In clearing out the attic over the past several months, I’ve discovered a few items that hold opposite meanings for myself and my adoptive mother: Greeting cards. But not just any type of greeting card. There are Baby’s First Christmas, Baby’s First Birthday, Baby’s First Valentine. The one that struck me the most, however, was the 1956 Baby Shower Card that reveals the promise of “increasing” happiness with the addition of a baby girl but ignores reality of loss of that baby’s family of birth. Such is the reality of adoption.

Here’s the front of the card:

Here’s the inside showing the cut-a-way window. The last names of the “girls at the shop” have been deleted.

Here’s another view of the inside of the card with the secondary card opened:

 Note the words:

“A darling little baby girl

To steal your hearts away —”

 Evidently, as a child, I stole their hearts away.

Definitely, they knowingly stole me from my family.

I gained an adoptive family, but lost the family that I had.

It is inhumane what was done to me and my siblings in the name of adoption. They did it - my adoptive parents – knowingly, willfully and intentionally. They did it out of love. And with Jesus’ blessings. Good Catholics they were.

And for this I am to be grateful.

No question about it, for me, there is no way to get through this pain but radical acceptance of the reality. Do I need to mention that I have no forgiveness for the parents and extended family involved with the coverup of the truth at my expense? I am not required to give forgiveness as it was not earned, nor even asked for, except by my adoptive father immediately after he spoke with my natural father on the phone in 1974 just days after I was found.

For whose happiness did I enter their family? Theirs. I was manipulated and tricked into believing the life they fed me. I developed close attachments and love with aunts, uncles and cousins who later turned out to hate me (but other cousins and aunts and uncles were not that way). I loved my adoptive parents, but I was cheated out of life with the siblings I was never supposed to know. Meanwhile, my natural father lost his newborn daughter and his other children lost their baby sister.

Let this be a lesson to adoptive parents everywhere: be as honest as you possibly can with your adoptee. Honesty is the best policy. For when there are secrets and spiteful rage to keep the adoptee from ever knowing the truth, the adoptee suffers at the hands of the very people who are suppose to love that adoptee unconditionally. Withholding vital information and preventing a minor child contact with full or half siblings is a cruelty worthy to be called child abuse of both the adoptee and her siblings left behind.

Yes, today my elderly adoptive mother shares her joyous memories with me of the day she and my father “got” me. She talks of the baby shower that welcomed me into the family. I acknowledge her joys. This is her journey through life. I try to make her as comfortable as possible by listening to her.

I also acknowledge my profound sadness at what I lost: my entire family of birth. My father, my siblings, my aunts, uncles and cousins, and I lost my natural mother due to her early death, a death that lead to my father’s mistaken belief that the only course of action was to give me up to a completely closed adoption. We lived less than six miles apart, but this magical social construct of adoption robbed me of my family, robbed my siblings of their baby sister, and robbed my father of his daughter. The only ones who got away with any happiness and security were my adoptive parents. They got the baby they could not produce on their own. Eighteen years of infertility and voila – a baby is suddenly available by the death of her mother. Take the baby and run. Have a baby shower and pamper that baby girl with all their love. And for what? For 18 years of lies to the adoptee and 36 years of hell to pay after I was found by the very siblings my adoptive mother so adamantly declared I should never know.

The past 36 years have been filed with accusations that I have been disloyal and ungrateful. Why? For accepting the truth of my birth and adoption? Why is it always the adoptee who is expected to accept other people’s viewpoints and opinions? Is it worth it to be permanently separated by arbitrary laws and social constructs to create a falsehood within  which the adoptee is expected to live? No, it is not.

I have been told with flippant comments from non-adoptees that “that’s the way it was done back then”.

So? That doesn’t make it right. I am the one to suffer the consequences of other people’s actions. My life as an adoptee was not worth the cocoon-sheltered childhood and the emotional and psychological abusive adult life I have had to endure because of adoption.

Now I must slowly say goodbye to a misguided elderly adoptive mother, make her journey to life’s passing as gentle as possible, and struggle to comprehend the devastation left behind.

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

The following blog post — My Story at Living in the Shadows — is a very well written account of a mother’s loss of her child to adoption by coercion from church members (this is God’s will, etc) and a crisis pregnancy center (with a pregnancy counselor not even offering her help to keep her baby). This mother conceived following rape and she still wanted to keep her baby. This happened in 1997-1998 in New Zealand.

Think this doesn’t happen in the United States today? Think again. It does.

Not married mothers are talked into believing that they cannot parent their babies. This brainwashing continues in our modern society. It is discrimination against and abuse of a mother and her child for the benefit of adoption.

Read this post; it’s a must-read. Perhaps this will help one mother to keep her baby.

As the author states,

“There is no place in today’s society for adoption.”

~ ~ ~ 

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

I came across a note the other day. It was written during the editing process of my book, Forbidden Family. One of my early editors told me his initial reaction to the contents of the book. He summed up the frustrations of the general public when confronted with the particulars of my adoption/reunion process:

I can’t deal with the magnitude of your problems so I’m angry with you.

Don’t talk about it.

Don’t write about it.

If you don’t talk about it I won’t have to deal with it.

I don’t think I can handle it my own life.

If it happened to me I couldn’t handle it.

Precisely.

Normal people tense up dealing with their own lives. Normal stress adds up the stress-level scale. People break down going through divorce, death of a parent, or a job loss. Some people don’t recover or develop stress-induced physical or mental illness. When adoption trauma is added to normal life stresses, the results are of a magnitude that are not even indicated on social work or psychiatric life stress scales.

Is adoption trauma discounted? Is adoption trauma off the charts?

Those of us who have been affected by adoption know all too clearly, we suffer unbearable anguish of stress brought on by relinquishment of a newborn or older child, or adoption search, or adoption reunion, or complications of reunion and rejection and loss. Our life partners, significant others, our spouses and children may not even understand what we must live with each day. Communication becomes a struggle with non-adopted people, or with normal parents.

My message to normal people: It could be worse. If you lost your child to adoption, if you were adopted, on top of all of your other problems, would you be able to cope?

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

I write today’s blog post from the point of view of being the daughter of two mothers: one who gave me life and the other who raised me.

It is not easy being the daughter of two mothers, especially since my time with my first mother was so short. She died when I was three months old. She was dying during her pregnancy with me — a death that resulted in my father’s grief and belief that his only option and the best choice of action he could do for me was to relinquish me to the total care of another set of parents.

I do not believe that was the best choice. I needed to be with the family I was born into.

But since I was raised instead by a stranger who became my mother through a legal decree, I struggle through the sadness and loss each and every day of my life. I grieve for the family I lost because of adoption. I grieve for the loss of a mother who left the earth far too early. I grieve for the mother who adopted me as she was misguided in her possessiveness. She clings to me now in a nursing home. I give her what I can, but mostly, what’s done is done. I’m sad for her suffering and pending death. I also have a step mother who is married to my natural father.

Mother’s Day is a day of sadness for me.

I start each Sunday, including Mother’s Day, by attending a service at my local UU Church.

It’s bad enough that a dear friend of mine, a mother of adoption loss, will not attend our local UU Church (she used to) for the hypocrisy there. I agree with her. There’s wealthy adoptive parents who give lip-service about the natural parents of the adopted children they hold dear. Like the adoptive mother who got a standing ovation for adopting a three year old Haitian earthquake survivor. And don’t get me started about the abundance of gays and lesbians at church who use ANONYMOUS sperm and eggs and surrogate mothers and don’t seem to care that they willingly withhold knowledge of the absent genetic parent(s) to the children so created. In the face of all of that, I still attend the Buffalo Unitarian Universalist Church. My friend doesn’t. I miss her. I honor her for her integrity to stay away.

I look beyond these human failings, even our minister who spoke awhile back about the appropriations of other religions, or rather, the miss-appropriations, without even noticing, or caring, that many people appropriate other people’s children with a sense of entitlement.

It is not easy to look beyond these in-your-face adoption assaults.

I am at this church weekly for the spiritual, intellectual, and suburb musical performances of our choir and musicians.

Today’s guest minister, Reverend Sally Hamlin, participated in a service inspired and encouraged by Debra Hafner, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, sexologist and Director of the Religious Institute. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-debra-haffner/honor-thy-mother-reducing_b_549650.html

This was the responsive reading: http://www.religiousinstitute.org/sites/default/files/initiatives/Rachel_Sabbath_Responsive_Reading_Mothers_Day_0.pdf

A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others.

We affirm the nurturing love of mothers, and the blessings of parenthood.

We pray for a society in which pregnancy is freely chosen, and mothers and children receive the care and support they need.

We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.

We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services.

We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.

Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption.

We bless them and hold them in love.

We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities.

We call for a commitment to make every day Mother’s Day.

© Religious Institute, 2010, May 9

 

And this bulletin was read out loud:

Global Maternal Health

* Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications – at least half a million women worldwide every year.

* 99 percent of all maternal deaths occur in developing nations. More than half occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and one-third in South Asia.

* Most maternal deaths take place during labor, delivery or in the immediate post-partum period. More than 3.4 million newborns die within the first week of life.

* More than one million children are left motherless every year due to maternal deaths. Children are three to 10 times more likely to die within two years of the mother’s death.

* The leading cause of death for girls ages 15-19 worldwide is pregnancy.

* There is no single cause of death and disability for men that compares with the magnitude of maternal death and disability.

* Doubling current global investments in family planning and pregnancy-related health care (to approximately $24.6 billion) could save the lives of 400,000 women and 1.6 million infants every year.

The Rachel Sabbath Initiative: Saving Women’s Lives supports the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 5, which focuses on improving maternal health. The Religious Institute calls on congregations across the country to raise awareness and support for the UN’s targets of reducing maternal mortality worldwide and achieving universal access to reproductive health care by 2015. This initiative is named for the matriarch Rachel, who died in childbirth (Gen. 35:16-20).

Religious Institute, 21 Charles Street, Suite 140, Westport, CT 06880. Join the Faithful Voices Network at www.religiousinstitute.org

In an effort to spread the word that maternal health is important, the UU Church sorely misses the mark on the focus of adoption.

Here is what I AM ADDING to the above (in bold and italics):

We don’t have specific statistics, but for every adoptee there is a mother who gave birth. That mother suffers the loss of her child to adoption but society does not recognize nor acknowledge that loss. There are millions of childless mothers (because there are at least 6 to 7 million adoptees in America) who grieve for the loss of their babies and who dread Mother’s Day because they were made feel shame and guilt for even being a mother in the first place. We must practice Adoption Prevention.

A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others.  We also honor mothers who have lost their infants to unwanted relinquishment to the adoption industry by resolving to end this practice of taking other mothers’ children as our own.

We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.

We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services. We mourn the countless women around the world who suffer the moral indignation of disrespecting the pregnancies and infant births by the unwanted snatching of their infants at the moment of birth at Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Birthing Rooms that allow adopting couples to witness the sacred moment of birth, and mothers who are victims of Open Adoption scams and Open Adoption Agencies. We mourn the scorn still inflicted upon young teens and young women who are not married and humiliated into giving up their wanted babies because society tells them they cannot parent their own children.

We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.

Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption. Difficulties in adopting other women’s children? We break the silence that women who desperately want their children are taken advantage of by the cruelty of the adoption industry — women who want their children ought to not suffer their children ripped from their arms into the waiting arms of adopting parents. If and only IF a child does not have caring parents is GUARDIANSHIP NOT ADOPTION ever a substitute for motherhood. In cases of abuse and neglect, removing a child from harm is best, but working toward reunification and stabilization of that family unit is primary to the wholeness of that mother and her children.

We bless them and hold them in love.

We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities. We celebrate to every mother the right to be mothers in life, and to be named on their child’s birth certificate, not dishonored by sealing and falsifying that document. This means that we honor the facts of birth by issuing ONLY 1 true Certificate of Live Birth and strive for the abolition of the amended birth certificate in adoption; such a document is a mockery of motherhood. Ultimately we strive for the abolition of adoption itself for every mother who gives birth and who wants her child needs to be a mother and every child needs their mother. For adoptive mothers everywhere, we strive for the acceptance that the role of raising children can be handled by a caregiver who is a guardian who does not usurp the dignity of another mother by taking her child.

I have no choice but to accept that I have two mothers: one by birth and one by adoption. My lesson learned from my life lived in this reality is to strive for a better world in which the sanctity of motherhood is respected everywhere on this planet. What might appear to be harsh to the adoptive mothers out there is actually a plea: stop trying to own someone else’s child and if you must fulfill your desire to be in a parenting role, be a guardian and not an adoptive mother. A guardian respects that child’s identity and true mother. Adoption, by its very nature, disrespects both the child and her natural mother by destroying the natural mother-child bond. Caring and love in a parenting role can be achieved by guardianship. Offended? I am offended that my life as the daughter of my mother who died in my infancy was not honored nor respected because of the all-almighty power of adoption.

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

PS — See this post: Happy Birthmother Day or Happy Adopter Day; and this quote from AustinHolistic : Which makes me think, if a woman wants her child, we need to provide emotional support, financial support, and psychological support for women who want their children: and this post with this quote: There is no paradox, no contradiction and certainly no upside in having been on the loosing end of the adoption exchange.

This blog entry is a response to reading Cedar’s blog post: Adoption Practice: “What is coercion?”

Many years ago I was the only adoptee rooming with a half dozen mothers-of-adoption-loss in a hotel room. They were surprised at my support for them, saying that adoptees were hostile to them because of being given away, but I wasn’t hostile to them.

Maybe it was because I before I entered into adoption awareness in 1974 I was introduced to feminist thought in 1971. I was 15 at the time. Womanhood came first and with that came the understanding of what it means to be able to carry life within and the struggle to gain independence from men. So, I understood womanhood long before I was thrown into shock at being found by siblings I was never supposed to know.

So, when I hear of women’s voices telling of what actually took place for them, I believe them.

It is a great burden to have reunion thrust upon an 18 year old who was raised in a sheltered life. My upbringing lead me into believing that sex before marriage was a sin, and was bad, that pregnant teens were, well, you know. That was what I was forced-fed in home and at school and at church. The cognitive dissonance really hit me in 1971 when Canada Jane came into my life. She was a beautiful traveler who had a perspective that was so unlike what I had been taught. Her freedom of self lifted me out of the holds of suppression. And she did it through poetry and photography.

So I am female first and adoptee second. And, the experience of being a real bastard is not mine so when I hear (rather heard in the past) adoptees speak of rage at being abandoned or given away, I did not experience abandonment in the same way. I knew my mother was not a teenage mother. She was not a “tramp”. She was not a seductress nor was she seduced. She was a wife and mother of four other children at the time of my conception, gestation and birth. My mother was nothing less than my mother in the full sense of the word. My father was nothing less than my father in the full sense of the word.

I knew these points instinctively at the moment I was found and heard my sister’s voice on the other end of the phone. When I met my father for the first time and developed a relationship with him, he was my father, he was not some sperm donor or a cad or a womanizer or a creep. He was my father.

My father was talked into giving me up for adoption. His experience in relinquishment is different from that of a mother. Mothers and pregnancy and giving birth are a different experience. But from his perspective as the husband of a pregnant wife, and the father of four children expecting the fifth in the mid 1950s, well, he was the breadwinner, the paycheck, the head of the household. It was his responsibility to take care of us all, to pay for us to provide for us. We were all dependent upon him.

When my father was faced with a pregnant wife who was violently ill, he was frightened. He did not think that the baby has to go, he thought that this was his family and he had to figure out how to fix it all. Illness made his wife go into pre-term labor. She delivered her infant two months too soon on the hospital bed before the nurses could get there. A few weeks before that, she was X-rayed to determine why she was so sick. A massive tumor filled her abdomen along side of the “fetus” who was guessed to be five months at that time. The tumor was real but the age of the “fetus” was wrong. When I was born the doctor determined I was 32 weeks of gestational age; a real feat of birth and survival in those primitive days of 1956.

I survived my mother’s cancer. I survived a premature birth. I survived six weeks in an incubator. My mother died. My father was stressed. Instead of help all he got was talk. The baby needs two parents. The baby? The baby was part of the whole family. The five children needed two parents, but the reality was that the mother died and the whole family needed help to cope with that loss. But no help was given. Just convince the father that the baby, alone, needed two parents. Make him believe he was not worthy to be the real father of his own daughter… make him believe that the only solution was to give her up permanently to another couple so she could lead a better life without him or her siblings.

I say that my widowed father was coerced into giving up his youngest child to adoption. And for that, he was crucified and his given-up daughter was both smothered in love by her adoptive parents and isolated by them. Stockholm syndrome is the better name for what I feel for my adoptive parents for I have those 18 years of a bliss or happiness of childhood gooiness. Yeah right. How do I justify the sad feelings I have for the father who died in 1982 when I see his picture playing with me as a one year old on the floor with the reality that he knowingly and willfully kept me apart from my own siblings for his sake of raising a child of his own? How do I justify the sad feelings I have to recall those happy times when Mom sewed those matching mother-daughter-doll dresses when she wanted me to grow up as she dreamed I would to fulfill her visions of the daughter she called her own? Did I have any rights or feelings? How did these two people justify within themselves what they were doing to me and to my siblings and to my father? How did they justify taking a child away from her family so they could call me their own?

Coercion is just that. There is no rational explanation.  

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Why should a child have his or her lineage falsified? Falsifying a birth certificate for two gay men is to pretend that they can give birth! The same applies to two women! Common sense tells us that a child is created by a man and a woman. To record fictional birth records is to falsify a child’s life, lineage, and facts of birth.

In a similar train of thought, a state legislator, Democrat Henry Heller of Maryland, says it’s time to ban marriages between first cousins and stop playing what he calls “genetic roulette’ with their offspring. He wants to bring Maryland ‘into the world of enlightened world of other states such as West Virginia, Arkansas, and most others which already prohibit unions of first cousins. Heller says couples who are first cousins are at an increased risk of having a child with birth defects.

Yet, in most states, and some Canadian provinces, adoption records and the original birth certificates of persons who have had their adoption finalized in that state,  Washington, D.C., or province, are sealed by that jurisdiction and, hence, are unavailable to ‘said’ person whose name is on this document. This adds a unique definition to an adopted person’s hereditary: their genes must be magic! Their DNA can, mysteriously, avoid pooling with a kinfolk’s DNA, ever, to produce an offspring with undesirable traits. Otherwise, why wouldn’t their original birth certificate be available?

This is pure hogwash! But it does reveal one thing:  We adoptees are defined, by law, to have a different place in a biological definition of what it human. We are segregated as a totally different sub-species, one whose genes are pure and/or never produce bad traits in our babies. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if we marry a first cousin, or a relative to a closer degree….

THIS IS DISCRIMINATION!  Are we 1/16th human? Remember that during the slavery times, a person who had African-American heritage would still be defined as “Negro”, even if he/she had only 1/16th amount of blood from his/her African tribe?

 Mary L. Foess

Bonding by Blood, Unlimited, founder & president, since 1988

Vassar, MI

e-mail:  mlfoess@Gmail.com

Web site: http://www.ArmenianAncestryBook.com

Facebook page: accessible by typing in ‘Mary Foess’ or using the above e-mail address

I’m not going to get into a huge discussion on gays rights as that is not the focus of this website.

If two people are committed to each other and love each other, then they should be allowed to marry and adopt if that is their choice. Having said that, I must also say, because there are serious problems with the American system, adoption is not the best choice for the child. Guardianship, and not adoption, should take precedence for the child’s welfare, not the parents who “want” a child. Fiddling around with reproductive technologies, surrogate mothers, donated eggs and sperm, all confuse just whose egg and sperm and womb created the child. In the case of many parents who had a part in giving a child life, all of those parents names belong on a birth certificate. Adoptive parents names belong on an adoption certificate. Period.

These points are discussed in detail in  my book and in this website.

In my blog post two nights ago on the article “5th Circuit Appeal: Court Upholds Child’s right to Both Fathers on Birth Certificate” http://lezgetreal.com/?p=26855, a commenter had this to say following their article:

 Melanie Nathan

Posted on February 22, 2010 at 12:43 pm

The truth is that all adoptive parents get to go on an amended birth certificate and same should apply straight or gay

Well, that may all be well and good, IF that is your goal is. Having the same rights to nullify the personhood of an innocent child for the benefit of raising the legal equality standards for an oppressed group (gay men and lesbians), is just wrong. It is the wrong goal. The goals gays and lesbians want is to be able to adopt, not to be told they cannot adopt. In that process of fighting to win the equal right to adopt, gay and lesbian pre-adoptive parents lose sight of the most important person in this equation: the adoptee.

 Another commenter at the above linked article had this to say:

Chloe

Posted on February 22, 2010 at 9:22 am

Accurate birth certificate?

An accurate birth certificate should state who actually gave birth to the child. The child became a second class citizen the minute his original birth certificate was replaced by the first falsified document.

This is not a gay rights issue. This is an adoptee rights issue. Falsifying birth certificates in the name of adoption is legalized identity theft. This child should be entitled to his true identity just as non-adopted citizens are.

Winning the right to adopt as two single men in a committed relationship is not a victory for gay rights, it is a stunning defeat for human rights, and a devastating defeat for adoptees and our natural parents. We, in the adoption reform movement, have been fighting since 1953 for the right to access our sealed birth certificates and sealed adoption records. In my opinion, we have been terribly short-sighted in our focus. We should also be fighting to PREVENT the sealing and falsification of more birth certificates by demanding an end to sealed birth certificates and the automatic falsification of a “new” birth certificate for every child who is adopted, whether the adopting parents are gay, lesbian, or straight.

I have written about this extensively on this blog, and in my book by the same name as this website. I must be writing to the blind and talking to deaf ears and trying to reason with irrational people. How hard is it to accept the facts of life? One mother and one father get together and one sperm meets one egg and there you have a baby! Throw in a surrogate mother and an egg donor and you have one genetic mother, one rented womb mother, and one sperm donor father. Is that explained clearly enough? Now, class, whose names belong on a factual Certificate of Live Birth? That’s right: the father whose sperm fertilized the mother’s egg and the mother who subsequently gave birth! That’s three parents! The fourth parent who wants to adopt must be named on an adoption certificate because no adoptive parent physically creates an adopted son or daughter. You cannot fabricate the facts of life.

Isn’t that a simple that concept?

But we have been doing just that and that is why the gay community sees this as a victory for their right to adopt.

Who the parents are gets muddied when a new set of parents come along and wants to take over parenting that child. This is why GUARDIANSHIP is much safer for the child: because in Guardianship, the child does not have a replacement set of parents. In Guardianship, the child’s rights to one mother and one father are protected. In Guardianship, the parent-figures have the legal role of care-taker, but they are not taking the place of the child’s true parents. Adoption makes the child’s true parents disappear. Adoption creates a new Certificate of Live Birth for the child and changes the child’s name to suit the purposes of the mother and father who adopt the child. But in the case of two lesbians or two gay men, the two parents who take on the social parenting role want the right to put their names on a new Certificate of Live Birth for the child. That is revisonist history.

The right to adopt should not be confused with the right to be a couple and take on a parenting role.  Adoption, as is practiced in this country, is a biased and unequal legal system with the adopting parents (gay or straight) having the upper hand. Gays and lesbians gaining the legal right to adopt is just one more step in the process of taking away a child’s right to the full truth of who created that child: one mother and one father gave that child life.

I get so tired of explaining this that I actually get tongue-tied.

So I’ll leave that alone for now.

Another commenter on the above article made this correction:

Daryl Royal

Posted on February 23, 2010 at 12:14 pm

Without taking anything away from the rest of the discussion, this decision is NOT from the U.S. Supreme Court, but is instead from the Fifth Circuit, which is a federal appeals court one step below the Supreme Court. It is only binding precedent for courts in that circuit, which include some or all of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

I stand corrected. So this is not a US Supreme Court ruling. None the less, this is certainly much more attention and “victory” than adoptee-rights legislation has received.

The adoption reform movement needs to stand up and take notice. Oppose such rulings as this! For what appears to be a victory for one oppressed group (the Gay Community) is actually a huge setback for the Adoption-Rights community.

Please, people, wake up! Each and every one of us has one mother and one father, and adoptees have another set of parents who should be named on a Certificate of Adoption, not a fraudulent birth certificate. Stand up and fight for what is right and just!

The United Nations, through UNICEF, has the goal of all children around the world to the right to a Universal Birth Registation and Birth Certificate.

I say we need to EXPAND that idea to include a UNIVERSAL Adoption Certificate. State the facts plane and simple. Put the truth right out there and stop playing with adoptees’ lives.

I still say that a full United States Constitutional Amendment should be made to overturn the Model  State Adoption Act AND this stupid, stupid case involving brain dead numbnuts gay men who can’t see the obvious crime they have just committed against the very child they claim they love so much. If they loved that boy, they would respect WHO he is and WHO his real parents are and not lie on a birth certificate! They would also insist on an accurate Certificate of Adoption to tell the absolute truth of who is the adoptive parent. The birth certificate should tell the truth of who are the biological, life-giving parents.

Gays and lesbians, go back into the corner. You can come back out only when you can recognize and honor the facts of life for another human being.

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

This is just too stupid:

http://lezgetreal.com/?p=26855

5th Circuit Appeal: Court Upholds Child’s right to Both Fathers on Birth Certificate

Yes, that IS the headline!

When adoptees are now asserting their rights to the truth of their births (see previous post and vote here: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates_2), this numb-nuts Circuit Court upholds a “child’s right to Both Father’s on Birth Certificate”!

No, you stupid, stupid MEN! Men do not give birth! Women give birth!

This boy has ONE mother and ONE father who biologically created him! Those two parents’ names belong on a birth certificate NOT two adoptive fathers!!! The adoptive fathers’ names belong on an ADOPTION CERTIFICATE not a falsified birth certificate!

Just because this is a GAY RIGHTS “victory” in adoption, does not give anyone the legal right, or moral right, to side-swipe this child’s right to the truth! But the ACLU is standing for the rights of the gay adoptive parents on this, backing the adoptive gay men as adoptive parents in a sweeping National Constitutional ruling!

I have written about this before in my former blog, and was shot down by gay rights activists who saw my opposition to gay rights without giving a hoot about the stomping down of the adoptees’ civil rights!

You can read the whole above article at the link indicated above, but here are portions:

 The result – the  US Constitution requires state officials across the country “to respect the parent-child relationships established by adoption decrees, regardless of the state where that decree is entered.”

 and

A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the state of Louisiana to issue an amended birth certificate for the child of the men stating that the State of Louisiana is ordered to put the names of both fathers on the new certificate.

and

Lambda Legal, a national civil rights organization based in Los Angeles, represented Adar and Smith sued on behalf of the couple in October 2007, saying Louisiana Vital Records Registrar Darlene Smith violated the U.S. Constitution in denying them an accurate birth certificate, which threatened the boy’s enrollment in a health care plan and treated him like a second-class citizen.

and

Because New York law allows adoption by unmarried couples, Louisiana had to follow those rules.  The registrar have the discretion to refuse to make a new, correct birth certificate for a Louisiana-born child,  when the New York adoption decree “indisputably satisfies” Louisiana requirements.

Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, called Caldwell’s decision to fight the birth certificate request discriminatory.

“It was shameful that Attorney General Caldwell took such extreme measures to deny a small child a proper birth certificate simply because he didn’t like the boy’s parents,” said Esman, in a statement. “Hopefully this decision will make him think twice before wasting taxpayer money to defend his anti-gay activism.”

This is just too stupid for words. What the f…is going on here? Gay Rights vs AdopteeRights? Gay rights win a Constitutional victory to uphold a fictitious birth certificate for the adopted child of gay men? What is going unsaid here is the fact that this adopted son was born of a woman — he has a mother. And when this boy asks for his mother, he will be denied that natural calling.

This is a disgrace to human nature and common sense.

As I have stated before in answer to this article: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view.bg?articleid=1141525

Judge: 2 adoptive dads’ names on birth certificate

By Associated Press
Saturday, December 27, 2008:

joanwheeler

Do these two gay men have the legal right to marry? I hope so. Marriage should happen before legal adoption. As for their adoptee: A person is conceived and born only once. Therefore, one, and only one, birth certificate ought to be legal. After that, if a same-sex couple, (male or female same-sex couple), or a traditional female-male couple, or a single man or a single woman wants to adopt a baby or older child, an adoption certificate ought to be issued, not an amended birth certificate. While same-sex couples want and fight for their rights, they often, as exampled here, stomp on the rights of the very children they so desperately want. Think of the fraud committed by false representation of two fathers on a birth certificate. Then think: lies beget mistrust. You cannot have a parent-child relationship based upon lies. Then think: once an amended birth certificate is created for an adoptee, the true birth certificate is sealed. The adoptee is banned, for life, from ever obtaining a certified copy of their true birth certificate because, according to adoption law, the adopting parents replace the parents of birth. In reality, adoptive parents are parents by legal decree, not by conception and birth. Adoptees bear the burden of living with this duality. How utterly ridiculous and ignorant of the facts of life for any adoptive parents (gay or straight) to be named on a falsified birth certificate! Shame on you! Shame on the court for allowing it! Joan Wheeler born as Doris Sippel Buffalo, New York adoption activist since found by natural family in 1974

 #478274 – Dec 27, 2008 4:05 PM EST

To which this comment was left on my blog:

Jason Finigan said…

As a person who is adopted, I can emphatically stated that your perception of what an adoptive child will feel about his or her “birthright” is far from reality. I’ve known since an early age that I was adopted. My parents (and yes they are my parents) never made that a secret, but they also never held that against me. They raised me as their own child, loved me, taught me right from wrong, and did all the things a person’s natural birth parents should/would do. The only difference is that I was not born to them. My natural birth mother, due to mental health reasons, was unable to care for me, and my birth father either did not know of me, or did not want me. Is this the type of birthright that I have been deprived of? A mother unable to care for her own child because of an illness and a father who does not know or does not care to know his own son? I have only known two people in my life who were my parents. They are my mom and dad and my birth certificate reflects that. Even if I found my birth mother and birth father… they aren’t my parents. I am also an openly gay man, and if one day in the future I am able to, I would adopt a child of my own. I would give that child the love he or she deserves and more importantly give him or her a family that he or she would otherwise have been denied through no fault of their own. Family isn’t about blood. It’s about what you feel in your heart for those in your life.

December 28, 2008 6:30 AM

 

To which I responded:

 Jason,

 What you say is the typical response from an unenlightened adoptee. I’ve heard thousands of adoptees, natural parents, and adoptive parents speak for nearly 35 years. I was found at the age of 18, by four older siblings. My adoptive parents lied to me because they didn’t want me to know the truth.  At age 19, I joined the Adoption Reform Movement. That’s 34 years of experience advocating for adoptees’ rights. And yes, the bottom line is: no amended birth certificate for adoptees, and, access to our original birth certificates.

 There is a big difference between civil rights and reunion, or the desire to know one’s family of origin, or to be complacent within one’s adoptive family.

 I did not state that my adoptive parents are not my parents, you do seem to be a bit on the defensive side about what you perceive is an attack on your adoptive family. As I’ve said, I’ve heard “your” story so many times in the past…your words are not new to me.

 You can say all the things that parents do, but, just remember, there are natural parents who did not get the chance to do all those things that parents do because many pregnant women were coerced into giving up their babies at birth. During the Baby Scoop Era, women were drugged, gave birth with blindfolds on their faces, and not allowed to see or touch the baby they had just given birth to. Mothers of adoption loss, and fathers, too, express that they did not want to surrender their babies, but were forced to.

 “A mother unable to care for her own child because of an illness and a father who does not know or does not care to know his own son?”  As I’ve said, this kind of story is not new to me. Yes, there are mentally incompetent people who aren’t fit to be parents, but the truth is, that woman is you r mother. That is a fact of life for you, one that cannot be denied. She probably does know that she gave birth to a baby. As a social worker, I’ve worked with mothers such as this. And they do feel emotional pain when they cannot be what everyone else is: normal. You should feel empathy, not disdain.

Ah, yes, the venom against the father for not knowing or not caring…this, too, is not an unknown to me. Many women often do not tell the father that she is pregnant with his child. Or, maybe it was a rape, or, maybe, true, he did not want you. That does not change the fact of life that he is your father. A baby must be created, conceived, and born, before an adoption takes place.

 Many adoptees will fly off the handle as you did, without understanding the larger issues. I’m not saying not to love your adoptive parents, or even that you have to develop a relationship with your first parents, I’m saying, no correct that: millions of adoptees around the world have been working tirelessly for over 50 years to understand their feelings about being adopted, and, fight for civil rights to get their original birth certificates.

“Even if I found my birth mother and birth father… they aren’t my parents.” Ah, yes they are. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them. Take a few biology and genetics classes, and know what inherited conditions you face. Also know that they are your first parents, whether you like that idea or not. THEY ARE YOUR PARENTS and no amount of screaming that they’re not will change the facts of life.

 I have no problem with gays and lesbians and transgendered people adopting children. My church, The Unitarian Church of Buffalo, has a large gay community. I’ve been a member there for 25 years.

 “Family isn’t about blood. It’s about what you feel in your heart for those in your life.”

Watch it with statements like this! Adoptees do search for and find their first parents and lost siblings. Relationships do develop into love. Even if adoptees never search, many are found because their natural parents or siblings search for them. If that happens in your case, please have a heart. Remember that you are not alone in this world. Strive to make the world a better place.

About that phrase: “openly gay man”…well, this is what my stupid adoptive cousin said to me in 1982 when my adoptive father died, “You OPENLY declare that you have two fathers! That means you don’t love the one who raised you! You don’t belong at this funeral!” 

 Yes, I’ve been open about advocating for adoptees’ and natural parents’ rights. It is a civil right to have access to one’s true birth certificate. Reunion and building relationships are an extention. I loved my father, he raised me. When my siblings found me, and my adoptive parents could no longer hide, my father said, “I’m glad the secret is out.” He had tears in his eyes.

 Now that you know this blog is here, check back occasionally. I’ll be posting other blogs I follow. Perhaps you can learn from other adoptees. Have a look at Bastard Nation’s website, and American Adoption Congress, for starters. Look up Concerned united Birthparents. Adoption is much more than what you know about….Learn and grow…Peace, Joan

 What I would like to know now is this: How is it that one oppressed group (gays and lesbians) can justify slaughtering the civil rights of two other oppressed groups: adoptees and mothers of adoption loss?

Where are the attorneys who will defend adoptees and our natural mothers and fathers in court all the way to make a Constitutional ruling that governs the entire USA?

Pathetic.

Gays and Lesbians — go sit in the corner until you have learned your lesson.

Right now, I have total disrespect for all of you pathetic worms. And some of you are my friends through adoption reform. You are a disgrace. Stand up for adoptee civil rights and the rights of WOMEN who give birth! Where is the National Organization For Women? We already know that the ACLU stands only for the perceived rights of adoptive parents.

America, the Land of the UNFREE for adoptees. Makes me want to emigrate to a foreign country that respects the truth of one’s birth and respects women as mothers.

True equality will happen when true respect and honesty rules over stupidity.

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Twice I clicked “post” and twice my post was rejected by Change.gov in response to http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates_2

So, censorship is alive and well on even President Obama’s website for Ideas for Change in America.

Here is what is rejected by censors of the truth:

Thank you Diana Iwanski!

A few years ago I was told that the reason this (the government seizure of soon to be adoptees’ birth certificates, and then the mandated falsifying of “new” birth certificates for all adoptees) is not considered a crime is because the Federal Government creates the forms used for amended birth certificates and puts the information on these documents. I was told that if I write about Birth Certificate Fraud in my book (Forbidden Family) that I would look like a fool because this is not an issue.

Well, it most certainly IS an issue!

If I could find a civil rights attorney who would take the case, I would sue the Federal Government, New York State, the City of Buffalo, and the (now deceased Surrogate Court Judge) and the (now deceased) City of Buffalo Registrar of Vital Statistics for tampering with my already existing birth certificate and for fraud of the making of a new document. The Surrogate Court Judge initiated the Order to issue a new birth certificate for me under my adoptive name and with my adoptive parents as implied parents of birth. The fact that the hospital and date and time of “birth” are listed, and that this was a “single” birth are blatant and provable untruths, yet, the Registrar of Vital Statistics of the City of Buffalo affixed his name and the raised New York State seal to this new birth certificate. By doing so, he certified as true the information stated on this document. THAT is not only FRAUD, but it is ALSO PERJURY! Lying under oath is perjury.

I would sue the Federal Government, New York State, Buffalo and Erie County Surrogate Court and the Registrar’s Office, and my adoptive parents, and my extended adoptive family for identity theft, theft of my family of birth, willful and intentional deprivation of family of origin, willful and intentional child abuse and emotional and psychological and medical abuse of my personhood, my personal development and emotional development has been impaired due to imposed adoption fraud. The lifelong identity confusion and humiliation that I have had to endure from being adopted has cost me deep and profound personal destruction, loss of relationships, mental and physical health, job losses, and personal integrity and loss of self esteem.

We adoption reformers must win this fight over the intentional destruction of our personhood. The cost to adoptees is a huge cost, and then the adoptee is held liable to pay for medical costs and mental health therapy due to abuse resulting from deprivation of our family of birth and destruction of our identities.

All people are born only once. To make a NEW birth certificate is to deny facts. Sue the Federal, State, County and City Governments, individual Registrars of Vital Statistics, adoption agencies, Social Workers, and Lawyers — yes, and sue adoptive parents — for the intentional destruction of another person’s vital statistics.

Enough is enough. Where are the attorneys who are in the adoption reform movement? Write the lawsuit, get the proof, file the papers, and make this a Constitutional Amendment or a Presidential Order. Reverse and Repeal and Overturn the 1930 Model State Adoption Act. This has gone on far too long.

Where is the National apology to adoptees and our natural parents? Where is the restitution money owed to us who have had to pay out for therapy and medical tests and to cover the emotional pain we have had to endure for our lifetimes?

Why is it that Australia has had National recognition of the problem, The Netherlands has NEVER sealed nor falsified birth certificates when a child is adopted, and other foreign governments have varying degrees of acknowledgement that adoption destroys the adoptee’s identity of birth?

America is NOT the Land of the Free!

Give me back the right to a CERTIFIED copy of my real and true birth certificate!

Give me the right to have my “new” and “amended” birth certificate declared NULL AND VOID and to demand the issuance of a TRUE adoption certificate to replace my falsified, government issued birth certificate that states that I, Joan M Wheeler, was born to E and D Wheeler. Those are lies and I want an adoption certificate to document what actually took place on January 14, 1957: E and D Wheeler adopted Doris M Sippel and her name was changed to Joan M Wheeler.

What is so difficult about putting the facts on a document?

Angry and Disgruntled? YES!!!

Certifying my amended birth certificate as true is fraud and perjury. Not allowing me a certified copy of my real birth certificate is a National disgrace perpetrated by the government.

 THIS IS TO URGE EVERYONE TO VOTE FOR CULLY RAY’S IDEA FOR CHANGE IN AMERICA. Click on this link to add your vote and your comment: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates_2

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

While I have been unable to find my own words since the earthquake in Haiti because suddenly there are orphans, orphans, everywhere orphans, or so-called orphans, I have found comfort in the words of others. This is why I have directed my readers to other bloggers who have written about the adopt-an-orphan craze that is sweeping America and parts of the world.

At the time the earthquake hit, I’m dealing with medical, legal, financial and emotional fallout from my adoptive mother in and out of the hospital and nursing home. I should be on top of the world — the book I spent the better part of the last seven years writing is now published! Instead, I’m sunk in depression.

Also, it just so happened that a few of my online friends have had inspirations, but with  no blogs of their own, they have asked me to guest-post their works. I am happy to do so.

And, to my surprise, another avenue of correspondence led to yet more postings from afar: the United Adoptees International, a worldwide adoptees news group, sent me Press Releases to post on my blog. Many of my readers are adoptees and first parents who circulate through our known blogs and websites, and, many of my readers are adoptive parent organizations who do not want adoptees’ birth records open to us, and who are foaming at the mouth to adopt those poor Haitian orphans who actually want to stay in their own home country with their families. So, as a comfort to me, and as a service to those who have asked me to post their material, I have posted material from others.

The United Adoptees International, based in The Hague, The Netherlands, is especially dear to me. I will close this quickly written post with this quote from an email  received this morning from the media director:  ”… is ok to post our messages on your blog. The more people read our signals the better.” Usually, my correspondence is with the Director of the UAI, but as he was out of office, I corresponded with someone else.

The messages are clear and direct: while do-gooder people have the intention to help Haiti or other poor countries by taking their children to a “better” place with more money, etc, those foreign-born adoptees grow up and feel isolated from their homeland. It is far more important for the message to get out and to be read by people I know are reading my blog because they don’t like the messages here, than for me to have long stretches of time between my own posts. Writers do have other obligations in life so I am happy to post the words of others in between my own works. As the owner of the website and blog, that is my choice.

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Many of you may be wondering why I, a half orphan, am not commenting much about the situation in Haiti. The reason is because this hits too close to my heart. Unlike most of the talk of adoption in America that surrounds the morality or immorality about the ‘sins’ of unwed mothers and how we ‘must’ keep birth records closed to adoptees for the sake of protecting those not-married mothers, real discussion concerning half orphans and full orphans has been lost inside this moralistic mockery. I’m tired of being lumped into this adoption abyss that does not pertain to how I came into this world. But now, orphanhood or the assumption of full orphanhood, is being tossed around just as carelessly as illegitimacy has been, and still is. I find it difficult to find words to defend the rights of other children who face the same fate as I did because their parents have died in the earthquake, or their parents just handed them over because the poverty suffered in their homeland outweighed any rational decisions.

Many other adoption reformers are doing a much better job in research and writing about the children of Haiti, so I bow to their excellent voices. The Daily Basdardette: http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-jorge-pulleo-really-jewish.html, 73adoptee: http://73adoptee.blogspot.com/2010/02/will-haiti-incident-reform-adoption.html, Baby Love Child: http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/02/17/haiti-fails-its-children-releases-8-child-scavengers-on-nothing-more-than-their-worthless-word/, Family Preservation: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/02/scary-libertarian-view-of-adoption.html, and First Mothers: http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2010/02/lets-hear-it-for-haitian-government.html, to name a few, have many blog posts and updates, so be sure to follow them.

My email inbox carries correspondence from United Adoptees International to an Adoption Advocate organization called Chances For Children. Please read this letter so you may become more aware of what grown adoptees actually feel about being adopted. (edited with the author’s permission and instruction, although I left in European spelling).

Joan M Wheeler

~ ~ ~ ~  

Friday, February 12, 2010, 5:11 AM

Intercountry Adoption Highly Regarded by American Public Even as Numbers of Adoptions are in Free-Fall

To:

Chances for Children

Dear Adoption Advocates,

We have been referred to your organisations by several articles send to us by different contacts around the world. We would like to inform you, that there are many organisations run and managed by adult adoptees who are not sharing your opinion and visions.

Besides this, we would like to request you be respectful but with exclamation to be careful to rewrite topics like adoptions as last resort as you did on your website. The impact of such statements is devastating for ‘family preservation’ projects and alternative family care.

Adoption has become and industry and it seems that your statements about intercountry adoptions seem to support this development. United Adoptees International and many of our contacts would like you to consider equality and support for women and families all around the world before adoption comes into perspective as a misguided concept of humanitarian aid. Huge flaws in international laws and treaties are thus created which abuse the human rights of vulnerable families and children.

Many researches around the world show the great danger of ‘child trafficking’ for adoption instead of supporting long term solutions for countries and families. Adoption has become a facility for ‘wish parents’ (PAP’s, or Pre-Adoptive Parents) and the world of consumers while it was meant as an option for children without families and local support. Approximately 2 billion euro per year is going around to support the adoption cycle. With this money all children, families and countries could have been helped to develop long term solutions for the ones in need. But as long the international adoption lobby is marketing adoption as solutions for children (many of them still have families or direct relatives) without material welfare and finance, we take advantage of the weak and abuse the context and situation in which they are confronted with, instead of understanding the need of the people in those countries who are affected by poverty, natural disasters, and war, etc.

The UAI finds the way international adoption is set up and continued as one-way traffic which makes the rich buyers or traders of the poor. And if we really believe that material welfare and finance gives us the right to get the children we want, than let us open the whole world as a free adoption market and exchange children for those who can afford them. Meaning, Dutch homosexuals already adopt (mainly colored children) from the US, while the US doesn’t want them. At least, that’s what the US advocates and government accepts as an argument to let children from the US go to the Netherlands. But why do US pre-adoptive parents adopt from Haiti now?

In the meanwhile, thousands of prospective US adoptive parents are waiting for white babies from Europe and the EU is opening their EU boarders for exchanging children within Europe. But we are sure, that if the US PAP’s (Pre-Adoptive Parents) will pay enough money, they will be able to get white children (who have still parents and family in the EU) from Europe. So let us open the whole world for the demand for adoption?

Is this what your people and organisation really want? Or would you be able to act in an ethical way, and with dignity, and open heart and ears, to those who have been affected by this child-caravan called adoption?

We urge you to read some statements from Adult Adoptees and reconsider your vision and tone of voice in this topic.

• http://uai-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/pers-bericht-uai.html
• http://uai-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/dutch-government-accept-bribes-to-get.html
• http://outlandishremarks.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/new-statement-by-adoptees-of-color-on-haiti/
• http://www.adopteesofcolor.org/
• http://uai-news.blogspot.com/2010/01/international-reference-centre-for.html

Sincerely,

Hilbrand W.S. Westra

Chairman UNITED ADOPTEES INTERNATIONAL

United Adoptees International is registered by the Chamber of Commerce under no. 34299425, in Amsterdam – The Netherlands. The UAI foundation is applicable under Dutch Law and refers in all her activities to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Especially articles 8, 16, 20 and 21. The UAI strives for equality and justicefor adoptees and human dignity to all whom are affected by separation and adoption.

As the title of this blog post states, some very rude and ignorant racial slurs were left in my inbox this past weekend. I have closed all sections to Comments as a result. Also, though I am of mixed white ethnic groups, I fully support adoptees of color. Here is a re-print of their excellent statement on adopting Haiti’s earthquake victim children:

http://www.adopteesofcolor.org/?page_id=14

Statement on Haiti

Jan 25, 2010

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking.

For more than fifty years “orphaned children” have been shipped from areas of war, natural disasters, and poverty to supposedly better lives in Europe and North America. Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these “disaster orphans” will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements.

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family”  to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.

As adoptees of color many of us have inherited a history of dubious adoptions. We are dismayed to hear that Haitian adoptions may be “fast-tracked” due to the massive destruction of buildings in Haiti that hold important records and documents. We oppose this plan and argue that the loss of records requires slowing down of the processes of adoption while important information is gathered and re-documented for these children. Removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse. We insist on the absolute necessity of taking the time required to conduct a thorough search, and we support an expanded set of methods for creating these records, including recording oral histories.

We urge the international community to remember that the children in question have suffered the overwhelming trauma of the earthquake and separation from their loved ones. We have learned first-hand that adoption (domestic or intercountry) itself as a process forces children to negate their true feelings of grief, anger, pain or loss, and to assimilate to meet the desires and expectations of strangers. Immediate removal of traumatized children for adoption—including children whose adoptions were finalized prior to the quake— compounds their trauma, and denies their right to mourn and heal with the support of their community.

We affirm the spirit of Cultural Sovereignty, Sovereignty and Self-determination embodied as rights for all peoples to determine their own economic, social and cultural development included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Charter of the United Nations; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The mobilization of European and North American courts, legislative bodies, and social work practices to implement forced removal through intercountry adoption is a direct challenge to cultural sovereignty. We support the legal and policy application of cultural rights such as rights to language, rights to ways of being/religion, collective existence, and a representation of Haiti’s histories and existence using Haiti’s own terms.

We offer this statement in solidarity with the people of Haiti and with all those who are seeking ways to intentionally support the long-term sustainability and self-determination of the Haitian people. As adoptees of color we bear a unique understanding of the trauma, and the sense of loss and abandonment that are part of the adoptee experience, and we demand that our voices be heard. All adoptions from Haiti must be stopped and all efforts to help children be refocused on giving aid to organizations working toward family reunification and caring for children in their own communities. We urge you to join us in supporting Haitian children’s rights to life, survival, and development within their own families and communities.

……………….

49 Comments follow on their website: http://www.adopteesofcolor.org/?p=6#respond

This one is my favorite:

“Comment by Leanne Leith — January 27, 2010 at 12:20 am”  

“Acts of benevolence by the color-blind privileged add yet another layer of violence to the personhood of vulnerable little people, compounding their losses. The redistribution of children of color is rooted in the marginalization of ethnic groups and the propensity to make fetish objects of their children. It is no charity to exploit a time of tragedy – or any time – to take a nation’s most valuable resource for personal gain.

It is a sad statement when those that capitalize on tragedy pat themselves on the back for their charity. The truly charitable would offer to help victims to help themselves. This feeding frenzy we are witnessing today by would-be child importers truly reveals the darkest aspects of man’s ability to rationalize the ugliest of acts.

It’s high time we respect the humanity of all peoples by preserving families and allowing them the dignity to build their own strong societies without the intervention of self-interested parties. THAT would be the action of an enlightened, advanced, civil society.”

And this one is second runner-up:

Comment by United Adoptees International — January 26, 2010 at 9:10 am  

“…It is time that Adoptees all over the world become active and participate in the international and national adoptiondebate at all levels of society and decision making government bodies and show that the time of Infantilization and the monopoly on adoption by adopters and their politics is over.

The adoption triangle starts with the (intersts of) parents, not the adopters. It seems that everyone in the adoption debate forgot that. Including the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.

We can change the world. Not by sitting down and wait, but to feel the power flowing within in us and everyone who is capable to understand what is really going on.”

 

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=67740

Haiti tragedy, adoptions

Stars and Stripes
Letters to the Editor, Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The New Jersey adoption community is not too surprised that an adoption agency may have skirted the laws to acquire healthy babies from Haiti (“Americans arrested on human trafficking suspicions,” article, Feb. 1). This particular organization is seemingly following (White House Chief of Staff) Rahm Emanuel’s motto, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

Agencies are no longer seeking adoptive parents but are rather seeking babies for desperate and sometimes high-paying couples.

Profit motive and secrecy will continue to plague adoption, but at least the American culture has evolved a bit. We no longer separate child from mother simply because the mother is unwed, a practice made popular by the Catholic Church. Today, it takes inhumane governments like that of China, or a natural disaster like in Haiti to grease the adoption machine and create a pool of adoptable infants. Some unethical brokers of adoption hardly care about the source of babies and some, like the New Jersey Bar Association, desperately fight to keep secrecy in adoption.

This only serves as a reminder that although the culture and practice may have changed, archaic laws from the 1940s still rule, placing biological families and their children at an unfair disadvantage.

Army Reserve Capt. Peter W. Franklin
AdopteesWithOutLiberty.com (AWOL)
Haskell, N.J.