Promoting Adoption - Is the U.S. Promoting Pain?
By Julie A. Rist


 
For adoptive couples, adoption is wonderful.  For the natural mothers and families of adoptees, adoptees themselves and their progeny, adoption is profoundly painful.  So why is the U.S. so enthusiastically funding this institution?
 
Industrialized cotton candy.

Our adoption industry has us believing that adoption is “a good thing,” and in the best interest of the child.  Their words conjure up rainbows, birds singing, and cotton candy.  We do not question this, else we might realize that it is in the best interest of a child to be with his or her mother.  We don't want to think about it.

It smacks of social cleansing.  Adoption facilitates the transfer of children from the "have-nots" to the "haves."  Perhaps they believe they are at the top of the "baby chain," - that money, status, church, and better education make them better human beings and, therefore, better parents.

Are we again embracing slavery, with the “haves” having dominion over the fertile?
 
Dancing on their mothers’ graves
 
Damage done by separation is irrevocable.  The toll on emotional health creates "special needs children."  There is no such thing as a "healthy baby" if separated from his or her mother.

No matter how much they want and can love a child, most adopters are blind to the child’s pain of separation.  This does not make for good parents.  Think, for a moment, how you would feel if you were expected to join in the "celebration" as everyone dances on your mother's grave.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Evidence has accumulated for decades, proving lifelong damage from separation.  But entities like the NCFA, backed by the $1.4 billion adoption industry, take an active interest in sweeping this overwhelming evidence under a rug woven of self-serving ...um... fairy tales.
 
Professionals in pre- and perinatal psychology have shown that “Babies are like us in having clearly manifested feelings in their reactions to assaults, injuries, irritations, or medically inflicted pain. They smile, cry, and kick in protest, manifest fear, anger, grief, pleasure, or displeasure in ways which seem entirely appropriate in relation to their circumstances. Babies are cognitive beings, thinking their own thoughts, dreaming their own dreams, learning from their own experiences, and remembering their own experiences" (David Chamberlain, Ph.D., in his paper “Babies Are Conscious”).

Many authorities have had difficulty publishing their research conclusions (that adoption is wrought with problems, regardless of loving adopters).  Publishing giants do not like the idea of spreading that word.  It's not what the public wants to hear, adoption rhetoric tells them.

David Berkowitz, Ken Bianchi, Patrick Niiranen, Matthew Heikkila, Aaron Lindh - in fact, roughly 2/3 of the world's famous killers - have proven that their adoptions did not work, many murdering their adopters.

Ground Control to Major Tommy

HHS Secretary Thompson's 2001 award of $8.6 million in grants is targeted toward the already wealthy adoption industry.  This industry enthusiastically “encourages” mothers to give up their babies and looks the other way when children are illegally and unethically taken from their families.

Tax "relief" goes to adopters (who already constitute the "haves").  Mothers and families are thrown under the bus (and indeed adoptees, as they are stripped of their identity, denied their original birth certificate, and discouraged from knowing their natural families).

Does America hate children?

America is the only nation which has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most swiftly and broadly ratified international human rights instrument in the world.  Even Somalia has ratified it.  The U.S. refuses.  Why?

We hear that China condones forced abortions.  If true, it's a reason. Is it a good enough reason?  We hear other reasons, too, supporting the archaic notion that "children should be seen and not heard."

What you haven't heard is that our thriving adoption industry is very generous with the government -- especially the "conservative right."  Some have created the Congressional Coalition on Adoption, now fighting INS moratoriums in Cambodia so adopters can get the kids they want.  The CCA, too, look the other way when the children are illegally obtained.  I ask, in exactly whose best interest is adoption supposed to be?
 
Ratifying this treaty could seriously threaten our thriving adoption industry.  "Product supply" could dry up, and we would have to start treating children like human beings instead of commodities.  What a concept.

Helping ourselves

We need to grow up, shed our self-righteous arrogance and entitlement-itis, and learn to live constructively - even philanthropically - with being child-free instead of harvesting little human souls.  We need better quality, stable, nurturing environments where necessarily separated children can thrive without being stripped of their identity and ancestry.  It's time for us to think more about helping others rather than helping ourselves to their children.

 

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