Kill a Kid, Run to New Zealand

Oh look, another little boy who hurt himself to death like Max Shatto did. I don’t want to read another damned word about how people who can have their own children but “can’t” raise them are privileged over those who can afford to purchase someone else’s child, especially if they choose to feed him honey instead of taking him to a doctor, make his care a sixteen-year-old’s problem, blame him and his mother for his own death, and then have the gall to beg for funeral money before bugging out to New Zealand.

And I don’t want to read one word on this blog about how biological parents do this too. They do, and it’s horrible, but adoptive parents are being entrusted with someone else’s child, and that means they should be held to a higher standard. Obviously no parents of any ilk should be allowed to get away with this.

Seven -year-old Seth “ultimately died from an inflamed pancreas and blood disease.” His APs “had issues with going to doctors.”

Returns Not Valid After Six Years

So this story popped up in my email. You know the kind: Child ungovernable! bad product! give us a refund…and then some!

So I Googled the APs’ names and found this. By their own account, this boy seemed to be adjusting splendidly at that time.

What a difference six years in a loving adoptive home makes! Kinda makes an urchin wonder who gave this kid to these people…and what happened to him under their roof. I would say I’m trying to imagine being eight years old and expected to call a 69-year-old stranger Daddy, but I’m not, because I don’t want to. I don’t want to.

“Love the boy dearly,” my ass. “Ruined [y]our lives,” my ass. Also, what does “he was a risk for severe mental illness” mean? I think it means you have grown weary of your expensive toy, because every human ever born is “a[t] risk for severe mental illness.” If this case is what it seems to be, I hope the adoption activist community and cosmic justice will get all over this couple like stink on shit.

Some Pedestals Are Higher Than Others

A friend called my attention to this blog post. I don’t want to critique the whole thing, because I don’t find it 100% horrible. But something really struck me about the way the a’mom involved chose to describe herself. So:

Has anyone else noticed The Adoption Process Moral Pedestal has levels? That it’s more an Adoption Process Totem Pole? Andrew MacDougall got to climb it because he brought a whole kid from overseas instead of just sending money for food. The maker of the “adoptees dodged a bullet” graphic got to climb just it for not being a relinquishing mother, which seems like a lower level to me. Pastor Boob Job Baby got to climb it for being just a little less ignorant about international adoption than the average person who isn’t involved with adoption is–fairly low, but probably still higher than Graphic Maker. Deb Goldberg got to climb it for presuming to tell the poor they need to save their money, which any non-adopting slob can do. And Jeff Gates got to climb it just for being insulted about being taken for a pedophile. (His pedestal’s probably pretty low, but he can still lord it over Masha Allen’s “adoptive dad,” right?)

So I’ve been thinking about the pedestals and how they’re measured. Here’s what I’ve gathered from the way I’ve seen people react online and IRL to adoption stories about APs (hey, is there any other kind?).

Rich couples who advertised themselves to “birthmothers” and scored a white, domestically adopted newborn get the lowest pedestal. Not only is there a chance they waited less than nine months to get their baby, they didn’t even have to get a passport. And they didn’t have to settle for a lesser product, the way people who get foreign or older or otherwise special needs kids do (did you know not being white is a “special need” in adoption?). All they had to do was put out a lot of money and get chosen by a “birth mother” who didn’t change her mind. Hell, they probably didn’t even do it because god told them to.

As the adopted person becomes less ideal (less white, less healthy, older) the pedestal gets higher. The pedestal also gets higher to the extent that the adoptive parents talk about religion.

International adoption is complicated: The pedestal might get higher because the APs have rescued an orphan, often for Jesus. But it might get lower because “American kids weren’t good enough for you?!”

The pedestal gets higher the longer the APs wait to adopt, and it grows a yard or more for every adoption they don’t complete because the first mother changed her mind. And if they ever had physical custody of a child and lost it because that custody was not entirely legal, their pedestal shoots into the clouds, borne aloft on a fountain of righteous anguish. Your pedestal grows if you claim your adoptee has RAD, and it gets taller the more out-of-control, dangerous, or even murderous the child becomes while in your care. Oddly enough, it retains its height should you decide to get rid of such a child. And, as we’ve learned recently, having one’s adoptee search still boosts the pedestal in some people’s eyes.

But the very highest pedestal is reserved for those for people like Megan (sorry: Megan!!!). Not because she adopted six times. Not because at least one of her children is from overseas. Not because she is a cheerleader for adopting older children, as if everyone were equally prepared to do such a thing. (Yes, it really is that simple–do it.)  Not because she has adopted four older children, and not because she congratulates herself for doing such a “simple” thing. (Most would snarl their faces with the thought of adopting an older child, let alone an older boy but not us.) Not even because, at least in one case, she and her husband had “paperwork approved for an infant” but instead chose to adopt an older kid (and let me tell you, very few things ramp up a pedestal in most people’s minds like turning down an infant in favor of an older kid).

No, Megan is the best kind of AP because, for her, adopting was never “plan B.” If there’s one thing that sets my alarm bells off, it’s the AP who takes pains to point out that s/he didn’t have to adopt. Not like those infertile slobs who had to settle for less…wait, not for less, because adopting is universally wonderful and your kids rock! So what the Hell were you doing just now besides taking potshots at people who couldn’t have their own kids?! I mean, isn’t that kinda…low?

I know, I’m silly expecting this stuff to make sense. So I’ll accept it. Nothing (except maybe ditching a kid you adopted) proves your worth as a human being and an adoptive parent like bragging about owning the functioning reproductive system most people take for granted. AdoptoLand is a strange place.

 

Some USAian APs Really, Really Suck

…because they do so little to educate themselves and/or give a shit about their adopted children that this is necessary.

Seriously: Click the link. Read. Then ask yourself what kind of fucked-up society would allow this situation to arise in the first place.

Well, I guess you needn’t really ask yourself. It’s obvious how big a lie our “nation of immigrants” rhetoric is and always has been, isn’t it?

Say It Isn’t So

This is garden variety Daily Mail bullshit, right? I mean, it reads like an April Fool’s day article that tries and fails to be funny.

I mean, pretty much every word was designed to be infuriating, right? WHAT THE FUCK EVEN IS THIS?!?!

Unfairness in Adoption

It’s so unfair! says an anonymous author. And she should know, because she is both an adoptive and a biological mother (because, as she explains, she wanted to have it both ways: There’s no point in bringing children into a world wherein so many don’t have homes, but she wanted her own, too, which is not hypocritical double dipping, but “normal.”)

Her beef with adoption is that people who make their own kids don’t get scrutinized the way adoptive parents do. And that’s not unfair, I mean really, she was glad to jump through all those hoops she bitches about and lists in detail. What’s unfair is that bad people who have their own kids don’t get scrutinized. And that’s crazy, because bad people are born with BAD PERSON (or perhaps GANG MEMBER) written on their faces so we know exactly who to force the birth control and/or sterilization surgeries on (bad people never become good, after all). Bad people, should they be allowed to have children, will abuse and kill them. Unsupported assumption: Adopted parents do not abuse or kill their children because the scrutiny is just that good.

But we’re not finished yet. Adoption is unfair to the only party to an adoption that matters (the APs) in other ways, too. Like, it’s so unfair for “caretakers” to choose a nonwhite couple for a minority child just because our white supremacist society makes it essentially impossible for white people to understand what minority children face. “More suitable”? “Loss of identity”? The kids say the loss of their culture matters to them?! OH SPARE ME.

Finally, sometimes a heartbroken child who will never see any part of her face mirrored in any other human face can be such a brat. How dare she fail to recognize how unfair that is to her A’mom, who has an entire family of faces that mirror hers?! It’s just not fair!

PS: Yesterday’s post seems to have been posted and then unposted. No idea what happened, but it’s up again now.

Demons In Adoption

The votes have been tallied, and this award couldn’t have gone to a shadier, shittier bunch of people.

This year’s recipient of the Demons of Adoption Award is a good example of being among the worst in an industry that thrives on bad practices.

Founded, in 1978 by attorney James S. Albers, Adoption by Gentle Care has been in the spotlight before. Already in 2011, the agency was nominated for a Demons of Adoption Award for their handling of the case of Benjamin Wyrembek.

In that case Adoption by Gentle Care placed a boy with an Indiana couple, in November 2007, knowing that the paternity of the child was not established. Benjamin Wyrembek, the father of the child contested the adoption and after a long court battle, the adoption was dismissed.

As a result, the child was officially in custody of Adoption by Gentle Care, which was ordered to show the child to his father on February 8, 2010. The agency failed to comply with the court order and through it’s [sic] executive director John Cameron was held in contempt on July 2, 2010.

The Indiana couple appealed all the way up to the US Supreme Court, but eventually October 30, 2010, the boy was handed over to his father.

Adoption by Gentle Care quickly dismissed executive director John Cameron, who was replaced by Trina Saunders. This change of leadership however didn’t change the way Adoption by Gentle Care operated.

Nope. After “cleaning house,” they snatched Baby Camden, using every dirty trick in the book:

When the issue of paternity came up, the agency coached Carri Stearns to list the father as “unknown” on the birth certificate, even though the father was known.

The case worker, having learned her lesson from the case of Dusten Brown (baby Veronica) asked if Carri had any Native American blood. When she answered truthfully that she did, the case worker responds: “Carri, you can’t say that. If we name Native American blood, then this adoption won’t happen. He’ll go to foster care.”

[…]

During the relinquishment [Carri] had to testify that she was of “sound mind and body”. In such testimony one must state that they are not under any mind altering substances and are making this decision of their own free will, independently of any coercion of duress. At the time Carri was still under doctor’s prescription for Vicodin and Dilaudid, but was advised by Adoption by Gentle care worker to say “no” to the question whether she was using any medication.

Three days after the relinquishment, reality what has transpired set in and Carri came to the conclusion she had made a terrible mistake.

Adoption by Gentle Care refused to revoke the consent and pushed through with the placement of Camden. However, the family chosen to adopt the boy, returned him to the agency and he has been in foster care ever since.

Yes, the same “foster care” the agency used fear of to bully Carri out of her baby. Only it’s worse than they threatened: Camden had now been declared “special needs” because he has de Morsier’s syndrome. Not only does no one seem to know what sort of treatment he’s receiving, the condition also makes him less adoptable than the average white male baby. Doesn’t matter: He’s still white and little and cute, there’s still a chance he can be sold, and Gentle Care is keeping him.

Remember how awful it is to take a child from “the only family s/he’s ever known”? Camden is reportedly now in a second foster family. Including his real one, that makes four. He’s only seven months old.

 

Ethiopia

Thanks to cb, we can watch what seems to be a version of Mercy, Mercy online. If you haven’t seen this, look now before it gets taken down.  (But maybe read this first.)

Also, here is Fly Away Children, the film famous for its scene of an English-speaking woman telling a roomful of non-English speakers that any of them who doesn’t want to never see their children again should take them and leave now.

…and its sequel, Fly Away Home. Thanks again, cb!

Adopted: The Movie

is on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, you really should.

Truly: If you trust me and my opinions, even in the smallest way, please watch this.

Another Angel In Adoption

(No, he did not earn the actual award…he just might as well have.)

If there’s one thing to know about adoptable children, it’s that they suck. They suck so much that pretty much anyone who deigns to raise one is good, especially after jumping through all those hoops.

Of course, the other thing to know about adoptable children is that they are precious oh fuck you, humanity.