Adoption: Reproductive Choice or Reproductive Exploitation?
By
Laurie Frisch
When trying to approach people with my concerns about adoption
and it's effects on adoptees and natural mothers, I have
been stymied by the response. Churches, pro-lifers, feminists
and others had difficulty comprehending why adoption surrender
(really, surrendering all parental rights is not an "adoption")
as obtained today in the United States might not be considered
a woman's choice.
When speaking with a pro-lifer about why someone who apparently
cared so much about a child before birth suddenly seemed
not to care about the child's well-being after the child
was born, he immediately replied "It's a woman's choice."
Granted that's an ironic use of language from a pro-lifer.
But, he seemed quite serious. He thought he was protecting
women, even while he was pointing them in the direction
of services that would counsel a woman by telling her essentially
that adoption is no big deal and "Your child will thank
you for it", services that would not provide complete, honest
information such as a parent would expect when making a
life-changing decision regarding their child's well-being.
Before you feminists lambaste me for lingering with pro-lifers,
I have to say it is a feminist I turned to next on this
issue, attempting to get some protections put into place
for naive mothers and their children. The response?
"It's a woman's choice." Just like the pro-lifers,
many feminists truly believe that they are protecting women
by making this "choice" available.
It's commonly believed that a woman faced with an unplanned
pregnancy has three choices: Get an abortion, surrender
her child for adoption, or keep her child. This
availability of choices is supposed to provide a woman with
reproductive protections. A woman should not
be forced or coerced into any one of these or else it is
no longer a choice.
It is the second of these choices that I wish to address:
The idea that a mother who signs a surrender contract freely
chooses to surrender her child for adoption.
Before I get started, I'd like to compare the surrender/adoption
choice to an abortion choice. Many women would prefer
not to have extensive delays prior to an abortion –
it's medically safer to have an abortion earlier for one
thing. So, if she chooses abortion, it's to her advantage
to get the abortion as soon as possible. If she does,
she may have minimal effects, and experience relief afterwards.
Having spent the last year and a half doing research on
the effects of adoption on the women who surrendered their
parental rights and supposedly made a free choice to do
so, I can say authoritatively that surrender choice is not
like abortion "choice" where less information may be desirable
and a woman may have minimal effects afterwards. There
may be a few instances where it's true, but I have yet to
run into any mother who has given birth and was anything
like "relieved" to have lost her child.
If she truly hadn't wanted her child, she would have gotten
an abortion. Even if she wanted an abortion
initially and could not obtain it for some reason, by the
time her child is born, she is as bonded to her child as
any mother. It's nearly always true that she
cares about her child and what was best for her/him more
than she cares about her own well-being.
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.
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.
George W. Bush is excited about the bill HR1997 that will
essentially overturn Roe v. Wade. Some might think
it's innocent and truly aimed at helping someone.
But it's interesting that the Gladney Center, a staunch
financial contributor and lobbyist group to both Jeb and
George W. Bush, is prepared for an onslaught of young mothers
by having a brand new facility all ready and waiting.
In addition there is HR 7 which (tacked onto the end of
the bill) provides for funding of maternity homes with adoption
counseling. And there are bills for "Adoption Aid"
license plates ("Choose Life") from which millions of dollars
in proceeds go to fund adoption. Here's are quotes from
an article in the Illinois Leader on "Adoption
Aid" Specialty License Plates:
"With adoption all about choice, the bills [ Illinois HB
5883 and Senate Bill 3089] should be well-received on both
sides of the political aisle."
"Florida was the first state to offer this plate. Within
four years, over $2,000,000 has been raised for agencies
specializing in adoption."
A young pregnant mother (or her parents) may be drawn
in by advertising for places like the Gladney Center "Dorm"
(aka Unwed Mothers Home) which is enticing with it's "park-like
setting", "beautiful swimming pool" and "cozy fireplace".
Separated from society to "aid" in decision-making and repeatedly
hearing "It's your choice" the mothers will all come
out of there saying "It was my choice". Just like
robots, their brains will be wired on that track.
With their thoughts constrained by the carefully chosen
phrases provided by the adoption industry, it'll be years
before they comprehend that (in the best interest of the
child) the choice to keep their children should have been
fully explored, but it was not.
In addition to lies and information hiding, the intense
solicitation to obtain babies now includes offers to pay
"expenses" far beyond pregnancy-related costs. These
"expenses" include scholarships, car payments, entertainment,
house maintenance, credit card payments, personal loans.
How does this compare to soliciting to buy children from
families off the streets in Cambodia? THAT is considered
criminal!
Yet, in the United States, many people seem to view the
promotion of baby abandonment for profit as acceptable.
I can't help but think a child who discovers she/he was
sold by her mother or by both parents, will NOT come back
later and say "Thanks for considering adoption."
"Thanks for considering adoption." is a slogan being promoted
in the Infant Adoption Awareness Training funded by the
United States government. On October 17, 2000 the
U.S. Congress, under Public Law 103-310, amended the Public
Health Services Act to authorize specific activities pertaining
to Infant Adoption Awareness (title XII, Subtitle A). The
legislation requires the Secretary of the Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS) to award grants to adoption
organizations to develop and implement programs to train
the designated staff of eligible health centers in providing
adoption information and referral to pregnant women "on
an equal basis with all other courses of action".
This training and colorful feel-good brochures are being
provided to those involved in health care. As short
as the training is, it can hardly provide much understanding
of the complex life-long issues surrounding the loss of
a child to adoption. There is no requirement that
this training inform trainees of the life-long emotional
consequences of surrender/adoption to mother, child or other
family members.
While other mothers are counseled carefully about the importance
of a mother spending time with and breast feeding her infant
on the child's well-being, a pregnant mother vulnerable
to "giving up her baby" is still being led to believe her
child will be better off without his mother. She is
called a "birthmother", giving the impression it is possible
to be an ex-mother, to just forget your child and go on
with life.
While other single mothers are caring for two or three
children and frequently receiving support from their fathers,
naïve mothers are led to believe the entire burden of support
should be theirs. The parents of these mothers
such as these are led to believe their daughter will be
better off without her child as well, with the effect of
cutting off yet another important source of support for
her.
There are so many websites and personal advertisements
that cover only advantages of surrendering all parental
rights (which they call an "adoption"). Are there
really disadvantages for a mother who surrenders her child?
Evelyn Robinson identifies the following effects on mothers
in her presentation "Adoption and Loss - The Hidden Grief":
"[mothers who have lost children through adoption] experience
the same outcomes as other people whose grief is disenfranchised
and suppressed. They become depressed, they have low self-esteem,
they develop emotional disturbances and sometimes physical
illnesses. Sometimes they withdraw from society or succumb
to substance abuse. Sometimes they have difficulty forming
healthy relationships. Their grieving often becomes chronic.."
In "A Keynote Address: Known Consequences of Separating
Mother and Child at Birth and Implications for Further Study"
Wendy Jacobs, B.Sc., B.A. provides an overview of the effects
of separation/adoption that have been known since 1941.
Ms. Jacobs states that one reason mothers experience problems
following surrender is the trauma of separation from their
babies:
" Back in 1941 Florence Clothier wrote about the traumatic
psychological effects on the mother of separation from her
baby. She said this trauma is inevitable. "
In "Adoption and Loss - The Hidden Grief", Ms. Robinson
wrote:
" Many parents and children who have been separated by
adoption are still suffering because they have endured a
grievous loss in their lives which has not been acknowledged.
Often they also feel guilty and inadequate because they
have not resolved their grief. The central issue in dealing
with disenfranchised grief is to validate the loss. Family
members who have been separated by adoption need their loss
to be validated and their grief to be acknowledged."
The problems are intensified by the secrecy in adoption.
To combat the intensification of these ill effects, experts
have promoted open adoption, to allow the adoptee to stay
in touch with her/his heritage and natural family and allow
a mother some contact with her child. Unfortunately, open
adoption is now being used as a "carrot" to lure in mothers
who would otherwise have kept their child. People
who are seeking a child frequently pretend to be interested
in open adoption, fully intending to close the adoption
as soon as possible. Even when the adoption stays
open, the mothers (and other children if they have them)
are at the mercy of the adopters as to what kind and how
frequent the contact will be.
But while open adoption may leave the natural mother feeling
used and anguished, other family members expecting continuing
contact with their grandchild, niece, nephew or sibling
are affected as well.
Many of those who have been "touched" by adoption loss
compare adoption to a veneral disease. A woman who
lost her granddaughter to adoption put it this way:
"Adoption: the gift that keeps right on giving. Giving
Depression, giving misery, giving a complete wreckage of
people's lives, giving an endless torment."
One mother whom I'll call Sylvia compared the emotional
impact of the loss of her child to adoption to having her
child torn out of her arms by enemy soldiers.
"At first, I believed it was my fault. I though it
really must be best for my child like I was told. I thought
I deserved this harshest of punishments for having a child
while still in school, unmarried and unable to support it.
Over time, I recognized that the 'soldiers' were adoption
vultures, which had been hovering, looking for me or any
other pregnant woman to exploit."
Whether Sylvia and other mothers consider themselves responsible
for the loss of their child or view it as due to the influence
exerted by the adoption "vultures" makes little difference.
It's still incredibly traumatic for a mother to lose her
child and have it raised by someone else.
Even if she has been persuaded that it is the best thing
for her child, it will still be the most traumatic event
of her life and the loss will continue for her throughout
her life. If she can stand to face it at all,
she will have to look to events like the massacre of an
entire group of people in Rwanda or the German concentration
camps and extermination program to find something that compares
to the horror of it for her. Like the Jews who
encounter people who deny the concentration camps that took
their loved ones even existed, she will have to face those
who deny her motherhood exists – and so deny her the
opportunity to experience her very real grief as a mother.
She learns she must repress her grief and never speak of
her child. Her very existence, as a mother, is completely
unacceptable to society – she might make the adopters
feel bad! Anyway, wasn't this her choice?
It's her own fault.
In The Adoption Reunion Survival Guide, Julie
Jarrell Bailey & Lynn N. Giddens, M.A. quote studies
that suggest as many as 40-60% of mothers suffer from unexplained
secondary infertility (or else cannot bear the thought of
having another child) following the loss of a child to adoption.
Of those that do have another child, they find that no
other child will ever replace their lost child. They
tend to be overprotective of subsequent children, fearing
that they too will somehow be taken.
The importance of the mother-child bond and other family
bonds is well known to psychologists. Mother-child
bonding begins before birth and it cannot be broken.
This bond is not the same as the attachment that may develop
between an adoptee and the people who have adopted him/her.
In her book Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted
Child (1993), Nancy Verrier wrote of her adopted daughter:
"I discovered that it was easier for us to give her
love than it was for her to accept it."
Those women (and families) who have had a child illegally
taken from them and who fight to get their child back face
strong opposition from a public that believes the child
has "bonded" to the people with whom he/she is currently
living. In Journey of the Adopted Self, Betty
Jean Lifton, wrote:
"Now therapists are beginning to understand that there
are primal strivings behind the adoptee's need to reconnect
in some way with the [natural] family. ....
The Argentine psychiatrists were amazed at how easily some
of the "disappeared" children, who have been adopted by
the military families responsible for murdering their mothers
in the late 1970s, had been able to adjust when returned
to their original families years later."
The need for real information in surrender/adoption choice
is not just a desire, but a right that women must have.
Essentially, in a surrender/adoption situation, a woman
should be counseled with the same respect she would be given
as a parent considering major surgery for her child.
She should required by law to be presented clear, honest
information about the long-term effects of separation/adoption
on mothers and adoptees. A woman should never
be subjected to manipulative lies (Adoption is in a child's
best interests, people with material possessions will love
a child better than his/her own parents, "loving" option,
etc. ) and mass-produced highly fictional "Dear-B___mother"
letters which are actually false advertising and nothing
more.
Consider that an honest advertisement from many potential
adopters might read something like this:
PREGNANT?
Our own baby is our dream.
But we can't have one so yours
might be our last hope. My wife is
willing to settle for the idea and
I am going along with it. We can't
understand why anyone would part
with their baby and we will never
respect you for it. We want only a
perfectly healthy white infant and
she/he better love us and be grateful
after all we've been through!
Contact our lawyer at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Can you imagine the uproar if those desiring fetal tissue
for research or medicine solicited women with ads similar
to those put out by adoption lawyers and agencies?
PREGNANT?
It's our dream to complete our
research on xxxx and we need
fetal tissue to do it! We provide
scholarships, pay expenses, etc.
You'll aid people with x, y and z
diseases and give them life!
Women should not have to be vulnerable to solicitation
for their child. To protect women (and children),
there should be no money exchanged by adopters for a child
ever, not even to pay for associated counseling services,
medical bills or expenses.
There is much evidence that a mother's (and father's) consent
to surrender parental rights as it is being obtained in
the United States is not a choice.
To be a choice, the parents must be informed by having
all the effects of separation on adoptees and their natural
families plainly spelled out and understood. Honest
language that is not discriminatory against natural families
must be used.
To be a choice, parents should understand that a person's
circumstances (financial, marital state, etc) change over
time. When a father gets laid off from work,
a family should not immediately be thinking of ridding itself
of the "burden" of their "adoptable" children and likewise
a mother whose resources are slim today should not immediately
think it is wrong to obtain help to make it past this temporary
situation.
To be a choice, all resources available should be clearly
understood. This includes financial support from the
father, government aid, parenting classes, young parents
groups, potential sources of low-cost but high quality baby
items (garage sales, Salvation Army, etc.). When a
mother has chosen to give birth to a child conceived in
rape, she should be taken seriously and helped with suggestions
when she asks how to answer questions (posed by strangers,
friends and the child) about her child's father.
To be a choice, family members should never be advised
to withhold offers of support if they wish to help.
No one should ever be told that it benefits a child to be
abandoned by his/her own parents in favor of an "adoption
plan", just because the child's parents are not married.
These things should be illegal.
To be a choice, there should be no pressure or mention
of any kind of the people who are clamoring to adopt.
In fact, the choice should be made with the idea in mind
that the child may not be cared for at all adequately if
surrendered for adoption because there is no guarantee of
any kind that it will. Most adopters of infants "pay"
for a healthy child that will love them. They will
return "the merchandise" if they are not entirely satisfied
(and possibly sue the agency for wrongful adoption) and
the child could find himself/herself abandoned to
"the system".
This is even true in an "open" adoption. Mothers
want their child to have some contact with their natural
families and know their origins. They frequently
"choose" open adoption over keeping their child, when their
resources are (to the best of their knowledge) limited.
They believe they will minimize the trauma for their child.
Naively, they trust the friendly potential adopters and
their verbal promises. But, an "open" adoption
may become closed at any time without consent of the natural
parents and all contact cut off.
To be a choice, the resources available to parents to keep
their child must be known and readily (not begrudgingly)
available.
To be a choice, fathers should be required by law to provide
financial support and such support readily obtainable.
The United States government should stop blaming and penalizing
women who are caring for their children as if they were
the ones not taking responsibility. Mothers
should not be pushed out into full-time jobs when they have
small children to care for. Training and
other resources that will help low income women to find
higher paying employment should be provided.
When children who are living with one parent find that parent
absent because he/she must work full-time or more, it's
the children who suffer from this and it's not right.
Without these protections for women, it can hardly be fair
to call the surrendering of parental rights a "choice".
Without these protections, it's not a protection of a woman's
reproductive rights but an exploitation that ignores her
rights. It's not a protection of children's best interests,
but ignores those interests.
The primary reason for this exploitation is to provide
people with the dream of having a child "of their own".
I call this a dream because the reality is that the child
is not "their own" even though they may "own" it legally.
The lack of acknowledgement of their natural family as a
part of their reality is troublesome to adoptees.
For adoptees who experience this possessiveness, this desire
on the part of adopters to "own" them, it is a problem into
adulthood.
Many of you may be learning about adoption loss for the
first time today. One of the inherent characteristics
of oppression is that the victim's voices are silenced.
Social workers and others have typically spoken for natural
mothers and adoptees. Websites with adoption forums
(which give the appearance of being open to all viewpoints)
frequently delete unwanted posts, just as they "deleted"
the unwanted mothers. When they post adoption stories,
only happy, grateful stories will ever be posted.
They will never post a story from an adoptee who describes
her surrender/adoption (or foster care for those whose adoptions
were terminated) as unsatisfactory and questions why her
mother was not helped to keep her.
In addition, a language which is negative and discriminatory
against the natural family has been generated by the adoption
industry. If you can control language you can control
people's thoughts.
According to the adoption industry, phrases like "own child"
must never be used, but must be replaced by "biological
child", giving the impression that a mother is simply an
egg donor. The phrase "give up" is also on the
list of words, evidently too many natural mothers realized
that they did simply "give up" hope and "give in" to the
pressure and lies. The word "adoption" itself is taboo
and has been replaced by "placement" to give the impression
that natural mothers have control. No mention is made
of the extra money paid by adopters to get their advertisement
in front of some naïve pregnant woman ahead of others' ads.
The term "FOB" (father of the baby) is used on the Gladney
Center website to refer to a child's father. Generalizing
and calling fathers FOBs is de-humanizing language similar
to but even worse than "birthfather" because it is so close
to S.O.B. While some fathers may shirk their responsibilities
(and thus merit name-calling) a great many might be pleased
and proud to assist mothers in nurturing and taking responsibility
for their children if fathers were encouraged (and required)
to do so, rather than being shunted off to the side or dispensed
with as quickly as possible in the interest of finalizing
an adoption.
Natural mothers are quick to point out other misleading
phrases. Joss Shawyer, in her column Voices From Exile,
wrote about how natural families are "touched by" adoption
in her article entitled "Touched By Adoption, With a Blowtorch".
Mothers who are traumatized, shamed and isolated (and constrained
in their thoughts by language carefully chosen by the adoption
industry) frequently take decades to face reality.
It is initially incredibly painful for a mother to acknowledge
that she has been used as baby-making machine to provide
a baby for someone else. Once the baby is in possession
of adopters the mother becomes a cast-off byproduct of the
process.
Many mothers and adoptees are speaking out, via their own
personal websites or through groups such as Exiled Mothers Origins
Inc. NSW, Origins Canada, and other Origins Branches;
Origins Queensland, ) as well as Adoption Considerations,
AdoptionCrossroads.org,
AbolishAdoption,
Adoption:Legalized
Lies and many more.
However for the mother who finds the information she needs
a day too late, the presence of these websites is no consolation.
To summarize, adoption choice is commonly perceived as
a protection for women who truly do not want their babies
– an option to abortion. In reality, adoption
"choice" as it is being implemented in the United States
nearly always ensnares mothers who truly do want their babies
and would be wonderful mothers. Most of these women
will be married within a few years after their child is
born, often to their child's father.
A pregnant woman who intends to give birth must be viewed
as a parent and deserves respect as a parent.
She is a parent, not "not-a-parent". She deserves
real information and kindly assistance to help her through
a temporary situation.
The "loving" option rhetoric designed to separate babies
from their parents should be illegal as should any solicitation
for babies or children. Whether the payment offered
is money, a television, potential scholarships, or just
"feeling good about doing the right thing" the truth is,
these people soliciting for babies and children are vultures
working to tear children away from the mothers who otherwise
would have kept and nurtured them.
No one should ever be allowed to pay money for a child,
not even to pay for associated counseling services, medical
bills or expenses. No one should ever be paid or provided
an incentive for adopting. No one and no organization
should be provided a bonus or incentive to get a child adopted
rather than returning that child to her/his family.
Let's stop the exploitation of women. Let's make
surrendering parental rights a real choice, by first calling
it what it truly is (surrendering all parental rights, not
an "adoption"), by eliminating the money in adoption, by
providing real help and real information for mothers, and
by removing all pressures on women to surrender their parental
rights including the false advertising and solicitation
of mothers for their babies.
Copyright © 2003 Laurie A. Frisch
REFERENCES
- Bailey, J.J. & Giddens,.L.N., M.A.(2001) The
Adoption Reunion Survival Guide. Oakland, CA:
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
- Finnegan, J.P. (Feb 18, 2004), "Help Choose Life Adoption
Aid Specialty Plates"; The Illinois Leader [World
Wide Web] Available: http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=12278
- Jacobs, W. B.Sc., B.A. (2002) "A Keynote Address Known
Consequences of Separating Mother and Child at Birth and
Implications for Further Study" [World Wide Web] Available:
(http://www.angelfire.com/or/originsnsw/wendys_pres.html)
- Jones, M.B. (1993). Birthmothers: Women
who have relinquished babies for adoption tell their stories.
Chicago, IL.: Chicago Review Press.
- Lifton, B.J. (1994) Journey of the Adopted Self:
A Quest for Wholeness. New York: BasicBooks.
- Robinson, E.(2001) "Adoption and Loss - The Hidden Grief"
(Presented in New Zealand, USA, Canada, England, Ireland,
and Scotland) [World Wide Web] Available: (http://www.clovapublications.com/Tour%202001.pdf)
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , Administration
for Children and Families. (no date given) "Infant
Adoption Awareness Training Program Guidelines" [World
Wide Web] Available: (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/programs/iaatp.htm)
- Verrier, N. (1993). The Primal Wound:
Understanding the Adopted Child. Baltimore,
MD: Gateway Press.
WEBSITES
