Recently I got an angry response from an Ethiopian woman on the post I wrote revealing my daughter's PTSD diagnosis.
Here is her comment:
And my answer:
This got me thinking. There is a whole community of adoption-haters here in the U.S. who spend their time & energy trolling the internet so they can leave nasty comments on adoption blogs and videos. They call us names like "baby stealers", "human traffickers", "well-meaning naive idiots", accuse us of buying our children, and tell us that we'll never be a real family.
I've been the target of some of these attacks myself. Mostly the comments just annoy me, though I get angry when the target is a loving adoptive friend of mine who doesn't deserve the verbal abuse heaped upon them by strangers.
I'm about to make a big assumption: I'm guessing the people in the domestic anti-adoption league belong in one of two categories. They are either adult adoptees who had crappy parents, or they are birthmothers/first mothers who were forced or pressured to place their children for adoption. Most likely these adoptions took place many years ago.
I firmly believe every child deserves to be raised in a loving home. To those who were adopted by crappy adoptive parents, I am truly sorry for your experience. Some children who were raised by their biological parents had crappy parents as well. However, I and the many adoptive parents who have been targeted by your hateful comments are not responsible for what happened to you.
Likewise I believe that no woman should be forced or pressured to place their child for adoption. For those who have had that happen, I am truly sorry. That should never have happened.
So why target families that had no part in the pain behind your anger? Do you realize how very different adoption is now compared to how it was even 20 years ago? Closed Adoptions are virtually non-existent these days. The adoptive parents are almost always chosen by the birthmothers, some of whom continue to be a part of their child's life, like in our case. Children grow up knowing their adoption stories now, rather than being lied to & led to believe they were born into the family. Our adoption agency made us sign an agreement saying that we would share our son's adoption story before he turned five so he would never remember not knowing he was adopted.
The fact of the matter is that there are some people who choose not to parent their children. Don't they have the right to make that decision? Don't they have the right to choose who parents their children in their stead? So why are the adoptive parents these women chose being subjected to attacks by strangers?
And to those who oppose International Adoption: no one can deny there is a serious orphan crisis. Adoption is not the answer to solving it. Finding ways to reduce maternal mortality, provide medical care & end poverty to keep families together are better solutions. But the fact remains there are millions of children in orphanages RIGHT NOW in various countries who need families. To the natives of those countries opposed to "foreigners" adopting their children, would it be preferable for those children to grow up in these orphanages until they age out & live on the street than for them to be raised in loving families? Yes it is a tragedy that many of those children will lose their culture. But is that preferable to being raised in an orphanage? I believe so. How many of these children have you adopted so they can keep their culture?
Adoption is not perfect. There is always loss in adoption. In an ideal world every child would be raised by their loving biological parents. In an ideal world every couple that wanted to give birth to children would be able to, without problems. In an ideal world we would not experience loss, sadness, sickness or death. But we don't live in an ideal world, do we? We have parents who want to have children but are unable to. We have children who need families.
Thank God we have adoption.
Biological connection does not make a family. Love does. My husband and I love each other dearly. We are soulmates. There is no shared blood between us, thankfully, because that would be weird. My point is that I have several good friends that love me as a sister with no biological connection. I grew up with "Aunts" "Uncles" and "Grandparents" who had no blood relation to me yet filled those roles in my life. Did I love them any less due to lack of biological connection? Of course not.
So my unsolicited advice to those of you who hate adoption and spend your time blasting & attacking us online...
Choose another target for your anger. Turn your anger into something productive and positive. Use your passion to help keep adoptions ethical. Be advocates for adult adoptees who want to find their birth relatives. Help change laws so that birthparents are listed on the birth certificates of adoptees as well as the adoptive parents. Provide support for other birthmoms who are hurting. Help counsel potential birthmothers to make sure they are making an informed decision. Help affect the circumstances that lead to unplanned pregnancies. In other countries, help lower maternal mortality rates. Help reduce poverty levels. Help keep families together.
Stop attacking loving adoptive families. Get counseling. Stop spreading hate. At the end of the day your attacks may annoy us or even ruin our day, but to deal with that level of hatred day in and out, you are causing so much more harm to yourselves than the families you attack. We will get over your attacks, but you live with this hatred every day. This will affect your health, relationships & general well being.
Of course in the end, the decision is yours. You can choose to continue attacking us. Just know that you are wasting your breath & aren't doing a single thing to change the situation that you don't like. We're not giving up our children and/or returning them to their countries of origins. They are our real children and we are their real parents and no amount of verbal attacks will change that.
Just think next time you decide to attack... Who are you hurting more in the end? Us? Or you?
