Mormon Opposition to Open Records

When I told Rebecca, my surrendered daughter who is a Mormon, that her Church opposed legislation allowing adult adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates, she asserted that I was misinformed: The Church had no position on opening records; she insisted; it was only the old fuddy duddies who ran LDS Family Services who opposed opening records and they would soon be gone.

Contrary to Rebecca’s assertion, the Mormon Church does oppose opening records. Furthermore, it stretches credibility to believe that LDS Family Services would take a position which had not been approved by the Church. LDS Family Services agencies comprise 26 percent of the 197 member agencies of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) the leading opponent of open records legislation. It sends emissaries to oppose open records at public hearings all over the country; it initiates letter-writing campaigns opposing open records. Without NCFA and its “official” sounding name, it’s almost certain more states would have open records laws by now. Make no mistake; LDS is the enemy of open records.

NCFA claims that it opposes opening records in order to protect "the principles of mutual consent and the option of privacy in adoption," but that’s just a cover for the principles of Mormonism, that is that your only family is the one to which you were sealed in the temple; this is the family with which you will spend eternity. Keeping records closed helps perpetuate the Mormon tenet that single pregnancy is sinful and ought to be concealed by surrendering the baby for adoption. Finally, it actively discourages adoptees from searching for their natural mothers, and makes searching seem like something that a good Mormon would not do. (Ironically, Troy Dunn, also known as “The Locator,” announces that he is a Mormon who searched and found his mother’s biological family in the opening sequence of each show. Go figure.)

Let’s look at how LDS beliefs and practices encourage and further sealed records. It starts with the Church’s reliance on abstinence only-sex education and includes the Church’s opposition to abortion, and insistence that single mothers surrender their babies. These same conditions created a baby glut in 1960's. There’s no hard data but it appears likely that without an aggressive adoption program, there would be more Mormon babies available than couples willing to adopt.

Mormons marry and begin their families early. Thus they have fewer age-related fertility problems than the general population. LDS Family Services excludes gays, single people, and those who are not “temple worthy” from adopting. At the same time, Mormons eschew childlessness, putting pressure on infertile couples to adopt. Many couples, however, are reluctant to adopt if there is a likelihood that the child may reunite with the first family. They may turn to foreign adoptions where reunion with birthparents is often impossible.

The Church actively promotes surrender and adoption. Its monthly publication Ensign has frequent articles encouraging pregnant single women to surrender their babies. Each ward, an organizational unit consisting of about 200 families, has an adoption coordinator who identifies pregnant single women and counsels them on marriage or adoption. Each ward holds annual adoption promotion programs during Sunday services. LDS Family Services has adoption agencies throughout the country. (See earlier post. And post about Rebecca's hurtful email.)

Although Mormon adoptions today commence with some degree of openness, adoptive parents have the power to deny contact between the adopted child and his natural parents. A mother-to-be may meet the prospective adoptive parents at the LDS Family Services offices but they are not given each others’ names or address. Adoptive parents are required to send pictures and letters to the natural mother through LDS Family Services offices until the child is three. The natural mother may send letters and pictures as well. However, LDS Family Services reads the letters and may censor them or refuse to forward them to the adoptive parents. The parties can agree to meet and to continue contact after three years, but this means that the adoptive parents have complete control over whether this happens or not. If they wish to cut off all contact, they may do so; remember that the first mother was never given their name or whereabouts. At this point, the so-called open adoption can in effect become a closed adoption, just as surely as mine was in 1966.

As usual, as in the past, this puts all the power in the hands of the adoptive parents, leaving natural mothers once again at the mercy of adoptive parents, who could turn out to be just like the ones Lorraine wrote about in the previous post.

It seems obvious that Church leaders fear that opening records – giving adoptees the right to their original, first biological heritage -- would encourage reunions which would in turn discourage Mormons from adopting domestically. The inevitable result would be single mothers keeping their babies or placing them with non-Mormon families. But adoption by non-Mormon families would work against the Church’s fierce drive to increase its membership. Remember, one of its main goals is to increase membership -- that is the point of the two-year mission that all good Mormon men undertake. Additionally, if women kept their babies, the single-mother families might draw into question the Church's teachings that a proper family consists of a married man and woman and their children.

How do we combat this? Certainly it is an uphill battle, and with the LDS, we will never win in our lifetimes. But that means that we have to work all the harder to spread the message that the vast majority of first mothers desperately want to know the children they surrendered and pray for a reunion.

In a few days, I’ll post about reading my granddaughter’s blog – and learning that she has obliterated me from her “heritage.”

--Jane

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.

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.

Romney urges single woman to give up her baby--or be outcast from LDS

Lorraine

Mitt Romney, as a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, pressured an unmarried woman to give up her unborn child to be adopted. That revelation comes from The Real Romney, a new book excerpted in the February issue of Vanity Fair.  In the book, co-authors Michael Kranish and Scott Helman tell the story of one Peggie Hayes, who had a long-time connection with the Romney family.

Hayes had joined the church with her mother, and knew the Romneys so well that as a teenager, Hayes baby-sat for the Romney boys in Boston. In her last year of high school, however, her mother abruptly moved with her daughter to Salt Lake City. Peggie married, moved to Los Angeles, had a daughter, divorced, and eventually moved back to the Boston area, where she made contact again with the Romneys. She stayed a member of the Mormon church.

Adoption and the Mormon Church

My surrendered daughter Rebecca is a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS, Mormon). In spite of a childhood marred by not knowing her origins, she accepts without question the Church’s precepts that all unmarried mothers should surrender their children for adoption. This doctrine is founded not only on the Church’s concepts of morality but on its beliefs about family and immortality.

The Mormon Church advises couples who conceive a child out of wedlock:

“…The best option is for the mother and father of the child to marry and work toward establishing an eternal family relationship. If a successful marriage is unlikely, they should place the child for adoption, preferably through LDS Family Services. … Adoption is an unselfish, loving decision that blesses the birth parents, the child, and the adoptive family.” (Quotations are from the Church’s website, www.LDS.org.)

According to Mormon doctrine we are put on earth to work towards perfection. After our death and resurrection, we will stand “before the Lord to be judged according to our desires and actions. Each of us will accordingly receive an eternal dwelling place in a specific kingdom of glory.” The kingdoms of glory in descending order are the Celestial the Terrestrial, and the Telestial Kingdoms. Those who are unworthy will be called the sons of perdition and “will have to abide a kingdom which is not a kingdom of glory. After death we may be reunited with family members who are in the same kingdom.

The Church’s rules on family formation are set forth in its 1995 “Proclamation to the World.”

“…Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and … the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

“…God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

“ Individuals who violate covenants of chastity … will one day stand accountable before God. … The disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

By surrendering her child for adoption, a natural mother “ensures that the child will be sealed to a mother and father in the temple” and thus may have “an eternal family relationship” after death. Surrendering the child allows unmarried parents to atone for violating the covenant of chastity and “enhances the prospect for the blessing of the gospel in the lives of all concerned.” Finally, surrender protects society against disintegration and calamity.

If the threat of being excluded from a kingdom of glory is not enough, the Church adds the familiar arguments:

“Young women who choose adoption are more likely to complete high school and go on to higher education. They are more likely to be employed and less likely to live in poverty or receive public assistance. They are also less likely to repeat out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Children who grow up without their fathers are three times more likely to have a child of out of wedlock, twice as likely to drop out of high school, and two to three times as likely to have emotional or behavioral problems, and they often become the poorest of the poor.”

Each ward (a church organizational unit of about 200 families) has a volunteer adoption counselor. The counselor contacts pregnant unmarried women, and if marriage is not possible or desired, refers them to LDS Family Services.

Each ward also holds periodic adoption promotion meetings during which the ward leader (bishop) reminds church members of the Church’s teachings on adoption. Adoptive parents provide favorable testimonials. The Church publishes articles it its monthly magazine Ensign urging pregnant single women to surrender their children.

Until recently, Mormon adoptions, like other adoptions, were closed. Now expectant mothers may select adoptive parents from profiles online and meet with them. The parties may agree to further contact.

The Mormon adoption mandate appears to be successful. Few Mormon women keep their babies. Those that do suffer condemnation from Church members. I have been told that while they can attend Church services, they are not permitted to participate in prayers nor sacred temple ceremonies.

This is the second of a series on the LDS Church and adoption-related issues.

Lorraine adding a note here:

The greatest most organized opposition to open records for adoptees comes from the National Council for Adoption. They send people to testify at hearings, they write letters, they have money to fight open records because they collect fees for adoptions...right?

And who make up a large--if not majority--of their agency members? The LDS adoption agencies. Given what Jane has reported (from their own website) NCFA will never support open records, and when any of you good soldiers in the fight against stupid sealed records come up against them...this kind of information should be made known to your legislators. NCFA must lose! NCFA not now, NCFA (Nik-Fa) never!

Mormons on Meeting your (Birth) Child

The comment from the Mormon birth/first mother to the last post has been on my mind because I am not too kind to mothers who stay in the closet from their children, and a good number of them turn out to be Mormons. She wrote:

"I wonder if many of these (possibly) Mormon mothers still feel alone, isolated, and wholly unworthy of speaking out or seeking contact. The social stigma of being an "unwed mother" still looms large in the LDS church, even if you were an "unwed mother" decades ago - it is a label that will never leave you in this culture.

Perhaps because I have an insider's understanding of psychological warfare used against relinquishing mothers throughout their entire lifetime in the Mormon culture, I am able to view some of these women's choices in a different light. I am not condoning or supporting their choice in any degree. My heart just aches for them that they feel like their own flesh and blood should have no contact with them."

Her post has been gnawing at me because I feel so strongly that mothers ought to at least meet their children ONCE face-to-face, and decide where to go after that; but I realize that a million different  cultural forces may be pushing up against them--just the way many of us felt when we relinquished in the Baby Scoop Era. And we want understanding and acceptance, don't we?

Additionally, I realize that my personal stance against established religions and their dogmatic views, despite having been raised Roman Catholic or perhaps because of having been, I am not as forgiving as I should be of those who are contentedly living within a religious culture that actively discourages contact. That would exclude most religions, including my own Catholicism, because they do not discourage meeting the child one gave up to adoption. From what I know, Mormonism does. Certainly the National Council for Adoption [NCFA] does, and the Church of the Latter Day Saints is a major component, though their adoption agencies, of that nefarious pro-adoption organization. NCFA is unquestionably one of the biggest stumbling blocks to allowing adoptees access to their original birth certificates. The only kind of adoptee-reunion legislation NCFA supports is a passive registry, with as many disqualifying caveats as they can unreasonably get legislators to agree to. So if anyone reading this is considering placing a child for adoption, stay as far away from any NCFA members as you can when choosing an agency. You can find a list of their members at their website.

As for first/birth/biological/original mothers who will not meet their children whom they relinquished for adoption, I know they exist. One has even gone so far as to sue the state of New Jersey for having released her identity to her daughter; another has a fervid website opposed to open records. While I truly deeply believe all mothers who have relinquished a child to adoption have an unwavering, unyielding, absolute obligation to meet their children at least once and open to door to those children to have a a relationship with their siblings if there are any, I try to find some compassion for those women, and birth father men, who struggle with this.

Where does this leave us? I do not have the answers. All I know is that giving up a child to the unknown, or even to known parents in an open adoption, is the most gut-wrenching, difficult, terrible, awful thing that a mother can do, and everyone suffers, mother and child. Birth mother and adoptee.

And the pain inflicted never ends. Adoption is the sorrow that goes on grieving.
___________
Incidentally, the woman who posted the above comment has a blog of her own: Letters to Mrs. Feverfew. And longtime readers know that in the past we have written extensively about the Mormon church and adoption. See Mormon Opposition to Open Records,
and Rachel's Origins Don't Include Me
and  An Inconvenient Appendage. For starters.
--lorraine

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.

Mormon Myths and Adoption Records

Lorraine’s post Mormons on Meeting Your (Birth) Child generated many comments about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ position on single mothers, adoption, and reunion. We encourage our readers to read the excellent letter on Feverfew from “M” correcting some of the statements about LDS beliefs. “M” identifies herself as a lifelong Mormon “who is currently attempting to live the precepts of the LDS faith while reconciling my adoption experience with the gospel of Jesus Christ. While I consider myself to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, I don’t consider myself to be a typical “Mormon” by any means because I tend to question with boldness the very existence of God.”

As many of you know, my daughter Rebecca was adopted by Mormons. Early in our reunion 12 years ago, I tried to learn about the Church. I’ve come to the conclusion that LDS Church leaders, like clever politicians, don’t take positions on issues when they don’t have to. Much like the platforms of political parties, the Church has core doctrines. These doctrines came from God via the first prophet, Joseph Smith, and have been “clarified” by subsequent prophets or presidents as they are also called.

Like political parties with their National, State and Local Committees, elected officials, candidates, precinct people, and the like, the Church has lots of “authorities”: second presidents, the Quorum of 12, the Council of 70, the president of the Relief Society, stake presidents, bishops, staff at LDS Family Services (which handles adoptions), and finally priests (every temple worthy male). These people (all men except for the president of the Relief Society) make statements about what Mormons should or should not do (have tattoos, for example – a definitely should not). But these statements are not Church doctrine and Church leaders disavow them if necessary. On the other hand, the doctrine is complicated and Mormons themselves may be confused about Church teachings or, in attempting to apply them, reach erroneous conclusions. Critics of the Church may twist statements by Church leaders much as Fox New Anchors distort remarks by Democratic party leaders, adding to the confusion.

As far as I can tell, the Church has no official positions on adoption or reunion although it strongly encourages adoption (“Placing the infant for adoption through LDS Family Services helps unwed parents do what is best for the child. Adoption is an unselfish, loving decision that blesses the birth parents, the child, and the adoptive family”) and discourages reunions.

As I have written here, LDS Family Services is a major player in the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the leading opponent of open records legislation, comprising a quarter of its member agencies. The Church however, has never taken an official position on opening records, leaving it to LDS Family Services to carry the water. (Rebecca explained to me that opposition to opening records could not be Church doctrine because keeping records closed would not help prepare the world for the Second Coming of Christ).

I know that if the Church prohibited reunions Rebecca would not have spent over 10 years looking for me. On the other hand, the statement by a reader explaining why a Mormon woman might refuse contact with her surrendered child which started the examination of LDS teachings is undoubtedly also true. "I wonder if many of these (possibly) Mormon mothers still feel alone, isolated, and wholly unworthy of speaking out or seeking contact. The social stigma of being an "unwed mother" still looms large in the LDS church, even if you were an "unwed mother" decades ago - it is a label that will never leave you in this culture.”

Post script. The Church recognizes that members may be confused about church doctrine. After I posted the piece above, I ran into an article from the LDS Church News reminding Mormons to stick to Church-approved documents when preparing Church lessons and activities. According to the article, the Church has prepared a "correlation" in which "we take all the programs of the Church, bring them to one focal point, wrap them in one package, operate them as one program, involve all members of the Church in the operation — and do it all under priesthood direction." The article discouraged Mormons from consulting "unofficial lesson plans, resources and information found in books and on the Internet."

Unwed Fathers Can't Win Against the Mormons in Utah

Lorraine

What is Utah doing in the United States? The Constitution protects us from  religious states, no? Not in Utah, apparently.

Its laws in one area seem to be outside those of human decency, and certainly unconstitutional. And it has to do with the Mormon Church, which really controls the electorate, which controls the legislature, the courts, the everything. This is Utah today. Separation of church and state is pro forma, but does not really exist. It is a state like no other where separation of church and state exists on paper only, because the Church of the Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ really runs just about everything, and should not be tax exempt.

In yet another case, a single father from another state (Florida) is fighting to gain custody of his nearly year-old daughter whose former girl friend left her newborn with strangers in that unholy state, reports the Salt Lake Tribune, in the first of a four-part series by Brooke Adams. Of course, in Utah, that was perfectly legal, even though the father of the child was doing everything possible to protect his paternal rights. In Utah, that matters not.

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.

Adoptive mothers bully birth mothers--what else is new?

Lorraine and Daughter Jane in matching shoes

Whenever I think that adoption and the animosity that some adoptive parents feel towards their children's natural birth biological parents has abated in the years since I first got involved in adoption reform, something happens to set me straight. In the minds of many adoptive parents, nothing has changed since the Seventies. We are two warring sides of the "adoption triangle" with the kid caught in the middle. 

The acrimonious push back--from a few adoptive mothers--that fellow blogger Jane's recent post on two mothers who have truly open adoptions* generated indicates the amount of jealousy and tension has not gone down--at least for the vocal crowd of Adopters Anonymous who decided to come to FIRST MOTHER FORUM and throw bricks at both adoptees and mothers who lost their children to adoption. 

If LDS Family Services ends adoption, it won't be soon enough

Lorraine

UPDATE BELOW
As we described yet another LDS Family Services adoption scam yesterday, one designed to cut out the natural father, it is merely one more in a long link of such fraudulent adoptions that the state laws were designed, if not to condone, to promote. In Utah the laws make it difficult--if not impossible--for a father to raise his child if the mother chooses adoption. It is apparent that social workers, LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Family Services, an organization with dozens of adoption agencies world wide, but most particularly in Utah, the seat of the Mormon religion, are not interested in ethical adoptions, but speedy ones instead.

Putting the birth family first in adoption

As our regular readers know, my daughter Megan was adopted by a Mormon couple and is a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Her oldest child, Rachael is serving a Mormon mission in South America. Recently, I connected to the “Dear Elder” website which provides a mailing service for letters and packages to missionaries. “Dear Elder” sent me an email last week recruiting volunteers for Orphanage Support Service Organization (OSSO), “a nonprofit charitable organization that provides volunteer opportunities to serve … in over 10 orphanages in Ecuador for the purpose of providing them with various types of support…. Volunteers provide one-on-one nurturing to these disadvantaged children who might otherwise never realize their potential. “

Sounded good but my cynical nature took over. I checked out the OSSO website to see if the orphanages were really just a vehicle for proselytizing. Not so: “None of our projects or programs will be used to propagate religious or political ideas that are contrary to the wishes of the institutions in which we are working.”

Hmm, I thought, that’s good but maybe these orphanages are just staging areas for infants slated for adoption in the U.S. We at FMF have written about the rampant corruption in foreign adoptions, fueled in part by the desire of Americans to obtain infants without the annoyance of birthmothers.

OSSO’s office is in Rexburg, Idaho, where a branch of the Provo, Utah-based Mormon college, Brigham Young University is located. Idaho is, of course, also the home state of most of the wacky Baptists who tried to take 33 non-orphaned children out of Haiti.

As those in the adoption reform movement know, the LDS Church is sort of an institutiona non-gratis. The Church pressures single pregnant women to surrender their newborns to “Temple-Worthy” Mormon couples. LDS Family Services is a powerful opponent of legislation to allow adult adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates.

I wrote to OSSO and asked about its role in adoption. I received this amazing letter from Rex Head, the OSSO contact in Idaho.

“Our goal is to try and do what is best for each child.

When we receive a new child the very first thing we do is to try and find out about her family of origin. We often spend a great deal of time and resources determining if her family of origin is able and willing to properly care for her. If they are not we then see what if anything can be done to help that family become able or willing to care for their child. …. Sometimes we are able to return the child to her family sometimes we are not. If we do, we follow up to make sure the situation remains safe and supportive of the child.

We do not believe that poverty alone should be the reason to seek adoption as an alternative. For example one of the children in our care has a loving mother but is not able to support him as he needs to be supported because he is severely handicapped and caring for him is a full time job and she is very poor. We have tried to employ her in our orphanage but her temperament is not appropriate to work with a large number of children. So we have helped her find other employment. The demands of her job are such that she just cannot care for him during the week so he is with us during the week where he gets therapy, medical attention, good food etc. On the weekend he goes home with his mom and sister.

It is our belief that even the best orphanage is not as good as a good permanent family, so for those who cannot be returned to their families and it looks like the family situation is not likely to change in a favorable direction, or their family is unknown, we do the paper work and legal work so that they can be considered for adoption. We do everything possible to place her inside the country with Ecuadorian adoptive parents. There are however many many more children available for adoption in Ecuador than there are families wanting to adopt so if there are not Ecuadorian families wanting to adopt international adoptive families are considered. In our orphanage we have 22 children, 20 of them have disabilities….

Although we don’t do them [adoptions] ourselves we do allow them to happen even encourage them when needed. I appreciate your concern, and I am very aware of the great injustices done in the name of international adoptions.... There are about 50,000 international adoptions each year. It is a big business where much money is spent to find the youngest cutest healthiest whitest babies and sell them to the highest bidder. Sorry if that sounds rather commercial that is what it is. In some countries it is a very profitable export crop….

Please see the other side of the coin. There are 5+ million children living in orphanages worldwide. Most of them are full of children who are not young enough, healthy enough or white enough to be considered export quality and so the mainstream adoption world never knocks on their door.…. Those children have a right to a family that loves them and if such a family can be found it should be a crime of the highest order to keep the child and family apart no matter where the family lives.”

I almost cried when I read this letter. I thanked Rex and sent off a small check. You can donate to OSSO through its website, www.orphanagesupport.org.

Is LDS Family Services getting out of the adoption business?

Lorraine

According to a source that seems to have the juice, LDS Family Services will be getting out of the adoption business ENTIRELY at the end of 2013. My source says that the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints will no longer be doing adoptions, and they are letting go all of their adoption-related staff prior to Christmas. They also say they will continue to offer their "free lifelong counseling" to the women who have already lost a child to their system.

The source, who says that this was confirmed by a friend who is a social worker for LDS Family Services, says this had been rumored to be in the works for about two years. While there is likely to be no official reason given by the LDS church as to why it is getting out of the adoption business, "but within the rank and file workers, it is thought to be because of the pending lawsuits against LDSFS in relation to father's rights, as well as the "gay adoption issue."

Utah adoption laws becoming more hostile to birth fathers?

Jane

Robert Manzanares only wanted to nurture his new daughter. But for the past four years he has had to run the gauntlet of Utah’s byzantine anti-father adoption laws. Although the Utah Supreme Court ruled in his favor in January, he still faces more litigation before--if ever--he can have custody of his daughter.

Meanwhile the Utah legislature is on its way to passing a bill drafted with the assistance of the attorney who represented the adoptive parents in Manzanares’ case making Utah’s anti-father adoption laws ever harsher. SB 55 which passed the Utah Senate makes it legal for mothers-to-be to deceive fathers about their intent to place their baby for adoption.

Romney's convenient stand on abortion: Flip. Flop. Loop holes.

Hard-hearted Romney then, no friend to women in trouble

More troubling information about the man who would be president, Mitt Romney, and his relationship to women is emerging. We wrote earlier about his encouraging a single mother to relinquish her child for adoption--threatening her with excommunication if she did not--but another story has come to light. It happened in 1983, the same summer that Romney infamously drove to his house at his gated lakefront community on Lake Huron with his Irish setter, Seamus, in a dog carrier lashed to the roof of the car. This became political fodder--cartoons, gags on late-night comedy, even a satirical song--but another incident that summer has been largely ignored until now. 

International Baby Thieves Given PROBATION

While we have this disgusting situation over the baby-snatchers who were given no-jail time by the adoption-always! Mormon band of thieves, U.S prosecutor, Brett Tolman, and Judge David Sam in Salt Lake City earlier this week, The Australian Broadcasting System has a story about stealing babies from the streets of India to be adopted in Australia. Both stories are equally sick and the product of a seemingly unquenchable thirst for infants from anywhere.

Having coffee with a friend the other day, I mentioned E.J. Graff's expose in Foreign Policy, and she said that she had friends who had just adopted from Vietnam. But, she said, they had spent six months working at the agency there and came home with a child with various problems. So I am assuming that their adoption in a clean one. ALEXANDER MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty ImagesWho's your mommy?

Parents might never know if their adopted child is truly an orphan. Back to the Samoan/Salt Lake situation. Prosecutor Tolman told Judge Sam that the birth parents reached by his office did not want prison time for those connected to the Focus on Children thieves...and that they had interviewed some 25 families WHOSE KIDS WERE SENT TO AMERICA to come to this conclusion.

Now what about this smells? This factoid: Approximately 30 % of the Samoan population is...Mormon. The Latter Day Saints are only saving your children! For those just catching up on this story, I'm leaving yesterday's post up. Sorry this has to be all one graf, but so goes the blog: Well, I'm about ready to throw up over the sentence that baby-thieves in Salt Lake City--good Mormons, apparently--got from fellow Mormon: PROBATION. U.S. District Judge David Sam, who ought to discover that he is a LDA (Late Discovery Adoptee) rather than LDS, passed on jail time for Focus On Children agency principals Scott and Karen Banks and caseworkers Coleen Bartlet and Karalee Thornock.

This lovely quartet scammed parents in Samoa into believing their children would be educated in the U.S. and returned later. What happened instead is that the kids were "legally" adopted in the U.S. Judging from the comments at the Salt Lake Tribune website, they were adopted into the Church of the Latter Day Saints and all that means. Prosecutor Brett Tolman (A graduate of Brigham Young University who is accused of dirty deeds during the W. Bush years) recommended probation and setting up a fund that will help set up post offices bosses in Samoa so the REAL PARENTS can receive letters and photos of their children BUT ONLY IF THE ADOPTIVE PARENTS DECIDE TO INITIATE CONTACT.

You read that right. Given what we know about adoptive parents who adopt overseas (so they don't have to save a seat at the dance recital), how many are going to do that? A fifth defendant is expected to also get no jail time; and US has been unable to extradite the child snatchers in Samoa, Tagaloa Ieti and Julie Tiuletufuga. Tolman's phone number is 801-525-5682, or email him at usaut.webmaster@usdoj.gov. What can we add? The market pressure for children leads to this kind of trickery and sham. Yeah, I'm steamed. At least email Tolman and let him know what first mothers think.

Selfless surrender of infant? Or a snow job?

Jane

"Woman Selflessly Gives Up Her New Born for Adoption for an Incredible reason" trumpets the San Francisco Globe. And what is this incredible reason that propelled Amber to make "one of the hardest decisions a mother could possible make"? The incredible bond the prospective adoptive parents had with the "birth mother" of their first child.  Gag me with a spoon!

With incredible saccharin, the twisted logic continues: "Here is a woman who, against her insanely strong motherly instinct realized that she couldn't provide the best life possible for her child, and so was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for her daughter. ...She's a mother who loves her child so much, she's willing to endure agonizing heartbreak to give that child the best opportunities in life."

The Locator Starts Tonight!

Ah....The Locator, which we blogged about a few days past, begins tonight on WE. According to the review in the New York Times everything goes well, including the birth mother/adoptee reunion. Two half-hour segments are tonight, beginning at 9 p.m.; the first is a reunion of siblings; the second is a birth mother/adoptee reunion. Troy Dunn finds the birth mother even though an aunt, who arranged the adoption, wouldn't tell the girl searching anything. Boo on her!

And amazingly enough, Troy Dunn is indeed a Mormon (see Jane's previous post) who has written about child-rearing, his Mormon faith and his work....the review states that he's been so succesful finding people since 1990 that he is now able to take on free cases. That he is a Mormon who reunites mothers and children goes so against the tenants of the LDS--maybe we could get him to knock some heads at the National Council for Adoption, the enemy of open records and reunions.

Stay tuned. We're recording it tonight.

Review at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/arts/television/06loca.html?ref=television

An Update on Rachael

I received a nice Christmas card from Rachael, my surrendered daughter Megan’s 20 year old daughter. This is the first communication I’ve had with Megan’s family in over four months. In August Megan asked me to stop sending her children birthday presents which I had been sending for a decade. I honored her request and didn’t send Christmas presents as well.

I hope Megan explained to her children why Jane was no longer sending gifts. I’m Jane, not grandma to them. Megan’s adoptive parents are on Rachael’s genealogy chart in the grandparent position. Rachael is proud of the fact that she is descended (sort of) from people who came up the Mormon trail. It doesn’t hurt me that Rachel doesn’t give me the privilege of being her grandma. She is a fine young woman and I’m happy to know her.

Mormons are big on adoption. The LDS Church pressures single women to surrender their babies or jeopardize their child’s chance to enter the celestial kingdom. Mormon Mother Marie Osmond has produced two songs “From God’s Arms to My Arms to Yours” and “Delivery” ("I delivered you from Heaven, from God's gentle loving care /And I've entrusted you to mortals who have wished and prayed you there”) to encourage these women to give up their babies.

Marie is not exactly a poster woman for Mormon Motherhood, though. According to Wikipedia, she married young and had a bio child; then divorced and re-married in the LDS temple. She and her second hubby adopted a child, had a bio child, adopted three more children, and had another bio child. Marie had a breakdown after the birth of the last child which she attributed to post-partum depression. She wrote a book about depression, “Behind the Smile”. She then adopted another child, making a total of three bios and five acquireds.

Several years later, tabloids reported that Marie attempted suicide. She and her second hubby divorced. One of her adopted sons entered drug rehab at age 16. It’s hard to imagine that these adopted kids would have been any worse off if God had left them in their natural mothers’ arms.

PS The Daily Bastardette has the video of Mormom Mother Marie singing the songs.