Tag: Adoption Psychology

Adoption Gone Bad – Not Reunion

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad

I do wish people would understand this about my adoption: it is not my reunion that “went bad” because there is much more to reunion than just a few relationships. My sisters are unto themselves, yet I had a reunion with multple people and still do. Reunion and adoption is about telling the truth to the adoptee. For the complete story, as it unfolded, read my book!

The real issue in my adoption is this: my natural father relinquished me under duress. He did not know he gave me to an adoptive family that made up their own rules about contact, what would be allowed to the older generations and other certain select relatives, and not to the father who relinquished his daughter to them, nor to his daughter, the adoptee, herself. My father’s rights were violated by adoptive relatives who deemed themselves to have control over my adoption and my life.

Meanwhile, my father was not aware that meddling relatives from his deceased wife’s family would spread filty lies about him killing his wife and that he “could not stand the sight of me” that’s why he “got rid of me”. THAT was the content of hate mail sent to me for decades from anonymous letters whom I suspect are members of my extended adoptive family who listened to these lies and beleived them.

My natural father was told by the court to stay away from me during the 18 years of my childhood. He did. He did not want me to be confused. But the inference of meddling extended family cause plenty of rumors and hate. I was hunted down like an animal (by adopted realtives) because I dared to accept my father back into my life in 1974. And I dared to  write articles in the paper defending adoptees’ right to know the truth. Hunted down, tracked down, by adoptive relatives who did not like the fact that I was in reunion with a father that they hated, but I was not ever supposed to know him or like him or love him. Nor was I supposed to know any of my blood relatives, but certain members of my adoptive family deemed themselves worthy of socializing with  my blood kin, while keeping me away from my own blood kin.

Why? Because the myth of adoption says that the adoptee must never be told the truth, or must never know the parents who gave them life.

That is what happened in my life: My adoptive relatives broke the adoption contract signed between my natural father and my adoptive parents. My father relinquished me to their care, firmly believing that I would be protected from a confusing life. It is not his fault that other relatives prevented him form knowing what was really going on for 18 years to his daughter that they were keeping a close eye on. Keep the father away from his daughter. Keep the adoptee away from her father and her siblings, but we will watch the adoptee and take notes on her as she grows into an adult.

Family secrets. Violation of a confidential and private adoption court proceeding between two sets of parents over the relinquishment and adoption of an unsuspecting adoptee.

Reunion  gone bad? Adoption not right from the start. Whose privacy violated? Mime. And my father’s privacy.

My reunion is still going on folks…I still have relationships with other relatives. The adoptee is in the middle and suffers because of the prejudice against adoptees in the larger society.

It is Not Reunion I Resent — It is Being LIED to and Harassed

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Genealogy, Obituaries, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

I was checking my trackers when someone’s search words caught my eye: “adoption reunion resentment”.

Let me make this clear: I will not be the Poster Girl for Bad Reunions. You will have to read my book to know the whole story.

I was lied to be my adoptive parents for the first 18 years of my life. They did not EVER want me to know my own siblings. Siblings that they knew I had! Siblings who lived just a 20 minute drive away! When those siblings called me on the phone and shocked the living hell out of me when I was 18 years old, I was not mad at them. I was in deep, profound, emotional shock! My adoptive parents lied to me and prevented me from having meaningful relationships with my own siblings and my blood cousins, but it was alright for other members of my adoptive family to socialize with my own blood kin!

I was happy to meet my siblings, my niece and nephew, my father, and I was grieving the loss of my dead mother for the first time in my life. Do not for one second label me as against reunions!!!!

My reunion turned sour because I was getting abuse from my adoptive mother who never wanted me to know the truth. I was getting abuse from adoptive relatives who believed I was disloyal to my adoptive parents for accepting a phone call from my own siblings! I was seen as the villain by my many of my adoptive relatives.

A few of my adoptive aunts took me kindly aside to explain what they knew. The point is: if THEY knew, I should have known all along. Not only that, but my natural father was completely unaware that the adoption contract was broken. He put his trust into the couple he chose to adopt me, but he was not told that there would be socializing going on with his deceased wife’s family. If my adoptive father’s family and my deceased mother’s family allowed themselves to socialize, but left my father out of it, then his rights were violated. He was also unaware that rumors were spread about him, rumors that affected how I was treated by my extended adopted family.

In my beginning stages of my reunion, and for decades after, I could not be everything to everyone. I was expected to learn my family history, learn names, dates, go here, go there, finish high school, go to college, and be OKAY. No one was concerned for my emotional or mental health. I was alone, until I went to a support group for adoptees. The group met once a month. Then, I went to an Adoption Forum of Philadelphia Day – long adoption conference. I met authors, natural mothers, and adoptees who felt just like I did. I found friends. Back home, I was criticized for being in a reunion, and ridiculed by natural family and adoptive family for writing Letters to the Editor about adoptees rights. This was in the 1970s.

I have been ridiculed for being an adoption activist, for standing up for what I believe in.

I am not against adoption reunions!!! I am against the lies, the deception of entire family groups, I am against being discriminated against for being an adoptee writing about my life.

My reunion went sour for many, many reasons. Too many for a blog to explain.

Message to adoptive parents: do not ever lie to your adoptees. THAT abuse destroys the parent-child relationship. To prevent an adoptee to live as a “only” child, knowing that there are siblings nearby, is child abuse. Divorced parents would face charges if they did that.

Reunions with blood kin can only work if all people work at it. My father worked at it, but could not handle me going public. He did not understand the politics of me being adopted. He felt guilty for giving me away and I have told him repeatedly that I never blamed him. I have a lovely step mother. My adoptive parents and my natural parents visited with each other. It was hardest on my adoptive mother since she did not want me to ever know my father. And my siblings and I had wonderful times together. I had a hard times adjusting. I was one person. They were many. I was overwhelmed. I was alone in my suffering.

Reunions between families separated by adoption are positive, natural events, that, if handled with respect and dignity and honesty, can and do, work.

Reunions happen with and without open birth and adoption records.

DO NOT pin negativity upon me and blame “bad” reunions on me! Many relationships ebb and flow and some end. It is part of life. Not all families get along even without adoption separation and reunion. It is now nearly 36 years after my initial reunion. There are many relatives that have sustained relationships with me, and many who have not. The younger generations now are asking questions. Adoption, just like marriage, grows and changes as we all grow and age and die.

My adoptive mother is dying. She has faced some difficult issues. She has accepted that the falsified birth certificate must end, and in its place, an adoption certificate must tell the truth.

My natural father read my book as I wrote it, twice, in these last few years. He gave his own input as to what happened. He also answered questions about the relinquishment, and, no, he was never promised confidentiality. He was told by the judge: “you must not interfere with your daughter’s life. She now is the adopted daughter in this new family. When she turns 18, you may find her again.”

Ahh, but single mothers who give up their babies, or rather, who are coerced into giving up their babies, are, and have been, told that they will never see their baby again.

There is so much that is wrong about adoption itself.  We need to focus on fixing those issues, which will then fix the reasons why relationships break down. There is much in adoption psychology of the entire family systems that cannot be explained in a blog. Read some adoption psychology books. They apply to family systems, and not just finger-pointing at the adoptee.

Society always must have scapegoats. That’s why illegitimates are called bastards. Cuss words. I resent it. Especially since I am a half orphan who should have been given respect, dignity, and honesty right from the very beginning of my adoption. Too many rumors. Too many untruths. Too much confusion for the adoptee.

Rebuttle from Yesterday’s ABC Article

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

This post, too, will be quick. No time for editing. This is written in response to this article: 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/adoptees-cite-discrimination-landmark-study-push-open-birth/story?id=9138141

I agreed to be interviewed, but I DID NOT say I would have preferred to be in foster care!!! The foster care and guardianship topics came up in my interview when the reporter asked me, “You’re not anti adoption, are you?”

I said, “Yes, of course, I am!”

The reporter said, “Well, what would you like to see done differently?”

I said, “Preserving the natural family is the first step. If a child cannot be raised by her parents, then kinship care,, and after that option, then guardianship.” I DID NOT SAY THAT I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO BE RAISED IN FOSTER CARE!

That kind of twisting my words has resulted in, again, more misunderstanding abaout adoption.

Of course I enjoyed my childhood. I was raised by doting, loving parents who gave me everything a child could want: a secure home, tucks in bed at night, good meals, snuggles and cuddles as a young chid, a good education, family get-togethers with extended family at other homes and at parks, and emotional closeness. I loved my parents while I grew up and they loved me.

But that love was destroyed when I got that phone call from a sister I never knew. It was at that moment at age 18, and a high school senior, that I realized a rush of information and acceptance. The two most trusted people in the world to a child are her parents. And mine lied to me. Not only did they lie, but they willfully prevented me from knowing my siblings during the time when it is most crucial for a child to have siblings: childhood.

The reporter made me out to be some kind of uncaring nutcase. I resent that characterization.

Foster care would not have been my preferred choice to the childhood  that I did have. However, finding out at age 18 that I actually had full blood siblings, devastated me.

Here is what I wrote in the onnline comments to that article. I acnnot stay to read comments waitiing for psoting, or to answer email. I need to go back to  hospital for my dying adoptive mother. Mixed feelings? Yes. How would you feel if your parents lied to you and prevented you from growing up with your siblings?

My reprints from online comments:

Part 1

The responses to this story reflect the ignorance of adoption that still exist. It is appalling what people perceive adoption to be.

 I will be posting a series of posts (due to space limitations) to correct mistakes in the bad reporting and mischaracterization of my adoption and reunion. First, it is not the reunion that went bad, it was my entire adoption that was wrong. Reunion, itself, is not a bad thing, and in miss-representing what I said to the reporter gives the wrong impression. Reunions are a good thing, if handled appropriately. Adoptions can be a good experience, if handled appropriately.

 I was an 18 year old high school senior, raised a socially isolated only child by parents who chose to keep secrets from me. They knew I had siblings within 5 miles of our home, and they chose to prevent me from access to them. Meanwhile, members of my adoptive father’s family and members of my deceased natural mother’s family socialized with each other, passing around rumors about my natural father and secret stories of me growing up. I was unaware of this and so was my father. This was social engineering and certainly not the proper way to handle a “relative adoption”. I was treated as an outcast by most of my adoptive family after my reunion – good enough to be in the family while my adoption is secret, but toss me out after I reunite with my father and finally grieve the death of my mother. I did not create resentment – adoption myths and taboos did.

 Part 2

When my older full blood siblings found me, it was a shock. Of course it would be: to learn that the most trusted people to a child lied, on purpose, and treated me as a possession. My siblings and I and our father had as good a reunion as could be, considering I was at everyone’s mercy for they told me their versions of the truth and assumed that I should get on with life quickly.

That does not happen. The shock of being found, the shock of lies, and the growing turmoil of both families putting me down because I chose to become an adoption reform activist, resulted in life-long psychological trauma. Do not twist my words around to make it seem that I had a “Bad Reunion.” THAT is mischaracterization of what I told this reporter.

It is the total accumulation of misinformed relatives, societal myths, and definite discrimination against adoptees in general that made my life difficult. How can one person defend herself against an adoptive family network of rumors and disgust, a split natural family (one side believing that my father was responsible for my mother’s death from cancer, and my father not knowing the full extent of the involvement of other people in the adoption of his child. There was total lack of concern for him as my relinquishing father, total lack of concern for the five children at the death of our mother.

  Part 3

The only thing that mattered was that I, the adoptee, had a so-called better life to be away from wretchedness of the father and siblings left behind. I paid for the “sin” of accepting my father back into my life by having hate mail sent to me and hate phone calls from anonymous adoptive relatives who took it out on me that I even dared to have a reunion with a man they hated. THAT is what was wrong in my adoption and reunion—distortion of beliefs surrounding adoption. I DID NOT say to this reporter that I wished I was raised in foster care or was under guardianship. THAT is a twist of what I actually said.   

If my adoptive parents were truthful to me while I was growing up, if the judge had realized that there were four other children involved and made it a part of this adoption to have ongoing sibling and father visitation, and if there were no hateful rumors spread for 53 years, then there would have been a cooperation in visitation for the sibling group, I would have known that my mother died and where she was buried. Better yet, my family should never have been separated by adoption in the first place. Family preservation should have prevailed, but no, adoption was seen as the only solution.

 Part 4

I said that, adoption as a social practice should be replaced by family preservation. IF a child cannot be raised by her family, then guardianship should replace adoption because adoption creates a new identity for the child and destroys the natural family connections. Adoption itself causes distortions in peoples’ attitudes.

This reporter misrepresented what I told her. And she chose to ignore the very real birth certificates I sent her. All adoptees’ birth certificates are seized by the government and a new, falsified, birth certificate is issued claiming the parents of adoption actually gave birth. The reporter was shocked when I told her this, “They don’t still do that, do they?” she asked me. “Yes, they do!” I responded. I sent her copies of all of my fraudulent birth and baptismal certificates, and true birth certificates. But she chose to ignore my message.

This is why I have written a book — because reporters are too casual with information given to them. I have told my story to numerous reporters since 1975, and it is always the same. They report a twisted version of what I actually said.

  Part 5

This adoptee has faced a variety of discriminations:  1st in my relinquishment that could have been prevented, then my adoption that was full of lies from the very beginning, and the lies told behind me as I was growing in a social circle similar to The Truman Show. Do not place the burden on a “bad reunion” upon me. Remember this: an 18 year old faced with psychological shock of this magnitude does not emotionally heal well, nor do the adoptive parents who lied for 18 years and defended their right to lie by screaming and yelling and blaming the adoptee, nor do the siblings of that adoptee, and, the relinquishing father who was talked into giving up his newborn at the funeral of his dead wife.

Adoption itself is wrong. Morally, ethically, humanly, wrong. Adoption is a no-win situation.

This reporter was more interested in getting a decent photo to put my face in her story to prove the bad side of reunions, without printing the evidence I gave her to expose the worst discrimination of all: sealed and falsified birth certificates that all adoptees suffer. Creating new and fraudulent birth certificates for each adoptee, and forcing us to beg for our truthful birth certificates, is the biggest discrimination in adoption today.

Joan Mary Wheeler, born as, Doris Michol Sippel

November 23, 2009

Re-Post of Last Year’s Commemoration: Commentary on article “Anti-Adoption Advocates: How Should We Respond?”

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Systems

This is a re-posting of a post from my former blog.

November 14, 2008

November is National Adoption Awareness month.

To commemorate this month-long awareness campaign, I wrote the following in response to the article by Heidi Hess Saxton, “Anti-Adoption Advocates: How Should We Respond?” Her article appears in an online publication called The Catholic Exchange:
http://catholicexchange.com/2008/11/11/114414/. Seventeen comments by her followers and adoption reformers are included at that site.

 

Dear Heidi Hess Saxton:

Where are you getting your information? Are you making this up? Do you have personal or professional experience to speak with authority, or are you basing your article on value judgments? Please, learn about adoption before you preach.

Pardon me, I see that you have adopted two children in 2002. That gives you a wealth of experience to draw upon. Honey, your journey is just beginning. Live life a little before you judge others. Remember the Golden Rule. You’ve got a lot to learn.

I am 52 years old. I am not “an adult adopted child”. I am an adoptee. Don’t patronize me as an “adult adoptee” either. Do you hear anyone else in society preface the description of others or themselves as “adult social worker” or “adult doctor” or “adult teacher”? No, of course not. I am a woman who was adopted as an infant. But because of backward thinking, I am called every name and label people want to assign to me. I am a normal person.

I was orphaned by the death of my mother — that’s MOTHER, not “birth” or “first” mother, but MOTHER, as in mother, the one who conceived and gave birth to me, who would have raised me had she not died. But because I was adopted as an infant, the definition of mother gets split. The legal term is “natural mother” and “natural father”. Says so in my adoption papers. Go look it up in any law library.

How dare you ridicule all adoptees and our parents! We are not “the enemy”. If we are your enemies, why do you want to adopt “the enemy”?

When I was 18 years old, and an “only child” in my adoptive home, I was found by a sister I never knew. That was in 1974 — nearly 35 years ago. I speak from personal experience as well as professional. I have been advocating for adoptees’ rights since I was 19. I earned my 2nd Bachelor’s in Social Work 9 years ago.

My loving adoptive parents did not ever want me to know the truth: they lied to me for the first 18 years of my life. It was their responsibility to tell the truth, but they wanted me all to themselves. It was the lie, and their fierce determination to keep me from the truth that made me turn anti-adoption. At the moment I received that phone call, I realized that the love and trust I had with the parents who raised me was gone. They held information about me to themselves, selfishly. There was nothing altruistic, saintly, or even remotely “Christian” about those first 18 years of my life. I also knew that I had to make a decision. I was 18 years old, not out of high school yet, facing a life-trauma that took my life as I knew it, and destroyed it. My parents lied, betrayed me, yet, here on the phone was a woman who said she was my sister. I decided, without having influence from any media or professional (because none existed in 1974) that I have two sets of real parents. Both sets of parents made me who I am. I have never deviated from that logical reality.

Mom was married to Dad for 10 years. They had four older children. Mom’s death made the 5 of us half-orphans. A Catholic Priest told Dad that the baby needs two parents. There was no caring help for the family to stay together, no Christian love, no bags of clothes, no money to help pay for a funeral or burial plot, no financial aid to help pay rent, no caring nuns or priests or missionaries to help with child care. There was no one to come over to help these children cope with the loss of their mother and their newborn sister. No one helped my father in any way. Except the advice from a Catholic Priest to give up the baby to adoption. The reality is that my family suffered tremendous loss. I hear no compassion from so-called Christians.

I do hear the venom with which you address pregnant teens and their babies. In your arguments, you believe that all adoptees come from horrible pregnant mothers who lead such horrible, destructive lives. Where is your compassion for these mothers? Do you know what its like to have your baby torn from you after you gave birth? It is a horrible experience! I have not lived that myself, but I have known mothers-of-adoption-loss for over three decades. I empathize with them, as a woman, and as a mother myself.

I was born in January 1956. I was issued a birth certificate. I was baptized, twice. Once at birth by a nurse because I was near death. After I recovered, I was baptized in a real religious Catholic ceremony at my dying mother’s bedside, one week before she died in March 1956. At my mother’s funeral, people were buzzing about the baby. Who will take care of her? In April, following the advice of a Catholic priest, my father relinquished me to the care of a couple who were to become my adoptive parents. My adoption became finalized one year and one week after by birth. These pre-adoptive parents called me Joan, but my legal and religious name was Doris.

Do you know that an infant hears inside the mother’s uterus? It’s true. I heard my siblings playing, talking to me before I was born. I heard my mother’s voice. I heard my father’s voice. I felt a shocking, empty void, after my premature birth as I lay in an incubator for 6 weeks. I suffered the trauma of losing my mother because of my isolation in that incubator. I was too young to know what happened, but my tiny body knew something was wrong. I did not hear the familiar voices of my siblings, nor my father, nor my mother. I was alone for a very long time.

Then, I heard my new name of Joan. My pre-adoptive parents called me Joan for 10 months before my adoption was finalized.

The seeds for life-long psychological trauma were set for me pre-birth. The damage was compounded by adoption separation.

It is my opinion that you need to study the dynamics of pregnancy and birth, and separation trauma experienced by all adoptees.

My father was not given any paper to sign that guaranteed him to any privacy or confidentiality. Nor was he verbally promised confidentiality. He was not hiding in fear that I’d track him down. No, he never wanted to give me up in the first place. The judge told him that he could look for me when I turned 18. Yes, that’s right. Even my adoption papers say that after 18 years, my father could contact me. When I reach the age of majority, I would become an autonomous being, free from the legal binds of adoptive parental control over me. My father loved me. He anticipated my birth. I was his youngest child.

I lived 5 miles away from my natural family. My Catholic adoptive family, with all the extended family, knew the truth. They even knew my natural mother’s extended family. Photos were traded back and forth. Stories of “Joanie’s phases” were traded from adoptive relatives to natural blood kin. I, and my siblings, and our father, were kept out of this spy ring. While my father thought he relinquished me to a private, legal transaction between he and my new parents, he did not know that there would be contact between his deceased wife’s family and my adoptive family. He was purposely kept out of the communication. He was told to stay away, to not interfere, and he did not interfere. All of the other relatives interfered.

In divorce, and re-marriage of parents, there is no sealed birth certificate. The child is shared by two parents and their respective new spouses. Blended families are made adding half siblings, enriching lives by diversity and continuity. But in adoption, a hard break is made. For no clear reason. No one owns their children. We are innocent children whose lives are manipulated and mangled by others who are supposed to looking out for our well-being. Children are victims of sealed, closed adoption. Adoption in America is a severe trauma to children. Adoption in America also is a trauma to adoptees later in life as we are forbidden, by law forever, to know from whence we came.

Three years after my birth and baptism, my adoptive parents asked the Catholic Church to issue a baptismal certificate in my adoptive name so that I may go to Catholic Schools. That’s right. The Catholic Church lied! A priest took the date out of the Church book in which my baptism was recorded. He wrote in my new adoptive name, and the names of my adoptive parents, but, because the godparents were ever-important, he named them on my new, amended, fake and phony and fraudulent baptismal certificate! My godparents were related to my deceased mother! OH NO! The identities of my real, factual, godparents were named on the fraudulent baptismal certificate! Joan Wheeler was not baptized. Doris Sippel was baptized.

For the Catholics out there, no, for the non-Catholics who do not know, listen up. When a Catholic child grows up and partakes of religious rites of passage, it is with the name at baptism—the name that God recognizes—that a child receives Holy Communion, receives Confirmation, takes vows as a nun or a priest, or takes vows in matrimony.

Do you understand what I just wrote? How many violations to my personhood is the Catholic Church going to inflict upon me? And other adoptees?

My birth certificate (notice I said “birth certificate” and not “original birth certificate”) was sealed and a new, fake, phony, fraudulent birth certificate was issued in its place. The parents named on this “birth certificate” did not make love to create me. The mother named on this “birth certificate” did not give birth to me. Yet, the document clearly states that this mother gave birth to me on my birth date, at the hospital in which I was actually and factually born, and that I was a single birth, and the time of my birth was indicated. This document is not my birth certificate at all! It is a government-perpetrated fraud!

My adoptive mother and father were infertile. Does it not strike anyone out there that pretending to give birth is a psychological denial of facts? When the Registrar of Vital Statistics issues a fake birth certificate, adopting parents believe the lies. They can live in their happy dream world because the law created falsified birth certificates: adopting parents are following the law, so they believe a falsehood.

To be absolutely true, an adoption certificate should be issued upon the legal finalization of adoption. An adoption certificate would state the facts of the adoption. The birth certificate states the facts of birth. Both documents should remain open to the person named on it: the person born and the person adopted.

Any minor child who is not adopted has the legal right to ask for a copy of her birth certificate. It is the obligation of the parents to show the document to the child and to give the document to the child at the age of majority. Up until the age of majority, the parents are legally responsible for minor children; a child cannot apply for school attendance, parents do that. In a healthy parent-child relationship, the child is told the facts of birth.

Americans think that adoption means the legal possession of a child. In the Netherlands, a progressive society, adoptive parents know their place. They are respectful of the adoptee’s natural parents; they have the legal responsibility to tell the child the truth. The minor child has the legal right to ask for the birth certificate and adoption certificate. The adoptive parents are issued an adoption certificate for the minor child. Dutch adoptive parents know that they are not the only parents. There are no sealed nor amended records in Holland. Openness gives freedom of communication in a loving, respectful adoptive home.

Just so you understand, as a social worker, I’ve worked with homeless people. I’ve worked with many women who have had abortions, and they were all in financial straights, unable afford a child. Many women were married and had other children. Some women are too old to carry a pregnancy that would result in maternal harm, and the fetus has defects because of the age of the egg at fertilization. Some women are taking medicines for existing health issues of their own and an unplanned pregnancy happens. Prescriptions often interfere with the developing baby, rendering the baby a deformed mass of fused or missing bones with no brain or missing internal organs. Some women were beat up by their boyfriends or fathers and had no other option. Only a pregnant woman and her doctor can make an informed decision about what to do with an unplanned (not unwanted) pregnancy. Many women chose abortion rather than adoption because they could not see going through a pregnancy to lose a baby to an uncertain future with strangers; punishment upon punishment. The finality of death was a better choice than to send their baby to strangers and know that they would never see that baby again. A person can grieve a death, but the agony of losing a child to adoption is a loss women never recovery from. Closed adoption and closed records are very damaging. Open adoption is not enforceable; the records are still sealed and falsified.

Why is it that Catholics preach love, but treat adoptees as villains? Why do you see us as the enemy? If we are your enemy, then please, don’t adopt! Stay away! We don’t want adoptive parents such as you! You treat our natural parents and our siblings as villains also. We come from these people so don’t make them out to be evil! If they are evil, then so are we! And if we are evil, we should not be adopted! You wouldn’t want us if we that bad! And then, to top it off, you demand that adoptees should be forever banned from the truth of our births? How cruel! You do not speak of loving kindness, decency or respect or honor. You are spewing hate and prejudice with every word written by Heidi Hess Saxton!

And yes, the rights of the adoptee trump the rights of either set of parents. Why? Because an adoptee was a minor child when the adoption took place. No other autonomous adult must ask permission of any parent to do anything. No adult should be held as prisoner by either adoptive parents or natural parents. You do not play god over adoptees! According to you, you think you have the right to own adoptees. That’s slavery. Discrimination—Violation of our civil and human rights! The United Nations in UNICEF has a global mandate: to register the BIRTH of all children in the world.

When my adoptive father died of brain cancer in 1982—8 years after my reunion began—my adoptive cousin got out of her car and came up to me as I was preparing to see my father in the casket at the funeral home. She said, “You OPENLY declare that you have another father, so that means you do not love this dead father. You do not belong here.” This cousin, whom I played with as a child, treated me with such hateful disdain! She certainly is not a good, Christian woman!

Notice that she said OPENLY as loud and as disgusted as she could! Why, she made it seem as though I was OPENLY having sex with the funeral director!

Here is another lovely Catholic bit for you: Bastards are forbidden into heaven! Yes, it’s true! It’s even in the bible! We all know, if it’s in the Bible, it must be true! Deuteronomy 23:2—“No bastard shall enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord.”

How’s that for loving kindness?! Now, think about what it is you want! You want unwed mothers to give up their illegitimate bastard kids so they can be free from the stain of the curse of their birth, yet, the Bible says bastards won’t get to heaven. You want these bastards to grow up ever grateful for the blessings of being cared for by people who feel that the very people who conceived and gave birth to us, are evil in some way. You want to prevent us from contact with our own blood kin! Is this family values? Is this done in love? I don’t think so.

How many of you have the hobby of genealogy? Feel Proud? Well, don’t prevent adoptees from tracing their family trees for the sheer joy and curiosity of it. You enjoy it, so can adoptees. Butt out of our lives. When we are adults, we are not subject to the constraints of parents. We ought to have ongoing visitation with our blood kin during childhood and into adulthood. That’s what happens in divorce, so why treat adoptees and our blood kin any differently?

Is Sarah Palin’s 17 year old daughter pregnant? Yes! Why isn’t anyone coercing this pregnant teen to give up her baby to adoption? Isn’t there a needy couple out there who would benefit from being blessed with the ‘gift of life’, the ‘bad seed’, the ‘illegitimate bastard’ from such a prestigious, ‘good quality family stock’? The child’s birth certificate will be amended, the original birth certificate will be sealed, and no one else would ever know! Oh, and, best of all, that baby will never know that his grandmother was a Vice Presidential candidate as the Governor of Alaska! Why would the adopted bastard child want to know that anyway? He’s now adopted and has a whole new set of parents and extended family and family history! Adoption wipes away his need to know anything about his blood kin!

Did you know that John Lennon lost his older sister to adoption? How would YOU feel if you were adopted and found out now, in 2008, that your younger brother was John Lennon? He was shot to death 28 years ago, but, hey, you are adopted and you don’t need to know anything about your blood kin!

I am proudly anti-adoption. I am proudly anti-Catholic, too. I openly declare that I have two real sets of parents — that is the bare truth of all adoption.

The next debate will be “embryo adoptions”! There is no legal adoption; embryo adoptions are actually swapped. Because the recipient mother of a frozen embryo gives birth, she is named on the birth certificate, but she is not the only mother. Nor is her husband the only father. How many Catholics out there donate their sperm? Eggs? How many Catholics depend on the prostituted services of sperm and egg donors to make their children? What lies are you telling your children?

For GOD’s sake, people! Get an education! No, sorry, correction: for ADOPTEES’ sake, and our natural parents’ sake, GET AN EDUCATION!

Ignorance is at the root of all prejudice.

Joan Wheeler, BSW
born and baptized as Doris Sippel

This is the article to which the above responds to —

“Anti-Adoption Advocates: How Should We Respond?”
by Heidi Hess Saxton, printed online in The Catholic Exchange:
http://catholicexchange.com/2008/11/11/114414/

November 11th, 2008

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Comments From Last Year:

Submitted on 2008/12/05 at 7:12pm by Lisa Kay, Fla

I stumbled onto your blog via a link on the 73adoptee blog. Wow! You hit the nail on the head on so many points that I won’t even try to comment on the ones that ring especially true to my own opinions and experiences, or are otherwise noteworthy.I’m laughing as I ponder whether you should be an attorney, a media pundit, or a politician. Regardless, I’m glad that I’m on your side of the argument.Hope you won’t mind if I recommend your blog in a post on Adoption Database’s message board about blogs the members should check out. [If you don’t want me to, please contact me.]A new fan,Lisa KayFL Adoptee Searchingb. Jan 2x, 1963Gainesville, Florida

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2008/11/18 at 4:04pm  janet blue

Thank you for speaking the truth about adoption. I wonder if my adopted children will feel the same when they are allowed to come and find me. They are not allowed to write to me at the moment but I keep looking for them. Janet UK

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2008/11/16 at 8:45am  mommaL3

THANK YOU! Your article was painful at times to read ,but oh so refreshingly honest and if there is one thing this reunited Mother of adoption loss insists on is honesty no matter how painful .I had enough lies ,when in my youth ,I was made to believe I had nothing that my daughter needed and the love for my daughter was used against both of us. Ms.Hess is no different than the other profiteers that have their own agendas for separating infants from their Mothers .Again they are trying to use us to keep business as usual. BTW,I never was promised confidentiality nor did I ask for it. I didn’t need protection from my own child.The real question should be “what do they need protection from? I see they also are not above trying to use God to continue this evil industry.. If anything many churches should apologize for what they did to us instead of justifying their actions and trying to make the victims the ones at fault. But than that is what abusers do, isn’t it? My God ,have they no shame???That was a rhetorical question. Thanks again Joan and I am sorry for your losses caused by adoption. Linda Webber

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2008/11/15 at 10:55am  Sandy Young

Doris, Send a copy of your piece to her. I did. She needs to hear this stuff from various sources. She needs to know that mothers and their children are hurt by these unnecessary separations. If you haven’t yet read them, her comments on The Daily Bastardette, Adoption and its Triad, and my own,Musing-Mother are worth reading. Her head is clearly spinning on her shoulders about now, and her veneer is slipping! Thank you for your very impassioned and lucid comments. I hope she gets a chance to read them. heidi.hess.saxton@gmail.com

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2008/11/14 at 9:20pm  jimm

Excellent post. Like Pennegal, I doubt they will print your comment; they wouldn’t print mine. Truth and the Catholic Church don’t go hand-in-hand.

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2008/11/14 at 7:42pm  triona

Joan, thank you for speaking out against this load of drivel. I bet they won’t post it, either, but at least by posting it on your own blog you will be heard.

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2008/11/14 at 7:34pm  Web2.0PRDude

You might want to cross-reference this article with the reference material by John Syrtash, a Toronto based Family and Divorce Lawyer http://www.freemychild.com/fl_articles.html

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2008/11/14 at 6:41pm  Pennagal

Excellent commentary, Joan. I seriously doubt they will allow this to appear on the website because it countradicts the rosy picture they have of adoption as the cure for all ill. But it needed to be said and, I hope, that Ms. Saxton will read it.

Adoption BEwareness Month – True and False Birth Certificates

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

Trying to learn FTP file transfer to build this flash gallery… in the meantime, these photos came with the slide-show setup. My own birth records will be added soon.

[flash_easy_gallery 1 /]

 

The woman I was named after died a few days ago. This is for Aunt Doris.

Adoption not only took me away from the family I was born into, but adoption took away the name I was given at birth. I had that full name for one year and one week, until the Judge ordered my name to be changed. It took the State a few months to issue my new (false) birth certificate in my adoptive name.

Adoption also took away the name I was given in the Catholic Sacrament of Baptism. According to Catholic dogma, a person must use their baptismal name to take vows: to become a nun or a priest, get married, and receive other holy sacraments. I was deprived of my baptismal name because the Church issued a false baptismal certificate in my adoptive name three years after the real baptismal ceremony. Catholic Baptism is not simply a symbolic gesture. Catholics believe that the child receiving the sacrament of Baptism is blessed by God. If that is true, then the Catholic Church should not have falsified a new Baptismal Certificate in my adoptive name. That document gives the impression that I was baptized in that name, which I was not.

An adopted child is not born twice, nor is that child baptized twice. Yet I have several birth certificates and two baptismal certificates. 

New York State sealed my birth records upon the finalization of my adoption. To this very day, nearly 54 years after my birth, I am barred from legally obtaining my true birth certificate. My case fell through the cracks. I have my sealed records (as evidenced in the cropped slides above and full scanned images in my forthcoming book). But I cannot obtain certified copies at the local Office of Vital Statistics because the law won’t allow it — even if I present what I have! That is totally illogical. Changing my identity without my consent, and without giving me my own attorney to act in my behalf at the time I could not speak for myself as an infant, is a crime that goes unpunished for millions of adoptees worldwide.

Just who do you people think you are anyway? What gives you the right to snatch infants from their families, change their names and prevent them from ever knowing the truth? Adoption is a disgusting, life-sucking institution that mimics real families. No one can truly love in a lie. Once the adoptive parents lie, their friends and extended family lie, building lie upon lie, fabrication upon stretched truth, day after day, decade after decade. Lie becomes believed truth. While relatives do their dance around the wicked adoptee, the unsuspecting adoptee is condemned, mocked, ridiculed, and scorned.

Couples get divorced for infidelity, with or without photographic proof. Parental infidelity in adoption, however, is rewarded by false and fraudulent birth certificates proving that the child is “theirs”, and all the rest of the glorified accolades of how wonderful these adoptive parents are to take in an unwanted child. How wonderful indeed, to be that unwanted child, to sense others’ pity and scorn. I, the adoptee, must live with the consequences of all those lies for the duration of my lifetime. This has had a devestating trickle-down effect on my children’s quality of life. That’s another topic for discussion…

Thank GOD I gave up being a Catholic for Lent somewhere around age 14! And I never looked back longingly for a religion built on lies, deceit, damaging secrets, hypocracy and fraudulent religious documents. The Pope has not bothered to answer my second letter to the Vatican. My first letter was answered with a form letter. Evidently someone in The Vatican took my second letter seriously because there was no form letter this time. No response was sent because there is no official Church acknowledgement of this crime of issuing my falsified baptismal certificate signed by a Catholic priest.

Some Commandment says “Thou shall not bear false witness”.

Another Commandment says, “Thou shall not steal”. We’ve not really delved into that one much, but I heard the author A J Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) say that that commandment actually means “thou shalt not steal other people’s children”. I wish I could find a link to that quote. I heard him say that recently on C-Span’s Book TV. So, children, here’s your Bible task for this week: Go find that quote. Better yet, study The Golden Rule: Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.

No, adoption is not a wonderful thing, event or condition. Adoption is a cover-up, a con-job, and a mockery of the sanctity of life.

Go ahead, you defenders of the status quo, keep shoving your shock and dismay at me. What about orphans who have no parents? What about the kids LANGUISHING in orphanages? and bla bla bla.

Even full orphans were conceived and born of one mother and one father. Those are the birds and the bees — the facts of life. Guardianship of true full orphans provides loving homes for children who desperately need homes. Guardianship does not destroy the identity of that child, nor does guardianship destroy family relationships. Guardianship gives a true perspective. Caring guardians can model parental roles while accepting that they did not give birth to that child. Guardians can give respect to the missing parents by acknowledging their names, their race, ethnicity, national origin, family religion, and, most important of all, guardians can respect the child for who she is. Adoption, by its very nature, is secretive, manipulative, and disrespectful to the true parents and the adoptee.

Working toward total honesty in adoption means to first acknowledge the act of adoption by issuing a certified Certificate of Adoption for every adoption of the past as a Vital Statistic of Adoption to be registered in the Office of Vital Statistics of where the adoption took place.

Secondly, from this day forward, make adoption itself illegal. Family Preservation, Kinship Care and Guardianship are the only acceptable alternatives to closed and sealed adoption.