Better To Have Been Aborted

It may surprise a reader to know this, but many adoptees actually wish they would have been aborted. That is how painful it is to be given up for adoption and doubly painful if the adopting parents prove to further damage an already damaged soul.

I am pro-Choice and pro-life. Not pro-Life like most of those are. They are only pro-Birth, truth be told. They are not willing to fund adequate financial support to struggling mothers so that they can keep and raise their children.

The world has enough people already. We do NOT need to be fruitful and multiply any more. In fact, we have not needed to do that for a very long time. The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950. Enough is enough. If a couple wants to have children and is willing to fully support raising them, I’m all for it. Otherwise, trust women to make the best decision and stop stressing over the babies you imagine they have killed.

I fully understand what it feels like for a child to be born into this world unwanted and unprepared for. My maternal grandmother never had any other children because of the shame and guilt she felt at having surrendered a child for adoption. She died too young and I fear what happened to separate her from my mom haunted her for her entire life.

I am a woman who chose to have an abortion. The timing was wrong, the father was wrong to make any kind of commitment and the pregnancy was not developing normally. I am grateful I could go to a clean clinic, where I received counseling and good treatment. It still haunted me. I had a child before the abortion who I am forever glad I kept (even though some circumstances at the time of her conception suggested I should not have – I knew she would be just fine and she was/is). I am a woman who went on to have two very wanted sons when I entered into a marriage to a good man who wanted to be a good father and he is.

The Better Option

There is such a thing as privilege. It is a privilege to have enough wealth that if you can’t have a child naturally, you are able to adopt someone else’s. Is wealth a better option than keeping a family intact ? There are cases where a child is going to need a safer environment but no child needs to have their identity erased and cultural heritage hidden from them.

It is weird to grow up with all these relatives and then reach an age in advanced maturity when one knows who their true genetic relatives are. Both of my parents were adopted. That means the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were never really my relations. It is a very weird feeling to know that with certainty now.

Of course, I acknowledge that there were these couples who provided for and raised my parents. They were the people I knew as grandparents growing up and they were without a doubt influential in my life. Now that I know who the real ones were, they are who I think of when I think of who my grandparents were, even though I never had the privilege of knowing them in life.

One of the expectations is that an adoptee is supposed to be grateful and acknowledge all the sacrifices their adoptive parents made to raise them. On the adoptees part there is this lifelong requirement to live up to the expectations of the adoptive parent. I know that my mom felt this and I know that she felt like she had failed to equal those expectations.

All parents expect something from their children but most children are quite free to ignore those parental expectations. An adoptee often fears being returned to a no-family state if they don’t live up to the expectations of the people who purchased their very lives.

It may be hard to read but it is a real thing for those who’s roots have been cut off from underneath them.

Equal Citizenship ?

Adoptees are less free than other citizens of the United States. Most citizens take for granted the right to know who they were born as. Adoptees have their birth names taken from them to be replaced by the name their adoptive parents want them to have.

Most citizens have their original birth certificates. Adoptees are given a falsified birth certificate making it appear that their adoptive parents actually gave birth to them. With some, even the location of their birth is changed to make it more difficult for them to learn about their true origins.

All adoptees endure a form of culture clash – for some more extreme than for others. Some adoptees are affected by ethnic, socioeconomic or regional differences than what they would have experienced if they had remained in the families they were born into.

Our society is adoption-focused. It is NOT adoptee focused. In other words – the focus is on the people who want children instead of on the children themselves.