What are the happy birth moms celebrating?

Note: For those coming here from Tyler Baltierra's Tweet, we have answered his rant against us and published it at a current post:   Tyler of 16 and Pregnant Tells FMF Off!

 (Below is the original post that he first responded to)

 November 18, 2012 8:39 AM

Lorraine

Open adoption or keeping the baby? We know that while overall very few teens--around one percent*--give up their babies for adoption anywhere anymore, the United States is far ahead of other developed nations in this regard. This is not a statistic to be cheering about--even if the impact of giving up a child in a fully open adoption does not lead to the depth of sorrow that we mothers from closed adoptions have dealt with. This is the perceived wisdom of those who compare the effect of closed adoptions versus open adoptions on the mothers who relinquish their children.

In the recent Donaldson report, Openness in Adoption, the authors state that the degree of openness generally does not affect their level of behavioral or socio-emotional adjustment [to being adopted]. The Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project study found, however, that higher degrees of collaboration in the adoptive kinship network [emphasis added] were associated with better

No Matter How Adoption is Done, Grief Remains for Mothers

“Putting an end to secrecy in adoption does not erase the grief or loss embedded in the adoption experience” according to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute March, 2012 report, Openness in Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma to Knowledge and Connections. With that caveat, the institute strongly endorses openness in adoption because "ending secrecy empower(s) participants by providing them with information and access so they can face and deal with facts instead of fantasies.”

IF adoption is necessary, we at First Mother Forum concur that openness is not only better but essential in voluntary infant adoptions.

Update on state bills and meet my new constant companion

Lorraine yesterday in her sling, named Herman the Terminator

To update on all the noxious state bills regarding contraception and abortion that I wrote about in the last post: Some--if not most--of them have been tabled as women like us have pushed backed---in the state legislatures, on television, on Facebook, and on blogs. Many of the governors and legislators do have Facebook pages that were pretty lame until this got started; women have burned up some of the pages and the legislators have either taken theirs down or not let others comment. 

Meanwhile, in New York, we may actually be making progress on our clean bill this year. By clean I mean that it would give all adult adoptees their original birth certificates upon request. No birth parent veto.  When I get back from my "therapy evaluation" this morning, I'll be pecking out a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, explaining why pushing our bill (and without him, we can't get traction) is good politics across the nation. Cuomo wants to be president, make no mistake--and I want to let him know that backing our bill would be noticed by the adoptee constituency throughout America. If you have a connection to adoption in New York, please write to Cuomo, your local legislators, or Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. We need letters from first mothers, adoptees, adoptive parents. This is an equal opportunity effort. For more on the bill, see Unsealed Initiative, led by the tireless Joyce Bahr, a first mother. The letter you write might make the difference.

Well, above is how I look these days. Not photoshopped, no skill with blow dryer, no makeup. Au naturel. (And have you seen the ridiculous phot-shopped pix of Demi Moore for Helena Rubinstein? She's pushing 50, right? but looks 20. ) As for news of the limb in question, it will be months before it's up and running, good as can be. But I can nearly dress myself--but closing the bra strap is quite a while away. Apparently recovery will be months long, and how quickly I gain use of my limb again depends on how faithfully I do the exercises. So far, so good. Can't even drive, obviously, like this!

Jane is working on a new post reacting to the Donaldson report on open adoption and will be here soon.

So it goes.--lorraine

Unless invited, please stay out of my vagina

Which of these statements are true?

A. The sun revolves around Earth.

B. Masturbating gives you warts and makes you blind.

C. Abortions may cause breast cancer.

D. The Pill may cause prostate cancer.

E. Recreational sex is bad. 

Conceived in rape, but joined by a daughter's love

Jane

Katherine (Kathy) Stockton was born in 1960, blind, severely retarded, and physically disabled because her mother, Linda, contracted German measles early in her pregnancy.* Linda and her husband, Dale, divorced and Linda was left to care for Kathy and Kathy's older sister alone.

Following  doctors’ advice, Linda placed Kathy at Fairview Hospital and Training Center in Salem, Oregon. Fairview, opened in 1907 as the State Institution for the Feeble-Minded, was a hell hole when Kathy entered and was little better by 1979 when Kathy’s daughter, Amanda Campbell, was conceived through rape.

Improved reproductive technology: Will it reduce the demand for infants??

Jane

An essay in Portland Oregonian, "Grim message in fertility 'gain'" about the downside of improvements in fertility technology caught my eye. To Bonnie Rough, a Seattle writer and author of Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA, research finding that women could create new eggs via stem cells can be interpreted as "yet another attempt to fit women's reproductive lives into an unnatural stress system" where motherhood is dictated by the demands of the workplace. What leaped out at me was that the reasons women postpone trying to conceive are the same reasons other women give for giving up their babies. In spite of all the rhetoric we're hearing during this election season about helping America's working families, the fact is, our work places are not child-friendly.

"The Rescuer's Path"

Something about being a birth mother compels up to tell our stories. While many tell their stories in memoirs, first mother Paula Friedman has woven her birth mother experience into a piece of fiction; adoption is the vehicle for universal themes of acquiescence and conviction, love and loss, separation and reconciliation.

The Rescuer’s Path begins in Nixon-era Washington DC. Fifteen year old Malca Bernovski rides a horse through a park and discovers a severely wounded fugitive—antiwar leader Gavin Hareen, prime suspect in the bombing of an Army truck which killed three people.

Choice is largely a myth when it comes to relinquishing a child

Jane

SURRENDERS BASED ON MISINFORMATION ARE NOT CHOICES

"Julia,"* a 30-year-old married professional woman who learned her husband was having an affair gave up her new born son for adoption, a story that we have been writing about in the last two posts.  We wrote critically of her decision, but back tracked somewhat, recognizing that Julia was more sinned against than sinning. “Anonymous” commented that Julia was “a woman who has freely chosen to surrender, evidently was not forced to this choice. … Whatever happened to the concept of informed choice, even when another person's choice is not the one you wish you had made?” (Emphasis added.)

Since the infant adoption system in the U.S. does little to assure that mothers surrendering their babies are informed about the consequences, it's almost certain that Julia did not make an informed choice as Barbara Thavis, one of First Mother Forum readers, commented:

Mea Culpa to Julia and others who give up their babies today

Lorraine

I've taken some heat for being so harsh towards Julia* in the not-quite-infamous story in February Elle about being 30, a divorcing attorney, and getting pregnant with your husband just before you find out he is more than knee-deep into an affair with another woman who has no idea he is married. I was hard on poor "Julia," I admit. Reading the story was really triggering for me as this woman seemed to have the resources--family, friends, a husband in name--to keep her baby.

But she chose not to. And I said something that was well, quite brutal. I've been lambasted at alt.adoption on Facebook by someone who is screaming about "her choice" and more sympathetic but questioning comments have been left at the previous post for not being more understanding to a woman in a difficult situation that I certainly can understand.

The saddest story of all: Opting for adoption today

Not an adoptive mother

"Julia [the mother] left the hospital the next day without stopping in the nursery—the baby was in an incubator because he was five weeks early—but a few days later, she took a friend’s advice to visit her son to say goodbye in real life. 'My gut reaction was not to do it, but I drove to the hospital when I knew no one else was going to be there. And I just bawled uncontrollably as he slept. It was the worst thing I’ve done in my entire life.'"

That's from a story in February Elle about Julia,* 30, who decides to give up her child for adoption because: her husband was having an affair. Because she decides to divorce him. Because she did not want to raise a child alone, even though she had the support of her mother, who offered to take her in and help with the baby. And who is Julia?

Finding babies through Facebook. And your manicurist. And....

Jane

“Loving professional couple looking to adopt newborn. We want to build our family through adoption with love, laughter, fun and passion.” A typical baby wanted ad except that it appeared on Seth Edlavitch’s Facebook page according to "Adopting Through Facebook" on Parenting.com rather than the Sunday classifieds or The Penny Saver. 

Seth’s friends passed the notice along via the social media and voila! A friend of a friend called Seth about the pregnant wife of one her employees, Lisa. She and her husband had several children and wanted to place this baby for adoption. Seth and his wife, Melissa Segal, met Lisa; they hit it off immediately. Lisa had the qualities they wanted: her children were happy and healthy and she passed drinking, smoking, and other health tests.

Illegal Immigrant Fights for Custody of Young Son

David Stonner/Joplin Globe

Encarnacion Bail Romero confers with attorney Omar Riojas during a custody hearing

One of the nightmare custody battles got underway today--mother loses custody of her baby, another couple is allowed to adopt him, but mother wants her child, now five, back.

Guatemalan-born Encarnacion Bail Romero, who came to the U.S. illegally in 2006 while pregnant was working at a poultry processing plant  in Missouri in 2007 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers conducted a raid looking for illegals. Along with about 100 other undocumented

'Fessing up and running straight into a fresh adoption...

Lorraine spills the beans

Last week in Virginia I met a woman whom I immediately liked and as we were together over the course of several hours, I ended up telling her my involvement with the Big A. You know, it's always a question: to tell or not to tell. And stay silent and avoid the slings and arrows of misfortune that may come your way when meeting new folks. When she first asked what I wrote about, I said, "feminist issues," as I have a long history of writing about women and the glass ceiling and gender bias in the legal system.

As we were in Virginia, just as the nutty bill to invade women's vaginas with an ultrasound probe before they may have an abortion was the issue de jour, she was eager to hear more. She herself had been at a protest rally the morning before. Incidentally, Gov. Bob McDonnell (who initially said he would sign the bill) and the anti-women Republican-dominated legislature backed down.

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.

How the daughter I gave up forever changed my life

Lorraine

When did I decide that I was never going to have another child, or more correctly, when I did I know that I never would?

As soon as my daughter was born.

I knew this in my bones. I didn't voice this to anyone, and at the time my daughter's father, Patrick, kept saying that we would be together. Later. After she was given up is what he meant.

An aspirin for birth control? We are not laughing.

Foster Friess

We at First Mother Forum are rather riled by the current controversy on contraception, and have felt the need to write about it, detouring for a few posts here about what is quite simply, bugging us like crazy. It's not enough the all the conservative religious leaders are lined up on the side of making it more difficult for employees of religious institutions to get birth control; now a wealthy investment manager, Foster Friess, and a major backer of Rick Santorum, has injected himself into the fray with a vulgar adolescent joke.

His prescription for birth control? An aspirin. "Back in my days, they used aspirin for contraceptives." he said. "The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly." 

Bishops bally-hoo over over birth control is a blow against my freedoms

Lorraine

So a group of old white guys aka, Catholic bishops, are having a major snit over whether they have to provide contraception to their workers of all faiths, as the Obama administration is demanding. Since a great many Catholic institutions--hospitals and universities--were already providing contraception to their workers of all faiths--including a good many Catholic women--this ought to be a no-brainer. And no problem. Instead the bishops are stomping around like a bunch of angry kids who have just had spring break cancelled.

The Catholic Conference of Bishops in the U.S. say including contraception as a benefit of their insurance policies this violates their faith, since contraception of any sort other than just saying No is against the rules. And it doesn't matter if the workers they are talking about are Catholic or not. The bishops don't want to let them have The Pill. Hell, if I'd had The Pill back in the day I wouldn't be spilling my

Washington representatives sell adoptees and birth mothers short

Birth Mother sell-out WA State Rep. Ann Rivers

Are Washington birth mothers in need of more protection from their lost children and the prying eyes of neighbors than Oregon mothers? Washington lawmakers seem to think so.

Since 2000, adult adoptees in Oregon have had unrestricted access to their original birth certificates (OBC) thanks to a ballot measure spearheaded by adoptee Helen Hill and passed by Oregon voters.* 

Cross the Columbia River into Washington, it’s a different story. Original birth certificates are locked up tighter than a miser's purse.

A second child doesn't replace the one lost to adoption

Jane

“You can go on to have other children.” As a young woman, I had heard these words in countless soap operas, read them in teen magazines and advice columns, as social workers urged young women into giving up their children for adoption. After I placed my first daughter Rebecca for adoption in 1966, I did go on to have three more daughters that I raised. The oldest of these Anne, was born five years after Rebecca and turned 40 last month. As our family celebrated Anne’s birthday, I reflected on the circumstances of her birth, so different than that of my first daughter.

Rebecca was conceived in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Several months before her birth I went to San Francisco where she was born and surrendered.  I knew no one there. My family was in Illinois and Southern California and I did not tell

What birth mothers can learn from Mimi Alford, President Kennedy's intern

Mimi Alford during her affair with Kennedy. She kept silent for 40 years.

Mimi Beardsley Alford, once a teen-age lover of President John Kennedy, has been all over the tube this week talking about how our boyish, young, handsome president seduced an intern four days after she joined the White House press room. There's plenty of dish in her interviews and in her book (ONCE UPON A SECRET: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath) apparently, with some seamier stuff than just losing her virginity at nineteen on Jackie Kennedy's bed. Yes, really.