The Case Against Adoption

The Baby Scoop Era is considered to be the time frame between 1945 and 1972 (before Roe v Wade) when many many young women lost their babies due to heavy pressure from other people in their lives to give their baby up for adoption.

With the overturning of Roe v Wade at the federal level is sending the legality of abortion back to the individual states to legislate, many people expect a bumper crop of adoptable babies as soon as 9 months from now. Though not directly expressed by the Supreme Court in their decision last week, Justice Alito referred to the lack of adoptable baby stock in the footnotes of his leaked draft opinion. The note was drawn from a 2008 CDC document (2008 regarding some adoption data) however . . . we may just be entering a totally new kind of Baby Scoop Era. Thankfully, less shame in being an unwed pregnant mother now or even a single woman parenting her child but still . . .

So, I found this thoughtful article by Jessica DelBalzo posted through The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative website titled – The Case Against Adoption: Research and Alternatives for Concerned Citizens. I have posted the link above and will add some excerpts below. About Jessica, she introduces herself thusly – “I am a mother, a lover, and a friend. I am a breastfeeder, a homeschooler, and an instinctive parent. I am an atheist, an advocate of reproductive freedom, and a liberal. I am also an anti-adoption activist.”

She thought it important to add regarding that last line – “When people discover that I am against adoption, they often assume that I am adopted. I am not, nor have I lost a child to adoption. In fact, I grew up believing that adoption was perfectly acceptable.” DelBalzo has a BA in Political Science with a minor in Psychology from Rutgers University. She has a daughter Rylie with partner Mike Kukal. Her family is supportive of her efforts to promote natural family preservation.

I resonated with this because both of my parents were adoptees and both of my sisters gave up a baby to adoption. Until I joined a large group made up of the entire triad – including expectant/birth parents, hopeful adoptive parents/adoptive parents, and adoptees – I thought adoption was the most natural thing in the world – how could I not ? The group I joined encourages education and ethical adoption practices but it proved to be a real eye opener for me and although I am not in the triad, I was honestly in the adoption fog (believing in the false narrative many people are fed). Now I am “woke.”

The 1950s brought the professionalization of social work and at the same time, the media began promoting adoption. The previous standard of care, which embraced both mother and child, was replaced by the idea of the unwed mother as a “social problem” that could be remedied, if the baby was removed and placed in an adoptive home.

From Social Work and Social Problems, a publication of the National Association of Social Workers, copyrighted in 1964 and now out of print – “Because there are many more married couples wanting to adopt newborn white babies than there are babies, it may almost be said that they rather than out of wedlock babies are a social problem. (Sometimes social workers in adoption agencies have facetiously suggested setting up social provisions for more ‘babybreeding’.)” Which particularly resonates with Justice Alito’s footnote in the leaked draft opinion.

We may be entering a period of forced birthing leading effectively to a baby breeding situation for couples wanting to adopt. Time will prove it out or not. Women (for the most part) are not going to go willingly back to the original Baby Scoop Era regarding rights they have come to appreciate.

I am short on time today but if you are intrigued, by all means read her entire article at the link.

Adoptee Birthdays

How one adoptee has described her feelings about these.

I do not celebrate my birthday.

So for every one of my friends I said no thank you, blew off, or straight up just ignored when they asked to take me for a drink on my birthday, sorry.

For everyone that I didn’t text back, no hard feelings.

I do appreciate you being happy that I’m around, and staying around for another year. It was nice to hear from you. Even if I didn’t answer you.

Birthdays are hard on us adopted kids/orphans/foster kids. Adoption is the only type of loss where the victim is expected to feel happy, grateful and indebted to someone about it. To be thankful for it. For adoptees our birthday is a day that we were separated from our entire biological family. It’s the anniversary of an abandonment. It’s the marker of the altering of our birth certificate and totally erasure of all of our family medical history.

It’s not great. Especially for those of us adopted through the INCREDIBLY UNETHICAL private infant adoption industry in the United States.

Many private infant adoptees who are my generation and the one below me are the age where we are coming out of the “adoptee fog” and realizing that the pretty stories and ideas we have been sold our whole lives about adoption are not true. I guess we knew it the whole time, but it’s very hard to pinpoint those feelings, and we are REALLY afraid to express them. Because many of us (myself included) have had really great adoptive families.

I love my family. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose my family.

It’s hard for us to express our real feelings about our own stories, and continually be met with opinions how wholly beautiful adoption is, how they just know that our lives would have been hard and terrible if we stayed with our birth families, ignoring and denying the trauma and loss associated with our birth stories and telling us that we should be so thankful.

Because if adoption is always so beautiful…

Why do people lie about it and hide it?

Why doesn’t everyone just give up a baby to a queer couple, or an infertile couple?

Why are records kept from the very people they pertain to?

Why do white babies cost more than black babies?

Why don’t you want to talk about this side of it?

I know that some of the things we feel, and some of the truths about private infant adoption is hard for people to hear. But if you/they actually cared about kids…. Then they’d want to hear it… and fix it.

I am not anti adoption. There will always be truly necessary adoption. But what adoption has become in this country, a multibillion dollar business, needs to be fixed. We can’t continue to treat these kids like a commodity, doing things like trying to re-home them on Facebook like a puppy you can’t potty train. What would happen if you tried to do that with a biological child? Would it be the same? Does it ever happen? These children should have rights. I turned 36 on Friday and I don’t have access to my own birth certificate. The government has it. But I can’t get it. Doesn’t that seem weird? Or wrong?

There’s a reason you can hear your mother’s voice and heartbeat when she is pregnant with you. It’s so when you’re born, you know who mom is. So when you hear it for 9 months and then never hear it again….It hurts your heart and it changes your brain. No matter how good the rest of your life turns out to be. And it can make your birthday a hard day.

Adoption Scams Are Real

This woman ended up on the radar of my All Things Adoption group.

The very first comment was related to a baby shower photo Breanne Paquin posted with this remark – “Anchor centerpiece for a baby shower. Does she understand the implication of anchor baby? Wearing a dress with her stomach pooched out too. Makes you wonder if she was even going to tell the baby he was adopted.” “Anchor baby” is a derogatory term that insinuates these children are little more than pawns.

Someone else worries – I’m convinced she’s going to end up physically stealing someone’s baby if she can’t find an expectant mother to give her theirs, like it’s seriously concerning.

Another notes – If there were red flags why was she continuing to purchase a baby from someone she literally never met anyway? So much hate towards the biological mom, questioning if she existed at all. This is all her fault. And all the hundreds of thousands of comments boohooing with her and celebrating she’s on the news, meanwhile she’s deleting heartfelt comments trying to raise awareness.

Yet another notes the truth – Desperate people believe what they want, not what they see.

Regarding this woman’s self-promotion on social media, someone else wonders if she’s doing this as a go around. A way to make people offer her their babies. Jump the waiting list so to speak. Stand out from the crowd. And adds – she’s just another entitled white savior. They’re a dime a dozen.

The motive seems transparent to someone else – that’s my guess. If she was actually “traumatized” she wouldn’t be doing this. She is trying to get another baby. And the other person notes – maybe just “a” baby because this one didn’t exist. To which another says, yep a baby I’m sure any baby will do. Unfortunately some birth mother out there will probably do it for some internet clout alongside her.

It is sadly noted – why can these people be so blind – acting like the money is the issue here. “Sorry you lost so much money so you can’t PURCHASE your wanted baby.”

And I am one with the others – we will change the narrative, of that I have no doubt.

Magnolia – Again

Magnolia – 2020 Gerber Baby

I previously wrote about Magnolia in this blog. She is recently back in the news. On September 7, 2020, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) announced that it had named a baby called Magnolia as one of their 2020 “Angels in Adoption” honorees. Magnolia, from the San Francisco Bay Area, rose to fame in May 2020 when Gerber announced that she was the first (known) adopted Spokesbaby.

Infant adoption is not a simple story of adorable angels, even when they are cute enough to be a Gerber Baby. The Angel award is meant to celebrate “the extraordinary efforts of individuals, couples, families, and organizations who work tirelessly to advocate for children in need of a family.”

Creating a connection between this apparently worthy, child-centered mission and adopted infants like Magnolia creates a false narrative. The truth is that there are approximately 30 waiting families for every infant voluntarily placed for adoption. It is unlikely that anyone needs to be convinced to adopt these babies. Also, these children already have a family — the family they were born to — who don’t have the resources to be able to parent their child in the way they would like.

It is true that there are approximately 100,000 youth in need of permanency in the US foster care system — but they are almost entirely older children who have experienced trauma, and there are fewer families interested in adopting them. In other words, domestic infant adoption doesn’t need a Spokesbaby — but families in poverty and foster youth without permanency do.

Obviously, it is not actually possible for Magnolia to have made extraordinary efforts to advocate for children in need of a family. It is the choices of adults (her adoptive parents, Gerber, CCAI) to cast her in this role. This highlights how the narrative is already being written and spoken for her, by individuals and organizations that want to promote infant adoption as an unqualified good. And it is deeply concerning that Magnolia, who has no voice and choice in the matter, has twice been made the literal poster child for adoption, before she can even speak in complete sentences, much less articulate her thoughts on what it means to her to be adopted.

Thanks to a Medium article from which the thoughts above were taken (because I do AGREE with every word I’ve shared as though it came from my very heart), I learned about PACT – An Adoption Alliance focused on children of color who end up adopted.

Here is their overview statement –

Pact is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve adopted children of color. In every case, the child is always our primary client. In order to best serve children’s needs, we provide not only adoptive placement but lifelong education, support, and community for adoptees and their families on issues of adoption and race. Our goal is for every child to feel wanted honored and loved, a cherished member of a strong family with proud connections to the rich cultural heritage that is his or her birthright. We advocate for honesty and authenticity in matters of race and adoption. We strongly believe that adopted children’s and adults’ connections to birth family and birth heritage should be respected and maintained. We also strive to identify and counteract “adoptism,” an unfortunately common social prejudice that challenges the legitimacy of the choice to place a child for adoption or to build a family by adoption. Finally, as an organization committed to children of color, we feel it is essential to educate ourselves and others about the pervasive power of race and racism as they affect our children, our families, ourselves and our society.