Help to keep family members together in the US and abroad. Help United States citizens and lawmakers learn the truth, including how the US may be viewed by other countries who will print accounts of adoption fraud even when US newspapers will not.
Read through this page carefully especially the letters to editors and lawmakers that are provided below.
Please work toward legislation to take the money out of adoption and remove the monetary incentive incentive to exploit women and families in the US and in other countries. No one should EVER be allowed to pay money for a child, not even to pay for associated counseling services, medical bills or expenses (which should all be covered by the govenment anyway). No one should ever be paid or provided an incentive for adopting. No foster care provider or adopter should be provided with child care, medical coverage, subsidies and other perks that are denied a child if cared for by his/her natural family. No one and no organization, no state or other government entity should be provided a bonus or incentive to get a child adopted rather than returning that child to his family.
The children who do need families need families that care about them, are willing to sacrifice for them, and are not in it for the money! These children need families that do not need to pretend the children are their real offspring or that their original families do not exist - families that will love them for who they are, not for what they want them to be.
Please work to criminalize solicitation of (and solicitation in search of) pregnant women and women/families with children of any age with the intent to obtain children. Whether the payment offerered is money, a television, potential scholarships, or just "feeling good about doing the right thing" the truth is, these people soliciting for babies and children are vultures working to tear children away from the mothers and fathers who otherwise would have kept and nurtured them. The "Dear B---mother" letters and classified ads (which are frequently mass-produced and highly fictional) are false advertising and nothing more.
Consider how an honest ad might read:
Our own baby is our dream. But we can't have one so yours might be our last hope. My wife is willing to settle for the idea and I am going along with it. We can't understand why anyone would part with their baby and we will never respect you for it. We want only a perfectly healthy white infant and she/he better love us and be grateful after all we've been through! Contact our lawyer at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Remove the Putative Father Registries that are put in place specifically to make it easier to deny children their own fathers. In cases where paternity is in question, genetic tests are available and should be used to verify paternity.
Stop blaming women who are caring for their children as if they were the ones not taking responsibility. Do not push mothers out into full-time jobs when they have small children to care for. Do provide training and other resources that will help low income women to find higher paying employment that includes child care and medical benefits. When children who are living with one parent find that parent absent because he/she must work full-time or more, it's the children who suffer from this and it's not right.
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SUBJECT: Adoption "Choice"
Illinois Leader article on "Adoption Aid" Specialty License Plates
http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=12278
Quote: "With adoption all about choice, the bills [ Illinois HB 5883 and Senate Bill 3089] should be well-received on both sides of the political aisle."
Just a few of the many rebuttals made to that article
http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=12295
Quote: "It's difficult for me to see how adoption could be considered a mothers and fathers choice as it is being implemented in the United States today."
Quote: "So many of us separated from our families [in favor of adoption] hope and pray the adoption aid effort will become the preserving natural families effort."
Quote: "I am a volunteer mentor to moms keeping their babies, and I am helping them to have something that millions of us moms never had - support they need for keeping our babies."
Quote: "They also lie to couples who want to adopt by telling them that the mother freely chose adoption and that the child will be "just like" their own."
From a woman who has raised an adopted child(ren):
http://www.illinoisleader.com/letters/lettersview.asp?c=12430
Quote: "Whatever the financial cost of adopting, it pales in comparison to the pain inflicted by knowing your child will suffer as an adoptee."
Another Quote from the same lady:
"I am an enthusiastic supporter of keeping children with their birth parents whenever possible, and of offering all the help one can to support a parent who chooses this. You won't get an argument from me on that point."
My comment: Yes I do "get it" that many, many of the people who adopt do truly care and very kindly expend a lot of effort and money raising children who feel rejected by their natural parents. I don't get why we are as a nation in such a hurry to get children away from their natural parents. The monetary incentives seem to contribute to the separation of family members and there is no incentive to help keep them together.
From an adoptee:
Quote: "I wish that my birth mother had been able to have some of her expenses covered. I certainly wouldn't have considered that she had "sold me" to the highest bidder, or that I was the supply in response to the demand (re: Tricia Shore). I just feel badly that today there are so few adoptable infants available (yes, due to abortion and to the thinking of, "I'M going to keep MY baby" no matter what!)."
My comment: I can't tell from your letter whether you have actually met your natural mother and family and whether you know for sure what happened - maybe in your case, for example, your mother was dying and everyone else in your natural family was truly unable to take care of you.
You say: "I have nothing but thanks, respect, and compassion for my birth mother."
I just wonder: Would it be OK with you if for those mothers who could otherwise keep and nurture their children had expenses covered to help them keep their children? Or, would you prefer that mothers be offered car payments, personal loan payments and scholarships as an incentive to "give up" their children and nothing to help them otherwise? Are you aware that if a mother who has recieved such incentives realizes (either prior to or when her child is born) that he/she loves her child more than anything in the world and she wants to keep her child, that she is frequently told that she must pay the money back first.
Note: Mothers and fathers, if this happens to you, contact a lawyer and contact as many other people as you can. Some email addresses to contact: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. Hotline: 1-866-41TRUTH.
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SUBJECT: Oppose Funding for Maternity Homes with Adoption "Counseling"
Dear < >:
I oppose HR 7 SEC. 304 Maternity Group Homes funding and Sec 323.
Unfortunately, many of these homes are set up specifically to get a mother away from the public where she can be more easily influenced to surrender her parental rights. The fact that adoption counseling is being funded along with the home raises a red flag. So-called "adoption counseling" is sadly lacking in any mention of the painful reality. It's not right. If people did not prey on the fears and uncertainty which are common to nearly all newly pregnant women, most of these mothers could just as easily keep their child and have a wonderful experience raising their child.
Providing babies to supply the needs of the people who wish to adopt (and lining the pockets of agencies, social workers and lawyers) does not protect these Americans (mothers and their children) from harm. They are harmed. What baby cries to GET AWAY FROM his mother? The babies cry for their real mothers when they are given to strangers and they may experience attachment problems for life.
Instead, why not suggest some of the far more loving options to help mothers keep their babies found on my website?
Thank you,
Laurie Frisch
www.geocities.com/counting_to_ten
(For an example of a maternity home with "adoption counseling" click on The Gladney Center)
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Subject: "Safe" Havens
Dear Editor:
Regarding the young mother who left her newborn daughter at the firehouse in the hands of a firefighter, I can only imagine what heartache and anguish she must be going through and no one to share it with, possibly for the rest of her life!
In this article someone speculates that she would have killed her daughter if not for the "opportunity" to drop her off. So, after encouraging her in the first place, they accuse her of being a potential murderer? They might just as easily speculate that if she had not seen all this advertising encouraging baby abandonment at a "safe haven" she would have told someone and had medical and moral support while giving birth and afterwards. She might be holding her baby in her arms today, proudly showing her off to everyone!
Being abandoned by his mother (and father?) is not so "safe" for a child. Adoptee Betty Jean Lifton's Journey of the Adopted Self should be required reading for everyone in North America!
Children, especially newborns, need the security of their mothers. Fathers need to be encouraged to nurture their children and expected and even required to support them. Mothers in such desperate straights deserve the encouragement to seek real help, not the encouragement to "give up" hope and abandon their babies.
When all else fails, a child's heritage should never be withheld from him/her.
I hope this baby's mother and/or father take steps to get this baby back. I hope someone cares enough about this child to give her back, without a fight. It's my understanding that the baby will go to foster care and when a child is adopted out of foster care, there is $4000 or $6000 bonus to be made. Think what the baby's parents could have done with that money! (This bonus was intended to help children already in foster care who truly need a home. Unfortuately, it seems to be too easy to obtain the bonus by "finding" additional babies and children to put into foster care that are more "adoptable" than the children already in the system.)
Thank you,
Laurie Frisch
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SUBJECT: International Adoptions
Dear < >:
It's peculiar to see people concentrating so much on the "needs" of people who adopt overseas. Next thing you know they'll be creating legislation for people who "need" a Porsche or "need" a bodyrub.
How about devoting equal time and space to the concerns of adult adoptees from both domestic and international adoption?
http://www.geocities.com/counting_to_ten/International.html
http://www.netaxs.com/~sparky/adoption/
How about devoting equal time and space to the concerns of Donor Insemination adoptees and surrogate adoptees?
http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/articles-archives/reproductive-tech.htm
http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/
How about devoting equal time and space to the stories and insights of the mothers and families who lost children to adoption?
Thank you,
Laurie A Frisch
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Subject: Help Keep Families Intact
Dear < >:
As someone who has a far-reaching influence on families through your work, I hope you will take an interest in what I have to say regarding adoption.
Have you ever thought about what it would be like for a mother to lose her child?
Please read about my experiences at www.geocities.com/counting_to_ten/About_Me.
In contrast, my sister-in-law, who resisted the pressure to surrender her first, is now married to my brother, they have three more children and they are the most impressive loving family I've ever seen. I was proud to see my whole family pitch in and help out, realizing that they had an opportunity to make things better instead of making them so much worse like they did with me. They had very lean times at first, but are doing well financially now, with the kids taking horse back riding lessons, dance, and soccer. They are all very involved in the community.
Please don't promote the idea that women who relinquish their children are better off. Here's a question I have: How many moms who keep their child vs. how many who relinquish a child seriously regret their decision 20 or 25 years later? Who is better off, really?
You should know that when women write in to websites about how various organizations "helped" them by placing their baby for adoption, they put the word "helped" in quotes, to show that they don't feel they were helped, but duped.
A women will not just get over losing her child. In fact, it will affect her greatly her entire life.
Adoptees also have problems with 1) separation from their original families and 2) adopters who didn't realize that they could never really replace their own lost child(ren), and 3) a lack of understanding on the part of many adopters, counselors and the general public of how seriously the separation from their original families affects their lives. You can do your own research of the effect of separation and adoption on adoptee-sponsored (and therefore uncensored) websites and even on websites set up for adopters. In addition, try this link: www.adoptiontriad.org/primal.htm
Recently when I was visiting friends, someone asked one of the people we were with why he never married and he responded immediately that as an adoptee he could never trust that anyone would really love him. I don't think this insecurity is what moms have in mind when they place a child for adoption � they simply do not know.
I'd like to see organizations promote family preservation, kinship care or guardianship (Unlike adoption, guardianship does not deprive a human being of his own origins).
I'd like to see organizations that set up adoptions be required by law to provide parents considering surrendering their child with this pamphlet by Heather Lowe well in advance:
www.cubirthparents.org/booklet.pdf
I'd like to see them required to respect a pregnant woman by calling her a mother (never a birthmother, aka ex-mother) and calling her child her child (not "the baby").
I'd like to see them stop calling it an "Adoption Plan" when they are really referring to the loss of a family member.
Adoption is not an "Option" like getting a moonroof or car stereo.
I've noticed these organizations (and lawyers) tend to prey on women who are not yet through college or who are college-bound, making them think they can never achieve their dreams with a child and they will be destitute forever. It's simply not true.
I've also noticed that women will sometimes defend "their" decision to surrender their child for possibly 10-30 years. In this time they come to the realization that they were terribly misinformed and uninformed at the time of surrender and that people could have and would have helped them if they had any idea the life-long anguish that separation would cause them. They see that they have not "gotten over it" ; Instead they have missed out entirely on parenting their child, including providing guidance and working through problems as well as later having the memories of all the good times spent with the family.
Sadly many of the original mothers (and fathers) also later find that their child never did fit in with their adopters. Some were terribly abused.
The adoption industry has know the effects that adoption has on adoptees and families and they ignore them in the interest of making a buck (a LOT of bucks).
See: A Keynote Address - Known Consequences of Separating Mother and Child at Birth and Implications for Further Study - Wendy Jacobs, B.Sc., B.A.
http://www.angelfire.com/or/originsnsw/wendys_pres.html
When organizations say they are doing "what is best for the child" they really are admitting that even though the mother (and father?) signed relinquishment papers, it was really the organization that made the choice for them by hiding information, by providing mis-information, by using "advertising language" to obtain "the baby".
This National Adoption Awareness initiative provides advertising for and teaches "helping" professionals how to obtain healthy white infants (which otherwise would have been loved and cared for by their own families) for adoption. It's not the good thing it appears on the surface.
It's hateful.
Please help to keep families intact.
Thanks,
Laurie