guatemala's demand to return a kidnapped child because according to US law the kidnap victim was "legally" adopted by Tim and Jennifer Monahan. 

You can do better Russia. You owe it to your future generations.

Lesser of Evils?

Today, while being interviewed again by Russian-American television network, I was told that Russia justified these placements because the rate of death is higher in their domestic adoptions!

I replied that it is far easier for them to follow up and provide resources and support for families who adopt within their boarders, than to expect to do it here. They cannot abdicate responsibility for their children in need - send them away - and then expect to dictate their care. If they want to protect their most vulnerable children, do it there where they have the ability to follow up.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery."  UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

"...overseas adoption is a kind of child abuse by the state. ....Overseas adoption is the forced expulsion of children from the society where they are supposed to live. In this sense, overseas adoption is a social violence against children. As humans, we exist as part of a gigantic ecosystem. The existence of the biological parents of adoptees can never be annihilated nor denied.
"Overseas adoption is a forced separation of children from their natural ecosystems, as well as a way of forcing them into compulsory unity with settings different from and unnatural to their genetic and original social systems. Through this forced separation and compulsory unity, not only the adoptees, but also their biological parents, adoptive parents and their family members suffer trauma." Pastor Kim Do-hyun, director of KoRoot

The Adoption Bloggers Interview Project

The Adoption Interview Project was started by Heather Schade at her blog, Production, Not Reproduction. The link to all interviews will be active today, Nov. 14. I encourage you to read my intreview responses to questions about ethics in adoption and being labelled negative, as well as all the interviews!

I was matched with Katja Michelle who blogs at TherapyisExpensive. Here are her responses to my questions:

1. What is your connection to adoption?

I am a birth mom 11 years into an open adoption. Yes, I know some people don’t like that term, but I do and I explain why here, http://therapyisexpensive.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/visit-highlights/ and here

http://therapyisexpensive.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/open-adoption-roundtable-4-these-are-the-moments/

I am also a social worker who provides comprehensive options counseling to those facing unplanned pregnancy, which occasionally leads to me advocating for my clients during the adoption planning process.

2. How do you feel about adoption?

I have a wide mix of emotions about adoption depending on the aspect as well as the moment in time. Personally I love it for providing my son with so much I couldn't and I hate it because he's not with me. On a wider scale I also have mixed emotions. Adoption is a flawed practice, but does have its role. So I suppose the shortest answer is I feel conflicted about adoption.

3. How much time do spend thinking about adoption?

I'm not sure I can quantify it. It's part of my personal life, it's part of my job, it's a topic I research. However, that doesn't mean that every thought of every day is adoption related. I do think about it probably daily prompted by various things.

4. How often do you write about it on your blog?

I would say most of my posts are adoption related, even when it may not seem they are. 

5. How many books on adoption have you read? What was the last? What is your favorite?

Again I can't come up with a number, but I can say a lot.  I'm currently reading The Third Choice, by Foge and Mosconi. Or rather I’m reading bits of it, specifically the chapter on grief and loss. I have a stack of adoption books waiting to be read or that I’ve read parts of and need to go back to to finish.

I have a few favorites. Gritter’s Lifegivers is one because it shifted my thinking and inspired some of my research questions The Girls Who Went Away is another and I recommend it often even though it was a difficult and emotional read. 

6. If there was something you could change about adoption what would it be?

There's a lot I think needs changing, I outline some of those things in this post:http://therapyisexpensive.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/i-dream-of-reform/ in short I think it needs to be child centered, regulated, and ethical

7. Do you think adoptees have a right to their original birth certifctates? Why or why not?

Of course. I think people should be able to access all documents that pertain to them. Birth certificates, adoption decrees, any paperwork the agency has should be given to any adoptee that requests it with absolutely no hoops to jump through.

8. Do you think mothers that relinquish have a right to anonymity? Why or wny not?

No, no one gets anonymity from their child(ren). It's an absurd concept. I often equate it to a preemptive restraining order. If I went to a judge and said there's this person out there who may or may not try to find me can you issue a restraining order and keep my identity from that person just in case I'd be laughed out of court. But these laws 1 assume we want that 2 assume adoptees and birth parents aren't reasonable people. As a reasonable person if someone from my past approaches me I can say either hey longtime no see how you been? Or I can say we parted ways for a reason and I'd rather you not contact me again. As a reasonable person the other party would respect my wishes. But in adoption we aren't given that chance. It's assumed we want to be "left alone" and it's assumed the other party won't do so if they do make contact. I’ve blogged about this here: http://therapyisexpensive.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/promises-promises/

9. What do you think of open adoption?

I think it can be great. I think I'm one of the lucky ones it’s working out for. I think it's not a panacea. It doesn't eliminate the grief or loss. I also think its better for the adoptees than a closed adoption. I think it's not well understood nor is it always well executed, 

10. What do you think of international adoption?

I really don't know enough about international adoption to speak about it.

11. The child adopted by Timothy and Jennifer Monahan was kidnapped from Guatemala, though they did not now and thought the adoption perfectly legal. Guatemala has revoked the adoption an dordered the child returned. What do you think should be done? What would YOU do if it was you and you found out the child you adopted was kidnapped?http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/adoption-wars_n_1028665.html

Yes I've read about this case. I think the child needs to be retuned to her family. I think it would be a traumatic experience for all involved but its still the right thing. I think professionals need to be consulted to ensure the best transition plan for the child as well as counseling provided upfront and after the transition home for all involved.

If I were in that situation I hope I would be the kind of person who'd do the right thing despite the inevitable heart break...and then I'd sue the hell out of the agency or whoever was responsible for this, because let's face it SOMEONE knew.  

Bananas: Transracial Adoptees Speak in Documentary

Somewhere Between: A Documentary

Four baby girls are born in China to families who are unable to keep them, largely because of China’s “One Child Policy.” Instead of being raised by their biological parents, the baby girls are raised in orphanages, and then eventually adopted by American families to be whisked halfway around the world to the United States. There, they grow up with Sesame Street, hip-hop, and Twitter. They describe themselves as “bananas”: white on the inside and yellow on the outside. All is well, until they hit their teen years, when their pasts pull at them, and they begin to wonder, “Who am I?”

All four know they were probably “given up” because they were girls (they are understandably uncomfortable with the word “abandoned”), and grapple with issues of race, gender, and identity more acutely than most their age. 

Documentaries have been made before about international adoption, but they have always been from the point of view of the adoptive, Caucasian parents, or the adult adoptee. Young women’s voices are rarely heard—especially young women of color. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN lets four teenaged girls—Fang, Haley, Ann, and Jenna—tell their own stories, letting the film unfold from their points of view and shedding light on their deepest thoughts: about their families, their feelings of being “other,” and their powerful connections to a past that most of them cannot recall. 

The film captures nearly three years in the lives of these four dynamic young women. 

The screening schedule is here.  Trailer here.

Mothers Day: A Time of Loss and Sorrow for Mothers and Their Children Separated by Adoption

As Mothers Day quickly approaches a young mother in Columbus, Georgia  has gone public with the search for her daughter she relinquished to adoption in 1984.  Dove Founz discovered she was pregnant at 18 while already the sole care giver for her mother who was undergoing chemo therapy for cancer. Dove says:

"Love was not the issue. I loved her the second I knew she was there. I loved her the whole time she grew in my tummy.  Because I loved her so much I had to give her a better life. I had to give her a chance.  She deserved it." 

Her story is beautifully told and for once with all the empathy and compassion focused on the mother for whom adoption is not a joy, not an answer to years of prayers and a celebration....but a lifelong loss and eternal pain and heartbreak.

I look at everything adoption through eyes and ears that have seen, heard and shared this pain with hundreds and hundreds over the course more than 40 years. For more than 50 years - since adoptions became secretive, records sealed, and birth certificates falsified by states to maintain the secrets...adoptees such as Jean Paton and Florence fisher have spoken out seeking their rights and equality.

In the late 70's they were joined by Lee Campbell standing up and becoming the first public face for mothers who lost children to adoption. Campbell founded Concerned United Birthparents. I was there at some of the earliest meetings.  Annette Baran, who once followed the dictates of her chosen profession - social work - and helped separate mothers and babies, became a whistle blower for the industry and called for changes, calling mothers who relinquished the silent, voiceless, marginalized members of the adoption process.  Annette and Campbell led the battle and soon others of us followed...

I was among the first group of mothers who followed Lee in going public. I did TV shows in the 80s saying: This is what a mother who looses a child to adoption looks like. We are mothers, school teachers, housewives, doctors and layers. We are your sisters, your mothers, your wives. We are not whores and drug addicts. We LOVE our children and were forced by our parents or pressured by societal norms that deemed us "too young" and undeserving for being "unwed."

And here we are all these decades later and this mother, Dove, was not "allowed" to hold her own child at the time of birth, before signing any relinquishment papers! Whisked away by a doctor.

Dove's local newspaper covered her story with empathy and compassion for her and her loss without the need to "balance" it. This is a oddity in a world in which so much press and public sympathy is cast upon the "plight" of these who struggle with infertility and then the "agony" of the long and expensive adoption process - as if they are so "deserving" of a child and so "entitled" to one, it should just be handed to them, and we should all feel sorry for them that it is not so easy...  As if adoption is all about meeting THEIR needs!! And a great deal of publicity is likewise focused on the joys of celebrities who adopt with never a mention of those for whom their gain is a horrific, life-altering, heart-wrenching, grievous, tragic loss. Such falsely one dimensional media coverage repeats over and over a message to the public of the joyous side of adoption, ignoring the pain and loss.

I am thus glad that as Mothers Day is quickly approaching this one story has been published that refocuses the public's compassion for those for whom adoption represents a tragedy, a lifelong loss and eternal pain. Far too often that a side of the story is still swept under the carpets as adoption is applauded, promoted, encouraged and celebrated as win-win when it very much a win-LOOSE.

Even in the happiest. most loving and caring of adoptions, the adopted person LOOSES their identity, their original birth records, their name, their family, their lineage, their heritage, their medical history, their genealogy, and in some cases their culture and language. They loose their TRUTH and they loose the right to be treated as equal US citizens - forever denied (in most all states) access to their own birth certificate that is hidden from them, having been confiscated by the state and replaced with a falsified state document claiming they were "born to" those who adopt and care for them.

My eyes and ears have seen and heard some progress over the past 40+ some odd years. A scattering of states have begrudgingly given back some crumbs to those who are adopted. In the majority of states that have given adopted persons any rights at all, they are still far less than equal, having hoops to jump through to obtain their own birth certificate - hoops that do not exist for those not adopted.

I've also witnessed Open Adoption become a viable option for a small percent of domestic infant adoptions - a small percent of adoptions to begin with.  Openness is given lots of lip service as the way adoption 'should' be.  It was a forced conclusion as with so many international and inter-racial adoptions its pretty hard to keep them secret anymore and pretend the child was 'born to' their adoptive parents. And yet, the "as if" pretense still exist in all but two states which never sealed the original records in adoptions to begin with: Kansas and Alaska. Openness is how it should be - everyone knows that, everyone says that -and yet every adoption (with the exception of those two lone states) every adoption to this day still begins with a falsified birth certificate denying the truth of adopted person's creation.

And, at the same time baby steps of progress are being made to restore adoptee right...children are being stolen and kidnapped worldwide to meet a demand.  Now that single motherhood is acceptable (for those who can afford private nannies etc.) and birth control is more readily available than it was in past decades....far less American mothers can be pressured top part with their babies. The supply has dwindled as infertility steadily rises with more women delaying childbirth for graduate school and careers. This increased demand coupled with decrease supply has created the perfect storm for unscrupulous bay brokers and child traffickers to operate within an industry with virtually no controls!

Adopters open admit and document (as in the documentary Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy) to paying bribes with o consequence whatsoever. She counts out the cash in the film and comments that some might think it wrong but "it's how things are done." And that's that. No shame. No guilt. No fear of recriminations by having that filmed and shown all over the world - she glibly pays off whomever needs to be paid off in order to whisk her new 'daughter' home to America! She has bought herself what she wanted and is happy and proud and the world applauds this as altruism, turning a blind eye to the exploitation and corruption her US dollars have supported.

The book Finding Fernanda likewise documents adopters and those hoping to adopt blatantly choosing to ignore "irregularities" like seeing the same child's photo with different names, or different names on the same photo of a child being "offered" for adoption. They hold their tongues and report no such obvious red flashing lights for fear of being black-balled and never obtaining the prize they so desperately seek.

We read about missionaries swooping in on places like Haiti and in their over zealous religious fury not carting if the children they are grabbing for redistribution in the US are actually orphans or have family who are searching the rubble for them.

And still the public is able to ignore all of this - call them 'anomolies' and remain focused on the joy adoption brings and how it 'rescues' children in need - while more than 100,000 children in US foster who COULD be adopted are IGNORED as too old, or 'too dmamaged' as if any child being taken from the only language they've heard since their conception and in an orphanage for any length of time is not equally "damaged." Ad out government supports all such adoption equally with the same tax benefits - benefits that were created originally to serve ONLY 'special needs' children in US foster care that now are used instead to supply more "appealing" to those with the money to pick and choose.

With nary a thought of the mothers and families left behind...in the same impoverished conditions...having still more babies, still lacking proper pre-natal care, proper nutrition and medical supplies. Still without schools. While wealthy Americans and Europeans pay $40k and more per child. And all of this is labeled noble and charitable, despite the pleas of the UN, UNICEF and other NGOs on the ground who plead for the money to be better spent to help these people instead of exploiting them to meet a demand.

This Mothers Day let us hold in our hearts all the mothers who have needlessly lost their children to corruption and poverty and social pressure. All the children unnecessarily torn from their loving arms.  And let us reach out and help mothers and families in need her and abroad.

Quotable Quotes: No Unparented Children

"Human rights documents throughout the modern era make clear that the family is the fundamental group unit of society, and the child is a part of his/her family as a matter of both basic human need and fundamental human right. These fundamental human rights include the right of a child to remain with the family to which she was born, and the corollary right of parents to the care and custody of each child born to them. Thus, the family that the child belongs with, as a matter of the rights of the child and of her parents, is clearly the family into which the child is born. Further, the child is born not only to a father and mother, but also into a broader set of relationships, including siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and so on. Thus, as a matter of widespread cultural practice, human need, and fundamental rights, the family into which the child is born extends beyond the parents, and beyond the nuclear family, to include an inter-generational and extensive family group......

"Beginning a discourse on adoption with the image of a child alone, without family ties, is inherently misleading. Children do not fall from the sky; they come into this world amidst a web of relationships. When a child is found alone, the first question that must be asked, therefore, is how the separation of child from parents and family occurred. The first relevant image is not of the child already alone, but of the child with her original family; the next relevant image is that of the event which tragically separated the child from her parents....

..."there is... no such thing as an “unparented” child. No one comes into this world without having parents. The phrase “unparented child” suggests a child who really, in fact, has no parent. Such a person has never existed."

BRAVO, David Smolin!!!

Excerpted from: 

David M. Smolin and Elizabeth Bartholet. "The Debate" Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices, and Outcomes. Ed. Judith L. Gibbons & Karen Smith Rotabi. Williston, VT: Ashgate, 2012.
Download available at: http://works.bepress.com/david_smolin/11


The book is to include chapters by the following, many of whom are well known scholars, thinkers, and stakeholders in the field of adoption:  Peter Selman; Jonathan Dickens; Kathleen Ja Sook Berquist; Karen Smith Rotabi; Cristina Nedelcu and Victor Groza; Kay Johnson; Kelley McCreery Bunkers and Victor Groza; Kelley McCreery Bunkers, Karen Smith Rotabi, and Benyam Dawit Mezmur;  Femmie Juffer and Marinus H. van Ijzendoom; Laurie C. Miller; Monica Dalen; Elizabeth Bartholet and David Smolin; Judith L. Gibbons and Karen Smith Rotabi; Thomas M. Crea; Jesus Palacios; Rhoda Scherman; Hollee McGinnis; and Judith L. Gibbons and Karen Smith Rotabi.  The book is can be ordered online for a discount at Ashgate Publishing. At $108, it is priced for serious research and university libraries than for personal or public libraries.

International Adoption FACTS

Pro-adoptionists - those whose livlihood depends directly or indirectly on the redistribution of children. the religious right who want to 'save' the world and recruit for Jesus, and adoptive parents who feel the need to justify by proselytizing...would have you believe a lot of LIES and untruths about the need to save children languishing in orphanages around the globe.

Here are facts to counter their "savior" claims:

IA FACTS

- FACT: 90% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one living parent and/or extended family to reunite their family as was the case with the two children Madonna adopted. These people have no concept of – or desire for – permanent adoption of their children.

- FACT: Many people all over the world are exploited for their ignorance, asked to sign papers they cannot read; told their children are going to the US Europe of an education.

- FACT: In nations that have ceased IA because of corruption, the number of allegedly “abandoned” babies dropped to almost zero. When adoptions were resumed, the number of said “abandoned” babies rose back up again to meet the demand!

- FACT: Many caring people wanting to adopt for purely altruistic reasons and chose reputable agencies have inadvertently adopted children who were stolen or kidnapped. Child traffickers label kidnapped children abandoned and it is virtually impossible to verify otherwise.

- FACT: Children ARE stolen, kidnapped and trafficked for adoption in China, India, Nepal, Vietnam and Guatemala.

- FACT: Children are kidnapped, stolen and trafficked all over the world to meet a demand for younger children while older and physically challenged children are ignored in orphanages as are the 120,00 US children in foster care who COULD be adopted! 

- FACT: Children who might benefit from adoption are ignored in US foster care and orphanages around the world because they are older, disabled or sibling groups while children are sought and coerced or stolen to meet the demand!

- FACT: The tens of thousands of dollars paid by westerners to adopt prevent local residents from adopting within many nations because they cannot compete financially with fees set based on demand.

 Read the UN quotes at the top of this page and the additional quotes on the quote TAB. 

If you are at all confused about the claims of the Un and ALL child experts who work on the ground in impoverished nations as compared to those claiming to want to "save" kids by gobbling them up to met a demand...think about each parties MOTIVE...or as they say, "follow the money."

Also read:

Orphaned or Stolen

Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples

Julia Rollings story

The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff

The works of David Smolin on child trafficking

Re China, read:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/

http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased

Re Ethiopia: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html

Ethipoia to cut foreign adoptions by up to 90 percent

Adoption Fraud and Ethiopia

Change.org focuses on International Adoption as a Human Rights Issue

So far two articles by  Katy Glenn, a human rights lawyer living in Africa, have been published on the organization's blog. Both reconfirm issues raised in my groundbreaking expose, The Stork Market of 2007 and later by E.J. Graff in her 2008 Foiegn Policy article, The Lie We Love, available at AdoptionResourceCenter.org:

Part I: International Adoption: A Tricky Business

Part II: Dangerous Gaps in the Business of International Adoption

The first article states that:

"Even factoring in all [necessary and required fees] a five-figure agency fee suggests that someone within the agency is doing very well, and it provides motivation for those agencies to ensure that the supply of children in need of adoptive parents remains steady.

"Further complicating this, most prospective adoptive parents are looking for children who are both very young and healthy.  As within the United States, older children and children with special needs have more difficulty finding adoptive parents.  Thus, some adoption agencies are motivated to locate young, healthy children.  The issue here is that evidence suggests there are not very many young, healthy children in need of adoption in most countries, and that a significant number of such children presented as eligible for adoption have essentially been trafficked."

 The second informs;

"Adoption agencies located in the child’s birth country typically receive fees of thousands of dollars — sometimes over $10,000 — for each adoption.  These fees provide an incentive for some unscrupulous agencies to resort to unethical measures, including deceit, coercion, and at times outright kidnapping, to procure healthy young children to offer for adoption." 

It then focuses in particular on Liberia.

Romania: Don't Lift the Ban on International Adoption

Romania should withstand pressure to lift ban on international adoptions

Guest Blog Post by RUPERT WOLFE MURRAY,  a documentary filmmaker based in Romania and a supporter of Against Child Trafficking.  His views from Romania are particularly relevant in view of Guatemala lifting its two-year suspension of international adoptions.

Ever since Romania prohibited international adoptions in 2001 it has been pressurised by the leaders of France, Italy, Israel, Spain and the US to lift the ban.  Behind these politicians are private adoption agencies, adoptive parents and others interested in getting children for whatever reason.

When Hillary Clinton met the Romanian Foreign Minister earlier this year she handed him a letter which said "We urge you to reform current law in Romania...including a reevaluation of your decision to remove international adoption as an important permanency option".

Romania should continue to stand firm in the face of this intense lobby for international adoption, a lobby which talks about tens of thousands of Romanian orphans languishing in grim institutions.  But the EU-funded reform of Romania's child welfare system resulted in the closure of almost all the notorious children's homes, introduced foster care and a range of family-based alternatives. The EU also insisted that Romania stop international adoptions as it had established a free market in children.
But now the EU and Council of Europe (COE) are joining the lobby to convince Romania to lift its ban on international adoptions.  The European Commission's justice unit and the COE are organising a conference in Strasbourg at the end of November with some of the most active members of the international adoptions lobby.  Conference organiser Patrizia de Luca admitted that one of the aims of the conference is "to convince Romania that inter-country adoptions can be authorized in a certain way".

The conference "Challenges in Adoption Procedures in Europe" was initiated by French MEP Jean Marie Cavada and investment banker Francois de Combret.  These lobbyists talk of the "free movement of children" within the EU,  as if children are like capital, goods and services. The aim of the conference is to develop a "European Adoption Policy" so that parents from one member state can adopt from any other member state.

Considering that the event will be packed with pro-adoption lobbyists, it is likely the conference will
recommend the commission develops a "European Adoption Policy".  This would mean that families in Italy, France and Spain, where there are huge waiting lists of adoptive parents, can access a fresh supply of children from Romania.
 
But the truth is that there are very few orphaned children in Romania, where children in care are placed in the extended family, foster or family type homes. In addition, there is a waiting list of Romanian families who want to adopt.  The Romanian adoption system developed in 1997, in compliance with the Hague Adoption Convention, showed that the financial incentives involved in international adoptions (up to 30,000 euro a child) corrupted health, welfare and legal services and poor single mothers were routinely persuaded to "abandon" their children in maternity hospitals. In other words, the demand for children creates the supply and corrupts local social services.

Roelie Post is a commission official now seconded to the NGO Against Child Trafficking.  For many years she worked on the Romanian reform and documented her experiences in a book called 'Romania, For Export Only - the untold story of the Romanian 'orphans'.  She says, "the trade in adoptions are mediated by private adoption agencies in exchange for large sums of money. The EU demanded Romanian become like other EU member states by taking care of its own children, but now they seem to want all EU Member States to become like Romania was before 2001 - when children were made available for the international adoption market. The EU now supports the same lobby groups that they withstood for many years." 

Bartholet Debunked Again!

PoundPuppiesLegacy has done an excellent job of countering the claims Prof Bartholet is trying to peddle once again.

"Adoption abuses exist, as in every area abuses of the legal system exist. But there is no persuasive evidence that adoption abuses are extensive. Nor is there reason to think that they would be extensive."

Even if true - which it is not - why bother investigating murder unless its "extensive." Many cities see a murder only rarely - why bother trying to prosecute the criminal or do anything at all about it? Kidnapping within the US - stranger kidnapping like that of Jaycee is a rare crime. Why not simply ignore those rare occasions and the rare few victims and their families?

My sarcasm is a result of utter frustration and anger at bold faced lies by the NCFA and she who lies-a-lot!

Bartholet -- who believes that "heritage is over-rated" is the spokesperson for adoption attorneys - those whose livelihood depends upon keeping the flow of babies constant. Their collective major concern is that Hague is closing U.S. adoption agencies who cannot comply, and closing countries.

She blatantly and very knowingly ignores facts and distorts truths by repeating over and over overinflated numbers of orphans, knowing that the general public will not fact-check and those adopting hear what they want to hear - the lies they love! The pretense that there is any concern for any child's well-being...except to the extent that at this point she has come to believe her own lies. ...like Jaycee's kidnappers pleading not guilty!

I encourage all to read the very sane (as opposed to my rant here) and factual dismantling of Bathelot's newest fabrictions at Pound Puppy.

International Adoption and the Fight for Human Rights

I write today to share with you an article in Conducive Magazine by Hilbrand W.S. Westra, Chairman, United Adoptees International

Amongst other things, this article reveals:

"But, lest we forget the role of the Church in paving the way for child trafficking, initially within Western countries and later in their colonies, Carine Hutsebaut, criminologist and founder of ICMAC (International Center for Molested and Abducted Children), wrote a very important book (Kleine zondaars – Kerk en kinderhandel [Little sinners – The Church and Child Trafficking]), explaining how the Catholic church had a hand in trafficking children to childless parishioners in different cities and countries.

The fortress that religious groups, adoptive parents, agencies and politicians have built to protect their monied interests and feelings of entitlement to other people’s children appears to be almost impregnable. However, the first cracks in their bastion are slowly becoming visible. The question we must ask ourselves, though, is who else is willing to push for necessary changes? Until now, the group fighting for children’s rights and family preservation programs is small, but committed."