International Adoption Done Right

Monyetta Shaw, I like your style. You’re “adopting” forty-eight Swazi children by leaving them right there in Swaziland and paying their living expenses: twenty thousand dollars a year.

You know you could have brought home Your Very Own Ethiopian for that amount.

(Longer post tomorrow, I promise.)

Things I Am Not

I am not a gift–and neither was my mother.

I am not a reward for the risk you might take in adopting me. I am not the subject of a Hallmark story or a Lifetime story.

I am not the subject of any story but my own, which should be mine to share, or not share, as I see fit.

I am not someone whose story began when two people wanted a baby very much. My story began when my first mother got pregnant, just like yours. I have a right to all of that story, just like you.

I am not a thing to be replaced by a teddy bear, and neither is my mother.

I am not a magical being who joined my current family because they (ping!) “made a wish.”  I got here because they went through the long, often frustrating, adoption process.

I am not Jesus Christ. My birth did not “redeem” anyone, and my mother was not damned until she decided to give me up, and she is not a heroine for having done so.

I am not an item you can purchase.

Finally, I am not the offspring of an infertile man and a woman who never gave birth.

I AM PART OF THE ADOPTION COMMUNITY*. Stop leaving me out and stop speaking for me.

Any questions?

*Try having an adoption community without the adoptees and let us know how that went, ‘kay?

Separation of Church and State FAIL

Remember when Virginia was for lovers?

The spiky urchin understands that the world is still full of pointless, blatant bigotry, and that some adoption agencies want to continue enforcing this bigotry when it comes to gay adoptions. What the snurchin doesn’t understand is how anyone can think it’s OK for such an agency to both

ban gay adoptions and

accept government funding.

You can’t fucking do that! If this passes, I hope it’s immediately struck down, because if it isn’t, a whole lot of other states are going to follow suit. Conscience, my ass! If a bigoted Christian adoption agency had a conscience, it wouldn’t take government money in the first place. But those outfits have specialized in serving both God and Mammon for so long it’s like they’re reading a completely different Bible or something.

And if ALL the adoption agencies had consciences….

BTW, isn’t it cute how so many people believe gay people must adopt because they can’t have their own children? Apparently gay people are born with broken reproductive systems. And we all know that no gay person who wanted “a normal life” and children ever accomplished it by getting married to the opposite sex. Never happened, ever. Also, sperm banks and turkey basters are products of my imagination. And there are no bisexuals.

Symbolic, Innit?

In a recent Elle online article entitled “I’m Not What’s Best for My Baby,”* a relinquishing mother tells her story. There’s plenty of tragedy in this story, but here’s what caught my attention:

Julia had chosen a couple to adopt the baby, and the wife was there—she cut the cord.

On FB’s Adoption Network, a post asks whether or not first mothers allowed adoptive parents in the delivery room. Ten of the affirmative answers mentioned an a’parent not only being in the delivery room, but cutting the umbilical cord. In nine of these, the cut was made by the adoptive mother (the other was performed by the a’father).

And that shit gets on an urchin’s spines, hard. Because it’s coercive and it’s mean.

I’m being silly, right? Surely a’moms just want “their birth experience” to be just like a natural one despite the fact that it is not and never can be? Isn’t that screwed-up enough without my having to speculate about ulterior motives?

Nope. My evidence?

No natural mother cuts her own cord in the delivery room, so letting the a’mom do it doesn’t “replicate the natural birth experience” at all.It’s a blatant, symbolic act of ownership, a cutting away of that inconvenient first mother you wish had never been necessary.What do we mean when we say “cut the cord”? The Free Dictionary says it means, idiomatically (i.e., symbolically),1) to stop needing someone else to look after you and start acting independently or

2) to end support of someone or something, esp. financial support

So in adoption, cutting the cord is

1) cutting away the mother you no longer need to look after “your” baby and

2) not having to pay any more of her expenses.

Cutting the cord is taking ownership when no adoption has been finalized. It is a symbolic and celebratory act performed  in order to insure future ownership of the new baby. It’s just one more coercive thing, like calling pregnant women “birth mothers” months before they’ve given birth, let alone relinquished.

Speaking of which–once in awhile I hear some fool who believes I’m a bigger fool insist the term isn’t coercive because “It just means the woman who gave birth to you. I call my mother my birth mother and I’m not adopted.”

No you don’t.

No. You don’t. You fucking well do not, and if you did and your mother were in earshot, she’d be within her rights to smack your ungrateful little chops. Nobody refers to a mother who raised her infant as a “birth mother,” ever, because it’s a slur.

Getting back to Facebook, the reply “I allowed the adoptive parents at all doctors appointments, ultrasounds and the delivery room” got the most “likes,” twelve. Adoptive parents cooed and gushed and said what a wonderful bonus gift that was (the baby being the main one), and one a’mom had this to say:

I was able to be in the room with my birthmother when my son was being born. I was not only able to be there for her but I know every second of my son’s life. We don’t have any gaps. He doesn’t have to wander about any time of his life. He was always with us. It was such a blessing!

You’re not fooling anyone but yourself, Honey. You weren’t “there for her;” you were there for that baby. I suspect that if you could have, you’d have snatched it newborn and covered with vernix and run, like Michael Jackson said he did with at least one of his babies, and for the same reason: you didn’t want your baby to ever have had any parent who wasn’t you. But he did, and your denial can’t change it. Most of us do wonder all our lives, whether consciously or not, and you can’t change that either. You may not even know it’s happening, because your son “has no reason to wonder.” He’ll absorb that message from you, and he may well keep his pain to himself all his life like so many of us have.

Just to complete the idiom, read what the a’mom typed again: He doesn’t have to wander about any time of his life. Dr. Freud to the delivery room, please. Dr. Freud, to the delivery room stat.

A’mom made her own umbilical cord so junior will never wander from her side and, perhaps, veer in the direction of the perilous birth family search. She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing.

You can’t cut adoption away. You can cut away a mother, a family, a heritage, a name, an identity; but your child will always have a Chapter One, however short, that didn’t include you. if you can’t handle that, don’t adopt.

*It should have been entitled “His Lying Cheating Dangerous Father is Not what’s Best for My Baby,” but let’s overlook that for now.

With Friends Like These

Hiya, Bastards and others! Here’s a burning stoopit question for you:

Do Utah’s friendly adoption laws make it anti-birthfather?

Hm. Hmmm. Is rigging things so any woman from any state can dispense with pesky father’s rights by going to Utah to relinquish “anti-birthfather”?  Why yes, yes it is–and what lovely doublespeak you have there. Removing all of the father’s rights is “friendly.” Some lucky fathers get to pay child support while they’re trying to reassert rights they never signed away. Now that’s adoption friendly! Robbing a child on another continent of heritage, family, native language and homeland while depriving that homeland of him/her? Adoption friendly. Buying a person? Adoption friendly. Declaring children with families who happen to be poor “orphans”? Adoption friendly. The bad old days when women were not allowed to see their babies or signed them away without knowing what they were doing or were told they were dead? Man, were those ever adoption friendly!

Ergo: Kidnapping a child you intend to raise instead of ransom? Adoption friendly. Laws and policies that try to ensure a woman gives birth whether she wants to or not despite her legal right to decide for herself? Adoption friendly. Carving a woman’s belly open and removing the fetus? Very adoption friendly.

How do I get into so many arguments about adoption in such an adoption friendly world?

Because none of these things are adoptee friendly. As with every other mention of adoption ever, “friendly” means friendly to APs and PAPs–some of whom don’t give a damn what’s legal or who they hurt as long as they get what they want. I mean, I love that Rep. Ray mentioned “the best interest of the child,” but we all know how that one decodes, don’t we?

Another thing that will never stop annoying me about adoption law is what would seem to be the blatant conflicts of interest involved. If I were an adoptive parent and I were given the task of considering laws that make adoption harder or easier, I might well feel that the right thing to do would be to recuse myself because I couldn’t be objective. But adoption is never a conflict of interest for APs or for people who profit from adoption–especially when they’re the same people:

[A]doption attorney and adoptive father, Lance Rich, opposes the bill. He said it would create a host of problems, including violating the birth mother’s privacy.

“Some birth mothers don’t want anyone to know they’re pregnant,” said Rich, also a member of the Utah Adoption Council. Many mothers, he said, would rather abort a child before disclosing the pregnancy to potential fathers.”

See? It’s OK because he’s inhumanly, impossibly, one hundred per cent BIAS FREE! That’s why he can speak for women. The fact that most first mothers who have been asked say they don’t want this “privacy” means nothing, because women are silly featherheads who always say “yes” when we mean “no” and perforce go around getting ourselves raped all the time.

(Unless we agree with Mr. Rich. Then we’re reasonable creatures. Bias. FREE.)

Also, and I hate to be rude,* we all see what you did thar, Mr. Rich. But I’ll assume you didn’t mean to do it because you’re not only bias free, you’re an honest man and not interested in using coercive language to make money in adoption. So here’s a biology lesson for you:

A Biology Lesson For Mr. Rich et al

A woman who has not given birth is not a mother. She’s as “potential” a mother as the man is “potentially” a father. Because zygotes and blastocysts and feti are not children.

Therefore, so what if she wants an abortion? That’s one less child for you to broker? I care as much about that as you care about the woman’s reasons for not wanting the potential father to know. Is he abusive? Is she doing this to hurt him? These things are possible, but what do you care?

Finally, for author Dennis Romboy and anyone else  who has ever used the phrase “balancing rights” to tell adoptees why we can’t have our birth certificates, please feel free to comment. I would love to see your list of those rights which the government guarantees you and which you would not mind losing so some people you’ve never met can have some non-guaranteed non-rights most of them don’t even want.

Because balance means all sides weigh the same.

*Kidding! I love being rude!

An Update on the “Why I Rejected Plan B….” Woman

The Dark-haired Daughter’s A’mom’s name is Elise Graveline Hilton.

Here is her original blog post on the subject, dated 30 January.

And here she is on 2 Feb, boasting about the attention her horrific story has brought.

“I must be doing something right,” she gloats. I wonder what it is?

Here’s her post from a mere four days later, in which she says her family has wow, had a nearly surreal personal experience lately, but what she’s really here to talk about is the recent Komen Foundation uproar.

“Nearly surreal.” That’s not how I’d describe my bipolar, cognitively-arrested daughter’s going missing for 48 hours and turning out to have been raped during that time. You couldn’t even manage a “nightmare”?

And what did she post about while her daughter was missing? Not much.

You should also know that has magical abortion-stopping, adoption-causing neck pain.

From what I’ve read (but not confirmed), the Dark-Haired Daughter is a high school senior with the cognitive abilities of a ten- or eleven-year-old. And her mom was already an anti-abortion nut. It seems suspicious to me that one minute she’s lamenting the anniversary of Roe and the next she’s a Real Live Pro Life Heroine For Jesus! But I’ll admit it: I don’t want this story to be true. I don’t want it very much.

Ms. Hilton, at the risk of confirming everything you believe about pro-choicers, I do think what you say you did is monstrous, and I hope for your sake that you’re lying. Because if you’re not, you have no love for your daughter in your heart, and you have no soul.

Detective work and speculation in the comments here.

What Would You Do For a Baby?

Would you “pray, beg” and try to raffle off a Kindle Fire?

Would you carry large amounts of cash around the world for bribing purposes?

Would you kill a baby’s mother?

No wait, that’s crazy.

Oh, come on! If it happened that often, we’d have a name for it.

Well, let’s assume you wouldn’t kill anyone.

Would you lie to its mothers face, promising visits you never intended to allow? Or would you maybe start with good intentions and then decide the open adoption was a bad idea and move away, leaving the child’s mother no forwarding address?

Would you let the coercion that supposedly doesn’t happen to first mothers anymore work for you, using your network of friends to turn up the heat?

Would you hire a lawyer to “hammer” any first family members who dared assert their legal rights?

Would you complain and complain and complain about how unfair it is that you can’t just purchase a person outright?

Would you lie and lie, year after year, reasoning that the longer you keep that kid illegally, the more likely you’ll be awarded custody because you’re white and well-off?

Or would you be really creative and come up with a new one? How about screwing the kid’s mother, then screwing her over?

No. Nobody does such horrible things. Bitter adoptees make this stuff up.

No. No. No. NO.

It was rather short-sighted of me to entitle a post “The Worst Thing I Have ever read” before this story came along.

You really shouldn’t read it.

It’s about a woman whose bipolar daughter was “brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted.” The woman is an anti-abortion nutter. So when a nurse gave her Plan B for her daughter, the woman tucked it away in her purse, where she says it remains.

Let that sink in for a second.

Wondering why it’s on my blog? Well, I’ll tell ya:

I knew adoption could excuse kidnapping, child trafficking, even the occasional murder. I had no idea it could be used to excuse this kind of twisted “maternal” cruelty. And make no mistake, that’s how adoption is being used here. Although this woman says she’s sure she could murder a man but not a blastocyst because she’s such a wonderful Christian, ADOPTION IS HER EXCUSE.

I know many, many people – some who call me friend – will think this is a monstrous decision.  I should have just had her swallow the pill and never looked back. There – done.  One less thing to worry about.

My daughter, though, you see, is adopted.  For all I know, she herself is the product of rape.  Her birth mom was known to prostitute herself, and for women in that life, rape is common.

And the commentors fall all over themselves to say how brave and wonderful she is to take the decision of whether to risk giving birth to a rapist’s baby out of the raped person’s hands and into Jesus’ hands, or her own hands, not that there’s any fucking difference. Hey, Lady, did you ever consider doing right by the daughter you claim to love?

I thought about it.  God help me, I thought about it.

Despite my desire to murder, despite my desire to never think about the possibility of pregnancy, despite the burden of this whole experience:  I am pro-life.

No, you’re not. You’re the poster child for why my side of the argument calls your side of the argument “anti-choice.” You speak of your daughter’s assault and possible pregnancy as a burden to you. And you brag about the harm you may have done to her to the entire internet. You are no mother, Lady. You’re a monster. You even knew you’d be called one.

And why is it you don’t tell us your daughter’s age? Is it because she’s old enough to make this decision herself, and you denied her that? Or is it because she’s too young to give birth, and that pesky fact might detract from your God’s glory? Either way, you are not doing what parents, adoptive or otherwise, are supposed to do, which is act in the best interests of their children, even if that means nobody at church ever talks to them again.

Jeebus this has ruined my day. Apart from the fate of this poor bipolar woman/girl, there are women out there who want Plan B very badly and can’t get it. Even the raped ones don’t necessarily have access to kindly nurses who bring it to them unbidden. They have to deal with self-righteous asses who call themselves pharmacists but want to reserve the right to overrule a doctor’s decision on what can be prescribed to women. Some women–some rape victims!–have to go from clinic to clinic, drugstore to drugstore and town to town all because they have the gall to believe it’s up to them whether or not they reproduce right now. Because they have the nerve to believe they own their own bodies, like men do.

You, Madam, are a handmaiden of the patriarchy. I don’t know what you think you get out of that, but I do know your collaboration will not save you. No exception is being made for you because you are so very Good, and no place is being prepared for you in heaven or on earth. You too are an object to be loathed and used and discarded by men…and you brag about this. To paraphrase Zappa again, If there is a hell, its fires wait for you, not the abortionists.