Monday 29 November 2010

Adoption/Bigotry Conundrum

The Christian Taliban says: Abortion is murder.

It also says: Homosexuals are evil.

So, what happens when a Talibanny confronts a woman with an unplanned pregnancy who has been successfully brainwashed?

SHE calls it 'the adoption conundrum'. Sure is.
Very occasionally, women who are in crisis pregnancy, will discuss and consider adoption. In my experience it is sometimes more common for younger women, especially ‘under age’ teenage girls to think about adoption. In a previous job, when I was helping pregnant girls aged 13 – 17, they would often enquire about adoption, but just as quickly say that they didn’t want their baby to go to homosexual couples. Here in London, when a pregnant lady broaches the possibility of adoption, she is more hesitant, but nonetheless will have the gut reaction that she does not want her baby to go to a homosexual couple. But outside of our centre, who is listening to these women?

This blogger (warning: religious glurge at link) doesn't say whether these women would rather abort than be a party to an evil gay adoption. But it's possible, no?

Rather, she -- I assume it's a she -- whinges about the rights of birth mothers to be bigoted.
In the debate on who should be entitled to adopt children – gay/lesbian couples or a heterosexual family – why aren’t the voices of women who do not want their children to go to homosexual ‘unions’ ever heard? This includes a woman in crisis pregnancy or a woman who for whatever reasons has her child taken from her by government bodies. Might this be a plausible reason why the biological mothers are kept gagged – because if it were more widely known that they did not want their children going to homosexual ‘unions’ that the pro-homosexual adoption lobby would lose their trump card? After all, the lobby groups that support gay adoption talk about it being a ‘right’ to adopt a child, but what right is left to the biological mother? Does she not have the right firstly to freedom of speech where she can say that she does not want her child to go to a homosexual couple? And secondly, does she not have the right to decide that her child who is her flesh and blood ought not to go to a homosexual couple? This talk and bluster about so-called ‘rights’ is very selective –so much so that the rights of ‘the mother of origin’ aka the biological mother are often forgotten altogether.

(Love all those scare quotes.)

Right. And how about birth mothers who don't want their children to go to couples of different ethnic origins? Different religions?

Don't they have rights too, dammit?

I have a (white) cousin who was dating a black guy. Her asshole fundy father actually threatened to kill her if she didn't stop seeing him. She left the province and didn't look back. (Apparently, daddy dearest was heart-broken. I say 'apparently' because I never had anything to do with the jerk again.)

So, if a fundy father would kill a grown-up daughter out of bigotry, it seems to me that some of that fine twisty-pretzelly logic the fetus fetishists love could be worked up and around to justify the abortion of a fetus otherwise destined for a gay couple. After all, don't they believe that the only moral abortion is their own particular, very special-circumstances-driven abortion?

h/t http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2010/11/adoption-conundrum.html

6 comments:

SustainableFamilies said...

Ugh. When I hear this I also have to mention that most girls/women do NOT want to carry a child for nine months, bond with, love, and become enmeshed with a child in their womb, go through the pain of birth, see their beautiful child born, hold them, love them, nurse them... and then watch some rich couple walk off with the child while she screams in pain and boobs leak milk.

In order for adoption to be a "freely" made choice, a woman should have access to abortion, be told about the pain for first moms and adoptees in losing each other, and also be given ADEQUATE resources to do a good job parenting.

The reason many of these women place is because they don't have the resources to parent their children adequately.

That sounds like a choice that is made as "freely" as one makes the choice to work in a sweat shop or starve.

If a child will otherwise be in state care, than no, the first mother should not have the right to decide where her child goes. That's what happens if you abuse your children (although there ARE cases where children are wrongfully removed)

But the whole premise of a poor mother without options having her child taken by richer people is exploitive at best.

Alison said...

We are supposed to believe that young pregnant women are fixated on whether or not their baby would be adopted by a same-sex couple? I bet. It sounds much more as if the person who wrote this is projecting her bigoted views onto the girls and putting words into their mouths. Pathetic!

SustainableFamilies said...

In order to understand this more fully, you have to understand the coercive nature of adoption propoganda. Because most women intrinsically know it would be horrifically painful to carry a child to term and watch someone else raise your own baby-- people don't place at a very high rate.

Adoption agencies work FOR adoptive couples. It's about the religious doctine and moral "rightness" of adoptive parents deserving the child more than a bad birthslut who dared to have sex without birth control/outside of marriage.

In order to convince her to hand over her baby to the "better" people, they have to convince her this is "empowering" for her and that she has "lot's of options on how she will be disembabied!"

She can choose if she wants to watch methodist people raise her child, or skinny people, or people with a dog, or people with a POOL! And what's more important, the more info they give her on how "PERFECT" the adoptive families are, the more inadequate they are making her feel.

They are encouraging her to believe she is not worthy of her own child, therefore they need to show her how "perfect" these other people are, so she will feel too inferior to keep.

If it's just another single mom, or a poor adoptive couple, or an adoptive couple with health proplems, or an adoptive couple who are elderly... then it takes away the whole point of telling her she needs to go through a lifetime of hell so her child can have this "perfect" live adoption is supposed to give.

Grrr adoption schmoption.

There for if the couple is gay and having sex outside of the "rights" definition of ok sexuality--- wouldn't it just be ok for the mom... who has been wanting to keep her child ANYWAY to simply view herself as good enough even though she deviated from certain sexual norms in getting pregnant?

deBeauxOs said...

The author of that nasty blogpost is Mary O'Regan, who prays for Sarah Palin, adulates pope Maledict and believes the AIDS virus slips through holes in latex.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I'd say.

Rob F said...

Logic will never be a strong suit of wingnut/fundie types, but let's try following through to the consequences of her reasoning anyway.

Basically, I don't see any way to reconcile opposition to abortion and opposition to adoption by same-sex couples. I mean, if you truly believed that abortion was the moral equivalent of walking down the street, pulling out a machine gun, and pumping some random passerby's guts full of lead until they keel over and die, how could being raised by a same-sex couple possibly be worse than that? Even if same-sex couples were the worst possible parents (they're not; I'm just granting it for the sake of argument), it still makes no sense to think that making someone be raised by/live with a same-sex couple is worse than killing them. If that really was true, if raised by/live with a same-sex couple is worse then killing them, why then do we execute or imprison murderers? If being raised by/living with a same-sex couple is worse than killing someone, then surely a murderer would be more deterred/better punished by being forced to live with a same-sex couple than they would by being imprisoned/(especially, since this is less bad than being raised by/live with a same-sex couple) executed, right?

Having beliefs that lead to ridiculous conclusions; it's the wingnut way!

Mirah Riben said...

Ditto SustainableFamilies!

The biggest problem in discussing adoption is recognizing that not all adoptions are equal.

The second issue is a realization that no one has a RIGHT to adopt! While there is a constitutional right to parent one's own children, the right to adopt does not exist.

What proponents of same sex adoption are arguing for is equality in terms of STATE AGENCIES which place children from foster care, i.e. children who have been removed for maltreatment of neglect. Private adoption placements cannot be legislated in this manner as they are a fee paid service. Whoever pays the fees buys the "services" of the adoption business which means they get a child.

This second type of adoption independent or private involves a so-called "voluntary" relinquishment, as opposed to state termination of parental rights. It is allegedly a "choice" (albeit often a pressured or coerced "choice") a mother makes when she feels she cannot adequately care for her child. She then has the RIGHt to choose the age, marital status, religion, type of home, profession, and even the car owned by potential parents for her child. Mothers making this choice select from photos and biographies. Some may prefer a couple who has other children and some may only want a couple with a stay-at-home mother. In such a case deselecting a same sex couple is not bigotry, not is about sex or religion. It is simply a choice not to add the burden of a child having to explain to their friends why they have two moms or two dads as adoption already adds a toll on a child who most often feels a deep sense of rejection and abandonment at their mothers hosing not to raise them.

And FYI - the average age of a relinquishing mother in the US today is 20. "underage" girls in the 13-17 category are having their "choices" made for them by their parents, who may well have their own set of criterion and even their own prejudices as to who is "fit" to riase a child.

But after all, isn't that what all of adoption is about? Making judgements of who deserves to be a parent and who doesn't based on marital status, age and finances??? Weren't thousands of mothers judged "unfit" to raise their own children in the 50s, 60's and into the the early 70s simply because they were single?? We make these judgments all the time and they change as social mores change.

Adoption should ideally always do what it is in each child's best interest. That is first and foremost providing services and support to keep the emerging original family or family in crisis intact. Secondarily, it is finding appropriate care within the extended family. Stranger adoption of all kinds should be a last resort and parents should be screened as carefully as they can be to be certain they are appropriate and up for the task. Slip shod screening measures have led to putting children in harms way - placing them with pedophiles and other abusers who have beaten, burned, starved, caged and killed adopted children...or terminated the adoption. This is unacceptable and speaks to a need for more stringent screening, not less.

Mirah Riben, author, THE STORK MARKET: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry

Post a Comment