More Adoption Issues and Articles
 Single
Mother's and Father's Rights
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 About
Open Adoption
|
