This is in reply to comments left here. When a person goes to an unethical doctor and receives crappy care, or when an insurance company is unethical by taking a month’s payment to provide insurance but at every turn they are denying to pay, do we call for all doctors to stop practicing medicine or that all insurance is stopped. Hmmm….how about a school that treats special needs children unethically with the idea that some children do not deserve an education or punish them because they have a disability (which happens all the time) but people are not calling for schools to be closed or education to cease.

People deal with all of these things and get beyond the issues of them being unethical by researching, educating themselves and knowing their options, etc. So why should this not be an important part of adoption? I thought that this blog was so that individuals looking or involved with adoption could learn and possibly see different options.

When a comment is left implying that practically every adoptee was not voluntarily relinquished, or that all adoptions are from coercion, to blindly believe that every adoption was coerced or to imply it is completely wrong is untrue. This would lead people to believe that adoption as a whole is wrong and bad. Leaving people to wonder why something so bad or corrupt exists, which in my opinion is what people involved with anti-adoption movements do, which this person that left this comment is involved with one in Canada.

When I started foster care I quickly learned that you have to set reachable goals and expectations. You cannot just walk in and provide these children with a safe home and meet their needs and expect that it fixes the problem. Honestly, a lot of the children will always have issues and just have to find a way to deal with them just as we have to learn to deal with things in life by educating ourselves, researching, etc.

Change is slow, and we have to learn to educate ourselves and others about avoiding or seeing the issues or unethical practices. Slowly adoptees are getting access to their birth information going state by state to change this, instead of trying to stop adoption as a whole or trying unrealistically to change the entire system. Instead of spending their time sitting and spinning their wheels, they are taking small steps to change things that when placed together will one day be a major step.

There will always be an unethical lawyer, agency around in the shadows no matter if everything changes for the better in adoption overnight. The only way anybody can protect themselves from ethic problems is by seeking knowledge, researching, seeking all their options, and not taking things at face value without truly knowing the facts for themselves.

As some people have implied that I see myself as an expert with little knownledge, is something that I have never claimed. Nor am I speaking out of anger or bitterness. Sorry, I did not realize that birth mothers have claims to all feelings, thoughts and opinions in adoption.

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