' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: October 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Illinois cracks down on sleazy adoption practitioner

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed an action against one of the sleaziest for-profit operators in the country, Adoption Network Law Center (ANLC) based in California. In spite of an Illinois law banning for-profit practitioners, clicking on ANLC's website brought Illinois residents directly to a screen offering "Help with an Unplanned Pregnancy in Illinois...or "Adopt a Newborn Baby in Illinois."

ANLC's website creates the impression that their service--offering "Free Confidential Assistance...24/7" is local. However. When I clicked on from my home in Portland, Oregon, I got "Help with an Unplanned Pregnancy...in Washington or Adopt a Newborn Baby in Washington." Is it because direct marketing by unlicensed practitioners is illegal in Oregon? Or are these folks are geographically challenged? I don't know.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Infertility may be Earth's way of slowing population growth

Lorraine
                                                               Added to on Wednesday, 10/30
To adopt or not adopt (except from foster care) has become the subject of lively discussion in the commentary fostered by the previous blog, about a couple who advertised themselves and their healthy lifestyle on Facebook as they attempt to find someone willing to give them her newborn.

Advertising for a first mother--or as someone said, "identify a birth mother"--is so scary and futuristic I feel as if I have stepped into a Ray Bradbury movie like Farenheit 451, only this one would be called Baby Hunger, 2013. The couple we wrote about aren't alone in their audacious advertising for a baby; recently a couple from Maryland put up a similar kind of ad on the New Jersey Turnpike at the cost of $2,000 a month. They are looking for a second child. Why advertise in New Jersey rather than their home state of Maryland? Because in New Jersey the first/birth mother only has 72 hours to nullify the proposed adoption; in

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Advertising for a baby to adopt on Facebook

Jane
"We have lovely friends who are hoping to adopt a baby, and I'd like to help get their message out" posted an attorney on the Oregon Women Lawyers (OWLS) list. "They need to identify a birth mother who wants to give up her baby for adoption." She included the link to Erin and Dan's Facebook Page who tell us "We are seeking a domestic adoption, open or closed, preferably a newborn."

This was a first for the OWLS list which typically includes job openings, requests for referrals to other lawyers, and recommendations for nannies, plumbers, and other services, but it shouldn't be a surprise. Many more couples are in the baby hunt than there are babies, particularly with foreign countries curtailing intercountry adoptions.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Why Ellen Page and the movie Juno bugs me--even years later

Lorraine
At dinner with friends--one of them a Movie Buff--the other night, I mentioned that whenever I see Ellen Page, the star of Juno, anywhere doing anything I have an immediate negative reaction because of the role she played in that movie. She was the wise-cracking, smart-ass, but ever-so-appealing teenager in a jam (she is preggers) and she's about 15 or so in Juno, which is also her name in the film. Her very dorky and underwhelming-but-overwhelmed teenager father of the child is in no way prepared to be a father, or do anything but look lost.

Why that kind of girl wouldn't just have an abortion boggles the mind--as well as reality. Her family is not particularly religious, or evangelical; yet an unpleasant but frivolous encounter at the abortion clinic turns her off and sends her packing straight into the arms of a couple she finds in a penny-saver. "I could have this baby and give it to someone who totally needs one," she says enthusiastically. (No, I do not have perfect recall, I just watched the trailer at IMDB.)

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Why I'm not bullish on celebrity adoptions

Sandra Bullock and adopted son, Louis
Now that actress Sandra Bullock's new flick Gravity has hit the big screen, she's looking to adopt again, according to the Hollywood gossip machine. Three years ago, Bullock, then 46, joined many other entertainers who took another woman's baby as their own when she adopted Louis named after the jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong because, like Armstrong, he was born in New Orleans. And frankly reading about the likelihood of another Hollywood adoption makes me a little ill.

The list of Hollywood adoptive parents goes back to the beginning of the silver screen and includes Bob Hope, Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine, Constance Bennett, Al Jolson and Ruby Keller, Dick Powell and June Allison, Bette Davis, Cecil B. DeMille, Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman,

Monday, October 14, 2013

The Declassified Adoptee Tells All

Amanda Transue-Woolston
Adoption, to the adopted, is rife with hard questions: Aren’t you glad you were adopted? How do your adoptive parents feel about you searching for your other family? What do you want from them? What if you find out your father raped your mother? What if you search and she doesn’t want to know you? Aren’t your [adoptive] parents enough? You never said anything about adoption, so I figured it didn’t mean much to you…? What do you say when someone says their friend’s sister is adopted and she “loves it?” And the biggest question of all, that most people never asks: “Why is it that lying in adoption isn’t seen as wrong?”

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Why not choose adoption? The longterm effects of relinquishing on first mothers

Lorraine
In the last post,* we dealt with the corrosive effect of secrecy in adoption, and some wrote about the secrecy that many first mothers cling to even years later. Some are so far in the closet they cannot tell their families about a reunited son or daughter, thus denying them knowing their siblings, grandparents, the family to which they were born. Unquestionably, that is sad and continues the trauma of the initial separation from the natural mother. Today I write about the trauma that makes birth mothers who have been in the closet so long stay there.
                                                     * * *
Adoption is trumpeted today as a universal good thing. For infertile couples who wish to have a family, it is a solution. For religious organizations and fellow-travelers, agencies that use the mantle of religion, it is a business. For liberals who want to do good and keep the sense of family about them, it is a way to keep population growth down. Celebrities adopt and get on the cover of magazines, thus

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Secrets in adoption: Dealing with betrayal of lies by omission

Lorraine, not quite incognito
Sunday's New York Times had an essay called "Great Betrayals," about the victims of long held lies in their families. The psychiatrist who wrote the essay, Anna Fels, tells of a friend whose husband had hid a huge credit card debt, and even after divulging the secret, he continued to lie about the amount and refuse to divulge how the money was spent. The wife was left to puzzle it out for herself. "The disclosure wreaked financial and emotional havoc on their family," writes Fels.

She then discusses how clients of hers dealing with the revelation of "new, pivotal information" were often left to deal with the emotional jolt on their own. Society is likely to forgive the miscreant who kept the secret, but the victim gets little support. Writers have the option of making sense of the secret they were not in on through writing, but others don't. As Fels notes:

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Review: Indian-born writer reveals the dark side of international adoption

Award-winning author Indian-born writer Mridula Koshy's new book, Not Only the Things That Have Happened, reveals the dark side of international adoption.

However, the story, set in the author's native India, is frustrating to read--beautiful passages are set in a confusing story line. The story begins with Anna, a poor Indian woman, on her death bed still grieving over the son she lost to adoption 34 years earlier. The author then takes us back to Anna's childhood, telling the story through snippets of events, cursing back and forth through Anna's life and ancillary characters.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Senate bill encourages more international adoption

Sen. Mary Landrieu
Foreign adoptions have plummeted from just over 23,000 in 2004 to just under 9,000 in 2012, as foreign countries and the U. S. State Department have responded to wide-spread corruption. Gathering its forces, the adoption industry has turned to its long-time champion, adoptive mom and wife of an adoptee Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. She introduced the deceptively-named Children in Families First Act of 2013 (CHIFF) "to strengthen intercountry adoption...and ensure it becomes a viable and fully developed option for providing families for children in need."* Among other provisions, the bill (S. 1530) would condition child welfare assistance to foreign countries on whether they allowed Americans to adopt children from these countries.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Mamalita: An adoption book I can't love, a story that isn't for everyone

Three generations, three blondes
How thoroughly adoptive parents are quick to push aside the thoughts that the children they adopt have other families was brought home last week when an adoptive mother sent me her memoir. At her blog, she wrote that she thought the primary opinion of the general public towards adoption was turning negative, based partly on the article in which First Mother Forum is mentioned as part of the new "anti-adoption" movement. I left a comment; she emailed and sent me her book about adopting from Guatemala, a country with one of the most troubled histories regarding the trafficking of children. I was interested, but immediately on edge because no adoption story coming out of Guatemala is going to be easy for me to stomach. I know too much.

Mamalita, the book, by Jessica O' Dwyer arrives: Cute native girl on the cover with native dress. Okay.