Dear East Indian Adoptee –

No, you won’t be a mother when you finalize an adoption of a foster child. You will be a foster mother and then you will be an adoptive mother. The only mother is the mother who conceives and gives birth.

Don’t trick yourself into believing that the court, by declaring that you are an adoptive mother, will automatically and magically wipe away your infertility. It won’t. The court will not magically make you a mother.

You must accept the fact that you are infertile. Accept it. As you plead in your essay, do not place the burden of your infertility upon the foster child you want to make “your own” via a legal court order. A court order will make you a legally appointed guardian acting as mother, meaning that you will have legal authority over the child, but you will not be the child’s true mother. You will have the privilege of legal, social, emotional and psychological parenting, complete with love and affection (if all goes well), but you will never replace that child’s mother.

Yes, of course you will call your foster-adopted child “daughter” or “son” out of affection and love. And the child may even call you “mother,” but those are terms of endearment, not fact.

Acquiesce to your lot in life. Forcing a foster child to lose her identity because you want to adopt is repeating the same that was done to you.

These are your own words: “Your grief from not being able to have biological children should never be carried by an adopted child. Your intentions don’t matter. I am telling you, as an adopted child and as a woman who is infertile, this loss and grief is not a child’s to bear but bear it, they will.”

Your foster-adopted child will bear the grief of your infertility should you go ahead with your plan because it will be your own intent to steal that child’s identity to make her “your own.”

Now I ask you to rethink your plan.

Thank you for writing this.

In addition to the global trafficking of children from country to country, it is very important to add here that the Adoption Industry also maintains dominance on domestic adoptions in the United States and other developed countries. Religious organizations and their people see themselves as “saving” children from a life of poverty and deprivation should these children stay in the care of their natural-born parents. Government agencies such as Child Protective Services routinely grab up children to maintain their monthly quotas of children who are then “freed” for adoption, even when cause for removal is not warranted. Private adoption agencies organize around religious fundamental ideologies, or cater to specific recipient clients such as gay men and lesbian women. Many agencies promote themselves as specializing in open adoption, knowing full well that no socially-open adoption can be legally enforced. An open adoption agreement allowing for visitation from the natural mother and father can be, and often is, closed once the adopters decide they no longer want the natural parents to be involved.

It is also important to force the adoption industry to acknowledge the damage done to the adopted person by the continual practice of revoking and sealing the adoptee’s birth certificate – the medical record of live birth. This is identity theft, yet, it is expected to be just one step in the finalization of adoption, in both domestic and intercountry adoption. Once an adoption is finalized, a new birth certificate is created by the Registrar of Vital Statistics office of each state’s capital city, replacing the names of the actual parents with the names of the adopters and replacing the child’s actual name with a name chosen by the adopters. This false-fact amended birth certificate replaces the child’s true birth certificate. It becomes the adoptee’s first document proving identity and parentage, yet the facts presented are fictitious. Adoption is based upon lies.

If a child is truly in danger of harm by living with abusive parents, then yes, remove the child from the home. Provide a safe home for abused children, but identity theft via adoption is not necessary.

Adoption claims identity theft is necessary, but adoption does not admit that the process of revoking, sealing and replacing adoptees’ birth certificates is, in fact, identity theft. Most adopters have the opinion that they are entitled to the new birth certificate as they believe that they need it to prove their legal parentage and they need to prove that they ARE parents.

The perfect answer is reality-based documentation which delineates the split that adoption creates. The facts of life cannot be scientifically denied. The mother who actually carried the pregnancy and who actually gave birth is the mother whose name should be on the medical record of live birth. DNA can and should be tested to prove who the genetic parents are and whose names belong on the child’s medical record of birth.

An adoption certificate would then spell out who the legal parents are, and the facts of adoption (date, time, place, and names of adopters). Adoption and birth are two separate events.

Better yet, Legal Guardianship provides the child with legal guardians while maintaining the validation of the child’s actual birth and identity. Kinship care provides the child continued contact with natural family.
Supervised visitation with abusive parents can be arranged via court order, or completely barred.

Siblings should never be separated. The child who is adopted has a natural and human right to know full and half siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Adoption destroys these relationships.
Many domestic adoption agencies seek out pregnant girls and women to guilt them into believing that they are inferior to the waiting adoptive-parent-wanna-bees. Coercive methods are used to take the infant from vulnerable pregnant mothers, even allowing adopters in the delivery room. Many adopters bypass the child’s actual birth record directly by insisting that their names be recorded on the child’s birth certificate from birth.

The adoption industry promotes delusional beliefs. The victims of adoption, however, live the truth of the negative consequences of adoption.

Have courage, Jerry. You are not alone in this suffering due to adoption. Moving through it all to see some shred of self, some hope, and some happiness is what we survivors do. One step at a time.