The previous commenter talks about “reforming adoption” and calls names.

The original article has a lot of truth, but doesn’t give enough details.
There have been cases of baby farming in some countries, but the dirty little secret is that often this is exaggerated by activists who feel guilty about exporting their children. However, given the millions of street kids in those same countries, I am not horrified at their horror stories.

I adopted from Colombia, where there are strict laws. First the children are placed with family, then with locals, then placed overseas. As a single mom, I was at the bottom of the list. I like boys, so asked for and got two older siblings who couldn’t be placed elsewhere (four of their siblings were placed with other family members or friends, but no one wants boys over age eight).

However, there are also a lot of anti adoption people in the US who oppose adoption because they had an abortion and have a psychological need to smear those who sacrifice to carry a child to term and allow someone else to raise them.
As for adoptees, most don’t care, but many have a pain inside that feels their mother hated them, and they too need healing.

My oldest needed to work out anger at his mother’s death and anger that no one wanted him and he lived on the street for two years. He still has anger at me and the world, but would his anger be less if he had gone back to the street at age 16?

Adoption is not about rich Hollywood types or yuppies making a social statement. It is about finding a home for a child. The best home is a child’s own family (which is why I condemned Madonna’s adoption of a boy whose mom died, and family couldn’t afford formula so put him in an orphanage. He had family…she could have sent them twenty dollars a month and kept the family together).

Family ties are best, placement in extended family is next best. Placement in one’s own culture and country is next best.
But if the choice is a crowded orphanage, or living on the street, or going from one foster home to another, then please consider adoption.

I’ve been watching — and bemoaning — this bru-ha-ha from the sidelines. The rhetoric has escalated until it has gone past the level of a healthy, viable discussion to one that attempts to control the discussion and silence those who disagree. One of the chief instigators of the conflict is NOT a suitable moderator for a forum that claims to put forth the truth and balanced information. In fact, Adoption.com, a for-profit enterprise, whose income is derived from the adoption industry, is NOT the appropriate place for such a forum.

A fresh start to this discussion is needed. One where misleading statements, name calling and outright lies are not a part of it. But opening another forum under the same umbrella where these negative tactics have prevailed for over a week now is not the way to achieve that. This already appears to be one where everytime someone who disagrees makes a point, the moderator is going to jump in and have the last word. Since every hit on Adoption.com transfers dollars from their advertisers to their coffers, it’s a perfectly understandable tactic in the tradition of yellow journalism.

Most of us who seek to reform adoption believe it is a viable option, although not always the best one. Adoption is certainly fraught with problems as practiced in the USA and elsewhere. It is inflamatory to paint all reform activists with the same broad brush. The FIRST leaders of the reform movement are adult adoptees, most of whom had near idyllic childhoods, but saw the need for reform. From my earliest memories, many adoption professionals were also eager for reform; the Child Welfare League of America has been involved in seeking reform of the adoption industry as long as I can recall. Many adoptive parents supported their grown children’s efforts, but more recently, the adoptive parents of minor children have added their voices to those calling for change. Until about a decade ago, most of the birth parents I knew were mothers involved in search & reunion efforts; that has changed as more and more birth fathers have joined us — and birth parents long ago became advocates of reform. There are fringe elements in the reform community who would abolish adoption just as there are fringe elements in the adoption community who style themselves as “pro-adoption” and anyone who disagrees with the practices they endorse as “anti-adoption.”

The element of the adoption community that is most dangerous is the element who profits from it. Any journalist worth his/her salt can tell you, when you want to know what’s wrong with something, you just follow the money.

The thing about adoption.com is its dictator-like rules. I understand it is a privately held concern - a for-profit privately held concern. As a user you abide by their guidelines if you wish to post.

Its founder, Nathan Gwillian is also a fundamentalist Christian. That’s all fine and dandy, yet not everybody paints adoption with the same brush.

I don’t like the fact one cannot discuss agencies openly. “Take it to private email”. Okay, take it to private email, leaving many PAPs in no man’s land if they’re getting the hard sell from certain “adoption professionals”. Adoption professionals who advertise heavily on the site itself.

Many of those questionable agencies pay to advertise on adoption.com. They have the right to do that. Those of us who had bad experiences with these agencies have to get the word out about it. But you can’t do that on adopiton.com.

I for one read Mirah’s book. At least she was willing to talk about things so many AParents, PAPs and “adoption professionals” push under the rug. Especially corruption in foreign adoptions. BTDT have the website:

http://www.bewareofbbas.org

Amyadoptee,
If you’re indicating that anyone finding fault with rabid anti-adoption nuts is against open records, agencies hounding mothers and reform, you’re showing a very limited understanding of the big picture, and a bias that may have more to do with your own blinders than anyone else’s failure to understand.
While you’ve been writing letters supporting open access to birth records in the US, others have been doing this AND supporting orphaned children around the world, establishing programs that allow mothers to feed themselves and their children, getting antiretrovirals to rural populations so mothers can live long enough to take care of their children, building houses for entire families in developing countries, founding and funding schools and nutrition programs, and on and on and on.
For many people, the agenda is much more than a tiny aperture focused only on the small percentage of American adoptees who may not be pleased with their fate or the birth mothers who regret decisions they made in the past.

Who is funding these anti-adoption groups? I would like to know. I bet the information will never be available to me, or any other curious person, because these people have something to hide.

But I can make a couple of good educated guesses about where the funding comes from. This whole movement has the stink of the abortion industry’s blood money all over it.

Abortions cost $300 to $900 a pop, depending on geographical location and stage of pregnancy. Every time a new born baby is placed in the arms of a loving adoptive couple, that is $300 to $900 that some abortion clinic did NOT get. Multiply that by every adopted baby in the country and the annual loss for the abortion industry could potentially go into the millions (depending on how many babies are adopted each year). That’s the real “pain of adoption,” the pain of lost sales for the abortion industry. Well, tell the abortion clinic staff to get a legitamate job.

Are we surprised that someone has a problem with adoption, in light of the lost sales to the abortion industry? Are we surprised there is a campaign to turn women away from adoption and eventually make it illegal? So much for choice.

Another possible source of finances to the anti-adoption movement is the child prostitution rings. If the anti-adoption people get their way and adoption is made illegal, that will free up a lot of children for the child prostitution rings. Of course the people who are into this are against adoption, cause they want children to victimize.

As for the crocadile tears about the terrible trauma of bio children and bio parents being separated, if this breaks you up so much, what are you doing to promote the Amber Alert system? Now there’s a program the legitamately helps bring separated bio families back together again.

I can understand the objections to international adoption. Its a very crooked system.

What I don’t like, though, is birth mothers here in the U.S. who claim they were pressured into giving their babies up for adoption. In many cases, it is not the truth. These women simply feel guilt for having given their child away, so they lash out at adoptive parents.

I know of many women in their 20s and 30s who recently gave up babies for adoption. They went and looked on websites to seek out adoptive parents, so they would no longer have to be responsible for their child. In 20 years time, will they claim someone pressured them to give their baby away? These women need to grow a backbone and own their decisions.