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While I do recognize and understand that there is some coercion involved with adoption even now-a-days, I do not believe it is to the point some people would like the public to believe. Sure there are unethical people involved in adoption but there are unethical people involved in every aspect of our lives from doctors, schools (this one is a huge one), politicians, police, legal services, religion, and even when you purchase things, you can find fraud. Truthfully, I do not know of anything that does not have unethical practices involved somewhere. This is in response to a comment about adoption here.
Guatemala has faced repeated rumors and accusations that make it seem as all adoptions are crooked, coerced and in some cases, stolen. Yes, this can happen with adoption any place but it only takes a few stories even if they are true, it does not mean that every adoption is like this.
Children being adopted out of foster care may have birth families that feel like they had their children stolen from them but this is not the case. Biological parents are given repeated opportunities to be parents to their children and correct the problems in their lives. I am sure there are a few biological parents involved with child welfare that could possibly be the parents that their children need them to be with some additional help but a very small few.
We continue living our lives with all of the above mentioned things that also have some unethical issues in them while we have to do more research and not taking what we are told at face value. Adoption should be no different, this is not a perfect world nor will it ever be, so adoption with some unethical practices will always be looming around.
I believe a lot of this is flamed by the anti-adoption people and organizations.
Hmm, I’m sorry but coercion is still alive and well. I’m a living example. This story out of the UK is a very disturbing example. (Ah, link won’t link right: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=488318&in_page_id=1774)
Adoption, under the right circumstances, legally AND ethically, is NOT a bad thing. But when things like this happen? Well, something needs to change. You can take the defeatist attitude that “eh, unethical stuff will always exist,” or you can strive for change. I refuse to sit and watch it happen. If that makes me “anti-adoption,” well, that’s just silly. But I’ll keep on keeping on.
If we don’t strive for change, things will just get worse.
Do you continue to go to a doctor you feel is unethical? No-you seek a different doctor.
It’s up to us to help future expectant mothers recieve ETHICAL treatment. IF not us – then who?
It’s all very well for YOU to say there is little coercion in adoption, since you have not experienced it. Nor do you associate with the people who have experienced it, via activism or volunteer work. If you had truly stepped outside your own experience long enough to see how much of it is in fact going on, you would never be able to make such a statement.
I love it when people who have very little knowledge of a subject consider themselves experts.
Jenna,
Read the first sentence again. Hmmm……I do not think it says that coercion does not exist and is not involved with adoption.
While I do recognize and understand that there is some coercion involved with adoption even now-a-days, I do not believe it is to the point some people would like the public to believe. Excuse me, I am not taking the defeatist attitude as you pointed out, yes I pointed out that unethical stuff is involved with everything in this world. Hmmm…..not saying it is right, just a fact. I will be posting a more lengthy response.
Abby
“Nor do you associate with the people who have experienced it, via activism or volunteer work”
hmmmmm….
Heather, how exactly do you know what she does or doesn’t do?
Heather,
Abby is both an adoptee and an adoptive mother, so your snotty snip about how you “love it when people who have very little knowledge of a subject consider themselves experts” seems designed to remove anyone from the equation that doesn’t share your POV … which is, I must point out, from only one angle of the triad where hers is from two out of the three.
Activism and volunteer work for adoptees and adoptive parents often has more to do with children, and I hope you’re not suggesting that this is less important than whatever it is you do with birth mothers.
It appears to me that we all step outside of our own experience, see what is going on, then prioritize our efforts, focusing what energy we have on the issues that seem most vital to each of us. No one is telling you that you must focus on support of adoptive families, and you have no right to tell anyone that birth mothers must be their focal point when they may choose to involve themselves in efforts to improve foster care or the plight of children in developing nations.
Hslowe:
I think you are missing the big picture. It seems to me that Abby is trying to see the big picture, but you will not give her the credit. You want to get all defensive just because she has a different view. Your view or her view are neither right or wrong. You are wrong for continuously attacking her for her point of view. You lose support when you are so militant and defensive in your views. You lack the perspective to make others understand your side. It is all about presenting your story with logic, not attacking others. I commend your passion for your cause, but attacking other will not help you in your cause. This forum is about Abby giving her views and ideas from her perspective. At no time has she been disrespectful to you, but all you have done is attack her for not experiencing what you think she should.
Coercion of expectant mothers to surrender their babies for adoption can take overt and subtle forms. In the past, we experienced more of the overt type of coercion, where the expectant mother, usually unmarried, was made to feel that she was pond scum for having premarital sex and told that she had no right to stigmatize her child by making him/her live live as a bastard. The doctor and hospital staff usually participated in beating down the expectant mother by treating her like dirt and withholding all forms of physical and psychological comfort.
I went through that hell and am still suffering from it 37 years later.
Nowaday, there is a subtler form of coercion. Watch an episode of Adoption Stories on the Discovery Health Channel. There is an agency featured on that show that brainwashes young women in crisis pregnancies to solve a temporary problem with a permanent solution. Oh, and they do it oh so lovingly…GAG. One of those stories, filmed in Grand Rapids, MI was actually up for a Daytime Emmy. I was sickened to the core.
This whole site is full search for a fee ads, crisis pregnancy ads, and adoption agency ads. It is clear what the true objective is for this site, any adoptee who questions the truth will be bashed and guilt tripped into submission. Any birth mother who claims that coercion played a major role into why she was not encouraged to parent her child will be flogged for the audacity to speak up!
Get real, adoption was and is still seen as a cure-all for infatility, by most adopters, Not your first choice but the only one that you can be told by others you so “wonderful” for giving otherwise unwanted foundlings a real chance at “the good life” that only you can provide!
Am I angry? Yes I was lied to, and was stolen from my birth family in 1958. My birth mother was threatened with commitment if she refused to sign me away. She was drugged with seconal for 5 months and I was born addicted to be sold to the highest bid here in TX, Tarrant County to be exact. My a-mother even saved the reciept from the agency, their lawyer and from the donation made to seal the deal.
In 1958 this seems to have been an accepted reality, and since TX refuses to allow us to have our OBC’s and our adoption records, they must have something to hide!
Why else would so many of us be turned away by the judges’ in Tarrant County TX, The adoption capital of TX in 1958 and still on the top today,
It is also the one county in TX that sent a paid lobbiest to Austin to lobby against our bills for open records and OBC’s.
Yet at same time, in the next county over, Dallas County, Judge Gaither, until his retirement, opened snd released them by just having an adoptee 18 yrs and over having to request them!
How can anyone claim this is okay and not wrong?