Dear Adoption, If We Both Have Lost
Isn’t loss what led many of our (adoptive) mothers to adoption? So frequently many of us heard about infertility and hopes for biological children prior to defeat, acceptance, and then adoption.
I was a last resort.
As an adoptee who grew up hearing about my adoptive mother’s infertility, here are my suggestions and insights:
- Infertility is none of your adopted children’s business.
- Please don’t ask your child to bear the weight of what you lost in addition to what they lost.
- Please be careful and avoid saying things such as, “we hoped for our own children, but God had a different plan”. In most cases this is not comforting. There isn’t really a conversation in which your infertility doesn’t make us feel bad or less than or like a last resort.
- Please don’t ask adoptees to acknowledge your losses (especially if you are unwilling to acknowledge their losses). Children should never be asked to acknowledge adult losses which led to their becoming a part of your family. That is not teaching children empathy. That is burdening children who already carry heavy loads.
If we both have lost in order for our family to have been formed, please don’t heap your loss on me. I can barely manage my own losses as it is. Remember who the parent is.
I am an adoptee who is infertile, zero chance at having a biological child. I hope to be a mother someday through foster-to-adopt as I believe that is the only ethical form of adoption. I have grieved and agonized over the loss of being a natural mother and creating life with my husband but that grief is mine and his to be managed privately and/or with other adults. I don’t feel entitled to anyone else’s children. I have never given to an adoption fund in order to finalize the separation of a mother and her child. I will never adopt a child through the foster care system unless I’m positive every effort has been attempted to keep biological family connections in tact. Please don’t read the above and assume I am insensitive to those who are infertile. I live in that sorrow each day. I wept and screamed every time the pregnancy test gave me the same, sad news. I have cried on public restroom floors while furniture shopping and at relatives homes during birthday parties for their biological children. I have opted out of more baby showers than I can count, not because I couldn’t endure them but because my friends all looked at me with that same we feel so bad for you expression while serving cake and punch.
I don’t intend to be critical of your choices. I intend to inform you of something you may be doing unintentionally.
Your grief from not being able to have biological children should never be carried by an adopted child. Your intentions don’t matter. I am telling you, as an adopted child and as a woman who is infertile, this loss and grief is not a child’s to bear but bear it, they will. If you bring it up, if you talk about how you wished for your own children and that’s what led you to adopt, your adopted children will bear what you grieve. We bear the loss and trauma of our biological families and cultures. We bear the money you raised/spent on us. We, adoptees, bear the weight of God’s second best plan for your family due to infertility.
Your broken picture of the family you hoped for, every dollar you spent on us, every hassle and delay involved in our adoption process, and every resentment and derogatory word you speak about our birth families/countries rests on our shoulders. We bear the weight of it all so please be more careful with us. Our backs are broken. We can’t bear anymore weight.
My parents were warm and loving. They were good people, but I heard about their shattered hopes of a (biological) family all my life and I bore the weight of those tattered pieces. I still bear it even as an adult. Additionally, as an adult I now wear the weight of my own infertility and it’s nearly too much for one person to carry but I won’t lighten my load by forcing it on another – a child – the way it was forced on me.
If we both have lost, perhaps you should bear your losses and I’ll bear mine.
dearadoption.com 
You have a valid and unique perspective. Hugs.
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Dear East Indian Adoptee –
You make very good points. I hope adopters are reading and understanding your words.
I am very sorry for your infertility. This is a double loss for you to not be able to conceive your own biological child and deal with separation from your own blood kin.
On one hand, you seem to have thought out this foster-to-adopt route to parent a child that is not your blood. I commend you for these statements: “I have grieved and agonized over the loss of being a natural mother and creating life with my husband but that grief is mine and his to be managed privately and/or with other adults. I don’t feel entitled to anyone else’s children. I have never given to an adoption fund in order to finalize the separation of a mother and her child. I will never adopt a child through the foster care system unless I’m positive every effort has been attempted to keep biological family connections intact.”
There is one thing that troubles me, though. That is, you said, “I hope to be a mother someday through foster-to-adopt as I believe that is the only ethical form of adoption.”
If you go ahead with all of the steps of adoption, including the court order that finalizes the adoption to the Vital Statics office that will revoke and seal the child’s medical record of birth – the birth certificate, and the automatic issuance of a replacement birth certificate that states false facts of birth, that you have given birth to this child, then that will most definitely NOT be an ethical adoption.
No adoption is ethical if it requires the adopted person to suffer the loss of her birthright.
All children are born and all children’s births are recorded by the hospital on a medical record of birth that is signed by the attending physician. After the birth certificate is signed by the attending physician who verified the birth, the birth certificate is sent to the Vital Statics office where it is signed and certified by the state’s director of Vital Statistics.
When a child is adopted, even through foster-to-adopt, the finalization of adoption requires that the child’s birth certificate is replaced with a birth certificate that states the birthdate and time and place, but changes the child’s name, and removes the names of the actual parents, and places the names of the new legal “parents”. The attending physician does not sign the new, amended birth certificate because this “birth” did not actually occur. Only the state’s Director of Vital Statistics signs the new, amended birth certificate.
Assuming that you were adopted by white adoptive parents, your adoption is a good example. Your amended birth certificate states your new Americanized name, and indicates that two white people sired, conceived and birthed you, a female of East Indian origins. You are a different race and your legal birth certificate states false facts.
If my guess is incorrect, then I apologize. But you get my point. Adoption’s cruel identity theft is even more obvious when whites adopt children of a different race.
This is why no adoption is ethical.
However, if you can secure extended family ties so that this foster-to-adopt child can maintain some family connections, and if you can convince the court and the Vital Statistics office to keep the child’s actual birth certificate intact, then the legal process you are looking for is Legal Guardianship, not adoption. If you can move forward with an adoption that will leave the child’s birth certificate intact and her parents’ names on the birth certificate without you and your husband being named parents of birth on a new birth certificate, you may be able to ask for an adoption certificate. The final Order of Adoption may be enough proof that you are legally the new parents.
But, think about this. Why do you want to be named legal parents? You can simply love and care for a foster child and become legal guardians. You can become a family in that regard. You already have the experience of parenting without being named as the new legal parents. Adoption requires you to obliterate the foster-adopted child’s identity for the sole purpose to provide you with your desire to be someone’s legal parent.
That is burdening the child with your desire to obliterate her birth certificate to create a false one. Why should a child bear that loss?
No matter how you slice this, I see adoption as unethical for the reasons I just explained.
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Infertility has been a part of human existence since humans climbed out of the waters millennia ago. Children who have been abandoned have ben separated from their DNA kith and kin for as many ‘ reasons’ as there are shells on the shores of the oceans separating the continents. One has little to do with the other because we all share about 99.9% of our genes, and within those genes are those which doom a developing embryo and abort it spontaneously because it cannot survive. As for the link between the transference of the abandoned child by courts to an infertile couple, that also is not new, nor is the fact that the child had no say in the transfer also not new. That said, allow me to tell you, Miss anonymous, my own version -except for the part of buying into fostering-adoption, something I would never have chosen to do on the basis it what was don to me was wrong, for me to do the same things is equally wrong and equally as irresponsible.
I was abandoned and involuntary given by court decree to an infertile couple. By the time the final adoption order was finalized they were expecting their first live birth who turned in to being the bain of my existence and only adding to my many problems caused by the ‘ saviours ‘ of the word. That the child born who survived was a boy was just more woe in my short life-woe which never dissipated but grew greater as my years rolled by. Two more children were born to this couple, one who died in infancy of CHD and the other, a daughter, who came into the world when I was fifteen, a time which for any girl is fraught with awkwardness and angst. For me, the ingrate adoptee, it was far more complicated. In 1963 I left the premises of my torturers at barely 18 years of age, but with enough battles scars of body, soul, psyche and mind to match any veteran of wars’
tale.
By age 25 I suffered thru 6 spontaneous abortions, the death of my daughter who died of CHD at not yet 4 months of age; by age 30 I had six more spontaneous abortions and a complicated pregnancy ending at 25 wks gestational age with my son’s birth -a tiny morsel which fit in the palm of my hand and who had no chance to survive-but he did survie and has his own son who will be a year old this month.
Foster a child? Adopt a child? Repeat the wrongs done to me and countless others? Take another’s identity as mine was taken? Separate a child perhaps forever from his/her DNA -siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins? (Maternal & Paternal) No way, José! Infertility and zygote-embryo-fetus unable to survive extra-utero are now known to be part of our genome. Some conditions can be treated and others cannot. But whether or not their is treatment available, it is unethical to take a child NOT yours and raise it as your own.
As another blogger wrote recently ‘Children need their own family-NOT yours!’
Become a guardian of a vulnerable child. In that way you become the child’s protector without stealing his/her identity and maintaining their integrity and inheritance.
A spontaneous abortion is nature’s way to end an unviable pregnancy, It is too often referred as a ‘miscarriage’ . Justice is too often miscarried … but a developing child in utero is not.
Best wishes to you.
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The comments above truly break my heart. Easy Indian Adoptee, this wasn’t a place for others to judge your story or tell you what YOU need to do with your life. This is not a place for others to tell you how you should become a parent. This is a place for you to share your story and unload some of your pain. I heard your pain your words. I cried reading. It is my worst fear to never be a biological mother to my own children. My heart aches for you, my fellow Indian adoptee. I love your heart and desires to be a mom. I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to tell you how to do that. That’s between you and your husband, not us. I would kindly remind our other fellow adoptees to leave their own beliefs to themselves as not everyone shares them. Your pain is heard here, East Indian Adoptee. Your story was heard here. Your words were heard here. My heart goes to you my friend, and I pray that you find some peace in your sorrow, hope in your future.❤️
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Actually, I know firsthand what adoption takes away. You have no right to assume how I feel about my adoption. Each adoptee’s experience is as unique as a snowflake—not every one is experienced the same way. I am not here to argue, but I’ll thank you to keep your opinions about me to yourself. My comment was directed toward my fellow Indian adoptee who was brave enough to share her pain.
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Thanks, Legitimate Woman. After I read Bekahbug9412pranali23’s response, and in it her audacity to play the shame game with the 2 of us who are probably old enough to be her mother if not grandmother to those kids who can never be hers even if a judge signs in blood to decree that they are, I had to take myself away from it to calm my Algerian temper before responding to her complicity in the myth and great harm called adoption..
So, Bekahbug9412pranali23, you are the what in this affair? How about EX-SPURT? Yes, that certainly describes you and too many others who -even if they are adoptees themselves -would rather be in denial rather than to face the truths of themselves, of the systems and of life itself.
To echo LW in a slightly different way, you need to take reading comprehension 101, preceded by understanding that everyone has his or her own ideas and understanding about subjects, and yours is just one-without any explanation or background in this subject aside from yo ur being adopted and terrified that you won’t mother YOUR Bio kids …horrors! You might want to review what it is to be in denial, because it is apparent that in denial you are.
Miss Anonymous wrote of her experiences, and her narrative. Her narrative is both similar and different to my own. Our responses are vastly different, yet eerily the same with divergent paths chosen in consequence.
Each narrative of an adoptee is like DNA -99.9 % is common to us all, with 0.1% unique to each individual.
Being adopted is being adopted is being adopted. Period. No matter where or when or how it took place. (And by the way, do take a course in elementary biology and genetics to understand that all the descriptions you and others use are not only false,, they carry on the myths of race and ethnicity via go-politics-all of which have done the greatest of harm to humanity who in turn uses these descriptions to humiliate others while elevating their own delusions of superiority.
No fact should be hidden, but its introduction to a child should be age appropriate and delicate wording should be used. It isn’t what one says that is the harm, but how it is said and in what manner; furthermore, what actions accompany the words during and after they are off the tongue are equally important. The words ‘I love you’ are meaningless if followed be a slap or a push or worse. And a judge’s decree is meaningless when DNA proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the one who insists that she is your mother is, in fact, NOT, any more than the children of the adopters are your siblings.
By the way Bekahbug9412pranali23,this place is one in which we share our experiences and our knowledge, or just read what others write, or, make suggestions … and sometimes give someone a tongue lashing (hypothetically since this is in written, not oral ,form) for their audacity or rudeness-especially if we are older with many experiences that my help someone to see another way to resolve their dilemas.
Children need their OWN parents and family-NOT another’s -not a court-appointed ones
And no one needs the pro-adoption trolls on this space, or the ones who live in their own la la land in effort to staunch or to deny the painful effects that life hands to most on this planet.
All cats are grey in the world of adoptees…
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PS Bekahbug9412pranali23-we have all shared our pain… do learn to read and to not insist you are th center of attention… I can assure you that you are the least of our worries … and you only know what may have been taken from you …not what has been taken or enforced on others.
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This conversation has left me feeling guilt about adopting our daughter. We struggled with infertility but we did birth a child who is alive and well. We knew we wanted more children but we were done with the infertility roller coaster. We adopted her because we realized we couldn’t help all the children in the world but we could help one. She needed a home. She needed to be loved and cared for. She needed stability and access to health care. She needed to have a family whether it was blood or not. Although her birth mom’s name is no longer on her official birth certificate, she knows no difference and feels no loss over the fact that my name is now there. It is simply a piece of legal paper to her. Because we feel that she should be able to know her birth family she does have contact with them and we are fine with that. Does she feel a sense of loss over her situation? Of course she does. But if she had stayed in her birth family I shudder to think where she would be by now. I think it is truly an awful thing to say adoption is unethical. I hope you who are saying this will rethink the use of that term. Adopting our daughter was NOT unethical; it was helping a child in need. Using words like being an adoptive mom, legal guardian, and foster mom is just semantics and, while I can feel the pain here, I think this is one of the oddest conversations about adoption I have ever seen.
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You have been pushed out of your comfort zone by the TRUTH. That TRUTH is what is finally setting us FREE!
You are not the one who was involuntarily given to others, and you are nt the one who doesn’t look like the others because our DNA is NOT your DNA. If we have disabused you of your saviour complex then we are succeeding in our determination to break the myth of the adoption- is- wonderful syndrome.
Slowly but surely adopters are stumbling upon the reality of what they have done to children NOT their own. They are beginning to understand that what that child needed and needs is their OWN family-their OWN mother and father and sibs, etc.
If you feel guilty, listen to what the TRUTH is telling you and right the wrong done, then pass it on. A judge cannot make you into what you are not, nor can he/she change the child from Yeblung Fungi Buss to Mickey Q Mouse.
Think beyond yourself and see the child’s reality-and your own. The child in your custody has his/her OWN parents,, his own brothers and sisters, his/her own grandparents, cousins and extended family, all of whom share cMs with h/her. cMs are strands of DNA which come to a child over the millennia and what makes him him or her her. Everything that this child is comes from his genome which is made up of his ancestors.
Thank God for Drs. Crick and Watson and their staff for discovering DNA and the double Helix. Little did they know what saviours -in the real sense-they have been to help the adoptee find his or her family ties and their ancestors-all of the aforementioned the courts and legislatures with colluding judges and social services and agencies denied us -our own information and OUR truths-not your delusions or the collective societal control over us no matter what age we become. Some, like me. learned at an early age to demand our right to be heard and to know from whence we came. Others are just learning.
Mothers forced to relinquish their child are coming to speak out and are finding THEIR child who they never wanted to be parted from. Even the happiest of adoptees eventually want to know who is their mother and where did they originate. And NO! Adoptees fortunate enough make connection with their NOTHERS don’t just say what a grand court-appointed family they had and rush out the door they just came in. They want to know why…and all the other things that non-adoptees know because they grew up in their own DNA circles, not someone else’s.
Odd conversation? Maybe in days gone by, but not in the 21st century. Get used to it, because this is just beginning to be recognized as very valid and cathartic. And we have no reason to apologize about fighting for the rights that are as much ours as for you non-adoptees who have no clue!
BTW: The road to hell IS indeed paved with ‘good’ intentions ….
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To H’s Mom –
If this conversation makes you feel guilty, that’s good. That means you’re thinking about the long-term consequences of adoption on adoptees and on natural parents. When you adopted, you were concerned about your microcosm of the world. You say you adopted because you wanted to help one child and she needed a home. Understand that people who want to help can and do provide loving homes to children without adopting them. Adopting equals the destruction of a family and the obliteration of the child’s identity. That is why adoption is unethical. Additionally, adoption leaves permanent scares on the natural parents and extended family left behind.
H’s Mom, you state: “Although her birth mom’s name is no longer on her official birth certificate, she knows no difference and feels no loss over the fact that my name is now there. It is simply a piece of legal paper to her.”
It does not matter that your adopted daughter “knows no difference and feels no loss over the fact that my name is now there. It is simply a piece of legal paper to her.” Your statements minimize the seriousness of the meaning behind the laws that mandate the revocation, sealing and replacing of adoptees’ birth certificates. Besides, why are you speaking for her? Is she a minor child? If so, just wait a few years, or maybe even decades, and your adopted daughter may wake up someday to question adoption.
You and your adopted daughter are but a drop in the bucket of the millions of people worldwide who are affected by discriminatory laws and social policy. Lift yourself out of your little world to acknowledge that these laws were written almost 100 years ago to hide illegitimacy and bury the bastard and throw away the sinful woman who had a baby outside of marriage. Yet, these laws have morphed the way society views children. Children are bought and sold, trafficked from one continent to another, money exchanging hands, and many times in the name god. No, you only think you saved one child, but what you did (because perhaps you were unaware) was fall victim of adoption’s savior mindset. Instead of dealing with the family unit as a whole, your solution (and perhaps the adoption agency’s solution) was to slap a band aid on whatever was happening with the parents at the time and permanently remove the child from her family. In that process, her birth certificate was stolen from her and replaced because that is the law.
You say that, to her, her birth certificate is a simple piece of paper. Awhh, but most people don’t think what this piece of paper really is and why it is important. Again, I say to you, you did not conceive this child. You did not give birth to her. There are no hospital records and your DNA is not in her body. Ethically, it is wrong for YOUR name to be on a legal birth certificate claiming that you gave birth to this girl. A birth certificate records the moment a child entered the world. You do not have the moral right to claim that you are responsible for growing her inside your body and birthing her. You did not give her life! Another woman did! Those are facts of life that you, and the government, stole!
But this is the law. You have the legal right to be named as her mother of birth on a falsified birth certificate.
God, I hope this guilt eats you up. Because then, you might feel strongly enough to join the adoption reform movement to change these horrific laws.
I am disgusted by this demeaning law that removed my mother and father from my legal birth certificate. I will fight to my dying breath to change this law and to make New York State reinstate my parents as my parents.
My mother died when I was 3 months old and my father, in his grief, followed the advice of a priest to give me up. He kept his other 4 children, my full blood siblings. My mother was 30 years old when she died of cancer in 1956. I wonder how she would feel to know what New York State had done, striking her name off of her 5th child’s birth certificate and renaming her infant daughter?
H’s Mom, you state: “But if she had stayed in her birth family I shudder to think where she would be by now.”
Again, a child can and should be removed from an abusive family. I am a social worker, so I know. A child can be safe in another home, but legal protections should be put into place to protect that child’s right to her own birth certificate, her own name, her own family lineage, and to have visitation with any and all relatives at any time. Adoption destroys all of that. Fostering provides a safe home, supposedly, and legal guardianship protects the child’s rights while also providing the child protections in that the legal guardians have legal authority for housing, schooling, medical and social and emotional caring – providing love.
H’s Mom, you state: “I think it is truly an awful thing to say adoption is unethical. I hope you who are saying this will rethink the use of that term.”
That is your opinion. It is my opinion that all adoptions are unethical. I have provided proof to back up my opinions. And I can provide more proof with links to articles – will be back to do that.
H’s Mom, you state: “Adopting our daughter was NOT unethical; it was helping a child in need.”
Keep telling yourself that you did the right thing. You could have helped a child in need by being her legal guardian, but you decided to make her legally “your own”. That is the mistake. You did not have to “make her your own” to help her.
H’s Mom, you state: “Using words like being an adoptive mom, legal guardian, and foster mom is just semantics”
No, a mother is the mother who conceived and gave birth and whose DNA lives in her child and her future generations. All other females who care for that child have descriptive words in front of the word “mother” to show the relationship: “foster mother” means a woman who cares for a child as a mother would, but one who is not the child’s mother. An “adoptive mother” is a woman who is appointed by a court of law as the child’s replacement mother.
H’s Mom, you state: “and, while I can feel the pain here, I think this is one of the oddest conversations about adoption I have ever seen.”
So, just because you have never been involved in a conversation like this one ever before, you think this is odd. Well, welcome to the world of adoptees who are standing up for our rights to the truth!
I’ve been at this since I was found by my 4 older siblings when I was 18 in 1974! I had the shit kicked out of me then, and I was still in high school. Imagine how shocked I was to find out that all of my relatives knew about my adoption, knew where my mother was buried, knew where my siblings and my father were living, and knew details of my life that I did not know.
I joined the adoption reform movement and have been to adoption conferences all over the United States. There are international adoption conferences, too. There are organizations out there that you, H’s Mom, are not aware of, that help adoptees and our natural parents cope with the destruction that adoption cause on our lives.
Of course this seems odd to you! You are being faced with the truth! Just because you haven’t been involved doesn’t mean these sorts of conversations haven’t been happening around the world for many, many years! WAKE UP! The adoptees have been rising up and taking back our rights while you’ve been living your quiet little life.
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I didn’t come here to get verbally attacked, only to show support for this DA author, so I’m bowing out of this conversation.
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Bekah I think it’s terrible how you’ve been treated here in just trying to offer support to someone else. Each person has their own truth, and just because someone doesn’t fall in line, doesn’t mean they are in denial. People have different lived experiences. Good luck as you continue to grow in your own journey.
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I agree with you! Like I said above, each adoptee’s experience is as unique as a snowflake. Everyone is different and that’s completely okay. People will draw their own morals and conclusions from their individual experiences. Thank you for the love. Hugs.
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Important links to articles on birth certificates, adoption law, family preservation, books on adoption published on my blog:
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https://forbiddenfamily.com/2017/03/24/presenting-my-sealed-birth-certificate-and-falsified-one-as-evidence-of-new-york-state-fraud-revoking-sealing-and-falsifying-adoptees-birth-certificates-is-unconstitutional/
Presenting My Sealed Birth Certificate and Falsified One as Evidence of New York State Fraud – Revoking, Sealing and Falsifying Adoptees’ Birth Certificates is Unconstitutional
In this article, I present scanned images of all of my birth certificates so that people can see what an adoptee’s sealed birth certificate looks like in comparison with adoption’s amended – falsified – birth certificate. The Catholic Church also falsified my baptismal certificate.
If you think that lying is okay to do to an adoptee, think again. What would you do if you found out that your spouse lied to you about something very important? You would feel betrayed. That is how adoptees feel to know that our adoptive parents and our state governments and our federal government stole our natural-born identities and replaced them with fabricated lies on state-mandated documents that supposedly prove our births.
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https://forbiddenfamily.com/1930-birth-records-of-illegitimates-and-of-adopted-children/
1930: Birth Records of Illegitimates and of Adopted Children
The following pages are copies of the paper read before the Vital Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association, on October 30, 1930, written by Sheldon L. Howard, Illinois State Registrar of Vital Statistics, and Henry B. Hemenway, Medical Assistant Registrar, Vital Statistics Division, Illinois Department of Public Health, Springfield, Illinois.
The article below was downloaded, printed, scanned, and uploaded on this website for educational purposes. It was originally published in The American Journal Public Health Nations Health, 1931 June; 21(6): 641–647.
A PDF is available at this link from The National Center for Biotechnology Information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1556353/pdf/amjphnation00610-0039.pdf
This is the basis for which all American state laws on the sealing and amending —- falsifying — of all adoptees’ birth certificates have been made into law.
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https://forbiddenfamily.com/open-letter-to-adoptive-parents/
Open Letter to Adoptive Parents
The following was written by an adoptee, Lilly, who gave permission for this to be published here.
An open letter to APs, PAPs, and anyone who has even considered adoption: December 06, 2011
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https://forbiddenfamily.com/family-preservation-adoption-prevention/
FAMILY PRESERVATION ~ ADOPTION PREVENTION ~
REUNIFICATION ~ KINSHIP CARE ~ GUARDIANSHIP ~
ANTI ADOPTION
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https://forbiddenfamily.com/books-on-adoption-reproductive-technologies/
This is a list of 135 books that I own. It is not comprehensive of all published adoption books. Look them up on the Internet, buy them, and read them. Educate yourself on the realities of adoption.
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EXCELLENT!!! BRAVO!! So well said. So sensitive.
http://MirahRiben.blogspot.com
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[…] https://dearadoption.com/2017/11/03/dear-adoption-if-we-both-have-lost/ […]
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Facts About Adoption you Won’t Hear from Your Adoption Agency
(with a link to this blogpost!
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eight-facts-about-adoption-wont-hear-from-adoption_us_59ff7696e4b076eaaae270b2?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003
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More fallacious information from so-called journalists….
My advice-skip the Huff-Post line(s) for the most part because they have left out 3/4 of the adoptees and their real situations-and as usual dismiss the abandonees whose parents (note the plural !) drop hem off with impunity in various places while heading east or west or north or south as the child(ren) left in limbo until the not-so-nice judge signs them off like a check list or a shopping or a to-dao list as if they were unwanted left overs to others who demand that their names be changed and the formerly child(ren) of Pat and Mike become daughter/son of Mickey and Minnie Mouse-bereft not only of parent(s) but of the rest of their close relatives but of their own identity (which often includes religion, culture, language, group association, etc.) … All of which causes intense pain and lifelong grief.
And if anyone thinks that an international adoptee is different than a domestic adoptee, better reconsider. We all loose the same things no matter what type of wrapping we arrived in. Emotional, psychological and physical pain knows NO artificial barriers or geo-political boundaries, and is one of the few entities -collectively or singularly where one size fits all.
What pretentious clap trap from the likes of Huff Post whose sources read like the inmate’s list of rogues an charlatans … My response: Balderdash!
Not all adoptions take place thru an ‘agency’, just as there is a great myth about the profiteering of ‘selling kids. Yes there are ‘adoption agencies’ and there are unscrupulous humans who sell kids to others-but this is not the great commercial venture being told by equally unscrupulous humans out to make a dollar from the vulnerable childless couple or the naïve and/or gullible. Trust me when I tell you that a ward of the state/county is hardly a profit maker and to be wary of book titles which are a come on but not worth the cost of the cover in terms of wither fact or usefulness! As PT Barnum observed, There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute. Take care not to be one of them.
The only true family advocates are those who know that the only family an adoptee should have is his/her OWN DNA parents; if that is not possible, grandparents, aunts, uncles or older siblings. At last resort there should be a guardianship appointed so that the child’s inheritance -in all that entails-and name and culture and language and religion is preserved and safe guarded. Only in the west -and the sub-continent-are children stripped of their self and of their true identities. (Excluded are the indigenous peoples who always look after their own-unless of course the colons who inhabit their territories intrude and remove the child.)
And just in case some of you oh so certain ones want to challenge me, I have degrees in English Lit and Psychology focused on the child; a masters in Human Services… and a BSN… I am an abandoned adoptee whose story would curl your hair and/or toenails. I also read, write, and speak at least three languages fluently and have extensive world travels -and despite sealed documents and a closed adoption did retrieve my OWN birth certificate and was able, over decades, piece together a family tree of many branches from four continents and met personally 7 close members of my paternal family-all without th internet, indexes, smart phones or mass market psych-babble volumes on adoptions… and.. Drs. Crick and Watson were my first heroes and remain so to this day five and half decades since they announced the double helix and were awarded the Nobel Prize.
And I work with adoptees in search as a charity because I understand their fears and their hopes only too well.
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O My Goodness! You just wrote everything I have ever felt but didnt know untill I read this.
My non biological brother was adopted due to infertility issues. I was adopted 2 years later because he had major health issues. Little do they know I have issues too, but hold them to myself.
Bla Bla Bla – I could go on – but YES!!! your words…
Please be careful and avoid saying things such as, “we hoped for our own children, but God had a different plan”. In most cases this is not comforting. There isn’t really a conversation in which your infertility doesn’t make us feel bad or less than or like a last resort.
Please don’t ask adoptees to acknowledge your losses (especially if you are unwilling to acknowledge their losses). Children should never be asked to acknowledge adult losses which led to their becoming a part of your family. That is not teaching children empathy. That is burdening children who already carry heavy loads.
Are so true – what I have carried with me for 51 years I am just now learning about – I too never had children – personal choice that I now so regret!
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Every time I hear or read or see the word ‘lie’ is relation to ‘adoptees’ or ‘absorbed children’ or ‘relinquished children’ I cringe at the too many reminders of the perfidy of humans-especially those of the west and in particular the US. Whether originally said by Disraeli, Twain (Clements), or Courtney, the phrase “Lies, damned lies, and statistics …” rises quickly to the forefront of my thought, followed closely behind by all of the too many self-[proclaimed experts on who does what to whom for what reason in what fashion- all if course the latest discovery by the blogger, person with a gazillion letters in a long list behind his or her surname, or the titles they attribute to themselves proclaiming their superior knowledge because they found a book or a report or this or that which they must absolutely share with the world because the rest of us are not possibly as much in the know as they…. Bosh! Humbug! Non-sense.
Humans have been honing lies since they climbed our of the water, lost their scales and tails, and learned to be bipedal-and always to cover up their involvement of untruthfulness and dastardly deceptions under ‘the best interest of the child’ excuse.
We need to be disabused of our notions that the vulnerable child is better off in any other place than with its biological -DNA family, along with the institutions of adoption and/or fostering. We need to keep the child within its own reality, not yours or the courts or the church or the society’s , and we definitely MUST REFUSE TO ALLOW DECEIT and DUPLICITY done to be HALTED NOW-not later.
Taking a child born out of ‘acceptable’ societal norms or mores and reabsorbing them back into the family of the mother is hardly news ir even new. History is replete with narratives of the absorbed child-Royalty is adroit in this habit, as is the ‘menopause child’ who appears shortly after the mother of the unwed mother returns from an unexplained absence with her mom, the grandmother of the child, who proudly displays her ‘miracle’ child, and sends her daughter the real mother out of the house so that the neighbours can neither speculate or gossip.
No documents exchange hands and no court presides over these family affairs, and the subject of the reality of that grandchild turned son or daughter is never discussed but between the grandmother and mother; even the grandfather may well be kept out of the loop.
In some cases the real mom returns for her son or daughter, forcing the grandmother to relinquish the child to its rightful mum. The mum who used to have the law on her side… to retrieve her child as long as no court procedure was performed in the matter of the child. The child’s father is rarely involved, having had his ‘fun’ in the hay and probably threatened by the girl’s father with unpleasant consequences should he dare approach the girl again for any reason.
And who ultimately suffers for this re-adsorption along with its untruths and cover-ups? The innocent children-not only in their childhood but in their adulthood as the truth comes out. And with the cutting science and technology of DNA testing so easily available -and becoming more and more affordable, that child now adult will discover that the mother he had was in reality his grandmother.. the comes the recriminations and the anger and the closure… No matter how many apologies may be offered, what has been done, cannot be undone. Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.
My source? Hours of research thru very atrocious indexes and documents.
Personal knowledge of my maternal grandmother, her ‘menopause child’, my aunt who reclaimed her son, and the narratives of the family who was deceived and the effects of that deceit, plus the documents regarding the child’s adoption by my aunt’s husband-who did the right thing by NOT changing little Jackie’s surname but who incorporated his middle name to cement his relationship with this then young child. Jackie’s uncle was devastated to return home from school to find his ‘brother’ missing. The uncle was the last of ten siblings born to my grandparents. His daughter says that her father never got over the separation or the deceit. But as hurt as he was, imagine me-the adoptee-who discovered that her own grandmother fought for Jackie but never for me… or for my sister…In fact by the time I learned of my own history, grandmother had been dead for 20 or so years.. the uncle for five… and the boy Jackie had died as an adult with at least one child before I knew my own name. Mothers don’t let your children grow to be adoptees.. or foster children or switched at birth…. or entangled in lies, lies, and more lies! And children don’t believe anything you hear, read or think that you see. Very little in this world is what it may appear to be.
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Ladies!
Could you both behave in a more professional manner and language? If you have disputes, please have them more discretely-this is not the place to air anyone’s private affairs … & making allegations of such nature is more appropriate in a court room .. In any event.. to spy on another is unethical… to report having done so in a public forum is reprehensible!
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