Part 2 of 2
Our society has become too idealistic, self-righteous and punitive. Life is not perfect and we cannot make it that way. There are many different cultures and lifestyles in the world.
Now, it is time to try to prevent those difficulties from happening in the first place.
Open and honest familial relationships are a must. SECRECY MUST BE FORBIDDEN.
This nation no longer tolerates secret covert activities. Why is it tolerated it in adoption?
The adoption practices must change. The old ways must stop. You wonder about the effects new ways will have on the children? Very simply, the old ways failed! Trying new ways cannot possibly be worse for the emotional well-being of future generations.
The United States Office of Human Development Services states in its published guidelines for child welfare for professionals that adoption is a third and last alternative, to be considered after all reasonable family preservation and reunification efforts failed.
Adoption agents must be held accountable! It is nearly impossible to have accountability when the principals in an adoption are bound in secrecy.
Many people will give some acknowledgment to the fact that adoption agencies have not always acted ethically, most especially to the birthparents in adoptions of the past. Yet, most people have a difficult time believing it is happening today.
The reform movement continues to be contacted by birthparents who have been tricked into surrendering their new-born babies for adoption. Licensed adoption agencies are involved in these cases.
Adoption agents of today are talking out of both sides of their mouths. They say one thing publicly and practice the opposite.
Adoption agencies and adoption professionals have the upper hand. In listening to legislative hearings it is quite obvious. The legislators give credence to what the professionals say. Those affected by adoption are discounted. As if we do not know what happened to ourselves, we do not know how we feel.
The legislators either believe the adoption agencies are benevolent benefactors, or they are afraid to touch the sacred world of adoption.
It seems as if the legislators believe adoption is wonderful-wonderful, as if there are no problems. Believing everyone lives happily ever after. They believe the sanctity of adoption must be preserved at all cost.
The basic principle of adoption reform is that the adoptive family is not just like or better than the family with children born into it.
The purpose of adoption is to provide for children. It is not to take children from the young or lesser advantaged families and give them to families who have more advantages and power.
A woman and her baby are a family, deserving preservation. A man and his baby are a family deserving preservation.
Children should be raised by their parents. If is not possible, then by people to whom they are genetically related. If the child's family is not able to care for the child and true attempts have been made to preserve the family, then you consider adoption.
A family household is not necessarily a mother, father and a child. A family household can be one parent and a child. It can include grandparents, or aunts, and siblings.
Children need food and clothing, but they do not have to have designer jeans. Ballet lessons are nice, but they are not necessary. Niceties do not replace a whole family of parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
If adoption becomes the only reasonable alternative, it must be done in an open and honest manner.
Adoption is becoming vogue. Women with untimely pregnancies are being convinced adoption is the only answer to their situation. Single women or young couples are being indoctrinated into the "wonderful-wonderful" world of adoption. They are being sold a "bill of goods." The old rhetoric:
If you really love your baby you will surrender it for adoption.
You are being selfish in wanting to raise your child yourself.
If you raise your child alone, without a spouse, and more money, you will abuse your child.
They are not telling these parents, fathers and mothers, about the repercussions to adoption. They are not advising them that adoption is a life-long process. They will not be able to get over the experience and get on with their lives.
Birthparents are not given appropriate social, emotional and legal counsel. Birthmothers are still being shipped out of state to have their babies to expedite adoption proceedings. Birthfathers are all but forgotten. Birthmothers are being told to list the birthfather as unknown, to deprive the birthfather of any prospect of parenting his child. Birthmothers sign final documents hours after giving birth. Irrevocable papers. When birthparents try to revoke consent they are delayed by those they trusted until it is too late.
Is this in the best interest of those involved?
As time goes on and we meet more and more people in the triad, and hear of their difficulties in life, the more we realize something radical needs to be done immediately.
We are frustrated and appalled. There is overwhelming evidence that the closed adoption system is destructive, yet it goes forth. How can the professionals be so selfish, all in the name of "the best interest of the child"?
If you must have an adoption it must be an open adoption. A complete knowing of names and addresses, relaxed and regular visitations for 99% of the people involved in an adoption.
Just what is an open adoption? How does it work?
Adoption is different. Adoption is the process of accepting the responsibility of raising an individual who has two sets of parents. Birthparents remain a part of the adoptee's life whether physically separated or reunited. Adoptees need to know their birth-family.
This individual comes already made with many predisposed genetic factors. It is not a blank slate to have just anything drawn upon it.
Adoption is a lifelong experience. It does not end when agency contact is over. It continues after the decree is finalized. It is not over when the child comes of age.
Adoptive parents must continually educate themselves on parenting an adopted child.
Birthparents come to terms with their situation of not being able to care for their child on a daily basis. Make the decision after knowing all alternatives. IT MUST BE THEIR DECISION, NOT SOCIETY'S.
Birthparents come to terms with some basic facts concerning adoption:
True open adoption:
Complete Exchange of names, phone numbers and addresses. Regular visits in the child's home (or in the birthparents home). Frequent and direct letter and picture exchange.
The list can go on. The birthparents play a role very similar to that of an aunt and uncle. The more open people are with each other; the deeper their relationship; the easier things will be.
The surrogate birth situation has the reform movement troubled a great deal too. First the term surrogate is wrong.
We need to gain clear knowledge of just what surrogate births are. There are essentially two types. One is the artificial insemination of a woman to bear a child for the purpose of surrendering it for adoption to its genetic father and his wife. This is the type most commonly practiced.
Another is where a woman is implanted with an embryo after in vitro fertilization, using an ovum and sperm of the prospective parents.
Surrogate-mother is a term cleverly used to give people a nicey-nice feeling of what is happening and the false impression the 'surrogate-mother' is the substitute, which is what the definition of surrogate is.
In most cases, where the woman is artificially inseminated, it is false. The surrogate-mother is not the substitute; the adoptive mother is the substitute. The so-called surrogate-mother is the mother. She is much more than a womb during gestation; she is half of the child's genetic make-up.
When the mother is allowed to receive money (or other valuables), SHE IS BABY SELLING. She is premeditating the SALE of a baby. She is creating a baby to be SOLD, as the old slave traders did in the South of this country, barely a century ago. People bought and sold babies, children and adults, as they did any other commodity. To buy or sell a person was made illegal.
The so-called surrogate is no more or no less of a parent to a child than anyone else is a parent to a child. No other parent or person may receive money for possession of a person.
Surrogacy must not be allowed, period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Our society is becoming hung-up on the story book lifestyle. You grow-up, go to college, become married, establish a career, buy a big house, and luxury cars then get children.
It takes much more than wanting a child to make a good parent. A 'surrogate' baby is the ultimate in YUPPIE TOYS.
In surrogacy you are creating a cuddly bundle of joy who will grow-up to be a human being. A human being who will be crippled not only by the emotional handicap of how he was created, for money, but a human being who will be forever legally cut-off from half of his birthparents, grandparents, brothers and sisters.
To deliberately create a child to be separated from all or part of his genetic family is WRONG.
... Artificial Insemination by Donor, children who are raised by the woman who gave birth to them, are some of the angriest people in this country. This is the same as surrogacy only in reverse. This needs reconsideration also. Anonymity must be stopped in all situations.
There is another way to have a baby by donor, doing it the natural way. There are women who deliberately find a man to have intercourse with to get pregnant. She is not planning on marriage; let alone the child knowing the father.
Yes, women can raise a child alone. Men can raise a child alone. When people find themselves with an untimely pregnancy, they should do all that they can do to raise that child. Just do not deliberately create a child to be separated from all or part of their birth-family.
The "Baby Boomers" are a generation with increased infertility. That is an emotional pain for those living with infertility. But, do not ask the next generation to pay with the pain of unnecessary separation.
Step-parent adoptions have gotten out of hand. Again it goes with people's ideas of having to fit things into nice-neat little packages.
Many step-parent adoptions happen as a retaliatory act, as a convenient way for one parent to get even with the other, or get rid of them.
The reform movement agrees that there needs to be a way to formally acknowledge the step-parent who has come into a child's life and taken the parenting role wholeheartedly, without reservation. There is also a legal need for this acknowledgment.
The child may want to be able to legally assume the name of his step-parent, if it is a step-father. BUT -- the child should not lose his birth heritage in the process.
The child's original birth certificate should not be changed. The child does not need to be severed from one side of his birth-family, including the possibility of additional siblings. The child does not have to be separated from the surrendering parent. This is the legal premise of all adoptions.
If something was to go wrong in the new formed family, the child's separated parent has no ability to step in and help. Things do go wrong, the next divorce.
So what if the parent does not pay child support, or visit regularly. The parent may not deserve to know the child, but the child deserves to know the parent. Let's not punish the child for their parents wrongs. A child needs all of their birth ancestry.
A child needs a good image of his birth family, as that is the beginning of his self-image. He needs to decide for himself who or what his parent is without one word from anyone else and without an excessive sense of obligation to his step-parent who 'rescued' him.
Abortion is not an adoption issue. It is not a question of abortion or adoption. Adoption only becomes a question after a person has determined not to have an abortion. It is then a question of raising the child or adoption.
The question: "Should there be laws restricting the ability for a woman to receive a medical termination of a pregnancy?"
The movement has agreed to disagree. There are adoptees and birthparents who believe it should not be legal, and there are adoptees and birthparents who believe it should be legal.
We do have strong positions on the auxiliary portions to the question and we do agree that:
Adoption is not the automatic alternative to abortion.
Families, a mother and baby should be assisted to stay a family unit.
Closed-secret adoptions cause people with an untimely pregnancy to choose abortion.
Open adoption -- where everyone knows everyone with a continued relationship agreement will relieve mothers of the burden of never knowing the fate of her child. Will provide the adoptee with the necessary first hand information about their birth heritage, and give adoptive parents more information to raise their child.
If society does not want abortions, they should look at the systems of providing assistance to mothers with children and the destructiveness of adoption.
The reform movement spends nearly all of its time in emotional support, search, adoption research, and one-on-one lay counseling. Not all reform groups act as search groups. Some groups have "Rap Sessions." It is a self-help group.
We are a referral network, providing people with information as to where to find the resources necessary to meet their needs. We receive calls for search assistance, women with an untimely pregnancy, and calls or letters from people wanting to adopt.
It needs to be noted that our opposition is primarily the adoption agencies, and adoptive parents. The NCFA was formed as a counter measure to the American Adoption Congress's growing strength in the late 70's early 80's.
Most of the work the reform movement does requires time. Our largest expenses involve the phone, printing and postage.
We rely on donations and membership dues to operate. We receive no government funding, or grant money. We need your help.
The objective of adoption reform is to make adoption more humane and less cruel. To help heal old wounds, and right past wrongs. To reduce the built-in dysfunction. To acknowledge the truth and promote open honest familial relationships.
The adoptive family is not just like, or better than the family with children born into it.
Adoption is not a one time event. It does not end with the decree or when the adoptee becomes an adult. Adoption is a lifelong experience.
It is time to take the triangle with its sides and sharp points and round the edges into a circle of love. It is just one family that has been built in several ways, birth, marriage and adoption.
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Ginni D Snodgrass
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