Never combine a cat with an apostrophe. It’ll be a catastrophe.
Adoptions from the Heart (or should that be Adoptions from Your Tummy to Her Heart?) is a private agency run out of Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1985 by Maxine Challker, who—get this—just happens to be adopted. It was the first agency to offer and limit itself to open adoptions in the New Jersey-Pennsylvania-Delaware area. Chalker’s goal was to take the mystery out of adoption. Since it opened, 6,000 children have been unmysteriously transferred from temporary tummy mommies to forever families through her services. According to its website:
Chalker took some of the fear and taboo out of adoption. Birth parents are encouraged to write a letter to their child explaining why they chose adoption helping their children answer important questions when they grow up and feel less like they were abandoned.
AFTH also handles international adoptions (or at least did) because it “recognized that there were not enough women choosing adoption in the United States….” (That’s bad?) The AFTH webpage is pretty barebones and doesn’t list which exploited countries it has worked in, though its timeline references China, India, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam. Angelina Jolie adopted Pax through the agency.
It has now gone really creepy and does embryo “adoptions” and has done at least one surrogacy involving India. (It’s a little vague.)
Now my intention here is not to single out Adoptions from the Heart as some sort of abusive money-grubbing outfit. I don’t know anything about it except what I read on its webpage and, importantly, that somebody there doesn’t know the rules of good grammar. That, to me, is its really big sin.
This came across my Twitter feed tonight.
Support birthmother’s what???? New haircut? Singing career?
And, which birthmother’s something are we supposed to support? There’s a lot of (assumed) birthmothers in this picture.
Now, I know it’s easy to stick in that unwanted apostrophe when you are keyboarding away. I do it all the time. I think it’s called muscle memory or perhaps it’s a neurolinguistic disorder or maybe just plain sloppy typing.
I was an English major. I know the correct use of apostrophes, but my fingers don’t care and insist on hitting that unwanted and extraneous character (the grammatical version of adoptees.) But I almost always catch it when proofing. There is no way I’d publish a misspelled meme or another Bastaradette-made image, or title; and if I did, I’d catch it soon enough and cancel it out at once. (Disclaimer, admittedly it has happened occasionally, but I’m not running a business or shilling for handouts, and I am comfortable with snarking myself).
I suppose I am being picky here, but sending what seems to be a pictorial fundraiser with such a glaring error? It would be bad enough if “birthmother’s” was a slip-up on a printed direct mail beg letter, but this is really eye-popping.
Why would anyone support an agency that doesn’t know the difference between the possessive and plural? Or the plural and singular? Adoptions from the heart just looks stupid.