Pro-Life and the Death Penalty

I read with sadness this morning a newspaper article on Joseph Duncan, the long-time sex offender who was convicted of the torture and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene, of Idaho. I read the news each and every day and make it a point to stay current on news and events. For the first time that I can recall, I sat and cried while reading this article. You may recall this case in which Dylan and his sister, Shasta, age 8, were kidnapped from the home of their mother and step-father. The parents were killed, as was their 16 year old brother, Slade. Joseph Duncan murdered the whole family with the intent of taking Dylan and Shasta, after stalking the family for some time. This predator had struck before, in Riverside County, killing 10-year-old Anthony Martinez. The evil involved in these crimes is undefinable. This is every parent's nightmare personified. Jurors in the case were shown a video of sexual abuse, torture, and death by hanging of little Dylan. Joseph Duncan taped his crimes so that he could re-live them over and over again. Shasta was forced to watch, knowing the same fate could be awaiting her. Shasta was rescued when an alert waitress notified police that the little girl looked like the missing girl on t.v.

Working in adoption, I am pro-life, as you might imagine. I like to think that I have a kind heart and wouldn't ever condone hurting anyone. However, in this case, there is no punishment too harsh -- no suffering enough -- to mitigate the crimes against the most vulnerable and innocent in our society. How many years of life did he take away? How many lives were changed because of what Joseph Duncan did? How does such a monster arrive at a place where he could possibly do such heinous things? Five people are dead. One little girl has to live with what she witnessed and the loss of her entire family. Twelve jurors, friends, and court personnel can never forget what they saw on the videotape. So, while I am very much pro-life, Mr. Duncan is the exception. He doesn't deserve to take up space or resources on this earth. I don't want any of my tax dollars going to feed or house him. He shouldn't be allowed to ever have the opportunity to do something like this again. He has received the death penalty. There will be years of appeals and he will live on for many more years before, and if, his life is taken. When it happens, it will be done quickly and humanely -- something he didn't afford his victims, certainly not Dylan or Anthony. The mere thought of what they went through haunts me.

How do we prevent this type of crime from ever happening again? How do we protect our children and our families? I wish I knew. It seems that more and more often in our world, this type of evil is making itself known. Perhaps with the advent of the internet and the availability of child porn to these predators, we are fueling their desire for children. We need to aggressively hunt down and prosecute those distributing this garbage and stop giving child predators short sentences or probation. No matter what we do, we can't help those who have already suffered and lost their lives. It makes me very sad. Dylan is my son's name. I can't even imagine...

Internet Marketing of Adoption

The Internet is a part of our lives and is here to stay. It is a wonderful tool for gathering information and we have all come to depend upon it. However, there are times when ethical lines are crossed and good judgment goes by the wayside. I am talking about the practice of putting birth mother information or adoptive parent profiles on the Internet for all to see. The first issue I have with this is privacy. Privacy evaporates on the Internet. Even when you take things down, much of the time those old posts can be found. Personal information is out there and it's not limited to those who need to know. In many cases, there are phone numbers listed. This puts adoptive parents in a precarious position because they have no idea who is accessing that information. There's no buffer to protect adoptive families who are all too vulnerable. I wonder how many times an unscrupulous person has purported to be someone they're not in an attempt to extort money from an adoptive family. You can read about it all over the adoption chat boards (another hot topic!). Secondarily, how many birth moms are really "shopping" for an adoptive family on the Internet? On one adoption website, the adoptive families are instructed to provide their phone numbers. Presumably, birth parents (and others) call them. If the situation isn't right or doesn't match with them, the adoptive parents become glorified office assistants for the agency, writing intake information and forwarding calls to the agency. I guess it saves the agency money because they don't have to hire additional workers, but what are the adoptive parents paying for, if not service and professionalism? Additionally, I wonder how long it takes a family to match when they are competing with hundreds of other couples on the same site? What happened to taking some time to get to know a birth mother and finding out her preferences and what she really wants? What happened to telling her about prospective families who may have a common bond with her that can't be communicated in a few pages posted on a web site? Birth mothers and adoptive families deserve better than this. These websites are more like Internet dating sites, where people -- based on looks -- decide whether to "keep this one" or "throw this one out". It reeks of baby selling, with some agencies even putting "prices" on each baby. Why is this legal? I have no idea, but I object to it. I think it's trafficking in human beings. The adoption of a child shouldn't be like shopping for a puppy. Perhaps Dateline should do a show along the lines of their highly successful "To Catch a Predator", only this one would be entitled "To Catch a Baby Broker". For those who do these postings, hiding under an agency banner or behind a shield doesn't make it right. It's time that our legislators look into these practices and make some changes. If you care, write your congressperson.

Heartbreak in Guatemala

The BBC is reporting today that babies have been stolen "to order" in Guatemala. Currently, the U.S. is not allowing adoptions from Guatemala until the country is Hague-compliant, however, for years couples have been able to adopt in fairly short order from Guatemala. Agencies and attorneys in the United States networked with Guatemalan agencies, attorneys, and facilitators to find adoptable children in a country where many were placed legitimately simply because their families couldn't feed them. It is being reported now that babies have been stolen in order to place them in the homes of adoptive families in the U.S. In a very poor country, the money that changed hands for "orphaned" babies (some couples paid upward of $30,000.00) was apparently enough to incite unscrupulous baby brokers to steal the children of women who had no desire to place them for adoption. One mother has found her daughter by looking through hundreds of pictures and video tapes. DNA proved the link between the two. Many more are searching for the children that were taken. There is no good outcome in this situation. Even though they are poor, women who had their children stolen have every right to have them back. In the U.S., adoptive families unaware of the dark circumstances under which their children came to them, face uncertainty about what may happen if it is found that they were stolen and placed illegally. In most cases, both families were innocent victims. As investigations go on, almost certainly some of these babies will be reclaimed as it is determined through DNA that they are missing children. Records have apparently been altered and falsified to hide the facts, so for many the truth will never be discovered. The anguish of the mothers who lost their children is indescribable. Some face a lifetime of heartbreak. The anguish of the adoptive families who lose what they long sought to find will be equally heart-wrenching. How could this have happened? The Guatemalan government needs to answer this question and many more. This is the stuff that adoption nightmares are made of, and why so many people are afraid to adopt.

How do you know how to choose an agency, attorney, or facilitator? Nothing is ever fool-proof, but if the cost seems out of the ordinary and much higher than you anticipated, keep looking. Make sure that your adoption professional can provide references, and lots of them. If they have hundreds of families willing to vouch for them, they are doing something right. If they don't, keep shopping for a better professional to represent you. If someone is reluctant to give you references and cites "privacy" as an issue, know that when adoptive parents are happy with an adoption professional, they are typically happy to talk with other potential adoptive parents and share their story, and they give permission to share their information. They were in the same place months or years before and needed the same reassurance. Network with other adoptive families -- they are great resources. Our adoptive families are encouraged to get to know other adoptive families for support and so that the kids know other adopted children. This is a win-win situation. If an adoption professional wants to keep everyone apart, that could be a red flag. I have more to say on agencies or attorneys who "market" birth mothers and adoptive families on the internet. More on that tomorrow...

Training

As a mother, I've learned that anything with the word "training" attached is something to be feared. First it's potty training (yuck!). There are always lovely accidents to clean up after. And then, just as you think raising kids isn't so tough, it's driver's training. The first will give you some gray hairs. The second will make you pull them out. I went through potty training three times. I can tell you that boys are infinitely harder than girls. When you're in the car and your little girl says, "Mommy, I want to potty"...you have time to find a clean place to pull into and assist her. With boys, it's a little more tricky. When your little boy says, "Mommy, I have to potty", it's generally followed in short order by "Oh no! I can't hold it!" or something similar followed by a soaking of the pants. Boys don't think about it until it's virtually too late. I always swore I wouldn't be a station wagon mom. The one good thing about minivans is that you can carry around a potty seat in the back and be ready at a moment's notice. Problem solved? Not quite. Getting them to the point of wanting to use the potty is another matter. We tried many things. I think for the boys the most successful effort came with food coloring. Boys are obsessed with their own urine. Yes, it's true. I'm not sure they outgrow that part, but that's for another day. With that in mind, if you drop one drop of food coloring in the "hat" of the potty seat, you can cheerfully say, "Hey, let's see what color your pee pee is today!" and it works for a while. You have to get creative and mix colors to keep it interesting, but the boys get quite proud when their pee is blue! Girls may require a little more ingenuity. Or not. I was all set up for the stickers and rewards when she asked out of the blue one day when we were dropping her brother off at school, "When do I get to go to school"? I replied, when you are age 3 and potty trained. "Hmmm", she said. Later that day she asked for her "big girl panties" and that was it. There wasn't another accident or problem. She just made up her mind to do it. She then stated that she was "ready to go to school". How do you explain to a child just over age 2 that age 3 is a year away? Who knew she could potty train in a day? If driver's training was as easy....

Olympians

If you're like me, you've been glued to the television, watching the Summer Olympics in Beijing. While I was watching superman Michael Phelps make it look easy, I began wondering how many olympic athletes may have been adopted. I started doing a little research and I am sure there are many more, but I came up with a few names of interest. Olympic figure skater, Scott Hamilton, was adopted. I remember him talking about being grateful that he ended up with the parents he did. They nurtured his dreams of being a competitive skater, taking him to the early morning practices for years. During the Winter Olympics of 2006, Toby Dawson skied for a bronze medal in Men's Freestyle Moguls. Dan O'Brien won gold in the Olympic decathlon in 1996. Dan is one of eight children, five of whom were adopted. Greg Louganis, a diver, competed in two olympics, winning a silver medal in 1976 (a very good year) and a gold in 1984. Caitlin Carruthers also participated in two olympics. She and her skating partner won a silver medal in 1984. Lopez Lamong is competing in Beijing in track and field, in the men's 1,500 meter this week.

Perhaps the most impressive adopted olympian for me is swimmer Jessica Long. Jessica was born in Russia and adopted by an American family. Due to an absence of fibulas, ankles, heels, and bones in her feet, her legs were amputated below the knees when she was 18 months old. She's like any other teen, hanging out with friends and checking her MySpace, organizing her bedroom and jumping on her trampoline. However, she does more than that. According to her bio page, she holds 34 American records, 17 Pan-American records, 2 Paralympic records, and 14 World Records. In the Paralympics, she holds three gold medals, as well as nine gold medals in world championships. She was quoted as saying, "I'm a girl, I'm an athlete, swimming is my sport. Prepare to be humiliated". Jessica will be going for the gold in the Beijing Paralympics during the first weeks in September. You can watch her progress at the official website of the Beijing paralympic games at http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/index.shtml. Go Jessica!

Searching for birth families

Listening to a podcast called "Journeys to Motherhood" by Barbara Winters, I smiled when I heard that a 70 year old adoptee had recently found his 90 year old birth mother. What are the odds of that? Adoptees have always searched. It's important to know who we are and we all want information about our past. Why should adoptees be any different? Background information, for adoptees, is much harder to come by. In years past, closed adoption was the norm. Getting information from closed adoption files was similar to a CIA operation. Fort Knox is less protected than some of these adoption records. In recent years, though, open adoption has become the norm and many states have opened the records. Bastard Nation -- an organization dedicated to the civil and human rights of adoptees -- has worked to change the laws state by state so that adoptees can have access to who they are and where they came from. Shouldn't everyone have access to that information? I've heard the arguments that back in the day birth mothers were promised that their records would never be unsealed. It seems to me, from the conversations I've shared with birth mothers, that most of those adoptions were sealed to keep information from the birth mothers. It wasn't necessarily the birth mother's request to have the file closed. Once upon a time, if you placed your child for adoption, your rights were severed just as totally as if you had put your arm in a wood chipper, never to be recovered. The nurse whisked away the baby after you labored to give birth and you weren't even allowed a peek at the newborn. Never mind saying goodbye. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment and the birth mother never even got a trial. It wasn't until I listened to a presentation by an adoptee who was trying to get the legislature in Tennessee to open the records that the denials by congressmen of what seemed to be reasonable requests on behalf of adoptees began to make sense. It seems logical now. Congressmen tend to be away from home a lot, either in the state capitals or the federal capital. How often do we hear about congressmen having affairs or mistresses, like the recent disclosures of John Edwards? It makes sense, then, that it would be a difficult, if not impossible, task to get the states legislatures to vote to open the records of adoptees. The adoptees get peace of mind, but what do the congressmen get? They get found out. Interesting how the whole process comes full circle.

Grief and Mothers

Often people say to me, "Oh, your work must be so rewarding and satisfying". Whenever I hear that, I say "Yes, it can be", but I also think to myself, "You have no idea how heartbreaking and emotional it can be too". It's always a happy event when a baby is born and goes home to a loving family. Birth is a miracle that unites families. However, for birth mothers, it can be a source of grief. A mother with empty arms is a mother, nonetheless. Even though she has made the choice of adoption for her child, she still goes through the cycle of grief that comes with losing someone or something very meaningful. It can be very much like a death in the family. I have yet to meet the birth mother who didn't love her child. Adoptive moms are no strangers to grief either. They have to grieve their infertility and childlessness before they can move forward to find other ways to build their family. Of course, a new baby erases all that pain and grief for an adoptive mom. But what about the birth mother? She goes home with empty arms and breasts full of milk. It can be a very sad time for her. Open adoption has gone a long way to helping birth mothers heal. While birth parents can give a child to a waiting family, that family can give peace of mind back to the birth mother. Just knowing that her child is healthy and happy and being cared for and given the life she couldn't provide at the time of birth helps a birth mother cope with her loss. It's important, too, for her to know what a gift she has given to the adoptive parents she has chosen. A letter and a few pictures now and then aren't too much to ask. What a long way adoption has come in the past 50 years!

When adoptive parents express to me that they are apprehensive about keeping in touch with the birth mother, it is generally because they are fearful that at some point, their child will be reclaimed and they will be left childless and heartbroken. Once it is explained that at the point that an adoption is irrevocable that won't happen, they are more willing to share. Adoptive mothers and birth mothers have a great deal in common. They share the same grief. Adoptive mothers grieve the loss of children never conceived or lost through miscarriage and stillbirth. Birth mothers grieve the loss of the child they bore, but were unable to care for, either physically or financially. When they realize that they share this grief, more often than not a bond is formed and a relationship is born. Then, both families can be united by the love they share, and the child can't get too much love.

All About Adoption

It seems everyone is blogging these days, so I figured I had better get on the bandwagon. With foreign adoption programs dropping like flies, more people are turning to domestic adoption as a way to build their family. Every day we fight the "myths" of adoption. People are under the assumption that they can't adopt domestically -- that it is too hard or takes too long, or even that there are no babies to be adopted. Certainly, it's not easy, but it's not as difficult as most people think. In this blog, I'm hoping to address the issues that adoptive families find intimidating -- home studies, profiling, being chosen by a birth mother, travel, open adoption, stereotyping, and perceived barriers such as age, weight, occupation, or negative family members.

In the media, adoption is big news. You hear about "celebrity" adoptions. The myth here is that everyone thinks that celebrities have an "in" or somehow are able to adopt more quickly than others. Not so in most cases! In fact, in some ways it's much more difficult to match a celebrity with a birth mom. Consider that currently, most adoptions are "open" adoptions, in which the birth parents know who the adoptive parents are, and have chosen them. With celebrities, it is more difficult because you can't send their profiles out to birth parents without everyone knowing that they are involved in the adoption process. If the media gets wind of an impending adoption, it can become a circus. So, a birth parent has to be asking for a closed adoption (rare) or they have to agree up front to sign a confidentiality statement and even then it can be risky. Tabloids are willing to pay big bucks for stories that most families wouldn't want splashed across the front pages of magazines. Never mind the privacy issue this poses for the birth mother.

In one adoption that I recall, an agency social worker leaked information to the media prior to the birth of a child who was to be adopted by a well-known celebrity. My guess is that money changed hands. The media frenzy that followed was mind boggling. Paparazzi staked out the hospital in order to get pictures and the adoptive father couldn't even go to the hospital to see his child born because of the media hype. So, don't believe it if you hear that celebrity adoption is easier than it is for everyone else. Everyone has to go through the same home study and background check process -- there are no exceptions. And when you read about an adoption, it may be that there was a plan to adopt for many months or even years before it actually happened. Do celebrities have a right to privacy like the rest of us? I think so. Does the media overstep their bounds? I think so. It is conceivable that we need some laws written to address paparazzi and celebrity stalking and perhaps allow sanity and privacy to make a comeback.