Adoption “Choice” – A Response to a Mother

February 9, 2010

I recently responded on another blog to a mother (I consider her to be a mother, but she calls herself  a “birthmother“  i.e. a non-mother) who expressed that the loss of her two children to adoption had brought guilt, grief and self hatred to her — and yet she was convinced it was her choice and she was not “bitter*” about adoption.

As she spoke about pain, guilt, grief, self hatred and tears — my heart went out to her, as those are the same words of many mothers who were forced to surrender against their will, yet who considered it to be a “choice” that they willingly and happily made.

My sincere belief is that the concept of “choice” is one that a mother internalizes from being given repeated social messages about adoption, social attitudes, and the refusal of Western culture to even consider the possibility of coerced surrender.   Why? Because the dominant discourse about adoption is controlled by the adoption industry and it’s customers.  And, the repeated message in this discourse as unquestioningly accepted by society is that  women choose to give away unwanted babies, right?   Half-right.  Adoption WAS created to find new homes for orphans and unwanted children.  However, exceedingly rarely were our children even unwanted,  As we held them in our arms, or saw them after their birth, and fell in love with them — how many of us actually emphatically phoned up the adoption agency weeks after birth to demand “Take away this bastard — I feel nothing for her!  I have no interest in keeping her!”  You see, that is the situation that adoption is actually intended for.

The mother-child bond and relationship is so important that there are recognized rights that all mothers inherently possess, for the sole reason that we are human beings. One of these is the right to all the support you need in order to raise your child without fear of an “unstable life’ (i.e. missing support system). Check out Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Coercion takes many forms: It can take the form of agencies, family members, clergy, hospital staff, etc. pressuring the mother to surrender her baby or telling her that adoption is a fantastic option (making her feel she would be selfish for wanting to keep her baby). It can take the form of carefully-researched methods being applied to mothers to increase the chance they will surrender. It can also be systemic financial coercion when governments withhold vital financial support from mothers which leave them in fear of dire poverty with no guaranteed income, housing, etc. The latter is, yes, intentional, and according to adoption researcher Reuben Pannor is the leading cause of surrender. It is also preventable. Why does Australia have a mere handful of surrenders each year while the U.S. has tens of thousands? Because Australia protects mothers against ALL these types of coercion.

There is a checklist of common coercion methods here, but human rights violations including poverty also count as coercion. So does open adoption practices where mothers meet or “bond with” adopters prior to birth or prior to signing surrender documents. That has a huge risk of emotional coercion. And again, a coerced surrender is not a “choice’ at all.  The choice of adoption not only must involve (1) informed consent (obtainable only once the mother has taken home her baby and found out first-hand what she will be sacrificing and with having been given full disclosure regarding the psychological risks (unresolved grief and loss, depression, PTSD, secondary infertility, future relatioship and parenting difficulties) but (2)  as it is such an important decision also must be freedom of any form of coercion as this nullified freedom of choice.

Ignoring the fact that abortion and adoption are NOT related events in the slightest, the fact that this mother states regarding surrender that she “did not want to do it” and yet considers it to be a “choice,” is a huge contradiction.  Only in adoption is the phrase “forced to choose” considered logical.

Let’s follow the logic: You wanted to keep your baby, you did not want to surrender:  So what made you do it?  Something made you surrender against you will. That “something” is called coercion.  A coerced “choice” is not a choice at all, the coercion by the fact of existing has eliminated all freedom of choice. So, in essence, you did not “choose” to surrender your babies.

That’s why i’m saying that mothers who love their babies don’t “choose” to surrender them. Adoption was created in 1851 as a disposal mechanism for unloved and unwanted children, not for children were were loved and wanted. It’s the rise of the adoption industry, convincing mothers to surrender babies, that has made it into such.

You had the right to keep your baby. Your babies had the right to the support they needed in order to keep YOU.

~~~

Post-script:  I have also realized that although the grief from the loss of my son has been crippling, I have never felt guilt, regret, anger at myself, or self-hatred from it. I think that this freedom has come with knowing that it was not my ‘decision’ as I had never been given a choice.  A coerced ‘choice’ is not a choice at all. No decision can be made when there is only one viable option given.  I wish that every women who has unwillingly surrendered a child they loved to adoption could also be free from these emotions.

~ ~~

* I am not “bitter.”  Never have been.  “Bitter” is a derogatory term used by society to describe someone they considered to be unjustifiably angry at themselves or  because they did or did not do something.  On so many levels this is just totally unapplicable to how many natural mothers feel:  justifiably angry at the adoption industry for taking their babies via coercive adoption practices and working to end unnecessary adoptions and coercive adoption practices.  If it were not for righteous anger at injustice, civil rights, human rights, campaigns against genocide, and the vote for women would not exist.

~~

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International Adoption: Bought a Chinese Baby Lately?

January 28, 2010

If you have recently adopted from China, here is further proof that children are being trafficked expressly for the purposes of international adoption:

” Five other orphanages opened nearby and were making the same request. By 2000, however, the supply of babies was drying up …

“Rising incomes, changing attitudes toward girls and weaker enforcement of the one-child policy had combined to stem the widespread dumping of baby girls. Besides, pregnant women who were insistent on a boy would determine the gender with ultrasound (illegal, but common just the same) and abort female fetuses …

“But foreign adoptions were in full swing, with more than 5,000 babies heading to the United States in 2000 alone …

“Instead of turning over extra babies to the orphanages in Guangdong, Liang preferred to sell them to traffickers who would pay more to take them to Hunan or adjacent Jianxi province, which also supplied many of the babies adopted in the United States. The Duans say that in addition to the 85 babies she provided them, Liang sold more than 1,000 to orphanages …

“The orphanages disguised the origins of the babies, the Duans said. … “They would fabricate the information. They would say that the baby was found at the Sunday market, near the bridge, on the street. Very few of the stories they put in the babies’ files were true. Only the director of the orphanage knew the babies were really from Guangdong,” Duan’s father said …

“The Chinese government acknowledges that each year 30,000 to 60,000 children go missing, most of them abducted.

“The Los Angeles Times reported in September that local family planning officials in Guizhou and Hunan provinces sometimes confiscated babies from families that had violated the one-child policy and then collected money by selling the children for foreign adoption. “

As they say, “follow the money.”   Where there is a market demand, little regulation, and the ability to exploit a “source of product” (in this case, mothers who have just given birth),  is it any wonder that this type of unethical activity occurs?

Not only that, but that Western society denies it turns a blind eye to it the same way it did when unwed mothers were herded into maternity facilities to give birth and be stripped of their babies?   Tied down and drugged while their babies were taken away from them?

A culture which condoned this systemic abduction of White children in Canada and the U.S., of course is going to turn a blind eye to Asian children overseas.  North Americans should be ashamed of themselves.

There are other articles as well about the trade in Chinese babies.  This is not an isolated incident. Such as “Chinese crackdown nets thousands of ‘stolen’ children – As many as 60,000 children missing each year” This article states that “The girls are often sold … to agencies that arrange foreign adoptions.”  But this is not the only story — there are also these articles:

Yet adoption agencies across Canada market these babies very legally, as the Canadian government turns a blind eye to human trafficking for adoption purposes.  But I guess, as they say, “The customer is always right” — or at least has the most power in the whole equation.  And the collective financial and political power that backs the adoption industry — an industry fuelled by intense and well-monied market demand for babies and marketed as “a noble deed” — is something that it looks like governments are willing to acquiesce to.

~~

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Human Rights, Motherhood, Reproductive Exploitation … and Adoption

January 13, 2010

This is a post about human rights.   Rights that we all enjoy because, well, we are human beings and not tadpoles, buttercups, or granite slabs.  We are born human, and in a special position in the world even if we share most of our DNA with a host of other similar creatures.

Humans have the ability to commit both magnificent acts of good and terrible acts of evil.  In the mid-20th century, the world was recovering from a horrific world war and related events of genocide and destruction, which had ripped apart families and left much death and suffering in their wake.

A coalition of “civilized” nations swore that this evil should never happen again, and worked to create what became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,  adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations ion December 10, 1948.

Included in the Universal Declaration are rights that are belong inherently to all living human beings.  They include rights to dignity and equality, the right to be free from slavery, and the right to equal protection of the law.  Also included in the Universal Declaration are rights  that protect even the most vulnerable of our citizens  from systemic cruelty and exploitation.  Rights that our governments try to conveniently forget.

A mother and her child together are one of the  most precious and yet are often the most vulnerable families in any society.  Vulnerable, that is, because in some cultures, they are rendered without protection from external forces that work to separate them. In many patriarchal nations, a mother is often only certain that she will be able to keep her baby if:  (1) she is married and thus financially/socially protected by a man, or (2) she has sufficient status  in the employment market such that she can independently support her baby by herself.

Men and women are equal, but due to biology they are very different, an example being when two people of the opposite sex make love.  The man can walk away from his responsibility for any resulting child — he may not even know he is a father.  The woman cannot walk away.  She must deal with the consequences in a directly personal way.  During her pregnancy,  social sanctions limit not only her options, but stigmatize her into solutions that society either provides or withholds from her.  A baby is a part of her body for nine months, and that experience is one she can never walk away from.

To be a woman means the inherent capability (or implied capacity) to create and give birth to a child.

“Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body.” – Elizabeth Stone

Human rights factor into the experience of every woman who becomes pregnant.   Firstly, human rights are universal, guaranteed to all human beings.  Article 2 of the Universal Declaration states:

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Article 16 states:

“The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” A mother and her child together is a family. There can be no doubt, and no argument, about this. They thus have the right to protection by society and the state.

But perhaps most explicit is Article 25, which states:

“(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”

This explicitly provides every family — every mother and her child — with the support and means required to keep them together, as a basic human right.   It also means that women have the right to social protection, the right to keep their children, without having to be the “social property” of a man  (did you know that until very recently, in many areas the birth certificates of the children of unmarried mothers were stamped “Illegitimate”?).   It means that marriage is not required to “legitimize” a woman fulfilling the natural function of her body, a natural function of being a woman:  giving birth to her child.  Marriage or at least a long-term parental commitment from both partners is indeed the ideal situation, but for many mothers it is just not feasible or possible.

This Declaration agreed to in 1948 protects all mothers and their children.  It provides mothers with rights such that no mother need be forced by poverty, coercion, or social pressure to surrender her baby for adoption. Every mother has the right to protection and social support for herself and her child as a family unit such that horrific trauma of surrender, the coerced separation from her infant,  is not inflicted upon her.

“Almost everyone believes that on some level, [mothers] made a choice to give their babies away. Here, I argue that adoption is rarely about mothers’ choices; it is, instead, about the abject choicelessness of some resourceless women.” (Solinger, 2001).

It is clear that if the basic human rights of ALL mothers were respected, protected, and codified into the laws of each nation, that there would be far fewer unnecessary adoptions.  Fewer families would be destroyed, fewer mothers would be forced to surrender their beloved infants, and the world would be a far more ethical and safe place for mothers who are giving birth — mothers left vulnerable to the  adoption industry because their human rights have been violated.

* * *

References:

  • “Elizabeth Stone Quotes” at http://thinkexist.com/quotes/elizabeth_stone
  • Solinger, R. (2001). Beggars and choosers – How the politics of choice shapes adoption, abortion, and welfare in the United States. New York: Hill & Wang.

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Origins Canada – check it out! :)

January 13, 2010

I’m absolutely thrilled to share a very special link with you, the new Origins Canada website:

Origins Canada: Supporting Those Separated by Adoption

http://www.originscanada.org/

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“Do natural mothers change their stories?”

December 24, 2009

This question was asked on “Yahoo Answers” a number of months ago:

“Do a lot of people believe that women give their children up for adoption and then in the future “change” their version of the facts/or their way of thinking, to reflect that their child was stolen or they were viciously coerced rather than truly relinquished due to whatever circumstances there may have been?”

Various people on Yahoo Answers had been posting comments calling into question the integrity of natural mothers (“birthmothers”) who had recounted their stories of having lost children to adoption against their will, of feeling they had no choice but to surrender.  This person asked whether mothers had actually changed their stories.

I found this question to be interesting for several reasons, as it showed how “general society” might still be ignorant of what happens when a mother loses a child to adoption, the trauma that occurs, or that she may be in a far different position later in life as far as knowledge of the processes of the adoption industry.  (Also interesting was that this question was asked in the first place: Perhaps the questioner was trying to wrap his/her mind around the very concept that coerced surrender could exist?).

Firstly, this question assumes that women don’t block out the memories of what happened to them — a common symptom of PTSD: you dissociate as the trauma is too difficult to face. I know women who can’t even remember their child’s birth date or signing papers, until much later, at which point the memories come flooding back, often in the form of flashbacks and nightmares. It is often with reunion or beginning their search that moms begin to remember details of what happened.

PTSD Criterion C:  Avoidance/Numbing
3. Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma

Secondly, a young or otherwise vulnerable mother may be forced to surrender by various means, and it is only when she is much older — when she has far more information on what her rights were at the time — that she realizes that those rights were violated. Rights that the adoption industry never informed her that she had rights.

“The first thing the unmarried mother is likely to lose is her right to make important decisions. The agency or community tells her what she must do if she is to receive the services she needs . . . In most instances the plan for the baby is pre-determined. Often these matters are decided without her being able to state her own preferences.” Helping Unmarried Mothers, by Rose Bernstein, copyright 1971*

Or the natural mother realizes only much later that she was coerced, not realizing it at the time, when she finds out that carefully-researched methods were used on her that would increase the likelihood she would sign those papers. An expectant mother, labouring mother, or new mother may not realize at the time that various practices were being done to her in order to ensure she would surrender her baby. Thousands if not millions of dollars in federal money in the U.S. and Canada has gone into studies researching how to get more mothers to surrender. These adoption studies do not hide their purpose. Even open adoption was designed for this purpose, to get more babies to market.

Why was this done? In part, because of the post-WWII consumer demand for healthy white infants:

“… the tendency growing out of the demand for babies is to regard unmarried mothers as breeding machines…(by people intent) upon securing babies for quick adoptions.” – Leontine Young, “Is Money Our Trouble?” (paper presented at the National Conference of Social Workers, Cleveland, 1953*)

“For every healthy newborn available, there are now almost forty potential parents searching.” – (“Love for Sale” by Nelson Handel, Adoptive Families Magazine, 2000).

Adoption is now North America’s largest multi-billion dollar unregulated industry. Agencies, lawyers, and facilitators exist as “baby brokers,” practicing adoption as a commercial transaction where people pay tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for an unrelated baby (In many other nations, this is known as human trafficking).

When I found the book “Death by Adoption” back in 1982, I discovered other socio-political reasons for what had been done to me, and why adoption was an issue of discrimination against women:

“Adoption is a violent act, a political act of aggression towards a woman who has supposedly offended the sexual mores by committing the unforgivable act of not suppressing her sexuality, and therefore not keeping it for trading purposes through traditional marriage. The crime is a grave one, for she threatens the very fabric of our society. The penalty is severe. She is stripped of her child by a variety of subtle and not so subtle manoeuvres and then brutally abandoned.” – Joss Shawyer, Death by Adoption, Cicada Press (1979)

For example: My baby was taken right at birth for adoption, by hospital staff. I had never told them that I wanted to surrender my baby. I wanted to keep my baby (but no-one ever asked me about this or gave me this as an option).  They put me in a room far from the maternity ward to keep us separated, and kept me drugged for days.   I was finally allowed to see him for about 5 minutes, but bulldog nurses kept a hawk-like watch on me to ensure I could not even pick him up.  I was not welcome in that nursery.   I found out later from my son that they even transfered him over to another hospital to keep him from me! Then I learned two decades later, by reading articles in nursing journals and the government inquiry testimony of hospital administrators — and through hearing the stories of dozens of other natural mothers across Canada — that taking babies at birth was routine, and done specifically to prevent a mother from keeping her baby, to prevent all contact in the intent that she would be prevented from “bonding with” her baby, to prevent her from “changing her mind (i.e. preventing her from making ANY real decision about adoption, as that can be made only post-recovery.) At age 17, I had no idea that this was why my baby was taken. I also did not know that it violated my parental rights, discriminated on the basis of marital status (in treating me different from married mothers), and constituted abduction under the Criminal Code of Canada:

“(281) Abduction of Person Under Fourteen – Every one who, not being the parent … unlawfully takes, entices away, conceals, detains, receives or harbours that person with intent to deprive a parent … of the possession of that person is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years.”

A mother may also “come out of the fog” when she discovers that other mothers “not on the adoption treadmill’ were treated differently. An example is when an agency/lawyer or parents tell(s) you: “You are 17. There is no way you can to go college and get a job with a baby — you’ll be in poverty on welfare for the rest of your life.  Besides, children raised by single mothers turn into criminals and if you don’t sign he’ll sit in foster care until you finally do!” You are not told about welfare and your parents are firm that you are NOT allowed to bring your baby home (after all, they already shut you away in (or you were shamed into “turning yourself in” to) a maternity facility, wage home, etc. so that relatives and neighbours would never find out).

A mother won’t realize at the time that this is coercion as she whole-heartedly believes the lies that the adoption worker told her — and no-one tells her differently. Then years later you meet someone your age who DID keep her baby, went to college (where there was an on-campus daycare), and works at a better or equal job, and her baby didn’t starve — you realize that at age 17 you were lied to and surrendered your baby because you believed this lie. Nevermind finding out that the paycheque of the person or agency who told you this depending on them “making enough sales”! This equates to legal conflict of interest.

For me, another wake-up call came when I met my friend Pashta back in 1990. She was a few years older than me, but also had her first baby when she was 17, also in Canada. I asked her how it could be that the hospital allowed her to keep her baby and did not take her baby at birth. Her answer: The difference was that she was married!

Does this mean I “changed my story”?  No, not at all. But it means I did not realize at age 16 and 17 how coercion worked. All I knew at the time I lost my baby was that I wanted to keep my baby and that I had no choice but to sign those papers in a state of numbness and shock. At age 17 I thought it was “normal” and legal and that somehow I did not deserve or have a right to my baby. Only years later did I find out how it was done such that I had no chance or choice, why it was done, and that it had been done to thousands of other women across Canada.

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Adoption separation: A tragic end for one natural family

November 11, 2009

I have a friend, Rowena, who is a natural mother who lost her son to adoption.

Rowena was only 17 when she gave birth to her son Blaise, and in Grace Hospital in Calgary, they only allowed her to see him sparingly for few days after his birth, and then one day the nurses took him away and refused to let her see him ever again. That was the power that hospitals had over us unwed mothers. The professionals around us, often government social workers, we trusted as no-one else showed any care for us. Little did we know of our rights to our babies – the same as the rights of any older or married mother – or that the hospitals’ actions were illegal. Beaten down emotionally and psychologically, and often cast away into exile by our parents and society, we did not know we had any rights at all.

So, in 1967, Rowena’s son was born. And the government social worker that came with the surrender papers made her believe that her only option was to sign, that an unwed mother could not be a mother at all. The growing list of “waiting parents” was more important to the worker than the emotional trauma she was doing by dismembering this one young family. Rowena wanted to keep her baby, and he was taken from her.

Because of the traumatic loss of her son, Rowena never had another child. She yearned for him for what seemed like unending years, thinking of him every single day, and doing what she could to deal with the PTSD and unrelenting grief.

As soon as Alberta set up an adoption reunion registry, Rowena signed up for it. Her name was on that registry for over twenty years as she waited to hopefully find Blaise again. All she had known was that he was supposedly adopted into a “good home” with a stay-at-home mother and a professional father.

Rowena began coming to our monthly Origins Canada support group meetings early this year, and we offered to help her find her son. Thanks to adoption records opening in Alberta (after a hard-fought campaign by people separated by adoption), she was able to apply for and obtain her son’s full adoptive name.

The search began in March 2009, and forty-two years after Rowena lost her son to adoption, he was found again!

The break came when we found Blaise’s adoptive family’s genealogy listed online, including an adoptive sister, “Alice.” We found her in the phonebook, and Rowena phoned her.

Yes, it was the right Alice. Yes, her adoptive brother was Rowena’s son. But, no, Rowena could not contact him as he was a drug-addicted homeless person living on the streets of a city far away. The sister promised to pass on the message to him, if he eventually got a contact number.

Eventually, when Blaise got a temporary cellphone, Rowena and Blaise were finally able to talk on the phone. He told her how his adoptive parents had divorced when he was young, and his adoptive mother was cold and distant. He had little contact with the adoptive father. No, Blaise had not graduated from high school. Yes, he was doing hard drugs, and when Rowena asked what drugs he used, he told her, “Anything I can get my hands on.” Rowena was shocked that her beloved son had been treated this way and was in this state, as she had been forced to surrender him by a system that had told her that these parents were fit and deserved her son more than she did.

Rowena and Blaise talked on the phone three times, when he was able to temporarily get a phone. By the second call, he was calling her “Mom,” and hoping to travel out to the coast to visit her and even live with her. He wanted to start a new life. Rowena offered to send him the bus fare for him to come out.

Rowena sent letters and photographs to Blaise through Alice. Unfortunately, Alice and her family opened up Rowena’s mail to Blaise, which hurt Rowena a lot.

In her third and tragically last phone call with Blaise, Rowena was happy to find that he had finally received the photographs and letters.

In early October, a phone call came from Alice. Blaise was in hospital with a serious heart infection, and Alice said that if Rowena wanted to see Blaise she had better hurry out to Edmonton fast. Alice offered to put up Rowena at her place. Rowena bought the tickets to travel the 1300 km trip and packed her bags, but 20 minutes before she left the house, the phone rang. It was Alice, who told Rowena in an angry voice that she “couldn’t have Rowena staying there” and that she would have to stay elsewhere.

Rowena phoned the hospital to find out how her son was doing. The staff there told her that they were not allowed to release any information, other than to people on the visitors list, and she was not on it. The adoptive father was in charge of the list. Even if Rowena had travelled, she would not have been allowed to see her son.

Last week, the final phone call came. Blaise’s adoptive father told Rowena that her son had passed away. When she asked, he stated firmly that, NO, she was not permitted to come to the funeral, as “They had enough people already.”

Thanks to adoption, Rowena never saw her son nor held him in her arms since his birth 42 years ago. Thanks to adoption, she will never have that chance. The adoptive parents had the right to ensure she would never be able to be there in his final days. Rowena is devastated. The hope of reunion with her son, the hope that sustained her for 42 years, has ended.

I write this post in dedication of the love that Rowena and Blaise had for each other, as mother and son. She never forgot her son. I hope that I am not the only one who sees the tragedy here.

If you are a mother considering the surrender of your newborn infant, please realize that you are losing the right to ever see your beloved child again. Even open adoptions may close at any time (they are not legally enforceable), and not only will you not have the right to see your child, but not even the right to know about his or her welfare. That is a right only the adoptive parents have, and even if your child is an adult — as next-of-kin — they have the right to deny all information or contact to others in case of a medical emergency. Adoption loss is a tragedy in so many ways. Please consider if you can live with this loss as well.

In Memory of Blaise
1967-2009
Loved and missed by your natural mother, Rowena,
even since you were born

This is a true  story about a natural mother and her son, and how forced adoption separation led to a heartbreaking tragedy.  Every time a mother and child are forced apart for adoption purposes, it is a tragedy; but for Rowena, the hope of seeing her son again was forever lost.

See Rowena’s article “Reunion Attempt“

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“Baby Look for Home” and Adoptions from China?

October 30, 2009

An new initiative by the Chinese government to try to find the homes of stolen and trafficked children was in the news this week (see “Chinese crackdown nets thousands of ‘stolen’ children“).   The news is about the creation of a website, named “Baby Look For Home.”  You can find it at http://www.mps.gov.cn/n16/n983040/n1928424/index.html.

As the newpaper article states:

“Many, if not most cases are not formally listed because local police are unwilling or unable to investigate crimes that usually involve crossing provincial borders. As well, many of the parents think police might be complicit in the kidnappings. It is a lucrative business that can net about $4,000 for each boy sold and about $1,000 per girl… The abducted children are mostly boys and are sold to families who want a son. The girls are often sold into marriage or to agencies that arrange foreign adoptions.”

The  sale of children within China has made the news as far back as 2001 (see “China’s Baby Traffickers“) and kidnapping since 2006 (see “Stealing Babies for Adoption“)   Despite this sordid history,China is lauded as having an “ethical” international adoption system that prospective adopters can have confidence in:

“For a family looking to adopt from the most ethical country, China is the best choice.  They are highly regulated and have increasingly good orphanage conditions” (Thome, 2007)

But, given China’s history of not enforcing laws against the sale of children within China, how is any Westerner able to guarantee that the child they are adopting from China is not stolen?  From the above quote, it appears that little girls in China, those same girls that are supposedly abandoned, are selling for up to $1000:   not exactly a price that would be charged if there were a surplus of “product” on the market.

But agencies and orphanages stand to make a lot of money on each transaction, so unfortunately they have a financial incentive to hide this information from “clients.”  (Perhap more “ethical” adoptions ( an oxymoron?) will only occur once  no-one’s paycheque depends upon the transaction being made, where there is no financial incentive to kidnap, abduct, or coerce.)

“Mr. Peng …  said some of the girls were sold to orphanages. They … often end up in the United States or Europe after adoptive parents pay fees to orphanages that average $5,000.” (New York Times, April 4, 2009).

Anyway, I wonder if this new website may be able to serve those who have adopted a child from China and wonder if that child has been abducted?  Many people adopted children from China, trusting in the assurances of baby brokers whom they now realize may have been lying or omitting the truth, and some of them now want to search, to find their child’s natural parents and discover if that child really was abandoned, or whether the child was kidnapped or the parents were coerced to surrender.   Maybe a photo-listing of that child on “Baby Look for Home” may be at least provide a small chance of finding the child’s natural parents and the truth?  I wonder if the Chinese government would cooperate?

(P.S.  If you check out the “Baby Look for Home” site and cannot read Mandarin, you’ll find Google Translate to be a useful tool.)

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“Abandonment”: A Disconnect in Adoption

October 10, 2009

There is a huge disconnect in public discourse related to the subject of adoption. I believe that this disconnect is directly related to the fact that the dominant voices that “own” the conversation about adoption do not include the voice of the natural mother, when women are kept silenced and invisible in shame and blame for a traumatic event that often they had no control over. The dominant voices belong to others, and others often attempt to speak for us.

A small example of an event illustrating the unintentional but systemic marginalization of the voices of natural mothers (and adoptees) is provided by Lorraine Dusky, in her excellent article on mothers in Korea, who describes a personal experience of marginalization at a conference.

About the program for creative works, primarily attended by adoptees and natural mothers:

the program … was scheduled late in the evening and held in one of the more distant buildings… the only people who were present were a handful of adoptees, their friends and partners, and ALL the birth mothers … the overwhelming participation [at the conference] was of adoptive-mother-academics

And about the conference in-general:

… Everyone was at least marginally polite, but I did feel like a stranger in a strange land there. The academics did not seek me out. I was more of a…um, pariah.

It is no social coincidence that the main body of “academics” at the conference were primarily adoptive mothers — adoption is more popular and accessible among the more educated and “monied” classes in our society, and, on the other hand, mothers are often pressured by poverty to surrender babies.  As well, a career in academia can often entail putting off reproduction until fertility is no longer assured.

This experience will sound familiar to those whose voices are marginalized and disenfranchised, whose voice is not heard in the “dominant discourse.”

And the dominant discourse surrounding adoption (and of course its underlying paradigm) involves the repetition and acceptance of the theme of “abandonment.”

The main focus of Lorraine’s article is about a recently published article about mothers being forced and coerced by lack of resources and social pressure to surrender their babies for adoption. Sounds familiar? Happened to thousands if not millions of mothers in Canada United States, Australia, the U.K., for decades. It was called the Baby Scoop Era. But this latest story is focused on Korea:  “Group Resists Korean Stigma for Unwed Mothers,” where the Baby Scoop Era obviously has not ended. This is tragic, because this systemic coercion of mothers in Korea was also pointed out 21 years ago, in the article “Babies for Sale”(Progressive, 1988, see footnote). Has no-one been listening for the past two decades?

With “Western” governments and society finally acknowledging their human rights responsibilities and providing at least token support and resources to mothers, the demand for babies has moved overseas to other nations where mothers are still vulnerable, where women are still second-class citizens, and human rights abuses and acts of reproductive exploitation go unnoticed and unchallenged. Similar to the Baby Scoop Era in Western nations, adoption serves in placed such as Korea as a “social safety valve” to remove the children of single mothers and provide them to strangers who are judged to be “more deserving” of their babies than they are. I know this feeling all too well — others were judged by society, Victoria General Hospital, and the government social wrecker adoption worker to be “more deserving of, more entitled to” my own beloved baby.

The disconnect?  The dominant discourse surrounding babies for adoption focuses on “abandonment,” exemplified by article such as this one, “South Korea’s troubled export: babies for adoption“:

Thousands of babies are still abandoned every year due to divorce, economic hardship and the difficulty of raising children in a society that sometimes looks on single mothers with scorn.

Now, I would state that a mother who surrenders her baby under pressure is not “abandoning” her baby. Abandonment has many implications: that the parent is performing the act out of genuine free will, that the fate of their child (life, death, injury) is of no concern for them, the child is rejected and unwanted, and is being  “disposed of” like some inconvenient garbage. The parent can freely be reviled and considered to be some sort of inhuman monster — after all, what kind of loving parent would abandon their child? Society justifiably considers child abandonment to be a crime.  Is it surprising that reading this phrase in her adoption paperwork would be upsetting to the adoptee involved?

“For reasons of their own they abandoned the baby…”

But are these the words of a mother who has abandoned her baby?

“I need to see him, and that I wasn’t the one who sent him away … I lost everything when I lost my child.”

These are the words of the Korean mother in the trailer for the film Resiliance.  Exiled from her baby, can anyone truly believe that she “abandoned” him?

As a mother who also lost her beloved newborn baby to adoption, I know what she and other exiled mothers must have experienced, the extreme pain they must feel and likely must still be feeling.  A mother who “abandons” her baby feels none of this. I do wonder:  Would these heartless people actually think that I also had abandoned my baby?

…. a delivery table as flat as an ironing board, my arms strapped down to the sides, feet up in stirrups … a sheet put up in front of my face to prevent me from seeing him. they whisked him away as soon as the cord was cut … not allowed to see or hold my baby. Never told I had any rights …

In Korea:

“After delivery at a hospital, the baby is taken from the mother …”(from “Babies for Sale“)

“Myung-ja Noh had no choice in giving up her baby for adoption. Her relatives took her baby to a hospital, which then contacted an adoption agency that came and took the baby away.”
(from “Resiliance“)

How different is this, in Korea, from what was done to mothers here in North America? How it is “abandonment” when a mother’s baby is taken from her, when resources and support are withheld? When her voice is silenced under oppression from those who have the power to take away her baby and withhold it from her? When someone listens to the voices of Korean mothers, it is not abandonment that is spoken of, it is trauma:

“She initially made contact with over 30 different birth mothers, interviewed six and planned to include three in her documentary. She said that the unifying thread between all the mothers is the devastating impact it has had on their lives.”

On a personal note, is “abandonment” also the rationale that the people who adopted my baby used, in order to feel entitled to “claim” him as their own? Was this the justification they used In order to lay down the law post-reunion that they were his only family, his sole mother and father? Is the assumption of “abandonment” the underlying theme that can be used in order to dismiss the enduring love a natural mother may have for her lost child?

The next time you hear of a baby being “abandoned” and adopted — even if it is in another nation, another culture — consider what this says about the natural mother of that baby.   Think about what happened to her. Did she really “abandon” her baby? Or was she forced to surrender her baby by lack of resources? By her family? By a hospital or an adoption agency?   Read this article about single mothers in Korea.  Read Mei-Ling’s story of how her parents were forced to surrender her in order to save her life.  Read about the crimes committed in the name of “international adoption.” Do you still consider her to be a “heartless abandoner”?

If the voices of natural mothers were actually heard and listened to, instead of marginalized and dismissed, if our experience of the (often violent and traumatic) loss of our babies were acknowledged, would the word “abandoned” be applied to readily, be so much a part of the dominant theme of adoption? The disconnect between the dominant theme, of “child abandonment,” and the experience of the natural mother who has no choice, should be recognized, explored, and eliminated in the adoption discourse.

~ ~ ~

Disconnect [noun]: a lack of or a break in connection, consistency, or agreement (Merriam-Webster). an unbridgeable disparity (as from a failure of understanding) (The Free Dictionary)

Excerpt from “Babies For Sale,” exposing blatant coercion of unwed mothers in Korea:

“‘According to the questionnaire that we distribute at the orientation interview, 90 percent want to keep the babies, says Kim Yongsook, the director of Ae Ran Won. But after counseling, maybe 10 per cent will keep them. We suggest that it’s not a good idea to keep the baby’…. After delivery at a hospital, the baby is taken from the mother.. ” (“Babies for sale. South Koreans make them, Americans buy them,” 1988)

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Adoption: Women’s Rights. Reproductive Rights. Human Rights.

May 20, 2009

The question was recently asked in a newsgroup: Is the use of unethical adoption practices (e.g., coercion, exploitation, reproductive predation) in order to obtain babies for adoption a reproductive rights issue or a women’s rights issue?

My answer is that it is both, plus it is also an issue of human rights.

Women’s rights

Adoption is a women’s issue because of the economics of male vs. female power in our society. Despite all our talk about “women’s rights” and “equality,” a woman who gets pregnant and gives birth without a “man” to support her is often left in the lurch unless she has a salary sufficient to afford a home, daycare, and other expenses on her own. The sole fact that men don’t give birth guarantees that they are not affected in this manner. Being “unmanned” makes her baby “illegitimate” and she is often left dealing with stigma, social disapproval and prejudice, insufficient income to support herself and her baby, and the lack of resources. “Single parent” is a term of derision in many places, and the stigma and inadequacy of “social assistance” renders her vulnerable to the loss of her child. Even the legal system fail the mother: child support from the baby’s father is often not guaranteed even when court-ordered, and he may not have a sufficient income himself.

Let’s look at her situation:

  • If daycare is not available she cannot work.
  • Lack of stable and guaranteed financial support may force her to work while her child is still an infant, thus potentially damaging her child and their relationship. Infants need their mothers, and from raising three children I personally do not believe that being away from mommy for 8-10 hours a day is beneficial for a young child. What about government providing solid universal mother-and-child support such that NO mother is forced to work before her child is in school?
  • Being pregnant and giving birth may force her to quit work. If a mother is in a low-paying or non-unionized job, few employers are going to pay for her to have maternity leave. Pregnancy can be physically incapacitating. Sometimes not, but i had to quit work myself during Month 4 of one pregnancy to avoid a miscarriage. And the only way I could do so was to sell the shop that I owned. Thus: out of a job.
  • Lack of financial/social support forces mothers to surrender babies they have bonded with for nine months. This does not happen to men as men do not have another human being as a growing part of their bodies for such an extended period of time, ideally followed by the extended physical bonding of breastfeeding. Overwhelming bonding hormones during pregnancy (oxytocin) serve to change a woman’s whole life to focusing on her baby. Her very brain structure changes. Mood and function changes occur. The brain can even temporarily shrink in size. Men, on the other hand, can more easily walk away (as the father of my eldest child did) — after all, their only direct involvement in the child’s life may have been ten minutes of sexual activity nine months previous. They have no physical connection with this unknown (to them) third-party, the baby.

These are all womens’ rights issues, as women cannot live on the same “biological timetable” as men can: pregnancy and birth (and subsequent childcare) are biologically a woman’s responsibility and this conflicts with jobs and career. Having been promised by the feminist movement that they can and should “have it all,” many women are finding that juggling a career and a family can be highly stressful and often next to impossible. And women who live according to “a man’s biological clock” may find that once they are financially-secure they can no longer have children (age-related infertility can start at age 27). Hence the “infertility epidemic” as women postpone attempts to conceive to later and later ages.

Reproductive rights

The term “reproductive rights” is most commonly attached to the pro-choice/anti-abortion debate. Does a woman have the right to control her own reproductive functions? Despite the adoption industry’s sales-pitch that adoption is an alternative to abortion, I would argue it is most definitely not. Early in pregnancy, a woman may decide to have an abortion or become a mother. The decision on whether to become a mother raising her child, or a mother who loses her child to adoption, is a decision that can only truly be made post-birth. So adoption and abortion are unrelated and are not alternatives to each other. But adoption is a reproductive issue in that it involves a woman’s inherent reproductive capability and the exploiting of that capacity as a “resource” by those in a position of greater social/financial/political power. This happens to women who are rendered vulnerable to this exploitation due to youth, poverty, or lacking the “Mrs.” designation.

Reproductive exploitation has parallels to sexual exploitation. In fact, the only difference is who is doing the exploiting and who is being exploited: economic and age differences are approximately the same, as is the tendency of the victim to blame herself and “fall in love with” the exploiter.

Reproductive exploitation is not new. It was an identifiable part of the slave trade in fact, where enslaved mothers were also were not accorded the right to keep and raise their babies.

Reproductive predation is a relatively new phenomena. Just as there are sexual predators who hunt down vulnerable young women and children to sexually exploit, with reproductive exploitation there are predatory practices such as women with “baby hunger” seeking out vulnerable mothers. If you want to see some examples of the parallels, check out the article “Reproductive Exploitation” on the Origins Canada site. If you want examples of the common “lures” that reproductive predators use, check out http://www.keepyourbaby.com/lures.html.

Feminists are not immune to engaging in reproductive exploitation, and may not even be aware that they are engaging in this practice. Is this from complete ignorance of what constitutes exploitation, or tunnel-vision due to personal avarice and “baby hunger”?

You don’t see people adopting from 30-something married mothers with six-figure incomes, nor do hospitals routinely approach them while they are in labour to ask if they have considered adoption. The average income of a woman who surrenders a baby for adoption is less than $20,000/yr — often far less than that.

Women left in these dire financial straits, with no way to financially afford to keep their babies — without adequate housing finances, healthcare, daycare, paid maternity leave, etc. — are left vulnerable. To obtain a baby from a woman in this situation is exploitation. Just the same way that paid or coerced sexual acts with vulnerable women and children is sexual exploitation.

Human rights

Adoption is a human rights issue because for most mothers, the circumstances forcing them to surrender are the result of government-led human rights abuses. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

* (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
* (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

If these fundamental human rights were enforced and upheld, particularly in rich nations, there would be far fewer surrenders. Adoption is a huge industry primarily because we deny mothers the support they are entitled to.

“Most infants placed for adoption come from poor families. Check with any of the adoption agencies and their adoption lawyers to verify that the number one reason for relinquishment today is the inability to afford to raise the child. This is a sad commentary on the richest and most powerful country in the world” (Pannor, 1998)

In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations — which includes U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and NZ — sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These nations then violated this on a massive scale with their treatment of unwed mothers during the time from about 1950 to the early 1970s (and up to the mid 1980s in some countries such as Canada, where the BSE was bolstered by the “Sixties Scoop” that took native children en masse as well).

The New South Wales government in Australia apologized. They changed their laws such that all mothers are provided support such that no mother need lose her baby due to a human rights violation (which includes poverty) again. PLUS they gave adoptees the right to annul their adoptions if coercion was involved. It’s a start. More information can be found on the Origins Australia website, including transcripts from the Parliamentary Inquiry where the government admitted that systemic human rights violations had occurred.

The same practices occurred in the other nations I listed above. The same crimes, systemic human rights abuses, and coercive tactics.

What must be done is to ensure the financial security of all mothers. To ensure that NO child is left in poverty. To ensure that no child is surrendered for adoption due to this form of blatant financial coercion.

Exploitation precludes any sort of ethical adoption from happening. When you exploit a mother, you are committing an ethical violation. You cannot state that you have “adopted ethically” unless you have proof that the mother’s rights have not been violated: human rights, reproductive rights, or women’s rights. And, frankly, given the immense emotional damage that the loss of a child to adoption does to a mother — damage that is in many cases permanent — coerced adoption should not take place at all.

References:

Love, S. (1998). “Interview with Reuben Pannor.” PACER newsletter. (Winter 1998-1999). Post Adoption Center for Education and Research.

United Nations General Assembly (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

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February 20, 1980

February 21, 2009

… a seventeen year old with no-one to talk to and no-one who would listen to me.

… parents are 62 and 61 years old … small town Prairie mentality and Fundamentalist beliefs.

… internment in a wage home once I began “showing,” hiding my growing belly to protect my parents from the shame of “what would the neighbours and relatives say?”

… being shamed by my parents into wearing my grandma’s wedding ring to hide my shameful “unwed” status from the world.

… a week of false labour.

… my parents dropping me off at the hospital slightly past midnight, and the nurses telling them to leave. Being put on a gurney and given a sleeping pill to sleep, then put into a closet for the night. Lights on. The pain was strong and the sleeping pill did nothing for me. Awake all night. Alone.

… strapped down to a bed with a fetal monitor wrapped around my stomach. Another one screwed into his scalp.

… my mother coming in the afternoon to sit with me, acting ashamed, never showing concern or affection.

… screaming in pain … and being told by nurses to shut up.

… nauseated and disoriented from the straight Demerol injections that did nothing for the pain

… a doctor telling the intern that he had given me too much Demerol.

… 18 hours of labour with no food or water

… wheeled down the hallway

… climbing  onto the narrow delivery table,  as flat as an ironing board, my arms strapped down with leather straps, feet up in stirrups.

… trying to push out a baby  against gravity, not having slept for 36 hours … not having eaten for 24 hours … overwhelming pain.

… episiotomy sliced down with a deep 4-inch-long cut, without anaesthesia … sewn up again without adequate anaesthesia.  Permanent nerve damage.

… sheet put up in front of my face to prevent me from seeing him as he was born and whisked from the room, abducted.

… given a shot and waking up 18 hours later in a ward far far from the maternity ward and nursery, other end of the hospital, different floor.

… a huge huge sense of loss.

… my breasts bound up to prevent lactation.

… unable to walk for 2 days after.

… not allowed to see or hold my baby. Never being told I had the right to. No lawyers to explain to me that i had *any* rights at all. No nurse brought him to me

… finally allowed to look at him for about 5 minutes  in the nursery several days later, watched over by hawk-like nurses to prevent me from picking him up. I was not welcome there.  Seeing him confirmed for me what I already knew: that I loved him beyond all measure. I wanted to keep him.

….  a woman who had surrendered a baby 2 months prior being sent in to convince me to “do the right thing.”

… forbidden by parents from taking my baby home.

… never told about welfare or any other way to keep him.  At age 17 from a small farming town and a sheltered upbringing, I had no idea even what ‘welfare’ was.

… the social wrecker telling  me to sign or he’d be in foster care until I ‘decided’ to. Telling me that the children of unwed mothers grow up to be criminals.  Lying to me that I would “move on.” No informed consent, no other options, no choice.

I wanted to keep my baby. I was capable. I was never given the chance or the choice.

This is adoption. This was coercion.  I was nothing more than a convenient uterus to them, to take away another baby for adoption.This was done to thousands of unwed mothers across Canada for thirty years, until about 1988. There is nothing “voluntary” about “voluntary surrender.” A coerced “decision” is not a decision at all.

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