Back To The Future

If ever there was a need for investigation, redress and acknowledgement of the crimes against the senior mothers of the baby scoop era, it is now. The current resident of the White House wants to re-establish "maternity homes (prisons)" and a woman's body and right to her own decisions about her reproductive future are in peril as never before since the early 70's.

They say that even the devil can quote the scriptures for his own purposes and I think that he has made his way into the middle of many a religion. They are the ones that would take us back to the future...one of oppression and sexism and misogyny.

This attitude is world-wide. This article shows how much we really need to bring to light the injustices that are sneaking back into our various societies...injustices that were common in our era of shaming, blaming and punitive "solutions" to our situations.

This one sickens me to the core. How dare these people disallow this child a reprieve from such a horrible trauma?

Abortion for rape victim, 11, opposed by churches
Alison Mutler The Associated Press
June 27, 2008
BUCHAREST, Romania - Twenty church groups on Thursday urged a government committee not to allow an 11-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle go to Britain for an abortion.The anti-abortion Christian Orthodox groups also threatened to press charges if the girl were allowed to have an abortion in Romania on exceptional grounds.Their position was in contrast to the official stand of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which said the decision should be left to the girl's family.A government committee is to decide today whether the girl can go to Britain for an abortion or must continue the pregnancy. A Romanian living in Britain has offered to pay the costs.

The girl's pregnancy became known earlier this month when her parents took her to a doctor because she appeared unwell. She told doctors she had been raped by her 19-year-old uncle, who since has disappeared.She is 20 weeks pregnant. The legal limit for abortions in Romania is 14 weeks. Abortions can be carried out after that time only to save the life of the mother.In Britain an abortion is legal up to 24 weeks if two doctors decide that the risk to a woman's physical or mental health will be greater if she continues with the pregnancy than if she ends it.

The case has bitterly split the medical community, child-rights groups and the public.The National Child Protection Authority has said the girl should be allowed to have an abortion because she is already traumatized by the experience of rape and pregnancy.

The National Doctors Council said the rights of the fetus should be considered and the pregnancy should go ahead.

It is obvious that women are still seen as chattel, even girls as young as this, and are nothing but vessels as far as the cited "Christian Orthodox group" is concerned. Things like this let me know that we have learned nothing, either nationally or internationally, from the era of forced surrenders and isolation and babies taken, sometimes literally, from their weeping mother's arms.

This child is not a thing, a brood mare or a baby machine. She is someone who has been badly hurt and deserves a right to have her childhood given back to her. I doubt, however, that it will ever happen that way. She has already endured the worst possible scenario and these self-righteous brigands, arrogant medicos and other people who just want to spout their rhetoric are making it worse for her. I want to tell them all to back off because IT IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS!!

At age 11, and with the input of her parents, the decision should be hers and should be honored.

Oh, and Uncle Testosterone needs to have his testicles removed and shoved down his throat. I'll be glad to volunteer if someone will hold him down for me. I'm feeling really crabby about this.

New Old Kids On The Block

Several of us Senior (*BSE) Mothers have felt the need for an overt and passion-driven movement for justice. Not all of us can be professionals or contribute with credentials that speak of a degree in certain areas, but most of us have the intelligence, drive, passion and determination not to be left out of the process of seeking justice for our Senior sisters and ourselves. To this end, we have created an activism forum for Senior (*BSE) Mothers, only.

This is not a talk and debate and support group, but an activism group for ideas and plans. There will be a website up very soon. Until then, I would like to invite my sisters from that era to join us. This link is to the front page and will give you instructions on how to join. Just go to the bottom of the page and click on "Join This Group." We are moderated and are a private membership group but can be read by the public. We caution those that might feel uncomfortable with that to sign up with an alias, but you will have to share your information with the moderators. If the openness becomes a problem, we will close it down so that we can discuss actions to be taken.

The group is the Senior Mothers Adoption Activism Coalition (see link at right..SMAAC) and is for those of us who only want justice, are not writing a book, milking others for information or seeking fame. It will be a group of equals whose only desire is to see this heinous era addressed. Please contact me if you are interested in joining. Our only exclusivity is that you must be a Senior Mother.

Our logo, pictured, is expressive of women of wisdom and knowledge. We have earned our PHD's in life and experience. We will not remain silent and we will not be dismissed to the sidelines. As a group, we still support the actions of BSERI and hope that we will be a compliment to whatever steps they might be taking.

*Please note that while the Baby Scoop Era has been noted in those terms by several writers, BSERI has copywritten the rights to use the title. We can refer to that era but cannot call our organization by that name. However, the Baby Scoop Era belongs to all of us who lived through it.

Robin Westbrook
Senior Mother of Four
Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

History In Danger..Of Being Repeated???

An article about the woeful state of the knowledge of American history in our current culture is in this morning's "Parade" magazine. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, David McCullough it resonates with me because of the eagerness of so many "adoption reformists" to brush off the Baby Scoop Era, a time that we Senior Moms lived though and from which we still carry the scars. Here is what he has to say about the importance of history.

How important is history in the United States? For at least 25 years, we’ve been raising young Americans who are, by and large, historically illiterate. The founding of our nation, the Civil War, World War II—they all should be common knowledge, but they are not. History has not just been pushed to the back burner, it’s been pushed off the stove.

Why does history matter?Amnesia is as detrimental to society as to an individual. The historian Daniel Boorstin put it very well: “Trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.”

What can we learn from the past?That there is no such thing as “a self-made man or woman”—we all are influenced by people around us. That every action has consequences, and we have to be very careful about leaping to conclusions from first impressions. And that integrity and character do count in the long run. The idea that no one has ever lived in more difficult or dangerous times is untrue. Others have weathered more horrendous storms; we can take heart from them.

Amen to that, and thank you, from a Senior Mother who weathered the "more horrendous storm." I am tired of having to tell the mothers from the succeeding generations that, NO, I don't think our pain is any worse than yours, but I do know that the situations were very, very different. Rather than looking at the facts, some just want to be historically blind and ignorant and want us Senior Moms to go away.

Well, that is NOT going to happen barring death and disaster. We're not so old that we can't make our own noise and plead our own case and, from all that I now know, that is very much in the works. Anyone who presumes to be the "voice" for all mothers had best think again. Unless the BSE is recognized and addressed, you're not speaking for THIS mother and for many others I know.

History is real and there have been heinous, factual, historical events buried by our government before that have come to light in the recent past. This is one more event that is going to see the light of day before we face the great unknown. Millions of mothers with children taken for adoption, children who are now in their 30's, 40's and early 50's, (my daughter is a grandmother) WILL have a voice that speaks for them and to let their children know the reality of what happened and why.

Let's not allow the baby of the social revolution of the 60's and 70's to be thrown out with the bathwater. Above all, this is history that must not be repeated. Like the holocaust, it springs from bias, judgment and power run amok and punishing the most vulnerable of the citizens of that time period. To go back to the attitudes, mores and activities of that era would be a national tragedy.

But, that is where we are headed if we don't learn from the past and address it, NOW.

Another Definition

The "Church Lady" is one of my favorite icons to use when talking about people who judge other people, especially those who judge the single mother-to-be and anticipate that she will SURELY abuse and neglect which is an unsubstantiated and biased attitude. These are also the people who will punish the woman rather than offer her help if she needs it. Why would people behave that way? Could it be....SATAN???

I have been challenged about using the term, "self-righteous" and I looked back and, yes, I have used it. I use it as defined in this way (my own definition);

self-righteous; adjective; The assumption by a person or group of people that they are morally and/or otherwise superior to another person or persons.

So, do I think adopters are self-righteous? Well, to be honest, and looking into my personal interaction with those who adopt.....YES. They see themselves as the "saints" who have "rescued" a child from the horrors of that child's family of origin. And don't be fooled...herein the USA, in Africa, in China, in Russia and other places, there are extended family members who would care for a child if the child's mother is incapable. The problem is that the state and opportunistic adoption brokers step in. I know of one very lovely grandmother who fought for custody of her grandchildren, but Florida was too eager to boost their infant and toddler adoption quota.

In a lot of those foreign countries, such as Guatemala, these supposed "orphans" were stolen or bought from their families who were plied with lies about what would happen to their child. It has already been proven that there was a father who wanted his African daughter but the celebrity's money spoke louder than his parental rights.

The CPS in various states, will seize children of adoptable age for little to no reason, at times, other than a dirty kitchen or poverty. Rather than helping the family, they disrupt and dismantle it. There is an active organization of families who children have been confiscated by the state without good reason who are fighting to get their children back WHERE THEY BELONG.

For a child, truly in need, kinship guardianship should be the very first option explored by these social wreckers. If that is not available, then a legal guardianship that has an open-ended stipulation that if said parent cleans up and gets right, those kids get a chance to be re-integrated into the family of their own, personal heritage.

So, let me go on public record here, without rancor, as saying that I have witnessed both self-entitlement and self-righteous behavior in adopters. Mea frickin' Culpa. I am not the least bit ashamed or sorry for calling something, that is waddling, quacking and has webbed feet, a duck. I've been around too long to quibble about what I mean and don't mean.

With apologies to the late Dr. Seuss, "I meant what I said and I said what I meant. This Senior Mother is honest about that, 100%!" If you don't like it, don't read it.

Definition of Self-Entitled

Crackwhore Beemommie (pictured, and yes, I do knit and nap in my chair and hubby naps in his), especially after a visit with the grandchildren or trying to talk sense to adopters.

I have seen more poor grammar, spelling, reading skills and limited vocabulary in the generations following those of us who were educated with the "Three R's" than I knew in all my years in a SC mill village. Huh...and some people think all southerners are ignorant rednecks.

Someone got a bit mixed up in reading my blog and said I referred to adopters, on several occasions, as "self righteous," which is not exactly right. I refer to the far-right, fundamentalist, "Moral-Majority" types as self-righteous and those who judge unmarried mothers and gay people, etc., as self-righteous, but with adopters, I have used the term, "self-ENTITLED." So kiddies, here is our vocabulary lesson for today.

self-entitled is two words, put together to describe a certain mindset, one that seems to be part and parcel of a lot of those who adopt.

Here are the two words defined:

self –noun
1.a person or thing referred to with respect to complete individuality: one's own self.
2.a person's nature, character, etc.
3.personal interest.
4.Philosophy.
a.the ego; that which knows, remembers, desires, suffers, etc., as contrasted with that known, remembered, etc.
b.the uniting principle, as a soul, underlying all subjective experience

en·ti·tle –verb (used with object), -tled, -tling.
1.to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; furnish with grounds for laying claim: His executive position entitled him to certain courtesies rarely accorded others.

So, if you put these two words together with a hyphen, it means " a person whose ego and personal interests have created the illusion that, they believe, gives them a right (entitles them) to what they want. " In the case of the adopter, that desired thing is the child of another.

So, dear, defensive, debating readers of the adopter variety, that is what the term means and it is accurate. Oh, but a self-entitled person can also be self-righteous, judgmental as in quick to judge an entire groups of people, say, single mothers for instance, by their lowest common denominator to justify taking her baby and can also be deluded that our American way of life is superior and better for any child than their own race and culture and that their family is better for a child than their family of origin for the most specious of reason. The ideas are not mutually exclusive. Does that clear things up for you?

I often wonder, if those who adopt think that what they are doing is so right and that no one is hurt by it, then why do they still keep sending me and other adoption issues bloggers hateful posts that attempt to justify their right to be paper parents while saying all in their power to degrade and denounce single mothers? Hmmmmmmm?

You know us crackwhore, open-legged, alkie, abusive, neglectful NATURAL sluts...we get curious. And I want to see the MILLIONS (really????) of abused, neglected children that really do get adopted. Those kids usually stay in foster care until they are booted out at age 18. Adopters want the healthy infants or the cute toddlers, not an older child with pain and baggage that really needs help and security. Oh, that's right...we are going on the assumption here that a single mom will abuse and neglect. Gee...I just read a very unbiased, scientific study that says the opposite. That old Guttmacher study and the Donaldson studies are way out of date and skewed towards the good of the adoption industry.

Just say you adopted because you wanted to, because you felt you had the right to raise a child as your own.....quit trying to tell me bedtime stories about the heroic adopter saving the helpless, healthy infant from sure perdition. I KNOW BETTER.

In adoption, the tail often wags the dog.

What's In A Word? Language Manipulation for Profit

Just like those rabid, right-wingers tried to make a dirty word out of the term "liberal," it has become de rigeuer for people to deny their own victimization. The pop psychologists of the past few decades have perverted the meaning of the word to the point that, to most people, "victim"="loser." Again, the meaning gets lost among the manipulations and judgments and spin doctorology. Here is the real and valid meaning of the word, "victim."

Etymology Re; Wicktionary
from the Latin victima, sacrificial animal

Noun
victim (plural victims)
(original sense) A living creature which is slain and offered as human or animal sacrifice, usually in a religious rite; by extension, the transfigurated body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.
Anyone who is physically harmed by another.
An aggrieved or disadvantaged party in a crime (e.g. swindle.)
A person who suffers any other injury, loss, or damage as a result of a voluntary undertaking.
An unfortunate person who suffers from a disaster or other adverse circumstance.
Narratology. A character who is conquered or manipulated by a villain.

Now, when people say that, "I'm not going to allow myself to be a victim," I think, "Well, isn't that special?" Becoming a victim is not something over which most folks have any control. A woman who is raped is a victim of rape. A person who is mugged is a victim of assault. A mother who is coerced into surrendering her child is a victim of the manipulations of those who want to take her child. An adopted person is a victim of an industry that treats them like a commodity.

What matters is if you SURVIVE your victimization and if you REFUSE TO REMAIN SILENT about your victimization. Every good little beemommie that stays in her insulated closet is still a victim. I was a victim of abandonment by the father of my oldest child. I was a victim of rape by the father of my second child. I was a victim of shoddy medical care when my daughter was born. I was the victim of the adoption industry and society when my children were taken from me. I was a victim of molestation when I was a child. I was a victim of poor parenting by my father. I had no control over any of that, but I, By Goddess, SURVIVED.

I survived to tell everyone that will listen about what happened to me and to my sister mothers and to my children. Those of us who are now senior citizens are even more to be respected for not only surviving, but, many of us, thriving and open and out in the light of truth. I do not think, for a minute, that having been a victim diminished me in any way. I am stronger for have been made to fight my way up from the bottom of the heap. I am kinder to myself for knowing that I didn't deserve what happened to me. Oh, I had sex, you say? Well, what of it??? Not that many people reach their marriage beds intact and that's a fact. I refuse to beat my breast in shame over THAT one.

It is time for us to show the progress we Senior Mothers, we wise women, have made, to the world. We can speak up, speak out loudly, refuse to be relegated to the sidelines and stand firm against the fear-driven aggression of the adoption industry, their customers and those embittered against us by the campaigns of the industry.

Yes, we were victims. The people who died or were injured or left homeless by natural disasters are victims..there is little to no difference. But we are also survivors, learners and listeners. We've learned a lot and heard a lot and seen a lot and, whether this society would like to accept it or not, we are smart enough to know when we've been mightily and detrimentally screwed by a corrupt system and confident enough to know that we ARE the mothers of our children taken for adoption.

Listen for the sound. It will be the voice of former victims and we can be loud.

Ah, The Mythology Takes Another Hit

We have a page on our MSN group, Anti-Adoption Truth (link is at the right) which has a list of these stories as long as your arm. The thread is on the "Docs. & Articles" page and is titled "Adopter Abuse in the News." I suggest that everyone who thinks that natural parents are fated to abuse (one commenter said "millions of children," an overstatement of momentous proportions), need to see that it happens in adoption situation as well and, proportionately, perhaps more often.

I am so sick of the idea people have that an unmarried, young woman is predisposed to abusing her child. There are skewed studies to this effect that were commissioned by the proponents of adoption and the industry, mainly the NCFA and the EBDIA. Now, who would have more to gain by an unbalanced "study" that only tells a small part of the story? I know too many single, young moms who are paragons of motherhood and would never think of harming their child. It is unfair and unreasonable. What if we judged all adopters by this woman in this article?

The poor kids in this article went from the frying pan into the fire. This woman is a nut job who has no business raising puppies (another puppy-mill adopter), much less children who have already been through a rough time. Who the heck does these "home studies, anyway?" Don't older, special needs kids have the same right to a safe home as healthy, cute infants and toddlers?Hmmmmmm??

The fact is that those who adopt are no better than those of us blessed with our own children, and there are, at least, as many abusers, divorces, alcoholics and drug abusers, neglecters and toxic caregivers in adoptive situations, proportionately, as there are in natural families. One study shows that an adult with no genetic ties to a child in their care is more likely to abuse. To be honest, this study centered on step-fathers and boyfriends, but I think it extends. Non-genetic connection is non-genetic connection.

I cannot believe that the jury is having trouble with this one. It just goes to show that the myth of the "saintly, better-than-thou, entitled" adopter is still alive and kicking and those who believe it really need a reality check. The defense attorney should be jailed along with this horrible woman.




http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/paddock/story/1103991.html

The News & ObserverPublished: Jun 11, 2008 09:59 AMModified: Jun 11, 2008

SMITHFIELD - A Johnston County jury deliberated about an hour and half today without reaching a verdict in the trial of Lynn Paddock, accused of killing her 4-year-old son, Sean.The jury is scheduled to resume deliberations Thursday.

In a final argument earlier today, a prosecutor today flashed a picture of the child's dead, shrunken body on a courtroom screen and told jurors of the terror the boy must have felt in the final minutes of his life."A picture is worth a thousand words," said Paul Jackson, an assistant district attorney. "The pleas for help that went unanswered. It's like he gave up. The world with Lynn Paddock held nothing for him but pain and terror and misery, and it cost him his life."Jackson asked jurors to convict Paddock of first-degree murder on grounds that the child was tortured.

He also asked them to consider convicting her under the theory of felony murder, meaning that the child's death resulted from the felony of child abuse.If the jury finds Paddock guilty as charged, she would spend the rest of her life in prison. Jurors may consider the lesser charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Jackson reminded jurors of the unorthodox discipline Paddock unleashed on her adopted children, including striking them with a plastic plumbing supply line.He swung a piece of the line for jurors; it whistled as it sliced through the air of the silent courtroom.Jackson argued that abuse turned the children into virtual robots."These were not children who were just polite," Jackson said. "These were children who were like robots. They were afraid to do or say anything. That's soul murder. That's taking the child out of a child."

Paddock testified Monday that she didn't mean to kill Sean, who suffocated when he was wrapped tightly in blankets in February 2006.But another assistant district attorney, Kelly Sandling, pointed out that she had admitted binding him in blankets for five nights during the week he died."You don't do something for five nights in a row and call it an accident," said Sandling.

Paddock's attorney Jack O'Hale argued that Paddock had no reason to think Sean would die from the wrapping.He said Paddock and her then-husband, Johnny, welcomed trouble into their lives when they adopted foster children already exposed to tremendous abuse. The couple adopted six children; Sean was the youngest."They took in kids no one else wanted," O'Hale said.O'Hale said that Paddock learned to parent from her mother, who has been described as a tyrant who severely abused Paddock and her step-siblings.

And he attacked the prosecution's star witness, Dr. Sharon Cooper, a forensic pediatrician who said Paddock tortured her children."She was brought to you to sell something," O'Hale said. "Her product was her agenda: abuse and torture."

He suggested that the children who testified had exaggerated the level of abuse inflicted by Paddock. He said Johnny Paddock would not have tolerated such severe abuse."You think [Johnny] was permitting this to go on," O'Hale said. "It wasn't what the state portrayed it to be. It wasn't the torture, the conduct you've heard described in this case."

Jackson, however, denied that the children had overstated the abuse."What in the world would anyone have to gain?" Jackson asked jurors. "You know what [the children] had to gain. They had to come into this courtroom, with strangers, with the scariest person they've ever known in their life and talk to you about the worst aspects of their lives."

mandy.locke@newsobserver.com, or (919) 829-8927
© Copyright 2008, The News & Observer Publishing CompanyA subsidiary of The McClatchy Company

Sometime I Wish I Had Never Heard The Word

I am at the point where I wish I had never heard the word adoption. I get to this point, often, and have to back off and spend more of this energy on the rest of my life.

Yes people. It's true. Adoption does not consume my life, 24/7. I am not embittered and obsessed. I go to movies, I make great muffins and soups, I paint pictures, I read books, I walk along the beach, I work out at the YMCA, I talk to my children and other family members on the phone and in person and I mess around with my husband as often as we can. This usually depends on whose arthritis is acting up the worst.

I think people get a picture of a bitter old bitch "b****"mother, campaigning against the warm, fuzzy institution of abduc...er, I mean adoption when she is not kicking puppies or taking candy from toddlers. Rather than listen to what is being said, they want to object to how it is being said. I can just see it now..."Gasp! Did she say she was against ADOPTION??????"

So we explain ourselves and explain and explain and explain and no one wants to understand what we are saying unless it is in synch with their acts of adoption, desire to adopt or need to defend a friend/relative who has adopted. THAT is when I wish I had never heard the word, indeed, I wish that such a painful, unnecessary thing had never come to be a part of our civilization. Because, then, I wouldn't have to try to explain what should be evident, obvious and realistic.

So, we rented "Sweeney Todd." I figure that a dark musical about a murderous barber and a demented "people meat pie" maker would be better than another frustrating, heartbreaking sojourn on the 'net, reading "Dear Barfmuggle" letters, watching the self-entitled troll for babies and the brainwashed future beemommies falling for the fantasy. In fact, a few straight-razor slashes across the Adam's apple was just what I needed. That is the first "R" rated musical I have ever seen. It was Tim Burton bleak weirdness for sure but very well done, I thought. Tonight, I am curling up with a Nora Roberts novel. Maybe some more murder and mayhem mixed in with a sexy, improbable romance will be as big a relief from the world of baby-snatching as Johnny Depp waving his blade and singing to it as "My Friend" was, last night.

I am refreshing and recharging the old batteries because this old broad will be back in the fray within hours, calling a spade a spade. But, for now, the "A" word is not to be spoken in this house. Ah.....blissful silence and peace. I wonder how hubby's arthritis is, tonight?

About Those "Dads"

I got a huffy comment from someone who wanted to tell me that adoption is NOT just a woman's issue but also includes fathers in the mix. Well, to the extent that it takes a male participant to produce a pregnancy, yes, they are a part of the equation.

But I talk, here on this blog, about the BSE. I am coming at it from the true experiences of most Senior Moms, and believe me when I say, that most of us had NO support, input or help from the fathers. The numbers of moms who never told the fathers about their pregnancy is another tiny minority and many dads from our era who say that they weren't told are lying through their dentures.

For most of us, as in my case, once the word "pregnant" was spoken, these valiant examples of male fortitude ran like rabbits. In my case, the father of my oldest child lied about his paternity and spread the rumor, along with some of his buddies, that I was promiscuous, in order to escape the consequences of fatherhood. Luckily, his parents were decent people who did make him answer the social wrecker's questions and she was convinced that he was the father. He still won't take a DNA test or include our daughter in his life.

For those of you who know me, you know that the second child I was forced to surrender was not the product of misguided teen love, but an outright assault. In both cases, I was the culprit as far as society was concerned. I don't know how many of us have heard the phrase, "she went and got herself pregnant," as if we just spontaneously conceived on purpose. The men got away with a wink and a nudge and a "boys will be boys."

During the BSE and even now, most men do not take the responsibility they should when they dip their wicks. They are too hormone-driven to care what happens to the girl/woman and the child they conceive. They expect the woman to be prepared and protected. These women who don't tell the fathers are usually women who were left holding the bag, so to speak, while Don Juan went on to plow newer fields. Sometimes it is pride and rejection that keeps a women from contacting a man who obviously doesn't want her. The fathers who do come forth, after the fact, then make the mother the goat, making her sound dishonest when she was probably just desperate.

Even in the rare cases where a young man wanted to take his responsibility and take care of his girlfriend and their child, back in our time, he was usually barred from seeing her and threatened with jail and charges of statutory rape. I know of one father from that era who was removed from the premises of the maternity prison by the law. The last thing our parents wanted was to see us married and pregnant for all the neighbors to count months and shake their heads and say "tut tut" about our ages.

When a man can become pregnant, gestate and give birth, THEN, maybe I will say it is not a women's issue. But that hasn't happened yet. I could only wish............ But the fact is that this is still a man's world and women are still sirens and sluts and daughters of Eve when it comes to this kind of thing. We are the ones who are the object of moral censure..NOT the fathers. Not much has changed since the BSE in that regard. Men DON'T get pregnant despite that modern-day silliness of a married or committed couple proclaiming that "they" are pregnant. SHE is pregnant, and is fortunate to have the support, responsible actions and love of a husband or partner.

I am still wanting to find out why NOW hasn't addressed this crime against their older sisters. The BSE IS a woman's issue, will always BE a woman's issue and needs to be addressed as such. To the Dads from the BSE who have accepted and welcomed their adult reunited children, hey, better late than never. But remember that many of you broke some young woman's heart when you abandoned her and knew you could get away with it. Combine that pain with the loss of her child to adoption, and you have one very injured woman.

To the fathers of today, I have a suggestion. After having sex, especially unprotected sex with a young woman, why don't you stay in contact for a while until you know for sure that there was no seed planted? That would go a long way towards lessening the need for lengthy court actions to try to regain custody from avid adopters. You don't have to love, marry, live with or even like the mother of your child. But, you can give her support and, if she is totally unable to parent her child, you can ask for custody right off the bat. She will be a lot more amenable to that suggestion and telling you the truth if she is treated like she matters enough to have a little moral support.

Now, do I hear any male volunteers for that first male pregnancy? (and I don't mean a tranny) You'll just LOVE labor and delivery. It's sooooo much fun. (And rewarding in a way that I don't think a man will ever be able to understand.)

Re-Learning What You've Lost

I walked out on my piano teacher in an early-adolescent huff and never went back. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! That was 49 years ago and I was showing promise. My husband, who cannot resist a bargain, bought an electric keyboard with all the bells and whistles and a book to self-teach. So I am trying to go back 49 years and take up where I left off.

Guess what? It doesn't work that way. I have to start from the beginning again, practicing scales, finger exercises and glissando's and chords and learning the bass clef (which was a bear for me, the first time). I have managed a very "children's recital" version of "Greensleeves" and while I yearn to skip forward to "Fur Elise," I am going to slog through "Skip To My Lou" and other nonsense, looking forward to the day when I can pay a decent homage to Floyd Cramer's "Last Date." I am not as quick on the uptake as I was at ages 11, 12 and 13.

Like re-learning the piano, reunion is an exercise in re-learning what should be natural and easy on both parties. What we knew was lost to us when our babies left our arms and was just a pre-verbal trauma to our babies as infants. No wonder we sometimes circle each other like two frightened boxers. You know the old joke...one is afraid and the other one is glad of it?

While the blood bond is strong and calls to us, we are now two very different people than we were when we were separated. We have to re-learn a lot, find our way through the maze of powerful emotions and, hopefully, meet in the middle. For some of us, that happens. For others, it can be a total disaster. I'm one for one. I have a really good relationship with my daughter and a precarious one with my son.

Someone once, and very arrogantly to my way of thinking, created a list of rules for reunion. If I have learned anything, it is that you cannot follow a prescribed agenda with individuals. We are all different. There is only one constant mode of reunion behavior and that is communication that includes treating each other with mutual respect. If that is not there, then we have a reunion that is sliding downhill, fast. Preconceived notions and fantasies about what our children/mothers might be like need to be tossed in the trash, because we are not meeting a daydream..we are connecting with real, breathing, usually normal people.

My childhood piano lessons give me a little boost as I re-learn the piano. My short time with my babies gave me a bit of an edge when entering reunion. But the rest has to be practice, practice, practice. I have been in reunion for almost 15 years. It is only in the last five that my daughter has come to call me "Mom." Patience and practice. I have always been "Ma" to my son, but his need for me is not as intense as my daughter's or, at least, he will not let it be so. Patience, patience.

Now comes the part where I offend the adopters and the loyal adoptees, but this is, we are learning, one of the most important parts of reunion. Reunion, in the beginning, is between the adult child and his/her mother ONLY. Trying to immediately build a big, happy, blended "family" of sorts just doesn't work most of the time. Insecure adopters try to control the reunion, other family members try to "fix" it and everyone who has never experienced what the adopted person and the mother are going through has a bushel-basket of pedestrian advice.

There will be times when all involved will come together and then civility and kindness is the rule of thumb for the sake of the adopted person and everyone else involved. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I would hope that adopters would realize that this is their reality check and accept it with grace and others would realize that there are some pretty intense dynamics going on with the mother and her adult child that need to be left to them to sort out.

If I had a string of letters after my name, then this post might be taken seriously by those who are re-learning how to be mother and adult child and by those who just have to stick their noses into the mix. The only qualifications I have are my experiences and common sense. I might call myself an RD...Doctor of Reality. Real life is an effective, if harsh, teacher.

Now, I am going to go practice that damn piano.

The Mice Are Squeaking

The one thing that I have made clear on several of my posts is that I am not going to debate the pro-adoptionists in my comments sections. Life is too short and hate mail is just that....something hateful and something to discard.

The latest tempest in a teapot (4 whole posts, 2 from the same person who baited me as a coward), is over an archived post, "From The Ridiculous To The Sublime", no longer even on the front page, addressing that abominable tee-shirt bearing the legend "Adoption is the New Pregnant." Looks like some wannabes and PAPs think we should give them our conceptions and gestations, labors and deliveries as well as our precious children. Nah...don't think so. "Paper Pregnant" isn't pregnant at all...it is just being predatory. There is no comparison to being truly pregnant.

One poster is adamant that women, especially young women, who become pregnant while single and keep their offspring are destined, nay truly FATED to become abusers and trots out the old line that judges all of us by a small minority. I would like to direct this person's attention here and suggest she read the thread about Adopter Abuse In the News. Now, what if all people who adopted were judged by that group? Hmmmmmm?

I know a huge gang of unmarried mothers, some of whom I helped to keep their babies when they were being chased down by voracious PAPs and unethical agencies and good "Christian" help centers. Not a one of them is an abuser or a neglectful Mom, all of them receive moral and other support from family members and friends, they work, they finished or are finishing school and they are exemplary mothers. I notice that our unnamed poster (my real name and location is here but you guys either use "anonymous" or a nickname) seems to think that leaving any child in his/her natural family is an open invitation to abuse. Well, then by your standards and stats, I can say the same fate awaits any child who is adopted if I want to judge you all by what some have done.

I am called "Hateful" because I don't like adoption or the act of adoption. It's funny, but at my YMCA water aerobics class, one of the ladies I like the most is an old-line adopter and we have had many a mutually respectful debate. Of course, she doesn't presume to think she can take away the natural mother's place where pregnancy is concerned. She thought the tee shirts were silly. If it is "hateful" to dislike the industry and the customers of that industry that still subtly coerce young women out of their babies and cause the kind of damage I have seen to both the mothers and their lost-to-adoption children, then "hateful" I am.

I reunited with two such damaged individuals and my heart has been thoroughly broken by the gentle ministrations of their "Forever Families." I shouldn't even put that one in caps since the entire notion is so facetious. However, the children I raised, while I am sure they will tell you I was an over-protective mother and a bit strict, will also tell you that I never raised a hand to either one of them except for a smack on the butt when my youngest tried to run out into the street and scared me half to death.

Now, one more time...this is a blog for me and others to get information about adoption which we use in our fight to keep natural families together. I and my sister moms in this endeavor, do NOT think that every single mom is an abuser or that the child of a single mom is short-changed. My father left us when I was 5, and we had a lovely childhood, my sisters and I, filled with positive attention and love. Actually, things went downhill when he returned 9 years later and my forgiving, very Christian mother took him back.

In truth, I have done you "ladies" or whatever you are, a favor by deleting your nastiness instead of leaving it all up for all to see. Even then, this blog entry is a waste of my time, but you asked for it. If someone questions something here in a civil and decent manner, I'll post an answer. People who post nasty comments get bupkiss and thrown into the trash. Not a matter of lack of nerve...but a matter of a waste of time. It's MY blog and I'll delete what I want to. That's the power of a blog.

I don't name names or pick on individuals, as a rule...I am an equal-opportunity iconoclast. But if you don't like what I have to say, run on back to alt.adoption or your Cafe Mom group and blast away. I have a feeling I won't miss any sleep at all. If you post it here and post it hatefully and with rancor, I'm just going to trash it. That's just the way it works.

Reproductive Exploitation/ Predator and Prey

I am so very disenchanted with the women's equality movement. I was all for the ERA, went to local NOW meetings and considered myself quite the feminist. Of course, I was also in deep denial of my adoption loss grief, buried anger and pain.

When I reunited and started becoming really, genuinely educated about what had happened to me and millions of other women, I wondered where the feminists stood on this issue. I certainly had never heard it addressed in all the meetings I attended or spoken about at demonstrations.

As the years progressed, I saw some of my activist sisters who were a bit further along in the justice for moms and natural family preservation arenas apply to NOW and the movement for recognition and support. It never came and the reason was bitingly evident. Many of these women who purported to stand for the rights of all women were adopters. They were able to "have it all" by becoming predators who preyed on their more vulnerable sisters, taking their babies as if by right, and calling themselves "mothers."

It has already been established as scientific fact that one of the leading causes of infertility among women is delayed childbearing. As a woman ages, her eggs become less viable and conception is less likely. Building a career, making sure that all the "right" things for a "successful" life were in place, takes precedence over giving birth, and other considerations such as starving oneself to stay thin or becoming obese or smoking, etc, can tilt the balance of the fertility scales even more. Then these women become the object of great social empathy, the poor, barren women and no one sees that it is usually their own damn fault. They are quick enough to blame us, though, for being human, sexual and fertile.

The feminist movement said that a woman could and should have it all, a career, a family, prestige and a comparable paycheck to a man's. Perhaps that is where this attitude of self-entitlement comes from when the little stick they pee on in the bathroom keeps showing up as "not pregnant." I wonder if they see it as their due...they worked hard to get where they are, graduated with their degree, got a career, then married the right man, or joined the right political action committees and those who were "careless" enough to get pregnant before doing all these fine things just didn't deserve that baby as much as the infertile feminist. Rather than reaching out to their less affluent, less educated, less successful sisters with help and support, they prey on them like crocodiles on zebras. Rather than filling hungry stomachs like the animal predators, they just fill a crib with a child to whom they are genetic strangers.

I used to call myself a feminist, but now, if a woman cannot be respected for doing the one thing she can do that a man can't, if she is just seen as a brood mare by her sisters, then I don't think I want to be called a feminist. The National Organization for Women does not speak for me or for all the women who still fall into the hungry jaws of the adoption industry to feed the demand for healthy infants. We are disregarded, ignored and used as much by these "champions of the American woman" as we ever were by any man.

The adoption and surrogacy industries are anti-woman, as anti-woman as pornography or prostitution. We are not people but fertile bodies to be used and then kicked to the curb like an empty can.

I'd love to tell the John Birchers and Moral Majority mavens that it isn't political liberals, homosexual rights or "free love" or lack of sufficient religion that is the biggest threat to the family. Plain and simple, it is the failure to respect the bond between mother and child....it is Eugenics with a capital "E." It is self-entitlement and everyone out for themselves and what they want and to Hell with who they have to walk on to get what they want. It is sitting in judgment of a pregnant teen or a poor family with more than two children that is bringing us down. It is elitism and arrogance, and I remember there was a lot of that involved in the fall of Rome.

We no longer have a social conscience. If we did, I don't think that mothers of adoption loss would be so summarily dismissed as unimportant by one of the biggest, most powerful women's groups in the country. As long as women treat other women like convenient incubators, there are no true feminists, just female predators and female prey.

Giving Women More Choices

A friend came across this article from the Philidalphia Inquirer that was archived from January. It is a very good review of Ann Fessler's "The Girls Who Went Away" and the honor bestowed on her for her work.

Let's support a set of choices
Melissa Weiler Gerber and Ann Fessler support choice for women

On the 35th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, impassioned words fill our newspapers and airwaves and pervade the discourse at the water cooler and on the campaign trail. Few, if any, issues generate the passion of the debate about a woman's right to a safe, legal abortion. Too often, the conversation is condensed into media-friendly sound bites unbefitting such a complex issue. Those who believe in a woman's reproductive freedom are characterized as pro-abortion or anti-life. Extraordinary efforts are made to limit, challenge and overturn the Roe decision as if that alone would solve the moral dilemma surrounding unwanted (I would call them "unexpected" rw) pregnancies. History suggests otherwise.

We know that in the pre-Roe era in America, as in every era everywhere, girls and women became pregnant unintentionally (pertinent to mention that there were two people involved in a woman becoming pregnant...we can't spontaneously become pregnant..it takes a man's "contribution" rw). The post-World War II era was a tricky landscape to maneuver. The nation was heading into a sexual revolution, but with no comprehensive sex education or access to reliable contraceptives. An extraordinary number of pregnancies resulted.

With no access to safe, legal abortions, an estimated 250,000 to one million women each year resorted to unsafe abortions that were responsible for an estimated 40 percent of all maternal deaths during this period. Women who did not want or were unable to obtain an abortion were under tremendous societal pressure to conceal and deny their pregnancies. They frequently were shunned by their families, friends and schools. More than 1.5 million such women (some estimate as many as 6 million..rw) during this period were secreted away to maternity homes and host houses where they were hidden until they gave birth and surrendered their children for adoption, often (in MOST cases..rw) against their will.

This is an era in women's history that, until recently, had been as hidden-away as the pregnancies themselves. The impact of the coerced nature of many (MOST..rw) of these surrenders, and the denial of any emotions following them, had gone unstudied. It is morally convenient to portray abortion as the ultimate evil and adoption as the ultimate good in the quest to tidily resolve the untidy issue of unwanted pregnancies. But, as with most things in life, it just is not that simple.

Every woman who experiences an unplanned pregnancy is faced with a decision of enormous magnitude that is likely to leave its imprint on the rest of her life. About that there is little debate. The only debate is around who, at such a personal and introspective moment, should be empowered to choose the best among difficult options. We can daydream about an era when each time a woman learns of a pregnancy, she greets that news with celebration. But daydreaming is all it would be. We do not live in such a time. Our pre-Roe sisters did not live in such a time. Overturning Roe would not in any way change this.

Let us live in reality rather than daydreams. First, let us work to limit the number of unplanned pregnancies in our nation by embracing comprehensive sex education in our schools and requiring complete contraceptive coverage from our insurance companies. Next, let us support a wide range of choices for women confronting unplanned pregnancies. For those who seek to carry their pregnancies to term and raise their children, let us support them with family-sustaining public policies, such as quality, affordable child care and health care. *For those who determine that adoption is best for them and for their babies, let us continue to evolve adoption practice and policy in a way that recognizes the complexity and intensity of the act for all parties involved. And, for those who decide to terminate their pregnancies, let us pledge to support their right to do so safely and legally.

Let us give women the autonomy and respect they deserve to determine what is best for their bodies, their souls, their families, their futures. Let us believe in the wisdom of women.

Melissa Weiler Gerber is executive director of Women's Way, and Ann Fessler is author of "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for
Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade." E-mail them at mweilergerber@womens
way.org or ann@thegirlswhowentaway.com.

*Just a footnote to the article above. I think it is important to also offer to women who are looking at surrender for adoption complete information on the effects to both the mother and the child. Too often, women surrender for reasons that they think will be a forever thing. Situations change and help is available. There are really very few reasons that a women should not keep her baby and a plethora of reasons why a child should be raised in his or her family of origin.
To this end, there should also be the possibility of kinship or legal guardianship that could allow for changing situations in the mother's life.

If anyone who reads this blog has not read Ann's wonderful book, please borrow it or buy it and read it. The unadulterated truth about adoption during the BSE is in the stories of the women who were interviewed by Ms. Fessler. I have a few good friends whose stories were chronicled in that book. It may be hard reading and it may even produce tears, but it is still a must-read for everyone involved in adoption, including adopters.....maybe even ESPECIALLY adopters.

Adoptive "Motherhood" The Same as Natural? A True Confession

Not only did this adopter confess to her true feelings, she has had several people empathize. I want to ask her what moved her to adopt in the first place? So sick and so sad......

http://www.truemomconfessions.com/confessions/tmc111019161

This sucks. I've just had an epiphany that I'm totally wishing my life away waiting for my children to grow up so I can get on with MY life. I can't wait until they're old enough to go to school and get them out of my hair. I hate all of this and I dread each and every day. I wish this was a rant, vent or just a bad day but it's not. I HATE BEING A MOM. I get very little out of this and I'm beginning to doubt my capacity to love anything at all. I wouldn't mind wishing a few years of my life away if I had more of it ahead of me than I do. I'm 40 and these kids won't be going to school for several more years. The worst part of this whole thing is that both of my children are adopted and somewhere out there are two (*natural) mothers whose children went to an adoptive mother who has very little appreciation for them.

Ah, Confessoress, but these women were in what they perceived to be a "crisis" mode and these agents/social workers were too intent on filling YOUR order for a baby to think about whether you were psychologically prepared for the job or to work first to find a way to help the mother keep her child. They put the screws to these women and never suggested that there might be a better way. That is the way of the big industry of adoption. Also, 40 is a bit long in the tooth to be keeping up with energetic little ones. That is why it is best to have your own children at a younger age when the eggs are fresh and viable and a real bond can be formed. This waiting for the "optimum" conditions is against all the laws of Nature.

This is the dirtiest, most awful--probably the ONLY awful thing I've ever done, but boy is it a doozy. I can't tell a soul this because it's just too terrible to say out loud. It's probably every (*natural)-mother's nightmare...to plan an adoption for your child who ends up with a mother who doesn't want or appreciate them. I really have no idea how I got here or why this happened, but I know it makes me an awful person---a person I can't look at in the mirror because my heart is so small that I can't stand being a mother. I used to like me.

"Boy, is it a doozy?" An understatement. These kids are probably just being normal, energetic, children and they could also be acting out their primal grief over the separation from their mothers. That is a reality. It could also be that each of them, as an intuitive child, feels your hatred on a gut level and is fighting back. Your bad...not theirs. Your heart is not necessarily small so much as you just were not cut out for motherhood, which leads to my original question...why did you seek it out in the first place? Why couldn't you have taken the money you spent to "become a 'mother'" and help a little family stay together? For God/dess' Sake, find their mothers and return them.

I hate having kids. This crushing boredom, endless need, bottomless thanklessness, blatant greed and inconsideration are slowly killing me. Even worse still is that I pretend very poorly that things are "okay" and in the end that will only rob these two kids of something real. It's clear that I can't "fake it 'til I make it" in this situation. If there was any way to save face and send these kids away, I'd do it. The worst of the worst? I hate myself, but I think I hate them more. Maybe they'll get lucky and I'll die before they really figure out what a horrific bitch their "mother" really is.

I find myself echoing your wish, Confessoress. The fact that many people who adopt fail to consider is that the human child, especially during infancy and the toddler years, is the most selfish creature on earth. It's how they survive, Dummy! The don't even see themselves as a separate entity from their natural mother until they are over 6 months old. That's why a separation at birth is so traumatic for them. You have to have a conscience or you would not be agonizing over it. Put the energy you are putting into self-pity and loathing and find those mothers. Work out a way to return them and, while you are looking, consider yourself a legal guardian of these children for whom you can feel some fondness and concern but are not required to provide "mother love."

You know, I'm not really a "kid person" myself, but Goddess, how I loved raising my two raised kids and my heart was firmly connected to all four of my born children. I even have an earnest and loving, long-distance bond with my great-grandchildren and they are at that mischievous, squealing age which, from other people's children, is a total irritant.

You are not alone, Confessoress. There are probably thousands or more adoptors who feel exactly the same way and are playing the "as if" game and all parties suffer for it, worst of all, the children. Those adopters who care for the children they are raising "as their own" attach...they do not bond because the most important bond was forming before these kids were even born.

You know, the only real answer to this is to do more to help mothers and their children stay together. This country has become so adoption-crazed that people do it because they THINK they should...not because it is what is best for either them or the children they might adopt. She's wasting energy hating the children because she's the one who decided to raid the baby market. She's also wasting time hating herself when she needs to be taking action. Let's hope she can forgive herself, be kind to these kids and do what is right by them...FIND THEIR MOTHERS.

The Power Of Language

There is the old story that I heard when I was in my teens. It was in a class where the teacher, along with teaching English, was trying to teach about the power of language, logic and thinking on one's feet. She told us that story and we had fun with it for the hour we were in her class. It was about a psychiatrist who asked a man to give him only a "yes" or "no" answer to a one-sentence question. The question was, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The man was at a loss. If he said "yes" that would imply that he had beaten his wife which would have been a lie. If he said "no" it would sound as if he was currently beating his wife. He decided that, since he had never beaten his wife, the only honest answer was "no" and the psychiatrist had him committed for wife-beating.

We Moms often get those kinds of questions from facilitators such as "why did you DECIDE to place your child for adoption?" The only honest answer for most of us is, "We were given no 'choice' in the matter so there was no decision made." But, on the questionnaires they have, there is no room for the honest answer.

That is the power of language. In using a term to describe a pregnant woman as a "birth"mother, she is already placed in the position of having made the "decision" to "place" her child. To use the term "place" or the phrase "make an adoption plan" makes it sound so much more like a thoughtful choice rather than the truth which is that most of us, especially from the BSE SURRENDERED our children....meaning, giving into massive, constant pressure, waving the white flag, going out in defeat. Surrender of one's child is an act of desperation, one where the mother can see no hope. And the facilitators and social workers will do all they can to foster that false notion of no light at the end of the tunnel.

This is also why many of us refuse to use the term "adoptive PARENT." If they can verbally lop off our parenthood at the moment of birth, why would we want to see them as "parents?" Hence, the proper term (it's in the dictionary), "Adopter." While I respect the fact that my adult children do see the people who raised them as parents, I am not required to see them in that light and I don't. My children know how I feel and we have decided that our relationship is more important than arguing the fact.

The use of Honest Adoption Language can go a long way towards showing more respect for mothers, adult adopted people and the trauma they have endured. It shines the light of truth on the fact that adoption is messy, painful, selfish and not the wonderful solution to "social problems" it was thought to be. It is actually a big business that preys on the vulnerable and threatens the fabric of the natural family.

Sometimes, even those of us on the same side can argue over language, especially the "b" word. One Mom and I got into a discussion where she stated that she didn't mind being called a "birthmother" and I, most adamantly, stated the opposite. I will stop someone in their tracks if they use that word. Her response was, "well, you say 'potato' and I say 'potahto.' It's all the same thing." To which I replied, "it most definitely is NOT the same thing."

There are those that claim to be advocates of "adoption reform." I find this as specious as trying to reform the cobra to keep it from biting. You don't reform the snake, you pull its fangs and, by doing so, it's not really a cobra, anymore. In Matthew 7:21, Jesus is quoted as saying "Not every one that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.... In that same vein, not everyone who talks big about reforming the corruption of adoption is in it to help the mothers and their children escape the big "A." Many times, the only kind of reform they want is that which makes it easier for people to adopt and for agencies and other entities (CPS) to break up natural families. There's a simple, English word for that, too. It's EUGENICS. Look it up.

It's getting bad out there, people, and language is adding to the confusion. It seems that any pregnant woman who appears to be young or may not be wearing a wedding band is prey to the b-word title. One pregnant women, who happened not to be wearing her wedding band at her job as a waitress, was solicited, outright, by a couple at a table she was serving. You can find the story at, Adopter Trolls. Just by being young, pregnant and not wearing her ring to work, she was spotted, labeled as prey and the predators circled.

Speaking of language, adoption advocate, Adam Pertman, in referring to this outrage, was quoted to say:"Generally, people should not go up to someone on the street who happens to be pregnant and ask her if they can adopt her baby." First of all, by saying "generally," does Mr. Pertman imply that there are times when such behavior is acceptable? And, Adam, old boy, it happens more often than you know. I know one young mom-to-be and her mother, who were out shopping for baby items, that were followed all through the store by a potential adopter who was trying to give the young lady her card.

Yes, language is important and has been throughout history. Spin doctors and Madison Avenue know this and use it. It behooves us to use it as well, with honesty and clarity and courage. And remember that other people with their own agendas will still try to twist your words and make their own meanings out of what you said. Stand your ground and call them on it. Don't let the language/emotional bullies fool you or confuse you. Stick with your message, whatever it may be, and stand proud.

The BSE...Why Now?

There has been much negativity in the natural family preservation (read*anti-adoption) community towards those of us who are seeking justice and redress for the millions of us who had our babies taken from us with arrogant impunity during the Baby Scoop Era. That time frame is held to be from the end of WWII into the mid-1970's with some small pockets of that antiquated mindset still operating into the early 80's. From talking to our sisters in Canada, the BSE was all over North America.

The arguments range from the erroneous charge that we think that we from that era were more hurt by the loss of our children than the mothers of adoption loss who came after us, to the dismissive attitude of wondering what good an apology, recognition and redress would do. Both these arguments are emotional and illogical albeit the subject matter is most emotional in nature.

The fact is that nothing has ever been recognized as a "sanctioned evil" by the general public unless it was brought forth with full umbrage showing and an answer demanded from those in power. Cases in point are the recent apology from the state of Virginia for slavery, the national government's apology for the wrongs done to the Tuskegee airmen and the national apology to Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated for no good reason other than national paranoia and bigotry during WWII.

What happened to millions of young women and their infants during the BSE was a harvesting of adoptable infants of genocidal proportions. Those numbers, those methods, those social attitudes and the wholesale degrading of single women who became pregnant has never been rivaled. We had no access to birth control or information about birth control. With most of us, it was illegal to sell birth control to unmarried women. Safe, medical, LEGAL abortion was unavailable to anyone except those with the right connections and enough money for the Medical Professional to risk his or her career to perform a "D & C," for "excess menstrual bleeding" so most of the less affluent had to carry to term and form that bond, in utero, with that baby, only to be forced, in the most overt manner, by family and social workers, to surrender our child.

More fathers involve themselves today than in our time. Most of the boys/men who fathered BSE children denied paternity, DNA tests were not available to prove our claims and they just danced off with a wink and a nudge. It was our word against theirs. WE, the girls and women of that era, were seen as solely responsible for our "delicate conditions."

We were not allowed to attend school, we were denied work or fired from jobs if our situation became known, no one would rent to a never-married mother-to-be and we spent most of our time isolated from our friends and life in general, hidden away like a shameful secret. While there were some social services in effect at that time, you can bet everything possible was done to make sure we stayed unaware of those services. Maternity "homes" were full with waiting lists.

The medical care we were given was usually done by interns and doctors doing their residency requirements at local hospitals located close to the homes. It was cursory and often humiliating and given grudgingly, as though we didn't deserve it. We were told very little about what to expect when the time came to give birth and then were usually left alone to labor in pain and fear, or doped so badly that our babies slept for days so we wouldn't cause any trouble. It has actually been said to a number of us, when we would moan or cry out in our pain, by prudish nurses, that we were getting what we deserved. We had to beg to see our babies and were often denied the right to even know the gender of the child we delivered. We were administered dangerous drugs to dry up our breast milk and there was no one there to hold our hand when we cried after our lost children.

Now be honest.... in the past few decades, can any of you see any woman of the recent past putting up with that kind of treatment from medical professionals? Back then, we didn't know we could complain, file suits and there was really no fear on the part of the medical community because they knew that our families wanted to keep our shameful secret so nothing would be done.

Those are just some of the DIFFERENCES between the BSE and later decades. That doesn't mean that it hurt less to lose one's child but, whether you want to admit it or not, there were more options open to the single, pregnant woman than in our day. What changed was how the adoption industry did business. Coercions became slicker, more covert and "spin-doctor" disguised and adoption was touted as a morally superior and heroic act on the part of the mother. We got bullied in huge numbers, the ones who came after us got badly scammed and taken in by a social myth and in much fewer numbers.

I know this isn't a new one...this quote has been around a while, bit it fits. George Satayana said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." There are forces at work in our nation, today, that want to return to the old shaming, blaming, isolating of and removal of infants from single mothers. The Christian Coalition, the far right wing and the anti-choice are all for this country taking a giant step backwards in the status of women and the right for a single woman to raise her own child. What we learn from the BSE and what this nation might learn from it could keep this from happening to your daughter or granddaughter.

The biggest and most compelling argument for addressing the BSE on a national level is the pure aspect of total injustice in what happened to us. Yes, we know that "things were just like that, back then." Well, slavery was how things were up until the 1860's, but that still doesn't make it right, excusable or ignorable. Konrad Adenauer said, "History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided." In the case of the legalized crimes against the women of the BSE it should also be said that it SHOULD have been avoided. Injustice is injustice.

The adoption industry has a lot to answer to for women of the BSE and those who came after. But let's start at the beginning and show this nation just how bad it can get. And, please, please, let it happen before we of the BSE are all dead and buried. Posthumous recognition isn't going to help those of us who suffered through that time.

We all want to help the mothers of today. What some just don't want to admit or recognize is how much this action of taking the BSE out of the closet of the past would do just that. It might help them recognize that the wolf isn't dead...it is just wearing sheep's clothing.

Are You Not Over That, Yet???

My Mother-in-law, bless her very elderly heart, at 93 has no patience with anyone's illnesses but her own. She can't understand that it takes a while to get over some things and other things you don't get over at all, such as my husband's (her favorite child) Crohn's Disease. She just can't understand why, with all this modern science, they can't give him some pills and make it go away.

It's the same way with tragedies. My stepson, my husband's only child, took his own life in 1996. To this day, my husband cannot go into a Winn-Dixie which is where his son worked part-time until his death and Mom loves to shop in Winn-Dixie. She cannot understand why he "isn't over all that," 12 years later. Of course, she has never lost a child to death. She lost her husband and then her gentleman friend and expected outpourings of sympathy from others but cannot relate that grief to the grief that others endure. I am told that she was never very sympathetic or nurturing when one of her eight children was sick, that their Dad was the one who petted them. Pain and illness in her loved ones scares the tar out of her.

We Mothers who have had children taken for adoption will often get that same message as in, "It's time for you to get over that and move on." Most of the people who say this have never lost a child to death or to adoption. OR, they are the ones who adopted our children. It's a hard thing to try to convey to them that you NEVER just "get over it" and easily "go on with our lives."

My husband and I went to Survivors of Suicide meetings after the death of my stepson and that was where I first heard anyone acknowledge that you don't just "get over" these things. Instead, they taught me that you learn to live with it, to incorporate the experience of loss into your life and re-learn how to find happiness in your changed world. I think that is what a large number of us older moms have done.

We have been smacked in the face with the reality of what adoption separation did to us and to our children and we have pulled ourselves back up to our feet and faced it and made our own conclusions...we can't change it now....we can learn from it....our anger is just....so we do what we can to try to change things and meanwhile we allow ourselves to have the life we so richly deserve after years of grief. We have earned our moments of love and laughter that rare feeling of being glad to be alive.

My Mother-in-law reminds me of a lot of adopters in that they don't want to acknowledge the unpleasant fact that people get hurt when they get what they want. Facilitators don't care. Maybe adopters, for the most part, don't care as long as they get the goods, but I think that some of them suffer from twinges of conscience, here and there.

But, as Mom is finding as her children reach their 50's, 60's and 70's and have real health concerns, not wanting to face it isn't going to make it go away. She is scared and confused and will probably go with the grim reaper, screaming, scratching and clawing all the way. But she is seeing that some of her loved ones do have serious issues, health or otherwise, for she has now lost two grandsons to suicide. When asked what she wanted for Mother's Day, she said she only wanted to still be alive. She will face it when she can and not before, I guess.

For those that either don't want to face our particular form of grief and anger or who don't care, it isn't going to just go away. We have learned to live with it, but we sure are not "over it." Keep an eye on Karma. Payback is a bitch.

YEEEEEOOOOOWWWWCH!!

I am SUCH a wuss. This getting used to a mouthful of acrylics is gonna be tough and I have some definite sore spots, plus open wounds where the front 12 teeth were pulled Friday. But when I look in the mirror and see clean, white, even teeth that still look natural...Dr. Probst and Dr. Lee, you guys are artists. I'll get used to them no matter what it takes.

Speaking of sore spots, Bastardette directed me to am editorial piece called the "Gift of Anonymity," which lauded the idea of closed records and "protecting" the privacy of the mothers. I wonder how many times and in how many ways we are going to have to say this before they stop pulling that old chestnut out of the fire? Most of us have looked and looked and wracked our memories and we can find NOTHING in the surrender papers we signed, especially those of us from the Baby Scoop Era, that states we are guaranteed any sort of anonymity, confidentiality or "privacy protection."

Only those few mothers still cowering in the closet of shame and blame find confidentiality to be a good idea. The rest of us are looking at each other and going, "Say what?" My fondest dreams came true when my daughter found me and we found my son just a few months later. I was not ashamed, nor was I feeling the urge to hide the fact that I was an (shudder and organ music) UNWED Mother!! EEEEEK! For Pete's Sake, get real People! The entire idea of such secrecy is anathema to the mental and emotion health of both the adopted person and the mother. The ONLY people who are "protected" by anonymity are the adopters and the facilitators.

As the spectre of a Democratic administration looms on the horizon of the far right's perfect world, I see a Media scramble to spread the scare tactics. "Juno" was nothing but propaganda, "Baby Mama" is more of the same and Madonna's not only "Keeping Her Baby, " but is raiding the third world for more child-flesh. I noticed in the daily comics, today, Lu Anne's friend, Delta, was naming all the things that were wrong with this world and mentioned "teen pregnancy." The funny thing about that is that recent statistics show that there are more single mothers in the 20 and over age group. And most of these young women have been brainwashed by the same media representation of adoption as has everyone else. Everybody wants to be a hero, even when the heroism is just so much smoke and mirrors and mythology.

The sore places in my mouth will go away, God willing, and I should soon be off my smoothie and soup regimen. I wish the adoption sore spots would go away as quickly.

Coming Out Day

Nope, I am NOT gay and there is no closet. What is happening today and making me quake in my boots is that the remainder of my teeth, the front twelve, top and bottom, are coming out to make room for gosh-darn, boney-fyde, store-boughten choppers. I am excited and scared at the same time. I've had trouble with my teeth for years (inherited) and this is where the trouble ends and a new adjustment begins. I will be at the dentist's and in his chair from 9:00 AM to 12:00 noon, YIKES!!!

I called a friend last night and told her that I was fixing my hair in front of the mirror and sucked in my cheeks to make my face look thinner and the darn inner cheeks met in the middle of my mouth because there were no back teeth to stop them. You should have seen how funny it looked on the outside. Well, I'll, at least, be a blast at parties.

I received a note of encouragement from an adopted, adult friend who is a member of Bastard Nation. I mentioned to her that I always loved the humor and satire written by members of BN. That satire has helped me laugh at a painful situation when I really needed to. Some Mom friends and I have taken to calling each other "sluts" and giggling like girls. Thanks to my new friend. We don't see eye to eye on every issue, but she has a load of my respect.

When we take ourselves too seriously, we lose perspective, depth and focus. That's usually when we become legends in our own minds and delve into the dangerous waters of terminal uniqueness. I forget who said this but I can remember the words, "laugh WITH everyone else and laugh AT yourself and you'll be OK." I have had my time with that dangerous self-involvement to the exclusion of good emotional health and I don't want to go back there. Reunion helped that situation, a lot. Nothing like a good reality check to awaken one to the world around you.

If we BSE Moms and others with righteous issues ever want to make a go of it, we have to make time for humor, lightness and a little wrangling. Superstars usually burn themselves into black holes. I'll settle for letting my own little light shine where it will. And meanwhile, let's all remember that we have to make room for real life. Thus endeth today's homily from the Right Rev. Robin the Self-Righteous.

Heh heh

Having A Life

You know, most people who read posts on message boards and on blogs like this one, might get the idea that this is all we are...all that our life holds. For most of us, that just isn't the fact. Long before this Internet thingy became the highway for exchange of information, people lived and worked and loved and created, laughed and cried. It's still true.

This blog and my adoption-related and other Internet activism and support groups are just a part of my life. I have a husband, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, a huge extended family of in-laws and I have been blessed with some very good friends.

We go to the doctors with our aches and pains (Hubby has an incurable gastric disease that acts up occasionally, and I am currently suffering the agony of losing de teeth), we plan our financial futures, we go out to eat, we watch movies (may I recommend 'The Golden Compass"...all about free thought), and plant petunias in our front yard. We laugh and play and cuddle at night. We worry over my stubborn 93-year-old Mother-in-law and save pictures of the little ones so we can print them out and frame them. We are planning a move and retirement...all part of a normal life.

I think that the Internet can, at times, constrict the view of other people, and make a lot of folks tend to see one-dimensional beings, ripe for harassment, argument and abuse. The very anonymity of the Internet makes it a playground for bullies and verbal abusers. I know that there are a lot of people who just love to do the "hit and run" thing...posting something nasty on a blog or a message board, anonymously, and then heading for other sites, looking for victims. Then there are the petty dictators who will not tolerate opinions that differ from theirs and the emotional bullies who can dish it out but not take it. Like any other jackasses, they bray the loudest when they are called on their actions.

I am not MLK, JFK, Abe Lincoln, Ghandi or Mother Teresa. I know that I am just one of the human herd. But my thoughts and feelings are just as important as anyone else's and I am not going to shut up just because someone has self-assumed the mantle of superstar. I think that if a "leader" divides rather than unites, then it is time for that "leader" to pick up her keyboard and fade away.

The good thing about the Internet is that it can be the great equalizer. We can look at each other and decide not to be overly impressed or star-struck. Because we can't see faces or hear voices, we make our decisions based on the content and context of what is written and I can tell you that there have been many times when I have been inspired and many more when I have been decidedly unimpressed. Isn't it great to have the freedom and the option of holding to our own perceptions?

Anyway, I have "Pool-Lattes" this morning at the Y, we need to go to Hubby's work today to fill out his short-term disability paperwork, I have to wash our cars, and I am expecting an email from my grandson in Iraq. I need to check the mail and send off a couple of bill payments, do some laundry and fix dinner for me and Hubby.

Life, Thank God/Dess, Goes On.