|
 Infant
Adoption in America is a Human Rights Issue
Millions of women (and men) in the United States are subjected to
violations of one of their most fundamental human rights for no other
reason than that they are unmarried. This fundamental right is the
right to keep their own child.
Adoptees are also denied a fundamental right: The right to know who
they really are.
Human Rights - Infant Adoption 1960's Style
The tactics used during the baby scoop era (1960s to mid-1970s) are
well-known to people who remember that time. Women were interred
in maternity homes or sent to "wage homes" as a punishment
for the crime of having a baby out of wedlock. The legal term used
for those in maternity homes was "inmates", clearing up
any doubt on the intention of their confinement. Many were refused
contact with the outside and even with their unborn child's father.
Most were provided no information about pregnancy or childbirth. They
were sent alone to the delivery room, with no support. Many were allowed
no contact with their child following birth.
They were provided no information about government programs that
could have helped them through a temporary financial situation and
no information about the known
effects of separation of a mother and child for adoption.
These tactics to obtain babies for adoption were utilized by the
government and by adoption services providers with complete impunity.
The story told to those hoping to adopt was that the mothers had
"chosen" adoption, that they did not want their babies,
that the babies were orphans.
Human Rights
- Infant Adoption Today
"The giver is called the birth mother or biological mother
or natural mother. These terms cloud the fact that a mother who
'gave up' her child was authoritatively deceived at a vulnerable
moment by her entire support system and the professionals who
were supposed to serve her." -PURELY AMERICAN: LAWS, LIES
AND LOVE, Dr. D. William Troxler, Capital College, 2000
The rates of mothers surrendering parental rights have declined since
the 1970s due to the decreased stigma associated with single motherhood.
With this decline, the adoption industry has doubled it's efforts
to obtain babies, especially healthy white infants from intelligent,
educated mothers. The use of shaming as a means to obtain babies has
diminished, leading to a false sense that women's rights are being
upheld. However mothers are still being lied to about the effects
of separation and legal risks. Adoption, as it is being handled in
the United States today, can hardly be considered a woman's choice.
In recent years, adoption businesses claim that by using the lure
of "open adoption" they are getting more mothers to surrender
their infant sons and daughters.
Adoption:
Exploitation or Choice?
We are inundated with advertising for adoption with no mention of
the options
for pregnant women who want to keep their child.
The promise of Open Adoption is being used by the adoption
industry as a "carrot" to lure in naive young mothers
who might otherwise have kept their children. The effects are often
devastating. Click here to read "Open
Adoption: The Wall" and see what devastating effects open
adoption may have on siblings and the entire natural family as well
as the adoptee.
Maternity homes are being reinstated so that mothers may be separated
from society for "decision-making". They are encouraged
to choose people to adopt before they have a chance to think. Then
they are pressured not to disappoint the people chosen by deciding
to keep their own child.
Fathers are being shunted off to the side by the adoption industry
and encouraged to sign away their parental rights before their child
is even born. Or, they are bypassed all together by means of the Putative
Fathers Registries (which very few of them have ever heard of) or
by the Safe Haven Laws.
After hearing her whole life that "everyone benefits" from
adoption, a mother is primed to think her child may be better off
with someone else.
Child Protective Services get funding from the federal government
based on getting kids into foster care and getting them adopted, ignoring
relatives requests to care for them. (See Parent's
Guide to the System for information on handling social services.)
But it is known that children
do suffer ill effects from being separated from their true parents.
Adoptee Betty Jean Lifton's book Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest
For Wholeness should be required reading for everyone in America!
Adoption Reform Ideas: How to protect
adoptive and natural parents rights.
Human Rights -
Adoptee Human Rights
With the people adopting insisting on retaining the illusion of being
the real parents of the unrelated children they are raising, adoptees
are being denied basic knowledge about themselves. Who ARE they really?
Who are their ancestors and what is their health history?
What is the point of keeping these secrets? It's NOT in the best
interests of the children nor in the best interest of adult adoptees
to be treated as the property of their adopters. A great many of the
people who have adopted children agree that their adoptees deserve
to have this information about themselves. And nearly all moms whose
children were adopted-out would love to know how their children are.
Yet the National Council For "Built Families" NCFA stands
in the way. Well, after all National Council for Adoption NFCA is
not there to help anyone - they represent agencies which profit from
the "sale" of children.
We must have justice for all adoptees.
And in the future, no child should have her identity or any other
information changed on her birth certificate and her own identity
denied.
###
Adoption - Is Heritage a Human
Right?
Human Rights Books:
Rickie
Solinger's Beggars and Choosers and More
Human Rights Movies:
The Magdalene Sisters (2003) Based on real events that took place
in Ireland from the 1960's until 1996. See also the documentary
included on the video/DVD.
Margaret
Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and more (reviewed by Ghostdancer)
Human Rights Articles:
America's
Secret Crime Against The Family
Human
Rights Articles: Social Policy on Adoption and Foster Care and the
Effects on Society
Adoption - Is Heritage a Human
Right?
Women's Reproductive Rights,
Civil Liberties and Social Policy
Read More:"Birthmother's
Day" Celebrations - Celebrating "birthmotherhood"
is celebrating the oppression of single moms.
Human Rights and Adoption?
"Only when the secrecy ends, will the crimes begin to stop as
well. Even today, countless young men and women are coerced out of
their children, left to suffer for a lifetime." - unknown
On Oprah:
Over 80 percent of the women at Dwight Correctional Center are mothers.
According to prison rules, inmates who are pregnant can only keep
their babies for 24 hours after birth, then the baby is given to the
inmate's family or to the state. After talking to mother-to-be Misty,
Jenné told the producers she'd rather be dead than give birth
to a baby in prison.
"I feel bad saying that for the women who are there because
I certainly don't want them to think that they don't have hope,"
Jenné says. "But that notion of someone taking my child
away from me, there is no worse way I could be punished. You know,
you hear all these stories about prisons and they have these luxuries
and, oh, they get a TV or they get three square meals. Put me in the
Taj Mahal, but take away my kids, and I'm dead. I'm emotionally and
spiritually dead. You've punished me in the worst way possible. I
can't imagine them having to do that."
|
