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Why Don’t Natural Parents Get Treated Like Adopters?

People who adopt are given donations, tax credits, subsidies and other perks. But with all the money to be made in finding babies for adoption, natural parents may get no help at all with their own child.

Marion, IA (PRWEB) September 29, 2004 -- In a Missouri newspaper someone suggests broadening the use of the $10,000 adoption tax credits so people who adopt can add a new room onto their house or buy a bigger car.

From a posting on an internet forum: “We let everyone know about our wanting to adopt. And, we got an anonymous check in the mail for $10,000!” and “At church, our Bishop and RS president just happened to also mention it in opening exercises…. We were a little hesitant at first to let ‘the world’ know our financial situation, but it is for a great cause, and it was well worth it.” Next a man writes: “My wife and I have adopted (birth adoption) and have not been asked if we want a shower thrown by our closest friends and co-workers. There are so many things we need.” Then a woman writes that she doesn’t understand why people who adopt “should be treated any different” than natural parents.

People who adopt get donations, fund raisers, tax credits, adoption subsidies, special airfares, counseling and training to help them feel confident raising an unrelated child. If a pregnant or new mother or young parents needed help with their own child, what would happen?

Instead of giving a pregnant woman who plans to give birth acknowledgement as a mother and the confidence to raise her child, many pregnancy centers turn an ordinary unexpected pregnancy into a crisis. A child’s own mother is called a “birth thing” and a father won’t be called a “dad” if they have anything to do with it. Despite all the talk in the United States about responsible fatherhood, when a baby is good adopting material his father may be referred to as an “FOB” and either have his parental rights circumvented completely or be actively encouraged to abandon his child.

Having dismissed a child’s father as irrelevant, “adoption professionals” who profit from adoptions make a mother feel she is all alone except for their help with an “adoption plan”. She will not be told of the serious effect that the removal of her newborn child for adoption by strangers will have on her baby, her other children or herself. As King Soloman demonstrated in the Bible by threatening to cut a baby in half, a natural mother will do anything for her child if she thinks it’s the best thing. Social workers know this and they use this knowledge to manipulate a naïve mother to their advantage. If what she really needs is help communicating with her parents or her baby’s father, help out of an abusive situation, temporary financial help, or just someone to believe in her, they will ignore or even amplify these problems creating anxiety and despair in the interest of getting “their” baby.

Social workers seem to enjoy watching a pregnant mother agonize over the decision whether she might be able to provide for this child she loves so much all on her own. These adoption experts know what the long-term effects will be on her and on her child, and they could ask family members, church members or others in the community to pitch in and help. Instead they keep repeating “It’s your choice” as if this were a choice between a candy bar, a stick of gum or a lollipop.

Most people in the United States believe that people who are unable to have children are entitled to an infant if they can obtain one. The best situation for the child is rarely a consideration. Prospective adopters are not ordinarily screened for drugs. People who have problems related to infertility are often given priority over less troubled people who have demonstrated their parenting capabilities. In an article on the internet one woman even states that she has bipolar disorder (manic depression) and has adopted.

Cared for in a country where the language is different, children adopted from another country may never be able to converse with their relatives again. How does it feel to someone later to think they must have been so undesirable they had to go halfway around to world to people of a different culture just to find someone who might care about them? Could someone have cared for them without removing them from their own culture? Will the adoptee experiencing prejudice in America understand that rather than being unwanted by everyone in her own country she may have been sold to the buyer with the most cash, that her own needs and the desires of people closer to her in her homeland to care for her may not have been considered important?

Adoptees aren’t cute little kids forever. Search the internet with google and there are 2,600 entries found for “adoptee rights” where adoptee civil and human rights violations are identified. One website refers to adoption as “family apartheid”. But whether they care about the lost family or not, many adoptees speak of dignity issues for adoptees deprived of basic information about themselves.

Very often the children had fit parents or other relatives that loved and wanted them. Many have an older brother or sister left behind that misses them terribly. Even children born later must live with a mother who has problems related to the traumatic loss of her first born.

There is much evidence that adoption is getting less ethical. The intense solicitation for babies by those who profit from adoption is aided by omnipresent advertising creating a “culture of adoption” in which a mother will receive no moral support from anyone. Now everyone in America is in favor of using some nice naive young mother and her family or some poor family to provide a baby for someone who is infertile because they had an STD, have some unhealthy habit, waited too long, are single or gay or just don’t want to be bothered with a pregnancy.

Next time you get invited to an adoption fundraiser, consider this question: Why don’t natural parents who need a little help get treated like the people who adopt?

Laurie Frisch

Next: Open Adoption - The Truth

Adoption Reform Ideas - To Protect Both Prospective Adopters and Natural Family

1) Outlaw all solicitation for babies. (We don't solicit living people for their kidneys and we shouldn't solicit living people for their sons and daughters, either.)

2) Give families time after a child is born to discuss things. (In S. Australia I think no relinquishment is valid prior to two weeks following birth.) Give fathers time to establish paternity.

3) Provide mother, father and other family members information regarding the risks of pshychological and other effects of separation/adoption.

4) Both mother and father (if one is recognized by the court) must sign.

5) Have an unpressured revocation period with no prospective adopter selected until AFTER the revocation period is over for both parents. (In S. Australia I think this is 25 days.)

6) Do not change information on the birth certificate or seal it. Every human being has a right to know who they really are.

(Pregnant and new Moms should already be covered by the state for any absolutely necessary expenses, so there is no need for "down-payments" on babies.)

This would protect prospective adopters and it would protect the child's right to her natural family.