After 6 years, a hollow victory in Utah adoption fight

Lorraine

 Six years. That's how long Robert Manzanares has been fighting for custody of his daughter--a fight that began before she was born. A few days ago, a court decided that he, the father, would have joint custody of his daughter, Kaia, but the adoptive parents will have primary custody and the girl will continue to live with them. The length of time involved in getting to this decision is why Manzanares will not be able to raise his own daughter. How did we get here? Six years? 

This legal battle began in 2008, shortly after the girl was conceived and the girl's mother and Manzanares broke up. Aware that the mother did not want to raise the child, he took all the right steps, filing for his parental rights to be recognized...in Colorado where he and the mother had been living. He made it clear that he did not want his daughter given up for adoption. But the woman fled to Utah before the girl was born. She had Mormon relatives in that state who wanted to adopt the child. And in Utah, that is pretty much all you need: Mormons who want to adopt.

Saying goodbye to adoptee L'Wren Scott

L'Wren Scott in a signature look

Updated at 9:10 p.m. 3/20/14

When fashion designer L'Wren Scott committed suicide Monday, the fashion and celebrity worlds mourned; when we read that she was adopted, the adoption community perks up its ears: another one lost to suicide. 

L'Wren was adopted by Mormon parents in Utah, along with a brother and a sister. An intrepid reader found an old story that included an interview with her adoptive mother who states that she and her husband, who met and married while teenagers, turned to adoption after years of trying to have children. L'Wren's mother says that the children they adopted were all from the Salt Lake City area, and adds this crucial piece of information: "At one point Luann [L'Wren's name after adoption] said she wanted to contact her biological parents, but nothing came of it." This story is ten years old and none of the new stories mention this.

A Birthmother's Fears of Reunion

Unlike Lorraine and Linda, I am a birth mother who can fathom the idea of rejecting our children which I did--before Megan, the daughter I surrendered to adoption, and I connected in 1997. I became pregnant in February, 1966 when I was 23 and living in Fairbanks, Alaska. I had grown up in Chicago and had gone to Alaska in 1960 to attend college thanks to the generosity of my uncle, my deceased father’s older brother who lived there with his wife.

I went to San Francisco in September and Megan was born there in November. She was placed in a foster home and I struggled for a month about what to do. Giving my baby to strangers was wrong but when I tried to visual how to keep my baby, I stared into a blank wall. I finally signed the paper but I told myself our separation would be for only 18 years. I knew that records would be closed but I figured I would go to law school, learn how to beat the system, and find her when she turned 18. By making this promise, I was able to rationalize abandoning my newborn daughter.

While I was in the hospital after Megan was born, an attorney who had been referred by a doctor I had seen who handled private adoptions came to my bedside. The attorney placed babies with Mormon families and knew a Mormon family in Idaho that wanted a baby girl. Idaho and Mormons did not appeal to me and I sent the attorney away.

After I signed the surrender paper at the San Francisco County Social Services Department which served as the adoption agency, the social worker asked me about religious preference, telling me that, while they could not guarantee any religion, my preference would be respected. I had been raised in a liberal Protestant church but I was not religious. I preferred either a non religious family or a liberal Protestant one. However, if it was necessary to give my baby a good home, a Jewish or Catholic family was okay. Remembering the attorney and the Idaho Mormons, I added as an afterthought that that I did not want my daughter to go a family with a non-mainstream religion like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Seventh Day Adventists. I thought it was unlikely this would happen – after all, I was in ultra-liberal San Francisco. I considered Mormons and the rest as kind of loony. I had known some Mormons in college and they didn’t even drink Coca-cola. One had tricked me into going to a service of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) church by telling me we were going to a meeting which would be beneficial to me. The social worker and I crafted a statement containing my preference for either no religion or a mainstream religion and specifically stating my objection to Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh-Day Adventists. Over the years as I learned more about the LDS Church (its racism and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment), I thought “at least I didn’t let my baby be raised by Mormons.”

I graduated from law school four years later. When 1984 came around, I was living in Salem, Oregon; I had a good job as an administrator for the State of Oregon, was married, and had three more daughters. I decided to put off my search until Megan was 21 telling myself 18 was really too young. While my husband knew that I had placed a baby for adoption, we had not talked about it since the day before our wedding in 1968. My daughters knew nothing about this older sister. In fact the only people close to me besides my husband who knew anything were my now deceased uncle’s widow, a few friends, and of course Megan’s birth father, all of whom lived in Fairbanks, far enough away that I felt secure that my secret would not reach Oregon.

In March of 1987, I came home one evening and my husband told me that my aunt in Fairbanks had called telling him a young girl in Utah or at Brigham Young University, I forget which, was looking for me. My husband had written the girl’s name and phone number on a napkin. I barely looked at the napkin and I did not learn her name for more than ten years. I thought immediately that the caller might be, probably was, my daughter. I refer to her now as my daughter but until we united I always thought of my first born as “the baby.”

I was stunned, terrified. I had heard of adoptees searching but not this young; she was barely 20. I called my aunt reluctantly; I did not want to know anything about this girl in Utah. My aunt told me that she had refused to give the girl my name and phone number. “Did I do the right thing” she asked. “Yes.” I assured her. She said something to the effect that since you have the information, I don’t need to send this. Later I learned that Megan had sent my aunt a letter and I think that’s what my aunt was referring to. At the time, I would have agreed to anything. I wanted to get off the phone. My aunt is a good person but we were not close and I did not like her being involved in my personal life. I was also angry that she had passed along information to my husband instead of waiting until she could talk to me. Since the young woman who called lived in Utah, she was probably a Mormon. I rationalized that it could not be my daughter. It did not occur to me that the social worker might have gone against my wishes.

My husband and I were going out of town for a conference in a few days. I decided not to think about the call and the name on the napkin until we returned and I didn’t. When we came home, I could not find the napkin. My mother-in-law had come to stay with our daughters; she had thrown the napkin away while tidying up. I was relieved.

I feared meeting my birth daughter. She became a ghost, haunting me, ready to strike. For the next few weeks I jumped when the phone rang or someone came to the door. A few months later as I was doing “spring house cleaning,” going through drawers and closets, throwing out the worn, the useless, and the meaningless, I came upon a picture of me taken a few days before Megan was born and the identifying bracelet put on my wrist right after she was born. I had saved these objects for 20 years because it was all that I had of her. I cut them up and threw them away to keep the ghost from returning.

What was I afraid of? Unlike many birthmothers, I was never afraid that people would find out I had sex without being married. I never thought that was wrong. I was afraid of people learning that my life had been out of control, that I had failed myself and my family by getting pregnant, that I was not who I pretended to be: competent, professional, knowledgeable.

My mother died in July of 1988. Death brings to us a need to strengthen the bonds with remaining family members. I began to feel Megan’s absence acutely. My mother never knew about her and never would. I begin thinking about conducting a secret search. I did not think of calling my aunt to ask for the name of the young woman who had called a year and a half earlier. It doesn’t make sense but I had completely blocked out this phone call.

That winter, I came across Florence Fisher’s The Search for Anna Fisher on a table at the library. I snuck to the back of the stacks and read the book in one sitting. It included information about ALMA (Adoptees Liberation Movement Association) which Fisher had founded. I sent in the membership fee and reunion registry information with a note asking that any correspondence be in a plain envelope. Several weeks later I began receiving newsletters with words like adoption, reunion, search spread all over the front page in big letters. I cancelled my membership. Sometime later I received a call inviting me to an ALMA meeting in Salem. I hung up on the caller. I was upset that someone, perhaps someone I knew, a neighbor, a co-worker, a parent at my children’s school, knew my secret.

My aunt, the same aunt, called again. I remember it being in late 1990. She told me a woman was looking for me who said she knew me in college. She gave me the name but it meant nothing. I told her I did not know the woman and asked her not to give the woman my phone number. Again I was terrified. Later I learned that Megan had contacted my aunt in 1991 asking for my number which my aunt refused to give her. That may have been the call that I remember receiving in 1990.

As time went on, I thought more and more about searching. I registered with AOL’s search registry which resulted in a slew of emails from private investigators offering to search for a fee. I thought of writing to the adoption agency in San Francisco but I was afraid my daughters would see the envelope when the agency wrote back. I checked into renting a post office box so that I could keep my correspondence secret and learned that the post office would not rent boxes to people with street addresses.

I can’t explain my thinking because it doesn’t make any sense. On the one hand there was this ghost which if it appeared would change my life for the worse, damaging my relationship with my husband and children, adversely affecting my career, and diminishing my image in the community. I did not want to be seen as a woman who could not manage her life, who at 23 was less rational than a 16 year old in the back seat of a Ford tussling with the high school quarterback. In failing to respond to Megan’s overtures, I did not even consider that I was rejecting her; I deluded myself into thinking that I could excise a part of my life that never should have happened.

On the other hand there was this baby out there somewhere with whom I desperately wanted a relationship in order to restore a missing part of my life. I hid from the ghost and feebly pursued the baby. What I wanted – and needed – was the ability to control the timing and pace of a reunion.

On November 18, 1997, the day after Megan’s 31st birthday my aunt called for the third time and told me my daughter had called and had written again. This was the first time she referred to the caller as “your daughter.” My aunt indicated she was tired of dealing with this woman. I told her I would take care of it and asked her to forward Megan’s letter. Although in retrospect it would be easy to criticize my aunt for not passing along me Megan’s letters or pressing me to contact her. I believe that my aunt meant well. She was trying to protect me. I’m sure she assumed as many do today that I did not want contact. I also think that she had an irrational fear that the story of my pregnancy would be circulated again in Fairbanks which somehow might occur if she cooperated with my daughter. She and my uncle were prominent in Alaska and very concerned about scandal when I became pregnant. Alaska is a dull place for the most part, particularly in winter. The most interesting goings on tend to be the negative, who ran off with who’s husband, who crashed his car while driving drunk, and so on. My aunt was so fearful of possible scandal that she waited until she took a trip to Seattle a few days later to mail Megan’s letter. Apparently she feared someone at the Fairbanks post office would see the envelope and know what was in it.

I could focus on nothing while I waited for Megan’s letter. One minute I wanted to jump off a bridge. The next minute I was euphoric. I knew my life was about to change. While I had read an occasional newspaper article about reunions and The Search for Anna Fisher, I knew little about the search movement or why adoptees searched. I knew nothing about AAC, Origins, Bastard Nation, the local Oregon support group, the International Soundex Reunion Registry, the fight for open records, Lorraine’s memoir Birthmark, Betty Jean Lifton's writings, or any of the other “books." I knew of CUB (Concerned United Birthparents) only through adoptive mother Lucinda Franks’ biased and mean 1993 New Yorker article, “The War for Baby Clausen” about DeBoer case. With work and three daughters I did not have time for morning news shows or daytime talk shows. I barely knew who Phil Donahue was. I prepared to call Megan by watching Secrets and Lies, a 1996 British film about a mother/daughter reunion.

I called Megan on November 24, anticipating the conversation would last less than 15 minutes. It lasted two hours. It was an awkward conversation, however. Megan had a lot of information and misinformation from the adoption agency and I was on the defensive much of time. I learned she was indeed a Mormon to which I expressed my displeasure. I later learned that the social worker had simply written “no Jehovah Witness” on my file. So much for the carefully crafted statement.

Megan told me about her search. In the fall of 1986 when she was 19, she obtained her non-identifying information from the adoption agency. It was so specific that she was able to determine her father's name, where he lived, and my maiden name. She wrote her father. He wrote back (against the wishes of his wife) giving her some information about himself and the name of my aunt who he knew was aware of Megan’s birth. He asked her not to contact him again.

Megan did not tell my aunt who she was, only that she was a young woman in Utah. She believed that if she told my aunt who she was and my aunt told me, I would be less likely to call her. The opposite was true. If I had known who Megan was I would have been more likely to have called because I could not have pretended I did not know who called. Over the years Megan contacted my aunt several more times, keeping her informed of her address in case I should ask for it. My aunt soon realized, if she had not known at the beginning, who this woman was. Several times my aunt told her that I did not want anything to do with her. Learning from some of our readers who have not had contact with their first mothers, I can only imagine how much this must have hurt her.

In the fall of 1997, Megan was living near Chicago where her husband was going to graduate school. He brought home The Joy Luck Club and Tender Mercies as part of a class assignment. These movies about reunion with lost children brought her to tears. Encouraged by some church members, she considered searching again. Although the LDS church discourages searches, it has no formal position against it. Megan prayed to God for guidance. She signed on to alt.adoption, a former newsnet group, and met a birthmother online who encouraged her to search again and be more forceful in her telephone conversations. Megan wrote and called my aunt once more. She also called her father. He was now divorced and agreed to meet her at his home in California where he had moved from Fairbanks several years earlier.

Megan also knew nothing about the search movement. If she had obtained help from a search group, she probably would have been able to find me without going through my aunt. If Megan had contacted me herself I believe I would have responded positively.

I’ve met adoptees who think they can soften the blow on their birthmother by asking a relative (even her husband!) to be a “go between.” A big mistake, I tell them. “Reunion is between you and your mother. Don’t let anyone else, who, for all you know might be your mother’s enemy, get between you.” I suspect that the reason that some confidential intermediaries claim a low reunion rate (fifty percent some assert) is that mothers become angry that a stranger knows their secret. They react negatively and the CI uses that to confirm what the CI believes, that mothers don't want contact. The best practice is for states to give adopted persons their original birth certificates and leave the search to them. Unfortunately this is only possible in six states.

Next: Telling my family, coming out in a full-page newspaper ad for Ballot Measure 58.

At last: LDS Family Services and fellow travelers sued in adoption scam

Jake Strickland, 26, in what was to be his son's nursery (Salt Lake Tribune)

Utah's anti-birth father practices and laws are the target of a lawsuit claiming $130 million in damages to an Arizona man who says he was tricked out of raising his son by the boy's mother, adoption attorneys and LDS Family Services. 

We say: Here we go again. Utah has the most anti-father and pro-adoption laws in the country, designed to whisk children away from biological parents as soon as possible, and specifically, to prevent birth fathers from being able to raise their children. 

The new adoption narrative: 'I love you so much I gave you away'

Lorraine

Have you seen the video of the woman who gave up her son in march of 2016? The handover is that day, and she videos her infant son telling him that she is making the video so that one day he will watch it and know that she loves him. She is weeping the whole 9 minutes and 36 seconds of the video. It is hard to watch. 

I had to force myself to see it all the way through, as I stopped a couple of times at a minute or two, as it is repetitious and in the category of "I loved you so much I gave you away." In today's zeitgeist, making such a video is the logical expression of this 18-year-old's pain as she prepares to give him up. The woman, Hannah Mongie, now 20, is a Mormon in Utah--she mentions her boyfriend's mission--and so to simply say that in today's world she would not have endured the severity of the opprobrium of women of earlier generations like my own is not appropriate. I assume that Mormon women, if they do not marry the fathers, are encouraged to give up their babies rather than keep them. From what she says, it appears that the couple would have gotten married; nothing is said about her parents, or if they were involved in her decision.

Rachael's Origins Don't Include Me

“How did you hear about the ‘American Girl’ show” the grandmotherly voice on the phone asked me? I looked around, and seeing the room was empty, whispered “from my granddaughter.”

I didn’t want Rebecca, my surrendered daughter, to hear me refer to myself as her daughter Rachael’s grandmother. Rebecca made clear when she first contacted me three years earlier that her adoptive mother and her mother-in-law were her children’s only grandmothers. At the same time, she never tried to hide who I was from her four children. I spent time with them when I visited Rebecca at her home near Chicago and later at her home near Bloomington Illinois; they visited me at my home in Oregon. I took Rachael and her sister, Chelsea, on a tour of colleges in Oregon and Chicago. Rebecca, her husband, and children came to our family reunion. Rachael and Chelsea email me occasionally and Rachael sent me the link to her blog.

It was Rachael’s twelfth birthday. I was purchasing tickets to take Rachael and Rebecca to the American Girl show in Chicago when the seller asked me the apparently simple question. But nothing is simple in the world of adoption. I did not want Rebecca to think I was assuming a forbidden role, thus I whispered. Rebecca's adoptive mother sent Rachael an American Girl doll for her birthday so our gifts complimented each other.

Last summer Rebecca and her youngest child Aaron, then eight, came to visit. I took Aaron to a local theme park with a friend and her grandson. My friend asked Aaron if I was his grandmother. He said “Well, she is my grandmother in that she is my mother’s biological mother but….” He stopped there, unsure of what I was.

This August just before Aaron’s birthday Rebecca asked me to stop sending her children birthday presents which I had been sending for a decade. I don’t know the reason for her request but I think it may be related to the Mormon definition of family which is not wide enough to include natural relatives. (See “An Inconvenient Appendage.”)

Rachael is now a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Utah. Recently, she attempted to answer the question “who am I” on her blog as part of a school assignment:

“I am a college student, I work a college job, I love life! I love my family, I love Chicago. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and believe in the truth of the gospel that is taught in this religion….

I am the oldest of four …and have mom, dad, two cats, dog, and rabbit (actually it's my sister's). Here's a little about where we come from. I don't mean Illinois, that shapes me too, but where we really come from. Our origins.

[Her mother’s adoptive father’s]… family has been in the US for many, many generations. Perhaps even back to the origins of this country itself. It's funny that these ancestors ended up in Illinois too, by the Mississippi, when they were taught about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They moved down river to join other latter-day-saint members in Nauvoo and then ended up making the trek West to Salt Lake City with some of the first Mormon pioneers in their escape of persecution. Now I'm back in Illinois.

[Her mother’s adoptive mother]: These ancestors were converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints while in Denmark. They … took a boat all the way to America where they met the Saints out West….

. …I think that by learning about where I came from helps me realize the special worth I have on this earth. God made me for a reason!”

Rachael’s omission of her mother’s actual, biological, natural family may have been because this second second family didn't fit into the context of the assignment. No matter why she did it, attributing her origins to people who have no biological connection with her ignores an important part of her. She is her mother’s daughter, yes, but only through adoption is she connected in any way to the ancestors she writes about. Since adoptees that search talk about feeling unconnected to their adoptive families, I wonder if some might explain how they feel about their adoptive ancestors.

Rebecca’s adoptive parents imparted their faith in the LDS Church to Rebecca who in turn imparted it to Rachael. Her mother's adoptive parents, however, did not give her the interest and talent in writing, the difficulty in spelling, or her blue eyes. Rebecca and her family moved to Chicago when Rachael was seven and to the Bloomington area when she was 13. Her love of Chicago with her sense of connection to Illinois is one of those synchronistic things that occur in families separated by adoption. I grew up in Chicago and Rebecca’s biological father’s family was from Bloomington.

I am sad about being left off Rachael’s blog. I’d like to think that knowing me has had some value for her.

How can first mothers talk to those who want to adopt?

Lorraine and reunited daughter, Jane

Dear FMF:

I am the anonymous poster who is the daughter of a very damaged adoptee. I am from Utah and I chose to parent as a single teen based on my mother's experience as an adoptee. I feel very confident discouraging any one from giving up their baby, but what do I say about adoption to friends that want to adopt?  I want them to know the true situation, but it is so hard when they feel like adoption will solve all their problems. And most of them believe that the mothers truly want to give up their children. Have you covered this before?
------------------------------
Let  us applaud you for dealing with the zeitgeist in Mormon-dominated Utah and keeping your baby. Yep, even for me it is very difficult to talk to people who are hell bent on adopting and telling them about birth-mother grief and the long-term impact on the adoptee. A friend wrote me about this very issue, and she remembers crying on the phone with her friend when adoption was being considered. After the adoption, they remained friends but drifted apart somewhat, as the other couple had a young child and she did not, adding however, "their adopting was a further wedge between us." She wrote, "They may not feel it but I certainly do, because today, twenty years later, adoption still finds its way into our conversation in ways that seem hurtful, or at least uncomfortable, for me."

But back to you. You can only save the world one person at a time, and you started out by keeping your child. By living in Utah, surrounded by people who think adoption is only wonderful, you are in a more difficult position than most. We have had an anonymous Mormon first mother commenting on another blog last week who wrote: "i love adoption and am SO grateful with my experience with it." Maybe what you will accomplish more than you realize is being an example to other women in Utah that it is possible to be a single mother; and you can talk to them about how damaged your own adoptee mother was by the fact of her not being raised in her family of origin.

The best thing would be to tell those who want to adopt about the difficulties of your own mother, and suggest that they read various blogs to learn how complicated it is for the adopted person to grow up among genetic strangers.

I've listed below a few of FMF posts that could be helpful. 

The longterm impact of giving up a child

An adoptive mother asks "How can adoption be less horrific on first mothers?"

The saddest story of all: Opting for adoption today

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

 

Utah Supreme Court delays return of Baby Teleah to her father

Teleah with her daddy, Terry Achane

The Utah Supreme Court yesterday put a temporary hold on a trial judge's orders to return a little girl to her soldier father, Terry Achane, after she was given up for adoption without his consent two years ago. The little girl is being held by Jared and Kristi Frei, a couple who proceeded with their plan to adopt her, fully aware that her girl's father, married to her mother, had not given his consent. 

Does this sound like legalized kidnapping to you? Sure does to us. Involved in this chicanery is a corrupt adoption agency (Adoption Center of Choice), a supposedly law-abiding and god-fearing couple (the Freis) and the Utah Supreme Court. The fight is not over yet by any

An Inconvenient Appendage

During our ten years of reunion, my surrendered daughter Megan and I have had many good moments but we have also had sharp disagreements, primarily over the nature of adoption. I believe--and the more I delve into adoption--the more firmly I believe that natural families are cast. The bond between family members can be stretched but never severed. No matter how much we dislike--even detest--our relatives, there is always a connection, those eerie similarities of expression and thought which pop out like moles in a game machine. We have an obligation to protect family members; ultimately, when all else fails, it is our blood which sustains us.

To Megan, a proper family is a husband, wife, and children. Her views come from – or at least are reinforced -- by her strong Mormon beliefs. If the natural family does not fit this “Ozzie and Harriet”/“Leave It to Beaver”/“I Remember Mama” mold, a new family must be created through adoption. This is the pattern God established for families.

Children adopted by Mormon parents are sealed for eternity to their adoptive parents through a temple ceremony. The LDS church discourages adoptees from searching for their natural families. Church Handbook of Instructions, 2006.)  Despite this teaching and her adoptive parents disapproval, Megan searched for me for over ten years.

The Church encourages its members to prepare a family history – in the case of adoption – it is the adopted family’s history although, according to Megan, they may also research their birth family if moved to do so. Genealogy is rooted in the Church’s requirement that its members baptize their deceased forebears in order to pave their way to a higher place after death. Genealogy has nothing to do with learning one's genetic heritage.

I am an inconvenient appendage -- a line on a genealogy chart that does not connote lineage.

Megan tells me that her adoption was part of God's plan for her although (thank goodness) she doesn’t go as far as Rosie O’Donnell to assert that God put her in the wrong woman’s tummy.

Although our quarrels over adoption have resulted in periods of silence, we have had a continuing line of communication through her four children. Early in our reunion, I asked Megan if I could send the children presents for their birthdays and Christmas to which she agreed. Over the years, I selected small items, often books or videos which I or the three daughters I raised had enjoyed as children. Occasionally I sent more expensive  items-–a scooter, a camera-–the price of which might exceed her family’s budget. When the older children reached 13, I sent checks on their birthdays, $5 for every year of age. I always signed the cards which accompanied the gifts "Jane," never "Grandma" not wishing to usurp Megan's adoptive mother's role. Megan participated in the giving, advising me on what her children would like or telling me their sizes when clothing seemed in order. Megan often sent emails thanking me. On rare occasions the children sent thank you notes.

This week Megan sent me the following email.

“Hi Jane,
Hope your summer's been fine. Aaron's birthday is coming up in a few weeks, and I would like to ask you not to send anything for it. We've always really enjoyed your thoughtful presents, and really appreciated them, but at times I've felt a bit uncomfortable about them. I wasn't really sure how to deal with it, but I've decided just to take the direct approach and ask you to stop.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you. Thanks.

Megan”

Aaron, Megan’s youngest child is almost ten and I have been sending him gifts since he was born.

I replay conversations and actions over the past several months but can only guess at what precipitated Megan’s email.

I debate what action to take. Ignore her, end our relationship, or ask her what’s behind her decision. If I received a similar letter from one of my raised daughters, I would call her immediately. We are family.

It’s different with Megan. In the eyes of the LDS Church and the law we’re not family. Although painful, perhaps it’s best if I let it go. If she wants to extinguish this cord between us, so be it. We will still be connected: She was cast from my body.

What will her children think if I don’t send them presents? I was planning to send Aaron, who loves history, Charles Dickens’ “A Child’s History of England.” He won’t miss it but he may miss knowing that I thought about him. And even if the children are not sentimental about gifts, a teenager can always use cash. Will Megan tell them it was she who stopped the presents?

How giving up a child affects you in the long-term

Lorraine

Grief and anger are two emotions that we first mothers know plenty about. Often only when the grief can turn to anger are we often able to make a positive step in working toward changing attitudes and reforming adoption, but so much in the culture comes at us day after day that it feels as if we are taking two steps backward. The bliss of adoption is everywhere.

Some Mormon singer has a song about carrying a baby for another woman, as if this is a wonderful thing, something to celebrate. We read about the corruption in interntional adoption--particularly now in Ethiopia--but I also read a profile of Connie Britton, an actress who's making it big at forty, but right there on the second page is "her son Eyob, a 2-year-old she adopted from Ethiopia in 2011." My elderly neighbor, temporarily forgetting because she disagrees with me, says that the couple next door, in their late thirties, early forties, are thinking about

A Daughter's Change of Heart

My surrendered daughter Megan, a Mormon, searched for me for over 10 years, finally locating me in late 1997. Shortly after we reunited, she asked me what her original name had been. It was Rebecca. She said that her adoptive mother told her that I had not given her a name. Soon after that, Megan wrote to the State of California requesting her original birth certificate (OBC). Given that California still seals records and steals the name, she did not receive her OBC.

After our reunion, I tried to learn more about adoption. I attended conferences sponsored by the American Adoption Congress and Bastard Nation, advocates for allowing adoptees to receive their original birth certificates. While I had kept Megan’s existence a secret from most of my family, I became an activist for open records and encouraged Megan to become one as well. In August, 2000 she wrote the following letter to the Chicago Tribune:

“I've long been an advocate of open records. I am an adoptee. The birth certificate that I must rely on to get a driver's license, passport, etc., is a lie. It lists my place, date and time of birth and has a signature of the attending physician. And then it has the names of adoptive parents who were not there on that day. It places them at a place and time they were not. It is a cover-up.

I have long wanted to own a Certificate of Adoption that I could use for identification. It would list the place, date and time I was adopted. Really, my identify began at that moment.

I have a pretty good relationship with my adoptive parents, and I know they would never understand this.

Before I found my birth parents, I spent a lot of time scrutinizing my birth certificate, trying to make sense of it, trying to find my birth parents names listed somewhere between the lines. The certificate contained other facts about my birth, yet it left off the most important fact. I could not make sense of it. I want my original birth certificate because I want the complete truth, in writing, of who I am. I will still use the ammended [sic] one for legal purposes, but getting the original one would give me great satisfaction.”

Over the past eight years, however, Megan’s connection to the Mormon Church has hardened and our relationship has deteriorated. When we are together, we get along, agreeing for the most part on subjects like movies, raising children, protecting the environment. We enjoy the same activities, walking, theater, family dinners. We both wear simple clothes -- jeans and T-shirts -- and use little make-up. We make the same spelling errors -- we both routinely spell “amended” incorrectly. However, Megan cannot tolerate any discussion that she considers to be a criticism of the LDS Church or adoption. She believes that her adoption was God’s plan for her; that her adoptive family, the family to which she is joined for eternity, is her only family. I and my other children and her father and his daughter are inconvenient appendages. She recently emailed me and asked me not to send birthday gifts to her children, my grandchildren.

Early this year I forwarded Megan emails from an Illinois member of Bastard Nation with information about an open records bill in the Illinois legislature, HB4623. In a complete turnabout of how she initially felt, Megan wrote the following letter to the Bloomington (Illinois) Pantagraph.

“I am an adult adoptee. About 10 years ago, I made the choice to search for my birth mother and I found her!

I knew nothing about the "adoption rights'' movement. It was just something I wanted to do for myself.

The reunion with my birth mother was satisfying for me, and we still correspond and visit each other. After we met, I even attempted to obtain my original birth certificate, but was denied.

Since that time, I have been exposed to many, many communications from various groups pushing for legislation that would allow all adoptees the right to obtain their original birth certificates, regardless of the wishes of birth mothers.

At first, the political arguments made a lot of sense to me. However, after much careful study, pondering and prayer, I have decided for myself that I cannot embrace these groups' basic philosophy regarding family.

God has a plan for families. Children should be nurtured in loving homes by a father and a mother who are also husband and wife. "Redefining kinship,'' as advocated by the some of these groups, is a dangerous thing.

Furthermore, to obtain one's original birth certificate is not a civil or human right.
Because I don't believe in the basic goals of “adoption rights'' organizations, I cannot and will not support their political agendas, including open records for all adoptees.”

The letter created a ripple in the adoption rights community. A blogger in Australia ripped her for writing the letter pointing out that she had what she wanted but now would not let others have the same.

“That she has said all this AFTER She has *reunited* and REMAINS *reunited* with her Mother who gave birth to her and they still correspond and visit each other and not only that but the whole reunion was 'satisfying' for her...( I should be so lucky)

“BUT What Megan about all those other poor sods out there who NEED Their Original OBC To even 'begin' their search ? did you think about that ? What about them ?

“No sorry but your views are antiquated and self serving and certainly NOTHING To do with GOD.”

I don’t know why Megan wrote the letter – to get back at me for something? To reassure herself that her adoption was the right thing? I can only think that Megan struggled with the need to be true to her feelings and the need to be true to her church. In the end, the Church won out.

How did I feel when I read her letter? Disappointed, wistful, sad. Five years earlier I would have been distraught. I’m disappointed that Megan isn’t like Marley Greiner and the many other adoptees that fight for open records. I wish Megan and I could share our feelings about adoption. I’m sad Megan is so controlled by the LDS Church that she suppresses her feelings in order to support the Church’s fanciful views on the family. I’m sad that Megan can’t accept that she has two families.

--Jane

Utah adoption attorney exposes corruption in Utah adoption agencies

Wes Hutchins

Wes Hutchins, a Utah attorney who has done more than a thousand  adoptions, decided to follow up on an “unsettling hunch” that “the way some adoption agencies handle birth mothers …‘is an invitation for birth mothers to lie, cheat and defraud birth fathers into thinking they don’t have anything to worry about’” according to a May 9 report on Denver TV station, 9News.*

"'The idea that the birth mother can travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child and then leave the state with the sole purpose of cutting off the rights of the biological father has to stop,’ Hutchins said.”

Utah's anti-father policies an offshoot of Mormon agenda

Jane

Wes Hutchins, a Utah adoption attorney wants to change Utah’s laws which allow a mother “to travel from any state to Utah and be in Utah for two or three days and then give birth to a child with the sole purpose of cutting off the right of the biological father.”

David Hardy, a Utah adoption attorney affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), asserts the laws are fine the way they are. “The Utah laws may be harsh but they are looking at what’s best for the child: stable families and two parent families, ” he told The Washington Post. Hardy’s claim supports an agenda to abet and encourage Mormon practices in the state. Is he attempting to make Utah a theocracy? There is supposed to be separation of church and state in the United States of America.

Equality begins with the right to know who you are

Lorraine

Soon the Washington legislature will vote on whether give individuals adopted in the state the right to their own unamended birth certificates, the one with the true information of their birth--unless one of the parents named on the original birth certificate objects. 

How such a cockamamie veto power came to be tacked onto this legislation--with the assistance of a first mother! and an adoptee--is a story that Jane has told in previous blogs. In the past, we did say that a bad bill--with a veto--is better than nothing at all for nearly all individuals who wish to obtain their original birth certificates (OBCs) will be able to do so. Only a very small minority of first parents will object and file a veto.

But now the thought of such bad legislation makes us angry to contemplate. We have heard from adoptees who have been denied; we have heard from those who

Argument to give up your baby is the same old one heard before

Sept.1, 2013 cover of New Republic

First Mother Forum is included as a place where you can "Meet the New Anti-Adoption Movement" in the current issue of The New Republic, to wit:

"Some women, like Corrigan D’Arcy, blog their stories. They run message boards with names like “First Mother Forum” and “Pound Pup Legacy,” full of tales of bitterly regretted adoptions. They hold retreats for birth mothers* and adoptees. They’ve formed several grassroots activist organizations, including Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform, Origins-USA, and Concerned United Birthparents. Some call themselves adoption reformers. Others prefer terms such as 'adoption truth advocate.' A few will come straight out and say they’re anti-adoption."

The piece, by Emily Matchar, is good and straight-forward reportage about the growing sense of dissolution about adoption in America, and makes reference to the Baby Scoop Era before Roe v. Wade, as well as the pressure that we, mothers of that time, were under to relinquish our children.

What Ever Happened to Baby Emma? and good news on the Wyrembek boy

Lorraine

Late Breaking News: This comes from Toledo:  "The Vaughns have signed new papers agreeing to give Grayson Wyrembek back to his father, Benjamin Wyrembek, by the end of the month, never to see him again, and to drop all further resistance to the law and justice and to stop trying to take this child from his Ohio family. Wyrembek apparently had, or is still having, a lengthy visit with his son over the weekend, and will continue to have such visitations until he the end of the month. To which we add: Great!

                                                  *    *     *
While we wait and watch to see what happens to Benjamin Wyrembek's son, there is another case of father's rights being denied, this one in Utah, my least favorite state: A young father in Virginia, John Wyatt, 22, was given the round-around by the Sentara Potomac Hospital in Virginia, but eventually learned two days later that the mother, college student Emily Colleen Fahland, managed somehow to relinquish in Utah.

Uh, oh....Utah and them Mormons like to get those babies away from single mothers...

Why didn't we resist the social pressures?

Some may ask why we did not resist the social pressure to give up our children, particularly since Lorraine and I were college graduates in our 20's at the time of surrender.

In addition to fearing the stigma which we knew would attach to us and our families as unwed mothers, many in my generation of birthmothers believed that keeping our child would be harmful to the child. Folklore passed to us through parents, clergymen, teen magazines, soap operas, and Ann Landers told us that children of unmarried mothers were always better off adopted by a married couple who had so much love (as well as material goodies) to give.

(The Mormon Church teaches this today. It saddens me that my surrendered daughter, Megan, a worthy church member, believes it.)

The social worker mantra "A child needs a mother (pause) and a father" rang in my ears. The only way Megan could gain a father was to lose me, a woman of no consequence.

I knew the pain of being fatherless. My parents had divorced when I was 15. My father, who died when I was 20, had not been involved in my life in a meaningful way since I was a small child. I envied girls whose fathers came straight home from work and presided at the dinner table, inquiring about their day at school. These fathers took their families on vacations every summer, taught their daughters to drive, and attended father/daughter events at church and school.

If a social worker had said to me: "Jane, being adopted in a closed adoption causes children problems. Your daughter may develop trust issues, she may feel abandoned, she may suffer from being raised by people who don't look or act like her, she is more likely to have behavioral problems and so on,” I would have kept her, no question about it. If the social worker had leveled with me about adoptive parents, that they, like other parents, might divorce, lose their jobs, suffer from alcoholism, or abuse their children, I would have walked out of the hospital with my daughter.

By 1966 when I gave up Megan, substantial research (as well as common sense) documented the many problems adoptees and adoptive families face. Social workers knew about them but didn’t tell us. I can only guess why.

And so, with no information to the contrary, I took as an article of faith that no matter how hard I struggled to raise my daughter, she would be better off, moving seamlessly into the mythical family, superior in every way not only to me but to my entire family. I envisioned her as a teenager screaming at me: "why did you keep me? I could have gone to a fine family and had a better life. You were a mean, selfish woman and I hate you!”

Family ties broken by adoption, linked by sychronicity

Jane

I'm off to Peru with Rachael, the daughter of my surrendered daughter Rebecca. Rachael was in Peru a couple of years ago on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She's taking this trip to visit the friends she made in Peru and asked me to come along. I am thrilled to be going.

I have never been to Peru, but it has a connection to the adoption of Rachael's mother. When I was six months pregnant with Rebecca in the fall of 1966, I left my home in Fairbanks, Alaska, traveled down the west coast stopping in Juneau, the Canadian city of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and Seattle before settling in  San Francisco where I knew no one.

Utah's laws designed to thwart birth fathers

Lorraine

The Salt Lake Tribune is continuing their revealing series on how natural/ birth fathers are regularly screwed by the system in Utah. Today's installment by Brooke Adams tells the story of Jake Strickland and how he lost his son through outright violation of the law in Colorado, and despite that, the law in Utah to designed only to serve the adoptive process. The Tribune did not name the agency involved but thanks to one of our readers, First Mother Forum learned it was LDS  Family Services, the adoption arm of the Mormon Church.

Strickland's story involves a lying women--the mother of his son--who strung him along, letting him and his family believe that she was going to allow him to raise their son, or that they would do so together. In many respects, he did everything right: support her, pay for her medical bills, and continue to check up on her as the pregnancy progressed. A few days before they baby was born, the couple strolled through Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Reproductive Agent, continued...

To add to the story--In writing about Yvonne to my blogging pal Linda, I believe I hit upon what bothered Yvonne about me searching so much: her own feelings of abandonment.

Her famous French mother was basically a high falutin' courtesan, and after she divorced Yvonne's father, had numerous affairs and a couple more marriages to wealthy European playboys, and left the raising of the children to their father. So Yvonne was raised in boarding schools with her sisters, both in France, until the divorce and the war, and then in this country. She says she hardly knew her mother when she went to live with her outside of Paris when she was seventeen. Her older sister did not see her mother for nearly two decades....

I've been attacked before by people who really hate that I am a mother who searched, that I am not against first mothers searching, that adoptees have the right to search, but unquestionably, the ones who are the most angry/upset are those who were abandoned by their own mothers. And that's what I think has happened here.

This is the letter I sent to Yvonne yesterday:

I am still quite distraught about what happened Sunday, but the white flowers seemed to say that you feel that we are only having a "disagreement" that could be easily patched up. It left the ball in my court to call you and say, Oh gee, let's forget it, let's be friends. I didn't accept the flowers because they would have only been a reminder that to you, I am, at the most basic level, a "reproductive agent." Without any rights except to mourn the loss of my child all my life. Instead of flowers, I would have welcomed a phone call to talk. I still would.

I don't know if the wine loosened your tongue, but if it did, it certainly only brought out how you really feel about women like me. I can not be separated from other women like me, anymore than you, in your mind, can not be separated from the French who did not stand up stronger against the Germans. That is a subject I have certainly not broached with you--for what purpose?--and I recall your angry reaction when Cocteau was criticized for collaborating with the Nazis. YOU WEREN'T THERE AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY ANYTHING was your hot and instantaneously emotional reaction when the comment was made at our dinner table. Yet you can tell me--no, insist with anger and certainty --how I, and the other women like me, had no basic human need/instinct/right to ever find out what happened to the children we gave up for adoption. Yet you have not lain in my bed. You have no idea with the experience is like. Yet you make ironclad judgments about it as if you had lived through it yourself.

Would it surprise you to know that in 1980, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, after holding numerous hearings around the country (for which I testified) issued a Model Adoption Act that included these words:

"There can be no legally protected interest in keeping one's identity secrete from one's biological offspring; parents and children are considered co-owners of this information regarding the event of birth.... " The Act would have given both adoptees and birth parents the access to the information. It also included this phrase: "modern attitudes and realities of adoption no longer support the cloak of secrecy upon which sealed records laws were based." But adoptive parents, and the financial backing of the Mormon church (for their own reasons of "family" in the afterlife) have fought this tooth and nail. Most other countries today do not seal birth records of adoptees. Adoptions from places like Siberia and Kazakhstan are suspect because there are several known cases of stolen babies, forged relinquishment papers, and the like.

People like Brooks Hansen go overseas, it appears, to get babies so they can have babies without an identity other than the one they give them. Most adoptions in this country today are some form of "open adoption," in which the parties know each other. These natural mothers--i.e. reproductive agents--apparently have a much less difficult time in their lives reconciling with the fact that their children are adopted. Let me ask this--and I don't know the answer--how old was Brooks and his wife when they decided to have children? In their most fecund reproductive years? Their twenties? Later? Much later? It is always sad when someone who wants to have children can not, but that does not entitle them ipso facto to someone else's child.

Your vituperative attack on me--and referring to us as "reproductive agents" is an attack on me-- went to the very core of who I am and what I have been about for most of my adult life. I have, over the years, received hundreds of letters from grateful adoptees, and other natural mothers, aka "reproductive agents", for the work I have devoted a large part of my life to. The letters are full of tears and thank yous. And of course there are always a few from adoptive parents who want to kill me. I have tried not to talk about this to you--though it is basic to who I am--because I know how you feel, and that nothing I ever said would open a crack in your feelings that I am wrong, and should shut up and sit down. Your mind was made up.

But know this: All adoptions do not work out well, no matter that the few that you know of have. Kids get returned; one parents dies, or they divorce and the new partner often doesn't want the kid and he's shuttled off to boarding schools and summer camps with little affection the week they are home in between; adoptees end up back in the care of the state; the statistics that I can show you prove that more adoptees end up in therapy, special schools, on drugs, both prescribed and illicit, have other children out of wedlock, are prone to pathological lying, etc. than the general population. Some adoptees can not search for any number of reasons--they may not have a birth certificate with the right date on it, or even the place--and only the natural mother can reconnect, because only she has access to the accurate facts of that birth.

Adoption is way more complicated than your experience has shown it to be. This is not just from my own experience, or from a few friends; I have a small library of books/academic papers/reports about this. I have testified in Albany to a joint Senate-Assembly committee, in Washington to a Senate committee, and in court for adoptees who want their records, been on television more than a dozen times talking about adoption reform. This is the subject of my life.

What I feel from you is a basic rejection/repugnance of all women who have surrendered children ("reproductive agent" says that), or at least all women who want to do more than say a million rosaries for those children. And that has to include me. So where does that leave us? I don' t know, but if you like, I would welcome you to come over and talk. If you want to do that, please give me a call so we can set up a time. I have been so very upset by this break. I hope we can repair this, but you have to understand that I can not erase from memory the words I heard you say with such vehemence. I am writing all this because I feel I could never get it all out if we talk. And I feel I not only owe you an insight into my feelings, but also would like you to know what the extensive literature on adoption says.

This break has hurt me deeply because I have been so very fond of you. I have often thought of you as the sister I never had. Our closeness has only made this worse. It is as if my sister told me I was worthless, and that how I have lived my life was a mistake.

lorraine

I'll let you readers know what comes of this. She does not read her email everyday. I know some of you may not understand, but I do hope there is a way we can come to some sort of understanding and have a relationship. None of us are perfect, all of us have glitches, and there is much about her that I like. Coming to the realization about her mother was liberating, and made me think more predisposed to excuse her. Though I don't know if my analysis will have any bearing on the outcome.
lorraine