Mommy Blogger Heidi Hess Saxton has a really insulting anti-adoptee piece in today’s Catholic Exchange blog “Anti-Adoption Advocates” How Should We Respond?
Now that the election is over, one of the most chilling prospects of the future administration is the president-elect’s determination to sign the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA). The implications of this – both financial and moral – are staggering, for it means our tax dollars may be used to snuff out the lives of millions of children. To be truly pro-life, then, is to seek ways to ensure that the need for abortion is eliminated, as far as we are able to do this.
Of course, one of the ways to eliminate abortion, Mrs. Sexton tells us, is to force the adoption option on women who either don’t want to be pregnant to start with, or are willing to be pregnant for somebody else if they can pretend later they never were.
Mrs. Saxton:
The situation would be dire enough … Now grass roots, anti-adoption advocacy groups such as “Bastard Nation” and “Adoption: Legalized Ties” are seeking to discourage adoption, choosing rather to advocate for disgruntled adult adoptees and “natural parents,” including those whose children were taken from them because of abuse and neglect.
According to her, these three organizations, who have nothing to do with one another, along with prominent adoption ethicist, therapist and award winning author Joanne Small (Adoption Mystique) are running our own little private war against women!
Under the “Unsealed Initiative,” adult adoptees and others are lobbying government agencies in New York and other states (successfully, in Toronto) to release sealed birth records in order to gain access to the identities of birth parents who may not desire contact, and who were promised anonymity upon relinquishment. In the minds of the adult adoptees, the “best interest of the child” trumps all – when in fact the “child” is no longer a child, but an adult whose “right to know” is no more important than the other party’s right to privacy.
This growing trend is even more alarming, given the unabashed pro-abortion stance of the Obama administration. Women in crisis pregnancies who are considering adoption may have second thoughts when faced with the very real possibility that their “past” may come knocking on their door twenty or thirty years hence, disrupting their lives with demands and recriminations. Unless the records are truly sealed with a “suite lock” – one that can be opened only by mutual consent – the real danger is that these “unwanted” children will simply be aborted.
You can read the rest of this silly stuff yourself.
OK I fess up! Bastard Nation, Adoption: Legalized Lies, Unsealed Initiative and Joanne Small are the misogynist leaders of the ultra secret International Abortion Conspiracy just to spite the American adoption industry and keep it begging at heaven’s door. We’re building an army of disgruntled adoptees and “natural parents” (Why the quotes? That’s what they are. Look it up in the dictionary) to kidnap the Catholic Bishops, shoot agency owners, frog march secret “birthmothers” into re-education camps, turn Gladney into a therapy center for the genetically bewildered, and force abortion on every female between the age of 12-49 (to be performed in Catholic hospitals, of course!) just to run adoption agencies out of business. We already got Obama elected and he’s about to bring on an era of mandatory fetus snuffing to stop adoption. No matter that during the Saddleback TV debate he endorsed a PEPFAR-type scheme for adoption. Are we evil or what?
Unfortunately, those who believe that adopted persons should be satisfied with our stigmatized second class status, should shut up about our lack of birth records, identity, history, and and be grateful we weren’t tossed in a dumpster, smear us with the labels “anti-adoption,””disgruntled,” “dysfunctional”–even mentally or emotionally disturbed. Rationality, justice and truth mean nothing to them.
By trying to smear us, they show their true nature. They, like Mrs. Saxton, see something inherently wrong with adoptee equality, truth in adoption…and ultimately us. Adoption is shameful. Adoptees are shameful. First families are shameful. They project their own doubts and dislikes and prejudices on to us. But we ARE adoption, which begs the question…
Who’s really anti-adoption?
Sheesh, you guys ruin everything with your hollering about “rights” and “needs” and wanting to be “listened to” and have your rights “honored.” Can’t you just give us the babies and go home???
(So to this woman, the handmaid’s tale is like a utopian fantasy?)
I am just reading the article now, Marley. What a crock of crap! The industry would must be quaking in their Luccheses!
I found it interesting that the bulk of the comments come from grateful adopters, Understand that they have taken yours down. I suspect that before the day is over, they will be VERY busy with comments….lol
Dawn,
The mothers of the BSE did that, and now we are back and won’t shut up! They are really sorry now that their original wishes had come true. We should have died in childbirth so that we COULDN’T come back. Then they could continue to speak on our behalf forever as they have in the past.
What arrogance and selfishness. I am still trying to take this in. It’s all about the adopters, isn’t it? What they want and what the facilitators can make from them is more important that the mothers’ pain or the adoptees’ rights. I don’t frickin’ think so!
Robin and Sandy–should I sign you on to the International Abortion Conspiracy?
Oh, wise and powerful Marley, golly, I am stunned that someone actually asked for my opinion, instead of just speaking on my oh, so unworthy behalf. I would be thrilled to join such a divinely subversive organization. And, btw, some of your suggestions in your blog are sounding better and better!
This is SO wrong and so stupid! Can’t that idiot woman even keep her players straight? Of the groups and individuals she named. only one is actually anti-adoption. Does she not get it that being pro adoptee rights and being anti adoption are not the same thing; not even close? These are two very separate issues, and although some people espouse both, it is neither mandatory or relevant.
I guess she doesn’t get it either that more women in crisis pregnancies would “choose life” if they had help to keep and raise their babies. The choice in most cases is not between adoption and abortion, but between abortion and motherhood. If she understood this, she would support adoptee rights as a means of making it easier for some mothers to choose life, and for those who do surrender to have some hope of knowing what happened to their children later in life.
As to our “evil conspiracy”, gee, I don’t like abortion so would want nothing to do with that, but I am up for kidnapping Bishops and holding them accountable for the many vile things they have done to women, gays, pedophile victims and others in the name of the Church. Hang ’em high……by their “bishoprics”:-)
They’re removing comments now? Nice attitude. Like I said on my blog, this just goes to show they are really frightened of the progress we are making in adoption reform.
As for conspiracies, let me get this straight. They’re concocting this yarn about BN, Unsealed Initative and others… but WE’RE the ones who are dysfunctional? Yes, it’s Rule #1 of the Adoption Game: When in doubt, resort to telling everyone that “natural parents” and adoptees are crazy.
“Rule #1 of the Adoption Game: When in doubt, resort to telling everyone that “natural parents” and adoptees are crazy”
well what do you expect for adopter’s to say their crazy!
They just want to take a child, pretend its theirs, and not have any interfering b moms show up on their doorstep. Live the lie, protect the lie, and hide behind sealed records.
It may be all about them but they aren’t the ones with the problems.
Its adoptees’ who speak up and mother’s who dare to speak the truth.
Marley: I was wondering if you got the e-mail I sent to you in response to your comments. The comments (yours and others) regarding birth certificates made me realize that this was an issue that needs to be addressed separately, and rather than try to respond to them in the comments section. The comments were removed with the intention to excerpt them in the follow-up article.
My perspective is not that of a “baby stealer,” but a foster-adoptive parent who is primarily concerned with (1) finding homes for the older children currently in the foster-care system and (2)eliminating the need for abortion by raising awareness of adoption as a better alternative. Clearly this is not a priority for your group — if I’m understanding your position correctly, it doesn’t even sound like it’s cross-purposes.
I was interested to learn that you count adoptive parents among your group, and would sincerely welcome an opportunity to interact with them. In particular, I’d like to learn more about how the release of sealed birth certificates affects the adult adoptive parent/child relationship and next-of-kin legalities.
I can be reached at [email protected].
Incidentally, the author of “Adoption Mystique” contacted CE in the comments section.
If for some reason you did not get my e-mail, let me know and I’ll resend. Of course, if you’d rather just climb on your soapbox and bray like a donkey, that’s your perogative … but if you’re interested in actual advocacy, which involves civil dialogue and a minimum of name-calling, you know where to find me.
I’ll be interested to see if you publish THIS comment!
Ms. Saxton, I am an adoptive parent and also a reunited natural parent, and I unequivocally support open records for ALL adopted adults. With no exceptions.
It needs to be reiterated that adoption is NOT an alternative to abortion. The two are entirely separate issues.
Nor is abortion to be conflated with the right of adoptees to their original birth certificates.
Oh, and for future reference, please to know that Toronto is NOT a ‘state’ – only the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario.
Furthermore, Ontario law includes a disclosure veto for both adoptees and natural parents, for any adoption that took place before September 1st, 2008, and maintains no contact notices for all adoptions registered in Ontario.
Kippa
“”My perspective is not that of a “baby stealer,” but a foster-adoptive parent who is primarily concerned with (1) finding homes for the older children currently in the foster-care system and (2)eliminating the need for abortion by raising awareness of adoption as a better alternative.””
O! how this Saxton chick has a talent for ‘spin’. This isn’t about saving human life…this is all about saving fetuses to come to fruition as babies for PAPs. People like this Saxton chick are scared shit that their adoption hole will run dry and that they can no longer pretend to be the one and only parents of their adopted children, should records be opened across this nation. I have been reading quite a bit lately on what the pro-lifers have to say since Obama was elected. For 8 years they really believed they had the whole abortion angle sewn up in a nice neat pile and all for their pro-life benefit. Truly believing they were going to overturn Roe v Wade. Enter Obama and now they the pro-lifers are screaming bloody murder! I know that many a natural mother and yes even some adoptees think that abortion and adoption were separate issues. I have never believed this..I have always believed that the aforementioned have been intertwined in the heads of most adopters and pro-lifers. There is a severe shortage of infants and not necessarily due to abortion either. Many a single mom now is choosing to keep and raise her own child. And then there are other women who choose abortion as is their legal right to do so. Let’s go back 40 years or so, when abortion was illegal causing forced pregnancies for some pg mothers and for whatever reason, adoption was the only option. This is what the Adoption Industry and the Pro-lifers would like to see again. A plethora of newborns being born..adopters get the so-called ‘clean slate’ and the Adoption Industry stands to monetarily profit even moreso. Saxton talks about older children in foster care..Adopters by and large do not want used merchandise, they want brand new. I asked a question on ‘Cafemom’ about this…about their child preferences to adopt. Majorly they talked in circles why they couldn’t ‘lovingly’ accept a ‘damaged’ older foster child into their loving adopter hearts and homes. And most of it is pure bullshit. A few adopters did answer honestly, that they only wanted a newborn baby, as to experience changing diapers, bottle feeding, watching that first tooth appear, first steps etc. Then for this Saxton woman to complain about open records, just another ‘spin’ on keeping those adult adopted people to themselves, ‘as if’ adopted children were ‘birthed’ thru paper and ink, directly into the arms of adopters.
This Saxton woman is not speaking honestly, she has another agenda and it ain’t just about saving fetuses from abortion. Her first priority is to save babies for adoption, for those ‘Forever Families’..which translates..’Give me child lest I die’!! Why doesn’t she speak to that grossly dishonest piece of paper called an Amended Birth Certificate, that should be totally eradicated. That would be the first baby step towards some form of minute honesty in adoption. Not the least to mention that women have the natural right to determine the fate of their own reproductive functions of their own female bodies. She wants to get rid of abortion…well here’s a novel idea..how about solid sex and contraceptive education for both our females and males, equally. Make birth control easily accessible and affordable or even free for those that cannot afford. Ya’ know…like closing the barn doors BEFORE the horses get out!?? Rather than that dismally failed program called ‘Abstinence Only’. Women like Saxton make me feel ill and disgusted.
Heidi–I did get your email. I haven’t had time to reply yet. I will.
“My perspective is not that of a “baby stealer,” but a foster-adoptive parent who is primarily concerned with (1) finding homes for the older children currently in the foster-care system and (2)eliminating the need for abortion by raising awareness of adoption as a better alternative.”
Ms. Saxton,
As always the truth of intention is in the professed alternative to abortion – as ONLY adoption.
For if an alternative to abortion was to support a pregnant mother, adopters would have to “move on” in life without someone else’s newborn child – just like they think pregnant mothers should do with her own child.
Ms. Saxton,
Some of us in adoption reform are pro-life, and not all are anti-adoption. I suggest you talk to some women who have had abortions and ask them if the fear that their child would find them in 18 years was a factor in their choice, or if closed or open adoption records had anything to do with it. I think you will find as I have that this was never a factor.
If anything, a few women with crisis pregnancies would be more likely to choose life and choose adoption if the adoption was open, and records were open so they had at least the hope of seeing their child again and knowing what happened to them.
In most cases though, the choice is not between adoption and abortion but between abortion and being able to raise a child. I have heard many women say they had an abortion rather than surrender because they could not bear to have a child and never know what happened to it. I never heard any woman say she had an abortion because she feared being found years later.
Adoption should be one option, but is should be an informed choice and never coerced. Surrendering a child results in life-long pain for many mothers, not unlike the pain of those who regret their abortions and turn abortion recovery groups. Both choices are full of pain and sorrow for many women. Pro-life groups are willing to deal with the pain of abortion and offer sympathy to women who regret that choice, but by and large will not even listen to those of us who have suffered just as much because of surrendering a child to the closed records secrets and lies adoption system.
Please, really listen to us, before you proclaim what mothers want and don’t want. We are not the enemy either of ethical adoption or real pro-life that just cares that each child gets born, not that as many as possible are surrendered. Adoption is not an alternative to abortion in the real world in most cases.
Well, what really chaps my hide is the way this piece ties in ‘Anti-Adoption Advocates’ (which I’m not – but so what if I was? It’s a legitimate POV) with the “Freedom of Choice Act”, and then links both to adoption
Of course, it doesn’t even begin to speak to the opinions of the many who are personally against abortion and pro-choice at the same time. I guess it’s difficult to impossible for zealots to get their heads around the fact that the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Ms. Saxton said,
“. . . to seek ways to ensure that the need for abortion is eliminated, as far as we are able to do this.”
How far would that be, Ms. Saxton?
Would you be prepared to go all the way to denying women the right to make their own reproductive decisions? As the previous poster has eloquently explained elsewhere, adoption is NOT a reproductive issue.
Ms. Saxton said,
“In the minds of the adult adoptees, the “best interest of the child” trumps all – when in fact the “child” is no longer a child, but an adult whose “right to know” is no more important than the other party’s right to privacy.”
The right to know one’s origins (which of course includes knowing the identity of one’s parents, in so far as that’s possible)is a recognised human right which, in my opinion, trumphs morally, if perhaps not necessarily legally, the right of a parent to remain anonymous into perpetuity.
After all, like the poet said, “The child is father of the man”. It is not right to try to artificially separate the one from the other.
To paraphrase from a recent article by Eguatu Ateguru “Wherein lies the dignity of of a person if he or she is not allowed to know his or her origins ? After all, nobody fell from heaven.”
Wherein lies the dignity indeed?
Especially when those origins are known to others and are being deliberately concealed from their rightful owners.
Kippa
Correction. “To paraphrase from a recent article by Eguatu Ateguru”
That should be Obiora Atuegwu Egwuatu.
Kippa
Kudos to Ms. Saxton for posting here.
I, too, am an adoptive parent. My soon-to-be 17 year old son was born in Central America. He spent his first year in foster care, with a wonderful local family. We have been in contact with his family in Central America since the day he came to the States. He met his mother, grand-parents and siblings on a return trip in ’99, at age 7. As we left his first meeting with his birth family, he said, “I’m a lucky duck. I have three families.”
He still holds that view.
J.
Wow, Marley! I, too, am overwhelmed. I accept this honor with humility and I would like to thank my mother and her mother and her mother and her mother……
Ms. Saxton, you pushed the wrong buttons.
J, you can give out all the kudos you wish, but this Ms. Saxton made some very inaccurate, arrogant and incorrect assumptions. She also tried to judge several million women, single mothers, by the behavior of a minority and to make specious and hateful references to our sexuality on another blog. My children also say they are lucky. They have one real mother..ME! They still feel that way.
LOL, the code I have to type in to approve this email response, which I wasn’t going to make until I saw the code word, is SITSPIN!!! Too good to waste as that was exactly what I would have told Ms. Saxton, who just posted on my blog too. Lady gets around, doesn’t she?
Maryanne:
If you are open to communicating with me privately — especially if you are an adoptive parent (I can’t tell here) — I’d like to hear from you. I have a few questions that I’d like to discuss with someone who can communicate reasonably.
For the record, I am not coming at my conclusions regarding unwed pregnancy in a theological vacuum. I have four instances of it in my immediate family. One was adopted. Two were abused. Only one (who is now two) is thriving — and his mother is VERY well taken care of by extended family, to an extent that most single mothers are not.
So before the rest of you resume your tossing accusations around, you might want to put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Just drop me a note with “B/N – adoption” in subject line.
Thanks.
Heidi Saxton
[email protected]
P.S. I’m well aware Toronto is in Canada. I live in Michigan.
LOL…Sandy, that is a good one. But she hasn’t come to my blog. Wah! I am broken-hearted…not.
The examples you throw out, Heidi, are not worth the time and energy to peruse. You still don’t understand the situation because you haven’t been in it! Like I said….you are judging millions of good women who would have made very good mothers based on a minority. Should we, perchance, judge you based on the many adopters who have gone postal and abused and even murdered their adoptees?
“P.S. I’m well aware Toronto is in Canada.”
“Under the “Unsealed Initiative,” adult adoptees and others are lobbying government agencies in New York and other states (successfully, in Toronto)”
Yes, well. You made *that* perfectly clear, didn’t you?
“I live in Michigan.”
But can you see Canada from your house?
I can see Michigan.
You betcha 🙂
“(successfully, in Toronto)”
Please keep yourself informed. Passing on wrong information doesn’t help anybody, least of all your own credibility.
http://www.familyhelper.net/
news/080522open.html
Kippa
Robin, the kudos were for being willing to post here. Her views are something else.
J.
Keep in mind she is also against contraception. She considers women who use that option as poisoning their bodies. They need to control their men with sex. Deny them it to get what they want. We tried that and it did not work.
Why didn’t I guess that she would be from Michigan? At least I won’t be surprised if I find out that Michigan’s CPS consults her before making their every backassward move.