International Adoption Advocates Fight Back against decline in adoptions

Pacific Harbor Seals

Mother Pacific harbor seals leave newborn pups on the beach when they go into the sea to fish. Believing the pups have been abandoned, humans take them to aquariums or try to raise them themselves, often unsuccessfully. Mother seals returning to the beach to nurse search futilely for their babies.

I think of these seals when I read about international adoption. Thankfully, it has declined from a high of 22,884 in 2004 to 11,059 in 2010. Wide-scale corruption or other abuses has caused Ethiopia to join Cambodia, Guatemala, Nepal and Russia, in closing their borders while adoptions from China, the biggest supplier of babies, have been reduced.

A First/Birth Mother remembers the first Easter after surrender, only days earlier

Four generations in 1996

Easter approaches in a few days, we celebrate the resurrection and spring with the symbol of birth: eggs, eggs, eggs galore. At my house nearly twenty friends will drink mimosas and lunch on beet salad and asparagus and eggy dishes and Polish sausage that's only made at Easter time and my mother's prune cake with buttercream frosting, and I will not really have time to relive in my mind that first Easter after I relinquished my daughter. That day I called my parents in Michigan to wish them Happy Easter--or did they call?  I can't remember. I do recall the day was long and I was empty and my daughter's father was with his other family.

I wanted to die.

Memo to Gov. Cuomo: Repeal the 1935 law sealing original birth certificates

Lorraine

It's lobby time in New York again, and this year the prognosis looks good and members of Unsealed Initiative, under the guidance of Joyce Bahr, are scheduled to meet with the governor, Andrew Cuomo, or members of his staff, to discuss the Adoptee Bill of Rights giving adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates.

What's wrong with fertile women adopting?

Jane

For shame, Tina Fey, having your second baby when you could be adopting! So proclaims Treva Bowdoin of “Hollywood Trends Examiner,” an online tabloid.

Bowdoin extols Mariska Hargitay, Katherine Heigl, and Sandra Bullock who have joined a long list of celebrities including Sheryl Crow, Jamie Lee Curtis, Calista Flockhart, Valerie Harper, Diane Keaton, Rosie O’Donnell, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Spielberg, Sharon Stone, Barbara Walters, and Liza Minnelli to, in Bowdoin's words, "give unwanted children a better life.”

Learning Your Origins -- or not

Jane

When adoptee Wendy Johnson researched her origins, she learned her biological grandmother was either a heroic World War II spy or an unknown Filipino woman. Johnson, now 53, of Albany, Oregon, was told she was adopted when, at the age of eight, she asked her father why she had yellowish brown skin when everyone else in the family had white skin.

Finding the Families of The Lost Children of Nepal

Lorraine

Since I put the blog about Little Princes up on Friday, we have learned that
police have rescued 20 children from Mukti Nepal, a Maharajgunj-based orphanage, and arrested its operator after finding the children living in squalor and without enough food. The children range from five to fifteen. Six boys and 14 girls were kept in one room.  It seems clear that the orphanage was the dumping ground of one of the child traffickers in Nepal, and the deplorable conditions are often shown to Westerners as a sham to get money to "take care of the children." Instead, the cash goes into the traffickers' pockets and he looks for other Westerners to keep the money flowing. The following book review of Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal explains how child trafficking operates in Nepal.

Does God Care (about birth mothers) or Is God Dead?

April 8, 1966

“Is God Dead?” asked the cover of Time on Good Friday, April 8, 1966. On that day, when my co-blogger, Lorraine was grieving over the loss of her daughter Jane, born three days earlier in Rochester, New York, I was 5000 miles away in Fairbanks, Alaska embarking on a path which would bring us together decades later. If I had known Lorraine in 1966, I would not be a first mother.

Poem for my daughter on her birthday

For Jane

Every blonde head makes me sad
Greatly grieving,
thinking how
I simply told you
to borrow a life,
anywhere you could.

But I can not
calm myself
with drama and sorrow
for your new identity
dearly bought
would cost
the serenity
I supposedly sought. --lorraine

written in 1967, a year after she was born

Some adoptees search, some adoptees don't

Jane and Lorraine in 1982

Adoption and adoption reform has obviously been a central focus of my life. I got involved with ALMA and adoption reform in the mid-Seventies, published Birthmark in 1979 before birth mother was the accepted language for women like me, found my daughter in 1981, and here we are today. I took a two-decade break from the intensity of it all, except for occasional stories or speaking appearances. But it has always been a major factor in my life, the maypole around which my life has revolved ever since my daughter was born in 1966.

How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives

Lorraine

There's plenty of information on the Internet about how the health--physical and mental--can effect the health of a fetus. For those nine months that the fetus is developing, it's aware of minute changes in its atmosphere, namely our bodies. I knew this, and I also am pretty sure that the birth control pills I took for months when I was already pregnant--having been given an pregnancy test that came back negative--were directly related to the seizures that my daughter had from the time she was five.

Kidnapping and Corruption in Chinese Adoptions

Jane

China, long thought to be squeaky clean in international adoptions turns out to have a history of corruption, according to David Smolin, one of the world's leading experts on international adoption scandals. According to Smolin, the decline in the number of Chinese infants arriving on U.S. shores since the Nineties as adoptees was largely due to the Chinese government’s curtailment of baby buying--

When Disaster Strikes, Adoption is Sure to Follow, Part II (and III)

Would-be adopters have begun circling Japan in the wake of the tragic earthquake and tsunami earlier this month. First Mother Forum readers may recall that after the January 11, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Catholic Charities and other south Florida groups planned a massive airlift of perhaps several thousand of children thought to have been orphaned (When Disaster Strikes, Adoption is Sure to Follow).

Madonna's Malawi charity fails and Ethiopian adoptions shut down to a trickle: Could there be abuse in the system?

Lorraine

Madonna's plans for a swell school for girls in Malawi (from where she has adopted two children) are going up in smoke, but in the meantime $3.8 million was spent on architectural drawings, nice cars and golf-club memberships, according to news reports today. Oy vey, was all I could think--think what could have been done with that money for boys and girls in Malawi--and their families--instead of turning them into families who are so poor they feel they must relinquish their children to people in more affluent nations to be adopted. By Madonna, perhaps, herself! How lucky is that?*

Baby Vanessa: The law worked; no need to change it

Would-be adoptive parent Stacey Doss, has vowed to go to “Capitol Hill and elevate children’s rights so they are equal to parental rights.”

Doss who sought to adopt Vanessa over the objections of the child’s father Benjamin Mills, Jr. has been appointed Vanessa’s permanent guardian with visitation rights granted to Mills, his mother, Rena Jordan, and Vanessa’s biological sisters in a settlement reached by the parties this month after nearly three years of litigation, according to the Dayton Daily News. 

Do birth mothers have the right to know who their children became?

Lorraine

It's legislation time in all of the states and provinces where there is any activity regarding changing the laws. A partial list includes Rhode Island, Missouri, Montana, and of course New Jersey and New York, two states were we've been involved in the process.

But as an adoptee (Robert Wilson) wrote to me recently, why aren't we working for access to the new name and identity

State adoption consent laws: the ugly, the bad, the better, and the GOOD

Jane

The loss of a child to adoption can be a blessing according to a social worker with the Mormon-affiliated adoption agency, LDS Family Services, who has commented on First Mother Forum recently.  She says this is true of many of her clients. I have to admit this seems far-fetched to those of us, both baby-swoop era mothers and recent mothers, still grieving from our loss, as many of the comments on the last post indicate and birth mother memoirs and blogs attest to. We also know that birth mothers' feelings may change over time.

Are we bitter birth mothers?

Lorraine

Bitter.

It's a word bandied about about birth mothers who are not content with their situation as mothers without children to mother. Call me bitter, and it gives you an excuse to dismiss me, because, y'all know that I haven't accepted reality and made peace with the fact that I relinquished my daughter to an uncertain future.  And we birth mothers who relinquished in the Mesozoic Age of shame, shunning and closed adoptions,

New short film about adoptee rights

Bills that put adoptee rights first in giving them back their original identities are in the works in at least

An LDS birth mother talks about her church, search and reunion, and the LDS position on such matters

Lorraine

During the last skirmish at the blog, we came across a blog that we check into now and then, Letters to Mrs. Feverfew, and we discovered that the author, a first/birth mother and also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) , was writing about recent posts at First Mother Forum. Melynda, author of the Letters to Mrs. Feverfew, was miffed because we had not posted her comments, but neither Jane nor I saw

Would I have found my daughter if I had married her father?

Jane and Lorraine in 1983

Just an add to yesterday's blog about a confidential intermediary's comment about married birth/first parents who reject contact and reunion when sought by the individual who had been relinquished: I hope it is a reflection of adoptions back several decades, and not recent ones, as a great many adoptions today are open (though we know many close), and the first mother is NOT promised anonymity and so there is no thought of her disappearing into the woodwork forever.

But what of closed adoptions today?

When you find birth/first parents who have married

Lorraine

I heard something that other day that has been gnawing at me because it is the opposite of what I thought would be the case: biological parents who marry after relinquishing a child...are less likely to want a reunion, agree to contact and a reunion than birth mothers and birth fathers who do not.

16 and Pregnant encourages the teen-mom trend

Lorraine

Teens having babies to get on television. That's what one of the former "stars" of MTV's hit reality series, "16 and Pregnant" says. I gagged when the upcoming story was promoted this morning on Good Morning America as I was walking out the door for my morning java at Starbucks with husband Tony and The New York Times.

According to the report at ABC--and there will be more on Nightline tonight at 11:35 p.m.--one of teens featured on "16 and Pregnant," Whitney Purvis said that her turn on the show turned her into a celebrity in her town of Rome, Georgia.  Purvis said that the movie, Juno, our least favorite movie of all time, make pregnancy look "cute." Right, she said, cute, and that made her want to participate in the original show on MTV.

HB 2904 is targeted at LDS Family Services! Absolutely Untrue

MEGAN
As suggested by her
and with permission

I've written on First Mother Forum several time about my surrendered daughter, Megan, and  difficulties in our relationship. As many with a surrendered child or a birth parent have experienced, the course of reunion never does run smooth. Megan has been following FMF for several months, posting under a pseudonym. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints and is conflicted over our posts and comments on the Church's position on adoption.

Should Birth Parents Be Allowed to Sue to Get Their Babies Back?

Jane

HB 2904 introduced into the Oregon legislature amends Oregon’s adoption law to ensure that parents have sufficient time and information to make informed decisions about adoption for their children.  A reader posted the following comment:

“’I don't have a problem with the eight and thirty day waiting period [in the bill], a mother DOES need time to make a decision. What I DO have a problem with … was the ONE YEAR

Adoption Reform and the LDS Church

Jane

First Mother Forum has gotten some flak from folks asking why we are bringing the Mormon Church into its discussion of HB 2904, the Oregon bill which would give mothers considering adoption time and information to make informed decisions.

Legislation to protect the birth/first mother AND child

Jane

My bridge partner asked me the other day about the legislation I was working on. I explained that it was a bill,  gave mothers time to decide upon adoption of their newborn child (HB 2904). Under current Oregon law, mothers can sign consents to adoption immediately after delivery.Her first question:

“What about the adoptive parents?" Surely such a bill couldn't be good for them.

Rosie O'Donnell Learns What a True Heritage Means

First mothers and adoptees everywhere who know that Rosie O'Donnell is an adoptive mother three times over. We have never seen any support of any kind for adoptee rights coming from Rosie. Her kids are still young but are adolescents now. Was she ever going to wake up? Signs did not point to Yes.

West Not Impressed by Adoption Practices in Nepal

Lorraine

Nepal continues to be on the front pages of the international adoption scene. Last summer the UN allowed adoptions to open again in Nepal and approximately 60 children were adopted during that time, most to the United States. This was after well-documented cases of kidnapping and child-trafficking, and allowing children who had been left at orphanages temporarily to be adopted out of the country. Supposedly the unethical practices such kidnapping and faked papers had come to an end.

The bittersweet reality of being adopted

Lorraine

What effect does being surrendered for adoption do to the individual so surrendered?

Being adopted approximately doubles the odds of an adolescent being diagnosed with a behavior or emotional problem. Yes, the vast majority of adopted people grow up to be fully functioning, well adjusted individuals, but a 2008 study at the University of Minnesota has found that a small minority of those kids--about 14 percent--are diagnosed with a behavioral disorder or have contact with a mental health professional as adolescents--roughly twice the odds that the non-adopted face.

Opposition to the birth parents rights bill: distortions, lies, and more lies

Jane

The websites springing up to oppose HB 2904 which would assure birth parents have the time and information to make informed decisions on adoption would be amusing except that some folks might actually believe the untruths and distortions they spew out. I’ll be writing about these sites for the next few days. 

Reforming Oregon's adoption laws

Jane

Oregon mothers are losing their children to adoption even though they and their families can and want to nurture them. Oregon has twice the national rate of domestic, non-related infant adoptions.

      After Lorraine and I wrote about Oregon's adoption-friendly laws (Are Laws Tilted Towards Adoptive Parents?), I received calls from folks interested in working on amending these laws. We formed a work group, Oregon Birth Mothers, and drafted a bill to assure that mothers have sufficient time and adequate information to make informed decisions about adoption. Rep. Margaret Doherty, a smart, forward-looking member of the Oregon House introduced our bill, HB 2904. This bill:

The real end of The Deep End of the Ocean: Boy returns to his first family

This post falls into the category of never write about a book until you've read the last pages--which I did last night finding that The Deep End of the Ocean (written about in previous post) has one last surprise in store for the reader:

The abducted boy, Ben/Sam after being found/reunited with his natural family/moves in with them but wants to go back to the father who raised him (his kidnapper "mother" is in the loony bin)/custody is transferred back, but then, a few weeks later...the boy, who's twelve comes back late at night to his natural family...with his suitcase. He shoots some hoops

What's the difference between being adopted and being abducted?

Lorraine

What's the difference between being adopted as a baby or abducted and raised by people who do not abuse you but treat you as...one might treat an adopted child? Carlina White, who was abducted at three weeks from a New York City hospital and renamed Nejdra Nance, and her mother, Joy, are obviously going through the kind of complicated and fraught reunion tango that many of us natural/first/birth mothers* are so familiar with post the gushing joy of reunion.

Wondering how one's "adopted" that is, relinquished, daughter is

Lorraine

 For a review of Didion's Blue Nights see:
Joan Didion's Blue Nights is really an adoption memoir


What is it like to find a child given up for adoption--a son or daughter of any age--who has serious and debilitating physical or emotional problems? It's less than "perfect," whatever that is, but it is an answer to a grief-filled question; it is the end of not knowing; it is the way to a reality, no matter hows painful, that can be dealt with.

Tell birth FIRST mothers the truth about adoption

 USA Today published two letters today following up my viewpoints piece (I share Oprah's mom's shame and pain) of last week: "Counsel birth mothers about the realities of adoption" reads a headline I can only think of as stupendous--as it is over a terrific letter by Jeanine M. Biocic, president of Origins-USA, and a email friend of ours at FMF. 

Lorraine

"Birth mothers believe, in fact are told, that relinquishing their child is the best thing all around. Rarely do they comprehend, until it is too late, that they may live the rest of their lives with secrecy, grief, and

Some happy endings have a twist mothers don't expect

Jane

“YOUR SON IS A CRACK ADDICT AND A SCHIZOPHRENIC” was the first thing Patti Hawn heard about the son she had not seen in 40 years.

Other than this bone-chilling revelation, Hawn’s memoir, Good Girls Don’t, is the oft told and sad tale of a Girl Who Went Away. It’s a story, both simple and profound, which needs to be told again and again, both as catharsis for thousands of first mothers and as a reality check for those who, like NPR weekend host Scott Simon, write in Praise of Adoption. 

Do birth mothers/first mothers have the right to search?

Lorraine

NOTE: If you read the blog since last night, there have been several ads at the bottom.
Should first/birth mothers search for the children they gave up for adoption? Or should I say: Surrendered to forces greater than one's ability to resist--maybe we should start substituting that every time someone uses the damn phrase "made an adoption plan."

But the question remains: Do first mothers, or birth mothers, or whatever we are called have the "right" to search for our children?

Do First/birth mothers want to be found?

Lorraine

Birth mother - do you want to be found?

With all the attention focused on Vernita Lee, Oprah's mother--a reluctant-to-acknowledge birth/first mother, who denied being Patricia Lloyd's mother for years--this is the what a lot of adoptees want to know: Do their mothers want to be found? This is what someone goggled yesterday and found her way to First Mother Forum. Answer:

Overwhelmingly, yes. YES, FIRST MOTHERS WANT TO BE FOUND.

Dear Abby encourages searching for first/birth family

Lorraine

I stand corrected. Denise posted the following comment re Dear Abby:

"I too was pleased to see what the New Abby has written. Although I have to say that the original Abby was quite open to search and reunion. As I wrote on this topic on my blog, it was because of a letter she published from a first mother who found her son through Soundex, that I learned about that registry. I saved the letter until my son was 18, then

First Mother Forum in USA Today and The Adoption Option Revisted

See LORRAINE'S VIEWPOINTS today : I share Oprah's mom's shame and pain AT USA Today. Please leave comments there; our side needs affirmation, not only from adoptees and first mothers but adoptive parents who understand the rights of the adopted to know the truth of their origins. SOME HAVE REPORTED A PROBLEM COMMENTING AT USA TODAY SITE; I'VE ASKED FOR HELP AND WILL TRY TO HAVE PROBLEM FIXED. (2:52 p.m.)

Lorraine

While we have written about The Adoption Option before, we are sending this rebuttal to it to John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and later this will be posted as as  permanent page at First Mother Forum.

By Lorraine Dusky and Jane Edwards

Making adoption more attractive to women with unplanned pregnancies is a “worthwhile goal,” according to the liberal think tank, The Center for American Progress. A recent publication, The Adoption Option: Adoption Won’t Reduce Abortion but It Will Expand Women’s Choices (October, 2010), argues for 

What kind of woman keeps one child, gives away another?

Someone  (Anonymous) left a somewhat nasty comment on an earlier post about Vernita Lee, Oprah's mother, asking "what kind of woman keeps one child, gives away another?" Well, I'll tell you, a desperate woman. A woman who feels she has no choice. A woman boxed in the corner. A woman who is at her wit's end about how she is going to manage another baby.

Guatemalan mother seeking return of son gets her day in court

Encarnacion Bail Romero

In a case which the Missouri Supreme Court described as “a travesty in its egregious procedural errors, its long duration, and its impact on Mother, Adoptive Parents, and, most importantly, Child,” Encarnacion Bail Romero will have the opportunity to regain custody of her four- year-old son. In the mean time the boy, referred to in court documents

Oprah's mother didn't die when her secret daughter was revealed

Lorraine

I am not the only one who found Oprah's mother's interview and reaction to her newly found daughter, Patricia, a tad...er, difficult to watch? Turn around and hug your daughter! my mind was screaming at the TV yesterday. Apologize for not responding to your daughter's plea for confirmation and contact. At the same time, Oprah's distance and undercurrent of irritation towards her mother, Vernita Lee, was barely concealed.

Oprah reveals she has half-sister; her mother was afraid to admit the secret

So Oprah has a sister! Given up for adoption! Reunited today on her talk show! From the Los Angeles Times: 

"Oprah Winfrey never knew her half-sister Patricia existed until around Thanksgiving, calling the secret sister a “bombshell family secret that left me speechless.” Holding back tears on her television talk show today, Winfrey acknowledged that “I thought nothing could surprise me anymore, but let me tell you, today I was wrong.”

After adoption first/birth mothers are supposed to suck it up

Lorraine

While we been picking over the differences between being kidnapped (and raised by genetic strangers) and being adopted (and raised by genetic strangers) as concerning the Nejdra Nance/Carlina White abduction, and how the public reacts to the mother--the first/birth mother, that is--there is another parallel to be learned from another story in the news: how people react to the families of mass murderers, such as the Unabomber and Jared Laughner. And how they react to women who surrendered their babies.

Kidnapped Daughter reunites with her family

Lorraine

How much alike are our children, who were adopted, when we first/birth mothers find them? Does this sound like a familiar story? From today's New York Post:

"They can't stop touching one another, they can't stop looking at one another -- their faces mirrors of each other's past and future.
"Cuddled on a couch in a Midtown hotel suite last night, Joy White and long-lost daughter Carlina began to bridge 23 years that were stolen from them, each telling The Post in exclusive interviews that now, at last, "I feel complete."

Mother and Child is a film not be be missed, though critics overlooked

Lorraine

The last batch of comments on the previous blog (Practice Babies: Unnatural Mothering) rapidly degenerated into snarky lobs across the net--are we no better than the discourse between the opposite political factions in this country? Apparently not. I admit a bias: I side with the folks who say: you can have your "expert" opinion, you might be better read (of those self-same experts) but those authorities do not know how I feel. They do not speak for me. And this is how I feel.

Practice Babies: Unnatural Mothering

Jane

Reaction to recent news reports about Practice Babies is much like the response to Ann Fessler’s account in The Girls Who Went Away of young pregnant women sent to hide out in maternity homes or with distant relatives, delivering their babies in secret, and surrendering them for adoption.

Do Origins Matter?

Lorraine

Judy Clarke, the court-appointed lawyer for Jared Loughner, the deranged 22-year-old charged in the Tucson shootings, is said to be likely investigate his life--"going back several generations to learn as much as possible about his origins"--as she prepares his defense. Of course most people will just read that and move on, but as I read it this morning in The New York Times my mind--the mind of a first mother, a birth mother--leaped to the awareness that this would almost certainly not be possible if Loughner were adopted.

Fight over adoptee rights in NJ continues--time to make your voice heard

Lorraine

Here we go again in New Jersey: After more than three decades, as a less-than-perfect adoptee rights bill (A1046) is making its way to possible passage in New Jersey, a pretty terrible bill (A3672) is being touted as an alternative. Alternative, hell--it is far from that. It is a stinkin' measure that would keep adopted individuals from obtaining rights equal to the rest of us non-adopted folks by giving, once again, the few birth/first mothers in the closet (and first fathers) the right to smash their childrens' right to self-knowledge.

Forever. Forever. For all time. From their descendants.

Inflammatory rhetoric leads to national tragedy

"Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." That was a tagline used by Jesse Kelly, who ran against Giffords, and as one might expect was endorsed by Sarah Palin, about whom I am going to say little because her own words condemn her.

The imaginary conflict between the rights of parents and children

Jane

Benjamin Mills has joined the sorry list of fathers seeking to prevent the adoption of their children. His now two year old daughter, Vanessa Doss, was born in Ohio. Her mother, Andrea Conley, consented to her adoption, stating untruthfully that Vanessa’s father was unknown. Vanessa was adopted by 45 year-old Stacey Doss, a single woman in California.

Mills sued for custody in Ohio and contested the adoption in California. A California court ruled that the Ohio courts had jurisdiction and ordered the child returned to Ohio. 

Was I Destined to be a birth/first mother?

Lorraine

"Meet the Twiblings--How four women and one man conspired to make two babies" read the headline in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Two adorable babies, bright blue eyes, and a  long essay on how to solve upper-middle class infertility: purchase eggs from an adorable young woman, rent two wombs from really nice ladies, mix eggs with husband's sperm. All right, I'm being sarcastic.

Homes for foster children: Find the real family first

Lorraine

Sometimes I do feel like we are making headway in the public's understanding of why adoption records should NOT be sealed. On NPR over the long weekend (while making cheesecake for a New Year's Eve party), I heard a discussion of DNA Sequencing & Personal Genomics and its implications for determining what strains of disease we might unknowingly carry in our genes, and whether we want to know about them years before they express themselves. The first caller was from someone who asked about the implications of sealed records for adoptees and their future health and treatment options.