Barring Death and Disease..SA, Here I Come!

Well, I tied down my airline reservations, yesterday. I don't know if there will be many SMAAC mothers in San Antonio in August, but this mother will be there, as will Musing Mother. I will be flying in on my wedding anniversary, leaving hubby at home with the two terrors..uh, I mean Terriers. That's how important it is to me to be a part of this gathering. I am lucky that he understands.

While this is a project of the Adoptee's Rights group, it will also be the first time that the mothers will be able to speak up for our rights as well as supporting the rights of adoptees to their original birth certificates. Will we be heard? I hope so, but it is also very important to note that we are actually speaking out in a venue other than blogs, letters and Facebook sites.

Our message will be a bit different from what has been talked about, prior to this occasion. We not only support the rights of adoptees, we also are stating that we mothers are worth the trouble of  real consideration of our own rights, as well...rights that were badly violated when our children were taken for adoption during the Era of Mass Surrender. We are neither fragile flowers needing protection, nor are we nothing more than a rung on a ladder for our adult children to climb. We are self-respecting, mature women who can handle our own relationships and decide, for ourselves, what we will and will not share with others, especially when that right is threatened by the state.

No, Mr. and Ms. Legislator, we do NOT need protection of our "anonymity" from our own children. We have the freedom of association as it is guaranteed in the Constitution and we can pursue that as we wish. Most of us are in our 60's. We have survived the worst that life could throw at us. Why should we need legal protection of a presumed right we were never, in most states, given in the first place and why is it assumed we would even want it? WHEN are these people going to listen to us rather than the various adoption-friendly organizations who have the temerity to try to do our talking for us? That one really chaps my hide. Every time Pertman or Johnson or an adopter tries to speak for us, I see red.

We have long had our differences with the content of many of these bills being considered or that have passed in many states. We do not have any patience with the idea that our personal medical and psycho-social histories should be on tap for the state to disseminate to adult adoptees as they see fit. We have long believed that there should be true equality in who has access to open record which means that mothers should have access to identifying information of their adult children. Fair is fair.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be time to say something, while we are there, about justice for the mothers of our era. Perhaps there will even be an opening to let these people know that it still happens to women of the present day. Maybe we can help create a crack in the mortar that holds together an elitist institution, a social experiment that has failed. Maybe people could start seeing that the rights guaranteed us in our Constitution do not include the right to take children from mothers just because they are single or poor or the right to recruit women to bear children for the infertile.

Maybe the day will come, hopefully, when we are no longer soiled goods with fragile psyches still in our teens...maybe the day will come when adult adoptees are no longer treated as infants and property.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself..one step at a time. However, this IS history and we are helping to make it. If all I ever do is this one thing, I can be at peace with myself and let things happen as they come. It took a long time for this Industry to become the power house it is and it will take a long time to take it down a peg or ten.

At my age, I have nothing but time. We'll see.