Making Adoption Easier

It has been a long standing Conservative project to make adoptions easier – hence an article from 2015 in The Federalist titled LINK>We Need To Make Adoption Easier. All Sides notes that this publication LINK>displays media bias in ways that strongly align with conservative, traditional, or right-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A “Right” bias is the most conservative rating on the political spectrum. As to the photo above, Slate did a reveal that LINK>The Real Story Behind the “We Will Adopt Your Baby” Couple Is So Much Worse Than the Meme.

The effort continues as written about by an adoptee blogger, Tony Corsentino, that I follow in his latest LINK>In the Woods. Several states are actively aiming to “streamline” the process of relinquishing and adopting a child. One is Indiana who is poised to pass a bill to “streamline” abandonment and adoption of newborn infants, which would omit any oversight and regulatory safeguards to prevent anonymous trafficking of those infants, through the state’s so-called “newborn safety devices,” commonly known as “baby boxes.”

He links to an article posted just in the last week at the Adoptee Rights Law Center titled LINK>Indiana’s Secret Adoption Pipeline. He asserts that SB345 will facilitate corrupt off-the-books adoptions with direct baby box referrals from fire station to adoption agency to “pre-approved” adoptive parents to final adoption, all completed in the span of a single month and all without any state oversight. Tony also links to Marley Greiner’s site LINK>Stop Baby Boxes Now.

Indiana is not alone in these efforts – enter now Alabama and Tennessee seeking to “streamline adoption. They suggest that they are only “trying to get kids into a permanent home as fast as possible.” The principal change is to speed the timeline for termination of parental rights. Reading about foster care and the goal of reunification of children who have been removed from their parents informs me that rarely do such parents actually get the support and time they need to meet the requirements of the state.

Tony shares an excerpt from Ann Fessler’s – The Girls Who Went Away. She notes that losing her son to adoption had a profound effect on her. She goes further to say “a few years after I was married I became pregnant and had an abortion. It was not a wonderful experience, but every time I hear stories or articles or essays about the recurring trauma of abortion, I want to say, ‘You don’t have a clue.’ I’ve experienced both and I’d have an abortion any day of the week before I would ever have another adoption—or lose a kid in the woods, which is basically what it is. You know your child is out there somewhere, you just don’t know where.”

He goes on to say – Given adoption’s unpopularity and the resulting mismatch between the domestic demand for infants and the domestic supply, it is no surprise that proposed measures to “streamline” adoption by making it faster and easier to terminate parental rights amount to an even deeper undermining of vulnerable pregnant people’s agency. We do not ameliorate the injustice of banning abortion by “streamlining” relinquishment and adoption. We compound that injustice. Both for those who seek abortions, and for their offspring.

Tony ends his essay with this – For adopted people to make progress in defending our rights, we need first to be heard. It’s a big forest.

She Just Got Lost

Amanda Deza with daughter Veronica

A sad story today by way of The Guardian LINK>DNA used to identify California mother whose body was found 27 years ago. There is a clearer, better photo at The Guardian article. Her daughter, Veronica Tovar, contributed the DNA sample. Veronica was removed from her mother’s home at the age of three along with her other siblings. Her mother did want her children to stay together and the three were eventually placed in the same adoptive home.

Veronica says of her mother “She loved her kids even though she wasn’t here with us. That feeling never left me. She did the best she could with what she had. For me, for what I feel and the memories I have, it’s almost like she just got lost. I think she didn’t have the support she needed to thrive.” As she waited to hear back from police, she pored over details of the case and the reality of what her mother endured began to sink in. “I sat on pins and needles until I found out. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I couldn’t stop reading about her case,” she said. “It is so unfair, so unjust, the brutality of how she was murdered.

She remembers being able to sense her mother’s struggles. “Before I was taken I do remember feeling sadness from her,” Tovar said. “I remember my mom was really sad.” Tovar is the only one of Deza’s children involved with the case. Her brother and sister are not up to taking part, she said. They were removed from her mother’s home before her and none of them know why. “We still just don’t know. On top of the not knowing we didn’t know what happened. We didn’t know why she never contacted us.” She adds, “I remember her playing with me in the sand one time. I remember her loving me. I can feel that. She did love me. She was sweet.”

Investigators believe she disappeared at the age of 29. She was last seen in 1994 with a man she had met at a rehab facility in the city of Napa, nearly 80 miles from where her remains were eventually found. Authorities said there was never a missing person report filed for Deza, who they described as experiencing “challenging times” before she died. On a spring day in 1995, a group of recyclers scavenging along a northern California canal made a grim discovery – the remains of a woman bound and gagged inside a partly submerged refrigerator. Authorities believed the body, described as being that of a woman between 29 and 41 years old with strawberry blond hair, had been underwater for several months.

Intervention

People with money will buy a baby. A wealthy couple suffering infertility will find a young woman who is expecting and offer to trade support during the pregnancy for the baby at the end. One of their conditions was that they be present at all of her doctor’s appointments. In the case of today’s story, they also offered a sympathetic “support” person. This was the man’s sister who had gone through a teen pregnancy when she was 17. She is now 24 years old and raising her 7 year old son.

This sister never had to consider giving up her baby. Her parents supported her so well, she didn’t even have to think about going to work after her baby’s birth. So this support person asked the pregnant young lady how much money she would need to keep and raise her baby. She did the math. It was very conservative and even included a schedule for repayment. Then this support person said I will give you everything you are asking for and then some – more baby supplies and more rent money. She offered to pay for vocational training for this young expectant mother after delivery. And she would not have to pay anything back, though she insisted that she would.

Long story short – she backed out of her adoption agreement with the couple. Of course, they are not only heartbroken but mad at his sister for her intervention. The young woman had to block the couple and the sister had to move away to stop their harassment. The sister simply could not allow this young woman who wanted to keep her baby to loose it. She asks, Am I the asshole for screwing up my brother’s adoption ? Of course not.

It is so wrong that hopeful adoptive parents are able to be given rights to view medical records and allowed at doctor’s appointments. It is a violation of HIPAA and the right to privacy, even if the mom signs a waiver. Being present for these visits is so coercive. Income shouldn’t be a determining factor in parenthood. So many mothers who lose their children had no option to keep them and no one to help them keep their baby.

One comment asked – When a human is in need, but gives no sign of not wanting their child, how does anyone deliberately separate them from their child and still sleep at night ? This couple found the expectant mother in a Facebook Buy Nothing group. These are often referred to as grey market adoptions.

There are so many hopeful adoptive parents, adoption lawyers, baby brokers etc all focused solely on getting babies. Not one of these ever bothers to ask the mother if they *want* their child or inquire how little the financial cost would be, to actually to keep the mother and child together.

Mental Health and Regrets

An expectant mother says “I’m not sure with my mental health I can parent another child.” This is despite the fact, that she is a good parent to her first child and that child isn’t suffering. Does she really think giving away her baby is going to do wonders for her mental health? She may be the happy mommy for a while after doing, this with no regrets. But she can only lie to her self for so long. Eventually, she is likely to wake up and wonder wtf did I do?

One woman replied – I was this mother. I placed my 3rd. I had absolutely NO idea what it would do to me.. it absolutely broke me! I could barely function for almost 2 years. I don’t think people really understand what giving away a child means. Adoption is pushed as sunshine and rainbows in society, so I think we somewhat look at it in a positive light when we are contemplating making that choice. . But no it absolutely will NOT help your mental state in any way.

And she is alone, another one said – Me too. And yet another one said – Same with my third also. Fact is, it is the rare person who won’t realize they exchanged one set of mental health issues for another and this one lasts a lifetime for yourself, the child, other children, etc…Then this, my mental health took a nose dive after adoption. Mentally I always struggled but since then, I have been in and out of behavioral health facilities and have made 3 suicide attempts. Someone else thought – it’s a way to delay the trauma and people should be honest that all you’re doing is delaying it and compounding it later.

On that last note, came this reply – i think that also delays trauma for many in a different way, too sadly. Granted each can choose for themselves but I have supported friends who have chosen this route for a variety of reason and again, they weren’t supported after or informed of just what an emotional roller coaster it can take you on, for a VERY long time.

Now I get that’s not for everyone and some may not be as impacted by it, but my friends who have (and many were moms already) came to me and told me, they wished they had listened to me (because I told them – I’m not sure it’s going to help in the ways that you believe it would help) and many were seriously already struggling (hence not feeling able to add another kid) and they didn’t think they could nose dive further but many have. In fact, one reached out this week to me talking about how 2 years after, she still regrets it and wishes she had listened to me.

I believe support for people who go this route is lacking and very much needed – many are left to deal with it in silence and it’s a dirty secret and they have guilt and shame, which contributes to more issues they have in the long run because they don’t have a proper healing outlet to deal with all the feelings and even physical stuff sometimes after (my one girlfriend ended up with an infection and needed to be hospitalized which compounded the trauma).

Finally, this – If there are reasons causing these feelings they usually stem from trauma and lack of support – and if those were addressed, it would be still hard to parent (cuz lets be real – its hard!!) but when you have a better support system vs a system working against you (like Child Protective Services or whatever). I said to my original mom recently, what happened after Termination of Parental Rights ? She jumped at the judge when he said they weren’t her kids now, they were HIS. She spent the night IN JAIL after losing her kids.

Abandoned Babies

Will there be more with Roe v Wade being overturned ?

A story making national news recently is about a baby found, wrapped in a towel in a stroller outside of an apartment complex, by a Coeur d’Alene Idaho resident when they left for work around 6 am.

A woman, identified as an adoptee named Webster, in this youtube news story, is quoted saying “We are living in a time where people feel like they are alone and they don’t have a support system or a net under them.”

If you are considering abandoning your baby, you likely are experiencing many different thoughts and emotions as well as being faced with one of the toughest decisions of your life. You might have one or more of these factors occurring in your life –

Have a history of substance use and are afraid to share that information
Not have proper documentation to live in the United States and fear being deported
Be living with a mental illness or facing postpartum depression
Be afraid of the baby’s father or worried about what your loved ones might say

If you are desperate for help, you may see no other option but to abandon your baby. Perhaps, you even wonder what happens to abandoned babies after they’re found?

There are really only three ways a woman can abandon her baby:

A prospective birth mother can work with an adoption agency to make an adoption plan for her baby. This is one legal way a woman can release her baby from her responsibility to care for it.
With Safe Haven laws, women have the option to safely, legally, and anonymously leave their baby, unharmed, at a safe haven location — like a hospital, fire station, or a church.
Even so, some women, feeling completely overwhelmed and unaware of the first two options, will take drastic measures, such as the case with this abandoned baby, leaving them in an unsafe condition.

The way a baby is surrendered will affect what happens to the infant afterwards. Babies who are abandoned in an unsafe location often have tragic outcomes because help comes too late. Babies that are found safely, after they’ve been abandoned or surrendered to a safe haven location, become a ward of the state.

Safe Haven babies are typically checked out by a doctor and, if necessary, given medical care. Afterward, the state’s social services department is contacted. Once that happens, the baby will be placed into foster care and become a ward of the state. In some situations, a private adoption agency might be contacted.

When a woman does not contact an adoption agency for assistance or use the Safe Haven law locations, if she can be located and identified, criminal charges will be filed against her. That is why the police in Coeur d’Alene Idaho are actively seeking information about who the woman may have been.

Not Reality, Scripted

There were a bunch of adoptee reunion programs on TV in the 1990s. I think seeing these really made my adoptee mom wish for a reunion of her own. It was not to be. Even as Tennessee was turning down her request for her adoption file, they broke her heart by telling her that her mother has died several years earlier.

As today’s story reveals, you really can’t believe what you see on these programs.

In early 2020 pre-COVID, I was contacted by a TV producer asking if I would be interested in being on a show. I won’t give the name, but it’s a show about finding lost family members. I immediately knew it was probably about my bio mom or dad.

I agreed, a little out of curiosity, but mostly because they offered me $4000 to be on the show and an all-expenses paid vacation to LA for filming.

Sure enough, it was my mother. She put forth this sob story. She was 15 (which I already knew) and that she felt like she had to give me up, in order to escape shame and disownment from friends and family. Also that her boyfriend pushed her to do it. She said, she always wanted to find me – blah blah blah. I felt completely awkward doing this around cameras.

I found out that ALL reality shows, even the feel-good ones, are SUPER scripted, and the producers kept trying to feed me lines to say, like “I’ve waited for this moment all my life.” At this time in my life, I really couldn’t care less about finding my biological family and had negative feelings about my firth mom, so I don’t think I played the “grateful daughter” role that they wanted. Anyways, the show ends and I go back to my life. I got my biological mom’s info and we text a few times a year.

I was just notified that the show will be airing in the summer, and I have had a lot of anxiety over it. I cannot shake the feeling that none of this was necessary and that it was all for show, and that my biological mom did this to give the world an emotional story to make herself feel better.

There was absolutely NO reason she needed to go on national television to find me. For one, I have researched, and closed adoption files can be accessed by the biological mother, if she goes through the proper steps. She could’ve found my adoptive parent’s information and gone from there. It’s also literally 2022 (actually it was 2020 at the time but still).

Everyone is taking Ancestry DNA tests. She could’ve spent 60 bucks to get a 23 and Me test and found out that I’m already in the data base. I just feel like she completely went to the extremes to do this and put our personal business out there for the world. What if I am portrayed as being an ungrateful bitch or something ?Or future employers search for my name and find the episode!!

One commenter noted – I hear you on the “reality” shows. I also did a pilot many years ago in which they wanted me to react a certain way, so did my daughter. Basically they’re all fake (not real at all). As for the biological mom, everyone is different in how they come to the decision, and what they do with it. She could’ve been looking for her 15 min of fame, or possibly she did feel so pressured and now finally felt like it was time to stand up to those who pressured her.

And yet another added – or she wanted the money.

Not Every Situation Works Out

It can be heartbreaking. Case in point –

We were matched with an expectant mother 2.5 years ago who chose to parent. We understood and gave her all the things we had for the baby. We checked in on her legitimately a few times to offer help, but she blocked us – which I also understood. This was not a $50,000 agency adoption. She found us on social media. During the time we got to know her, we also got to know her sister who we have remained Facebook friends with. The sister recently reached out to ask how we were doing. In that conversation she shared that soon after her niece was born, her sister got into a bad relationship and started using drugs. Her child was taken by Child Protective Services, the Termination of her Parental Rights by court order occurred and the foster parents adopted the child. The sister was complaining that at first the foster family let them have visits, but they were super uncomfortable, seemed sketchy, and have since blocked contact with the child’s biological family.

I do advocate for moms to keeping and raising their babies. The woman above asked, “but what about situations like this?” and goes on to make a point that there are some moms that do not do well parenting or maybe their circumstances change. That maybe she wasn’t as able to parent though she thought she was.

A really good response to this story acknowledged that the woman telling this story was really trying to learn and wrap their head around breaking out of the whole “rainbow and butterfly” narrative (what adoptees often refer to as the societal adoption myth). I believe you are mature enough to understand that there is always going to be a “not“ situation that falls into a gap. I have a sibling who could perhaps fall into that not all situation… (and in fact this blog author does too.) To answer your question… Yes, there are probably situations involving parents who don’t want to raise their children. Some parents believe the narrative that giving a baby for adoption is better than having an abortion. Some parents, maybe in this particular situation, decided to parent the child because they honestly feel that’s what is in the best interest of their child and it was. Here’s the reality – being in an abusive relationship can change the victim’s mentality. A person trapped in such a relationship can literally become someone you would no longer recognize and someone they never intended to be. So again… Had this child remained with the mother and had she received the kind of support and assistance she needed when she need it including how to get away from her abusive partner, this story would have had a good outcome. There are so many women in situations that really could use help. There are a bunch of places where the system fails to help. And in her case, those failures resulted in the termination of her parental rights. I immediately wonder why this woman’s sister wasn’t contacted to foster this child who is her kin. Why was this sister not encouraged to adopt this child? It’s too late for answers to these questions. I’m just saying there were so many ways in which this one child was failed by a seriously flawed system. The trauma will be huge over the child and her mother’s lifetimes.

Adoption Is A Selfish Act

A woman in the all things adoption group I belong to wrote –

Why can’t people just stay childless, if they cannot have their own ? Why is adoption even sought after failed attempts trying to conceive ? How does it not occur people that taking a child from their mother because you want a child is not an ethical path to family ? Adoption is so selfish. As humans we need to live with the fact that we cannot have it all. We don’t always get what we want and that includes babies. Like any other disappointment in life, you need to deal with it. You are not dying because you can’t have kids.

The truth is that adoption has been packaged (for commercial profit reasons) as the selfless solution to their infertility problem. “Save the unwanted babies” and all that.

The ProLife/religious narrative is strong. Giving your baby to a family who can’t have one is framed as giving the most precious gift anyone can give. And NOT having children is a fate worse than death because you’re not bringing more soldiers into Christ’s army. The manipulation tactics used by the church are psychological warfare. And that bleeds into secular society.

Of course, the argument “for” always comes up –

Where would you have these children go ? What happens when the person regrets their one night stand and resents that child for their loss of “freedom?” What happens when someone has a drug or alcohol addiction and does not feel the need to seek treatment ? What happens when someone has anger issues that put children at risk for abuse ? I agree that the system is not perfect, but I think on some level we can agree that there are some wonderfully kind, capable people with a lot of love to give who would be better suited to raise the child than a parent who is not willing to put the work in to make themselves the parent their baby deserves. I really don’t think this is so black and white, where adoption is always evil, period. I think it’s a case by case thing.

The reality is that there will always be people raising other people’s kids, but there isn’t a need for the power imbalance, the fake birth certificates, and all the other bullshit. What it means to “help children” needs to be redefined because adoption and identity theft isn’t it.

An adoptee responds to all the what if statements with this –

Most children are not relinquished for the reasons you stated. The majority of adoptions happen because of lack of support. Furthermore even in the circumstances you mentioned, adoption as defined currently is not necessary. No one should have to give up their identity and be forced to play a sick game of pretend, that never really ends, just to be cared for properly.

The narrative that adoption is the ‘opposite’ or the solution to child abuse is damaging. The truth is that there are adoptive parents who are abusive and have anger issues. And there are adoptive parents who resent their adopted children and treat them terribly.

Why is adoption so heavily promoted in the US as a good thing that there are 40 couples wanting to adopt to every newborn that is available for adoption ? Money and religion are behind the desire.

Human Dignity

It has been amazing for me to learn how adoptees are treated as somehow LESS THAN other citizens in this country.

It isn’t a wonder to me that adult adoptees simply want self-determination and autonomy. They yearn for a respectful and inclusive definition of family – where their inclusively defined (original and adoptive) family is seen as a strength rather than
a weakness. It isn’t too much to ask that they be allowed transparency and truth.

Policies related to adopted person should be based on evidence and best practices that are healthy for adult adoptees and respectful of their human rights. They wish to be treated with dignity and as having human worth.

How is it that adoptees never have a say within the adoption system ? That they are not considered the “owners” of their own birth experience.

A child’s human rights include –
the preservation of their biological family whenever possible, information related to their heritage and identifying family information that will provide accurate medical health histories.

At a minimum, there should be unrestricted adult adoptee access to their own original birth certificates.

It is mystifying to me that there is such a lack of support for an adoptee to make sense of their personal diversity. I believe that is because in a predominantly non-adopted society, people simply don’t understand how it feels, how vexing this hidden and/or false identity is for a mature person.

My mom was offered the most minimal non-identifying information from her adoption file, often referred to as the “censored records”. It was of no practical use to her and why is it that the powers that be do not honor a citizen’s right to information that is personally their own ?

Just recently the state of New York finally decided to do what is just and fair by adult adoptees. Too many states continue to hide behind bureaucratic policies that I judge to be no more than bureaucratic laziness.