Only In America

Some thoughts from a birth mother –

Only in America is the for-profit business industry of adoption disguised as non-profit god work, that saves babies and is the answer to abortion; greed, trafficking and coercion will now be standard practice. This isn’t about women or babies. It’s about money and control.

When things like this happen, there is no rest. Only exhaustion, heartache, devastation. I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-INFORMED choice, the one that every human should have the right to make themselves and have access to safely. This is about controlling women and making money off their offspring, calling it “saving babies”, “orphan care”, “better lives”. THIS is a war on families, particularly on family preservation. Giving children to people deemed more worthy than biological parents, then selling it to the masses as “creating families”…that had to be broken first.

Billions stand to be made by the adoption industry with this ruling; to an already billion dollar a year industry that disguises itself as the hands and feet of Jesus. Commodifying women and children in crisis could not be less of Jesus. Seeing posts claiming how the church will step up, pushing their congregations more to take these “unwanted” babies, feels so dehumanizing as a mother who was in crisis, not fully informed about the ramifications and traumas involved in choosing placement, and then used by the church as the poster child for adoption. It’s lifelong trauma being separated from your children. Even though I did the best I could with what I had to go on, I was still failed. Most of us are. Women will now be forced to endure pregnancies either dangerous physically or possibly detrimental emotionally and psychologically, in the name of domestic infant supply, for the demand required. And there is nothing in place for these women in the aftermath.

Money in hand, baby secured, they have no need for us anymore. Millions more of us will now suffer these traumas. This is a sisterhood I never wanted to be apart of. It is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone and yet, people are shouting from the rooftops, without any lived experience or knowledge of the traumas we live daily, they’ll take our babies, like they are a pair of shoes at a garage sale we are looking to get rid of. Nope.

Unbelievable But True

Trying to find a word for it, I think, sort of like having your own orphanage, but the children are not orphans. Certainly, the babies are cared for but one really wonders if this is a healthy situation to grow up in. Let us be considerate and call it an experimental family.

24 yr old, Kristina Ozturk and her millionaire husband Galip, who is 57, live in Batumi, Georgia (the former Soviet country, not the state in America) and have in effect created this situation intentionally by paying surrogates to carry through pregnancy and deliver through birth 21 babies for them. Their babies are Mustafa, 19 months; Mariam, 18 months; Ayrin, 18 months; Alisa, 18 months; Hasan, 17 months; Judi, 17 months; Harper, 16 months; Teresa, 16 months; Huseyin, 16 months and Anna, 15 months. The youngest kids are Isabella, 15 months; Ismail, 14 months; Mehmet, 14 months; Ahmet, 14 months; Ali, 13 months; Kristina, 13 months; Sara, one; Lokman, one; Galip, 11 months; Olivia, nine months and Judy, three months.

In order to care for so many babies, they employ 16 live-in nannies. The nannies work a rolling schedule of four days on, two days off and all live-in, with bedrooms near the kids. They also have their own kitchen where they can order food. During the day, a specific nanny is responsible for a specific child. But during the week the nannies change.

Kristina’s daughter Victoria, age six, from a previous relationship, and one of Galip’s nine older children, also live with the family making it 23 children under one roof.

Doing the math – that’s less than $10,000 paid to each surrogate. The amount paid to her 16 nannies is a living wage for 1 nanny in California. I am thinking that is is exploitation and on more than one level.

You can read the complete story and see some additional photos in I’m a Mom to 21 Babies in the New York Post.

Someone else did some background research. Not a pretty story and possibly a case of sex trafficking.

Christina had her first child at the age of 16 in Russia. Her parents split when she was little, her mother is very poor and had a small apartment that is not well heated, and she does not get along well with her step father figure. When she turned 18, she was flown to Batumi (likely by an agency that works in trafficking women but publicly she has stated that she took herself on this “vacation”).

Within 24 hours of making this trip, she met her now-husband, and the love bombing started hard. On Instagram, this trip was recorded as swimming with dolphins, having elaborate dinners on balconies, having personalized fireworks shows for just her. In actuality: Galip Ozturk is a known criminal and murderer, and was already plotting something far more nefarious. He wants 100 children. He arranged for Christina to go to a fertility clinic within these first few days of meeting her in person. Here they performed invasive tests as well as bloodwork to check her hormones and egg reserves. Within 3 months she started her first IVF cycle to withdraw eggs. Christina has no control of what happens to these eggs. She has gone through 4 cycles (and likely it has been speculated, a 5th) and has created 22-30+ embryos PER CYCLE. For an average family, one cycle with 30 embryos would be more than enough.

Christina has publicly stated she has no part in the surrogacy process. Galip and the agency (or agencies) that he works with arrange for transfer day(s) and choose the number of embryo(s) to be transferred. She has publicly stated that many times she has not known there were more pregnant women until Galip told her to meet them at the hospital at birth. At first, she was told they would have 5 children with surrogates because she told Galip she thought she could only handle 5 at a time.

There are more than 21 children- and at LEAST two that are currently in the NICU that she seemingly is not allowed to post about, as these posts are taken down quickly. It is unclear if they have lost children in the NICU after birth, or if children with disabilities are not included in this count. Many people have theorized that Galip will only allow healthy children home.

Christina’s daughter (prior to having an influx of surrogacy children) was initially allowed to live with them in the house and after hitting 10+ kids, was sent to a boarding school. It seemed to many this was “temporary” for Christina, but that she was lied to (again) and more surrogate children started to appear. Her oldest no longer lives in the same country as her and also has no contact with her family in Russia unless on a vacation with Christina and Galip.

Christina regularly states that Galip is not happy with her sharing the number of children that they have, and she has expressed some confusion as to whether the children are all genetically related to her or if some of these children are infant adoptees to “help friends”. All in all: Christina was trafficked into this situation, and was coerced into this lifestyle without much input of her own. There is likely a LARGE incentive to keep up with this life now as she has very few other alternatives. Not only are these her children- but her oldest child is not in her direct care either and may be being kept from her.

What is C-PTSD ?

Most of us have heard of PTSD but until this morning, I didn’t know there was a more severe version called Complex-PTSD.

Most people who have looked at adoption very closely already know that trauma is an aspect of having been surrendered to adoption for most adoptees. I’ve become so steeped in it that I can recognize effects now in statements made by an adoptee that to them a vague issues they still don’t know the source of. This lack of awareness occurs most often in teenagers and young adults. Most mature adoptees have worked through many of these and may have had some counseling or therapy to help them uncover the underlying emotions and possible sources of these.

Complex PTSD, however, is specific to severe, repetitive trauma that typically happens in childhood – most often abuse. On the surface, both PTSD and C-PTSD both come as the result of something deeply traumatic, they cause flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia, and they can make people live in fear even when they are safe.

The very heart of C-PTSD – what causes it, how it manifests internally, the lifelong effects (including medically), and its ability to reshape a person’s entire outlook on life – is what makes it considerably different.

PTSD typically results from “short-lived trauma”, or traumas of time-limited duration. Complex PTSD stems from chronic, long-term exposure to trauma in which a victim has limited belief it will ever end or cannot foresee a time that it might. This can include: child abuse, long-term domestic violence, being held in captivity, living in crisis conditions/a war zone, child exploitation, human trafficking, and more.

The causal factors are not all that separates PTSD from C-PTSD. How their symptoms manifest can tell you even more. PTSD is weighted heaviest in the post-traumatic symptoms: nightmares, flashbacks, hyperarousal/startle response, paranoia, bursts of emotion, etc.

C-PTSD includes all the symptoms of PTSD as well as a change in self-concept. How one sees themselves, their perpetrator, their morals and values, their faith in others or a god. This can overhaul a survivor’s entire world view as they try to make sense of their trauma and still maintain a belief that they, and the world around them, could still be good or safe.

When an adult experiences a traumatic event, they have more tools to understand what is happening to them, their place as a victim of that trauma, and know they should seek support even if they don’t want to. Children don’t possess most of these skills, or even the ability to separate themselves from another’s unconscionable actions. The psychological and developmental implications of that become complexly woven and spun into who that child believes themselves to be — creating a messy web of core beliefs much harder to untangle than the flashbacks, nightmares and other post-traumatic symptoms that come later.

The effects are usually deeply interpersonal within that child’s caregiving system. Separate from both the traumatic events and the perpetrator, there is often an added component of neglect, hot-and-cold affections from a primary caregiver, or outright invalidation of the trauma, if a child does try to speak up. These disorganized attachments and mixed messages from those who are supposed to provide love, comfort and safety – all in the periphery of extreme trauma – can create unique struggles.

Credit for this blog and for the beginning of my education in this new concept goes to Beauty After Bruises.

The Underground Marketplace

“Rehoming” is a term often used in situations where adoptive parents are trying to “get rid of” their adopted child. This can stem from behavioral and/or emotional issues from the adoptive child that the parents do not feel equipped to handle.

Most re-homing exchanges initially are made via the internet, through websites or forums. The majority of these rehoming exchanges are made by parents who adopted a child internationally. There is less follow-up/resources for these parents, so many of the parents have stated that they had nowhere to go or no one to reach out to for help regarding the issues they were having with their adopted child.

Although it seems like rehoming should be illegal, unfortunately, there aren’t many laws protecting children being given away to others. The problem with this is that many of the people who are taking these adopted children have criminal backgrounds or are psychologically unstable, putting the child at risk for emotional and sexual abuse, trafficking, or even death. Predators take advantage of adoptive parents who are emotionally burnt out, giving them an “out,” many times free of charge.

Kids can be put into real danger when adoptive parents are desperate enough to give in to this type of exchange. It is not illegal but there is usually no background check and the exchange can be made with nothing more than a signed notarized document. No legal authorities need be involved.

Most people are unaware of the horrible reality of rehoming. But it is a real issue. Awareness can prevent a tragedy. If you are an adoptive parent who is in a situation with a new adoptive child which seems unbearable, there are resources. Don’t choose a do it yourself solution.