National Adoption Awareness Month: Hearing Voices of Loss

[me b zola]

Many whose lives have been permanently changed by adoption have mixed feelings (at best) about the month's glorification and promotion of adoption. Adoptees and their parents are becoming increasingly vocal and seek to focus awareness on the challenges of adoption that many struggle with personally and politically in order to mitigate as much future pain as possible.

~snip~

Some whose lives have been permanently changed by adoption resent celebrating a process that sanctions lies and inequality, denying adopted persons access to their own birth certificates. Cathi Swett, a reunited adoptee and attorney, is founder and downstate coordinator of New York State Adoptee Equality. Swett says that promoting adoption, as is the goal of National Adoption Month, is "like promoting divorce. Children need caretaking... No [one] needs to have the State declare them a legal stranger to all their kin and falsify their birth records forever. The children and grand-children of adoptees cannot do genealogy. There is no reason for this. "

Lee Campbell, a professor of social science, is founder of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB), a national nonprofit that serves all those touched by, and concerned about, adoption. CUB provides support and resources for birth parents and advocates for family preservation. Happily reunited with her son for 36 years, Campbell still finds National Adoption Month painful. She aches for mothers who live in one of the majority of states in which "they still cannot know the fate of children who were harvested from them" at a time when unmarried mothers were shamed and scorned. Today, many mothers, says Campbell, "believe they are placing their babies in 'open' adoptions" only to become "victims of an ultimate betrayal of trust. And, for that, they have no redress or even acknowledgement...

~snip~

Adoption joy is the result of tragedy, not unlike organ donation. In both cases, the tragedies are often preventable. While we encourage the latter, we do so with great respect and dignity. Organ donation is carefully regulated to protect against exploitation, not commercialized or hyped as a "win-win," as adoption is often portrayed. It's reprehensible to imagine funeral directors, monument, or cemetery salesman plying their wares in a hospital as adoption agencies and baby brokers do. Ironically, we maintain sanctity for life-saving, non-sentient tissues, but not for human beings that are coveted, but not needed, and who grow into autonomous adults with kinships and needs of their own.

We need to hear the voices of those that adoption was intended to serve and keep the focus of National Adoption Awareness Month on foster care while increasing awareness and sensitivity of, and working to decrease, the unfortunate familial separations that precede adoption placements.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mirah-riben/national-adoption-awarene_b_6129926.html

[me b zola]

1. Our stories begin with loss

This is what non-adopted people don't understand about us. We are not puppies nor kittens to be removed from their nursing mothers. Human beings have a very real connection to their mothers and their blood lines. An infant placed for adoption undergoes a tremendous loss, a loss that stays with us whether we are aware of it or not. By adoptees stating this, we are not attacking our adopters, this is about us, about our reality~and how no one bothers to ask us when they want to "celebrate" adoption.

[me b zola]

2. I adore each and evey women in the video

...but there are many men in the adoptee rights movement.

Angela was the focus of the documentary "Closure"

I haven't been fortunate enough to see the entire movie, but I can tell you that there is no such thing as "closure" for adoptees.

[me b zola]

3. This...

We need to hear the voices of those that adoption was intended to serve and keep the focus of National Adoption Awareness Month on foster care while increasing awareness and sensitivity of, and working to decrease, the unfortunate familial separations that precede adoption placements.

[me b zola]

4. How fucking sad that a message board of progressives

cannot bother themselves with this issue.

[B2G]

5. Many of us have had this conversation with you before

I have nothing more to say on the subject.

[me b zola]

6. I'm (not so) sorry, what does that mean?

Adoptees do not need to be heard? National adoption month is just meant to promote adoption for those wanting to build a family without knowing the consequences for the child that loses its family? Just what are you saying?

[B2G]

7. I believe you are very anti-adoption, no?

Perhaps I have mistaken you for someone else I've had discussions with over this topic.

[me b zola]

8. I am very PRO adoption reform

This OP is about listening to adoptees. I would think that someone who is for adoption would want to hear from adoptees. How can someone be for adoption and not be pro adoptee?

[me b zola]

9. Oh, but I insist. "Many" of you? Who the hell would that be?

My question remains: How can you be "pro-adoption" yet anti-adoptee? Yeah, the disconnect is palpable You and those who think like you are easily seen through, for those willing to see the ugliness of the adoption trade.

[B2G]

11. Easily seen through?

You know nothing about me.

[Waiting For Everyman]

10. Thank you for posting this!

And I'm also glad I happened to see it, because I'm not on here very often anymore.

Bookmarking to read again tomorrow and check into the group mentioned further.