Ethics of Destroying Families

All You Have Is Love documentary

Infant adoption has long been big business in the U.S. A typical domestic infant adoption runs between $40,000 and $70,000. Adoption entities – crisis pregnancy centers, agencies, lawyers, social workers and independent facilitators – may all profit from a finalized adoption. And the demand is huge! Each year, close to two million hopeful adoptive parents throw their well-crafted picture-perfect profiles into the adoption arena, hoping to be the chosen ones.

The documentary intends to explore, through interviews with birth family members, industry professionals and reform advocates, how the adoption process exploits expectant mothers. while providing infants to those hoping to adopt.

LINK>All You Have Is Love (hopefully coming in the Spring of 2024) is a project by Lisa Elaine Scott at Seed & Spark. She is a writer, video journalist and life-long human rights activist. The documentary will explore the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy and expose the tactics used to convince resource-less women to relinquish their babies. Most people assume that adoption is about finding parents for children when, in fact, the industry’s focus is on finding children for parents.

Is it ethical to build one family by destroying another ?

However, fewer than 1% of all pregnancies result in adoption. This means that most hoping to adopt will not. This also means that a lot of money is left on the table. So how does an industry survive with an inadequate supply? The answer: Rebrand with the promise of a “modern adoption.” Then find resource-less women and convince them that their babies are better off being raised by someone with more to give.

The documentary intends to identify the various entities in the pipeline, expose the myth of “open” adoption, and present community-based solutions and evaluate proposed regulations and reforms that will place the focus on family preservation.

Do watch the YouTube for an eye-opening view of what is really going on in adoptionland.

The Unthought Known

My mom was full of sayings, actually my dad too. “Honesty is the best policy” was one. I guess it was a deep one for me, for I’ve always tried to be what I refer to as a “straight” shooter. I have a friend who says somewhere deep down inside, she always knew, even if what she deeply knew could not be fully articulated. Eventually, the truth came out. It usually does.

So, maybe I also knew that secrets never keep very well. As ignorant as we were, we never kept the truth of how they were conceived from our sons. Following advice I had seen offered, we told them abbreviated origin stories when they were yet very young, even if these were stories they were too young to fully grasp. After I learned our egg donor had done a 23 and Me test, I bought one for my husband and then test kits for both boys. They were older now and we could honestly discuss the whole situation with them and they could comprehend it fully. 23 and Me gives them a private channel of communication with their egg donor (genetic mother), if they chose. They have also spent time with her and her youngest son, when they were yet very young, though they’ve only seen photos of the other two. Distance and financial constraints negate our having very much contact.

Since learning my adoptee parents’ origin stories (they both were adopted), I’ve also learned a lot about all things adoption and that extends into donor conceived persons’ stories, as well as what is referred to as a non-parent event – meaning that someone discovers that at least one (or sometimes both) of the parents they thought were theirs – were not. This can be painful and difficult for one to wrap their mind around, especially if this knowledge comes late in life. That is what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54 years old.

His subsequent documentary is available at LINK>video on demand. This can be rented from the Microsoft Store, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies, YouTube, or Spectrum On Demand.

Baime shares his journey in the interview with LINK>Severance Magazine. It is this interview where I got the title of today’s blog. It begins with this background – Imagine yourself in this scenario. You tell your 92-year-old father that you want to take a DNA test to learn more about your heritage. Your father says, “I don’t want you to take that test until after I’m dead!” You ask why, and he can’t or won’t tell you. What do you do? Naturally, you take the test, and your father says, “Fine, piss on my wish,” and you spend weeks waiting for the results and wondering what’s the big mystery.

That’s what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54-years old. You might think he shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the man he believed to be his father wasn’t related in any way, that he was in fact donor conceived, that his parents had been keeping a secret from him, about him. But even if you were raised in a family that keeps secrets, as he was, where children were often told that certain matters were none of their business—and even if you’ve always known that something in your family wasn’t quite adding up—it’s always a shock to find out your identity is not what you’ve always believed it to be, that your relationships changed in the moment you received your test results, that your whole world flipped upside down and there’s suddenly so much you don’t know that your head spins.

During the four years after his DNA surprise, he used his professional skills as an Atlanta-based producer of non-fiction projects, to unravel the family’s secrets and lies -researching and scrambling through a trove of family history in the form of photos and home movies, and traveling the country to interview his older brothers (also donor conceived with mixed reactions) and his new siblings (who had appeared as DNA matches). One sees why genetic mirroring can be important to a person in the photo below.

Baime and his biological father, Harrison.

Reckoning With The Primal Wound

I’ve read the book, hope to catch this documentary soon.

More Info at Reckoning With The Primal Wound.

Adoptee Rebecca Autumn Sansom made a film titled a film titled Reckoning with The Primal Wound that captures the complexities, forsaken years, and mirror smashing pain of adoption better than any other I’ve seen. She says at her Twitter – “bunnies are my spirit animal.”

I am a fan already. Those who know me will understand why. We have a house rabbit named Walnut.

Here’s an article, My Biology Matters, in Severance magazine by Kristen Steinhilber – an excerpt from which, the paragraph mentioning Rebecca Autumn and italicized line below were taken. She says, “My story is not any other adoptee’s story. But the gist of it is not uncommon. These themes of diabolical dishonesty, betrayal, unbearable rejection, and hopelessness run through countless adoptees’ stories, and are begging not to be ignored.” Also, my favorite part is the “Adoptee Army” featured in the credits. There’s a massive number of names listed, all those of adoptees who stand in solidarity for adoption reform. After a lifetime of feeling utterly alone, I was moved to tears seeing my name included with all of the rest.

We are the adoptee army, and our biology matters. It did all along.