Assembling Self

Monday, May 30, 2011

"Selfish" Adoptees

Is just one of the labels/names we hear when we, as adoptees, attempt to reform and change the way adoption operates.  It still shocks me that anyone could believe having your biology and genetics taken from you and held hostage by government and religious entities is alright and could actually be approached with such a nonchalant attitude.  Adoption, sperm and egg donation, and IVF is in fact a booming business, and not the altruistic operation it is usually perceived to be.

It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a newborn infant.  Nonprofit agencies that facilitate these adoptions bring in millions of dollars each year and the BOD incomes from these can range upwards of six figures.  Egg donors are paid a high price for their donations.   In Vitro fertilization techniques leave unused embryos in freezers to languish when no longer needed and or given away as donations to other infertile couples.  Anonymous sperm donor banks are supposed to put limits on the amount of children conceived and born this way and yet sperm donor registries dictate otherwise.  All of this is a much unregulated industry, an industry out of control.

I shake my head in disbelief that we play God with life and lives every day, and refuse to look at how we got there.  Are we really going to continue to justify the  means to the end when we are dealing with manipulating gametes that become embryos and human beings?  And then turn our backs to the repercussions and ramifications these actions dictate permanently into the lives of adoptees, sperm, and egg donor children?  How is it people can expect adoptees to feel grateful when we are treated like commodities and interchangeable parts?  And when we as adoptees stand up for our rights and the rights of future children brought into this world by whatever means available, and usually most affordable, we are met with harsh judgment and cruel ridicule?

Money, profit, and power have obviously become more important in creating a family than ethics.

And we are the selfish ones?  I think not.


Sunday, May 8, 2011

Remembered on Mother's Day

Remembered

Never forgotten, never lost.
Never far from mind or thought.
Not left behind, or in the past.
No image fades, the memory lasts.
You're seen in smiles my children give.
Always within my heart you'll live.
Remembered now, forever here.
'Til close of life, and end of years.

I've been very busy lately starting a new job, moving, getting settled in both.  I had not even thought about Mother's Day and the extra emotion it brings being adopted and separated from the mother who gave you life.  I had a few rough moments that brought tears to my eyes last week with a very moving quote from an adoptee who we lost this year.  She wrote incredible books that almost every adoptee can relate to, and BJ put into words what so many of us haven't been able to say, or define about our adoptive experiences.
Those who know their mother cannot imagine what it is like not know the woman who brought you into this world. What it is like to be forbidden by law to see her face, hear her voice, know her name. No one can imagine it because it is unimaginable.- BJ Lifton
And then I open the Sunday paper.


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20110507-essay-a-son-gets-to-know-and-love-the-mother-he-never-met.ece

And....

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Mothers-Day-Has-Double-Meaning-for-Adoptees--121392439.html  

Even though my biological mother can't step out of the past and let go of the secrets and shame I will always think of her and wonder if she thinks of me.  As a mother, I don't see how she could not.  And, as an adoptee I'll never give up hope someday, I will be able to know who she is.