Exploration of Exploitation

I am wondering if the government and pro-adoptionsts, at large, will ever cease using and exploiting the mothers who had children taken for adoption? It would seem we are still of some use after being harvested for our desirable, healthy infants. I was watching a History Channel segment of "Modern Marvels," last night. The subject was edible nuts, and I noticed how they used every part of the nut..not just the tasty kernel, but the shells and other by-products, as well. Nothing was wasted and that is the good, old US of A way, to squeeze every last penny out of a "product." I think that the industry has seen our babies as the "nuts" and us as the "shells."

The adoption industry is doing its best to recruit mothers of adoption loss to work with them, telling new moms how wonderful it is to give these usurers their babies. That seems to work with the more naive, those addicted to the pats on the back the industry and adopters give them, and those that just have to believe that it was "for the best" or the grief and anger will overwhelm them, ie., those in denial.

There have been moms recruited for "studies" only to find their words and thoughts used in pro-adoption literature and by the industry to see how they can use these bits of info to make adoption look better to the unsuspecting, upcoming mothers-to-be. That's how the so-called "open adoption option" came into being, a carrot to dangle in front of the mother's nose. One such mother, a friend to many on the Internet Mothers' Support circuit, had just that terrible thing happen to her. She recently passed at the young age of 63, of ovarian cancer. I didn't know her, but many did and loved her and, I am told, her story is a sad one. What was done with her most traumatic experience is criminal. I can't say enough horrible things about any entity that would do such a thing.

Then there are the poseurs, who haunt the support group boards, asking leading questions about the mothers' feelings and experiences. These people, who don't let you know what they are really all about, are carrion crows. They feather their "nests" (ie., books, master's theses, studies for social work and adoption agencies) with our pain and anger and are doing so without our knowledge and/or permission. Some of these are also potential adopters who want to know all about the thoughts and feelings of the mothers so that she can use the information to her advantage when she acquires her adoptee.

All in all, it seems like the facilitators, exploiters and adopters are going to use our poor, abused carcases until they are all used up. We are the food for the vampires of adoption and eugenics, and their fangs are firmly embedded in our jugular veins. We moms from the BSE have struggled for years to regain our voices and our autonomy, and they want us to lose even that, again. Our language is censored and our opinions are scorned. For other, younger moms, the realities of how they were used are just now hitting them and the shock is only beginning to wear off and turn into righteous anger.

The underlying beliefs of the mavens of adoption come out in the open, every so often, when someone lets something slip or when someone sticks their wingtips down past their tonsils. There is our current chief executive who would return us to the days of maternity prisons and wholesale baby-snatching and then there is someone like Rep. Larry Liston, R-CO, who just outright called any teen, past or present, who becomes pregnant while unmarried, a "slut." I don't think this elected jackass will hear the last of that one for a while.

We have to be more on guard, now, than ever, and that is not paranoia. They really ARE out to get whatever they can from us to further their own aims...increasing infant adoption and keeping us silent and submissive. Sorry all you eugenicists, adopters, wannabe adopters, agencies, social wreckers and other facilitators...NO CAN DO. Our days of hiding in shame and allowing our sisters to turn their babies over to you without a struggle or in an uninformed daze are over. We are respectable, caring, decent, empowered women and we will not "go silently into that good night (Oh how I love a dramatic phrase)" without drawing blood and shouting out our cause.

So, users of mothers, beware. We're on to you.