National Adoption BEwareness Month.

National Adoption BEwareness Month.

Remember the families needlessly separated, the mothers who longed to keep babies they loved and wanted, and the adoptees who were cast assunder by an industry that sold them for the highest bidder. My prayers are with all of you.

Birthmothers™ trademarked = you can't use it ... ?

For something to do in your free time, dig around the U.S Patent and Trademark Office, and take a boo through their database. Do you know what a trademark is? By registering a trademark, a company claims (and obtains) the exclusive legal right to use that word or phrase. A trademark is a brand name.

What is a trademark? By the USPTO FAQ, "Trademarks include any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and "to indicate the source of the goods."

Why is this relevant? Because if you do a search on the USPTO trademark database, you will find that the term "birthmother" is the trademark of Birthmother Ministries, a group that focuses on convincing mothers to surrender babies for adoption. They befriend vulnerable mothers, steer them towards surrendering, and link them up with baby brokers who can then lovingly harvest them. Yes, folks, this means that they legally own that word. Interesting that, according to the definition of what a trademark is, it distinguishes indicates the source of the goods. Gee, the source of the goods -- all those little babies being brokered for adoption -- are the good ol', happily-surrendering, splayed-on-their-backs birthmothers, eh? Or, should we say, birthmothers™.

Interesting. You too can be a brand name owned by that company, a "source" of "goods." And not only that, but the very name does not belong to you, but to a company that "lovingly" separates mothers from their children. Mothers of adoption loss, this is just one more reason to question whether you really want to be labeled by this term. Never mind that, according to the letter of the law, technically you cannot use this term without their permission.

Leaving Mothers Without Protection: A Human Rights Abuse

Today is the day when bloggers unite to speak out about human rights. Each of us has our own focus on human rights, as this is a far-reaching subject.

Mine concerns mothers and their children.

A mother and her child together are one of the most vulnerable families in society. Vulnerable, that is, because in some patriarchal and woman-hating cultures, they are rendered without protection from external forces that work to separate them. In patriarchal nations, a mother is often only certain that she will be able to keep her baby if (1) She is married and thus financially/socially protected by a man, or (2) She has sufficient financial status in the employment market such that she can independently support her baby herself (Note how no-one complains about middle-aged single women adopting, but a young single mother having a baby is often vilified and stigmatized).

Is this sexist? Definitely! Two people of opposite sex make love. The man can walk away from his responsibility for any resulting child. The woman cannot. She must deal with the consequences in a directly personal way and in such a way that social sanctions limit not only her options, but stigmatize her into solutions that society either provides or withholds from her. A baby may be part of her body for nine months, and that experience is one she can never walk away from.

"Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body." - Elizabeth Stone

Male sexuality and female sexuality are treated differently. As Ellison (2003) notes:

Until there was an infectious disease model in the AIDS pandemic, male sexual activity had provoked little public controversy. Communities... have neither built nor filled paternity homes with single fathers to undergo moral or psychological cleansing before being returned to society as marriageable. Male illegitimate fertility has not been the focus of heated political controversy, moral recriminations, reproductive legislation, or institutionalization (p. 338)

Women's sexuality, and women's fertility, is still seen as a threat to be controlled, distributed as "wealth" to "deserving men," or supported only as far as it benefits the economy or politically-motivated population growth.

How do human rights factor into this? Well, in 1948, the United Nations (including the U.S. and Canada), passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In effect, these signatory nations promised the rights contained in this document to all their citizens. And this documents forms the basis, the foundation, of ethical human behavior.

Article 2 states, "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

This means that women should not be treated less respectfully than men, that the rights contained are applicable to all. Why? Because we are ALL human beings, not dogs, goats or amoebae. It also means that women should be able to keep their children WITHOUT legally belonging to a man, that legal marriage should not be required to "legitimize" a woman fulfilling the natural function of her body: giving birth to her child.

Article 16 states: "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State." A mother and her child together is a family. There can be no doubt, and no argument, about this. They thus have the right to protection by society and the state.

But perhaps most explicit is Article 25, which states "(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."

This, agreed to in 1948, protects mothers and their infants! No mother should be forced by poverty, coercion, or social pressure to surrender her baby for adoption. Every mother has the RIGHT to protection and social support such that this horrible disembabyment, this lifelong trauma, this systemic violence, is not inflicted upon her:

"Adoption is a violent act, a political act of aggression towards a woman who has supposedly offended the sexual mores by committing the unforgivable act of not suppressing her sexuality, and therefore not keeping it for trading purposes through traditional marriage. The crime is a grave one, for she threatens the very fabric of our society. The penalty is severe. She is stripped of her child by a variety of subtle and not so subtle manoeuvres and then brutally abandoned." - Joss Shawyer, Death by Adoption, (1979)

“Almost everyone believes that on some level, [mothers] made a choice to give their babies away. Here, I argue that adoption is rarely about mothers’ choices; it is, instead, about the abject choicelessness of some resourceless women.” (Solinger, 2001).

Let us protect ALL mothers from the violence and trauma of losing an infant to adoption. It is clear that if the basic human rights of ALL mothers were respected, protected, and codified into the laws of each nation, that fewer families would be dismembered, fewer mothers would be forced to surrender their beloved infants, and the world would be a far more ethical and safe place for mothers who are giving birth -- mothers left vulnerable to the predacious and profit-driven adoption industry because their human rights have been violated.


References:
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• "Elizabeth Stone Quotes" at http://thinkexist.com/quotes/elizabeth_stone/
  
• Ellison, M. (2003). "Authoritative knowledge and single women's unintentional pregnancies, abortions, adoption, and single motherhood: Social stigma and structural violence." Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 17(3), 322-347
• Shawyer, J. (1979). Death by Adoption. Circada Press.
• Solinger, R. (2001). Beggars and choosers - How the politics of choice shapes adoption, abortion, and welfare in the United States. New York: Hill & Wang.

Adoption: Is surrendering a baby an act of violence?

Just wanted to drop in and let you know i have not forgotten about you, friends and readers. Life has just been very busy lately all around.

But I wanted to share some thoughts with you. I have been corresponding lately with some wonderful people who do research on trauma and violence, especially violence (physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual) against mothers and children.

And it struck me, of course we all know that "disembabyment" (using coercion to make a mother surrender her baby for adoption) is an act of violence; HOWEVER, is the surrender ("placing") of a baby for adoption also an act of violence, perpetrated on the child?

The fact that someone is coerced to perform a violent act, or is an innocent victim of the same act, does not make it any less violent for the other victim involved: the child who is ripped away from family, heritage, blood kin, family history, and the nurturing maternal presence he/she has bonded with for nine months and knows of no other.

I have met many adoptees who have very justified feelings of anger, rejection, and betrayal. But what if it is not just anger and hurt from being rejected: What if there is also a very justified feeling of having been the victim of violence? What if because there are no words for this crime, we all have a hard time expressing the emotions resulting from it? Or recognizing it as a crime. I.e., if the mother voluntarily surrenders her baby, it is an act of violence against her baby. If she is coerced into doing it, then she was forced to commit an act of violence and as such was a victim as well.

What if this is why most of society shuns women who have surrendered their babies? What if this is why many mothers who have surrendered feel guilt and shame? Because they have actually committed "a crime with no name." A crime that became socially sanctioned when infant adoption was legally invented ~150 yrs ago, but even now which makes many people feel uncomfortable. A crime now promoted with carefully-researched advertising campaigns geared at impressionable young mothers who want to "do the right thing." A crime that is no longer considered a crime as it is now "legalized abandonment," but about which all humans have an instinctive feeling is still just as violent. Is this why many people's first response to a natural mother is, "I could never give away my child!"

Not violent? Let your imagination picture a 4 or 5 yr old being suddenly and permanently pulled from their mothers arms ... if i were a young child it would certainly feel violent to me. The only difference? A 4 to 5 year old is verbal and has words for their loss, their pain, their trauma. Love her or hate her, this is what Nancy Verrier says:

" While adoptive parents may refer to the child as "chosen" and to themselves as the "real" parents, the child has had an experience of another mother to whom he was once attached and from whom he is now separated which he can never completely ignore. The words we use to describe that separation or the cognitive reasons we give for it make no difference to the feeling sense of the child. As one adoptee told me, "Being wanted by my adoptive parents didn't compare to being unwanted by my [mother]." Whether we refer to this separation as surrendering or relinquishment, the child experiences it as abandonment."

If the act of surrender, or of being taken, is a violent act against a helpless newborn, then how about a billboard campaign about "Giving away your baby is an act of violence. If you really loved your baby, you would keep your baby. Have a heart!" Tell it like it truly is.

Maybe it would counter the latest nauseating NCFA-promoted "Adoption is being a good mother" and "Adoption is a loving option" billboard and TV ad crap.


If you are an adoptee reading this: What do you think? What do you feel about it? Do you feel that it was an act of violence you experienced? (Comments enabled for this post)

"Son of Surrogate" -- check it out

Check it out.

Homepage. http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com
Blog. http://sonofasurrogate.tripod.com/blog/
And especially the Post "Love Isn't All You Need"

Not a Great Loss (HUMOR)

President Bush was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the President if he would like to lead the discussion on the word "tragedy".

So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a "tragedy".

One little boy stood up and offered: "If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and ills him, that would be a tragedy.

"No," said Bush, "that would be an accident." A little girl raised her hand: "If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy."

"I'm afraid not," explained the president. "That's what we would call great loss."

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Bush searched the room. "Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?"

Finally at the back of the room a little Johnny boy raised his hand...In a quiet voice he said: "If Air Force One carrying you and Mrs.
Bush was struck by a "friendly fire" missile and blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy."

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Bush. "That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?"

"Well," says the boy, "It has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be a fucking accident either".

If you call yourself a "birthmother" ...

... you are stating that you are not a mother.

... you are stating that you have no connection, no love, no bond with your lost child.

... you are stating that your worth in your child's life is as nothing other than a convenient set of reproductive organs, not as a person or a human being.

... you are agreeing with the people who told you that you are not fit to be a mother because (fill in the blank) you were young, unmarried, poor, a sinner, irresponsible for getting pregnant in the first place ... or whatever the coercion of the time was.

... you are in effect calling yourself an incubator.

But worst of all, you are stating you are no longer a mother as your role ended with birth.

The term "birth mother" was created and defined by social workers to be part of "Respectful Adoption Language" which, in contrast, defines the only "Mothers and Fathers" of our children to be those who adopted. It is only respectful to those who have adopted, and shows you no respect what-so-ever.

You deserve much more than this. We may have been separated from our children, though surrender or "placement", but we are still their mothers. And, being mothers, we are not "birth mothers," because a "birthmother" is defined as being a non-mother.

Think of it this way, in other (non-adoption) circumstances, one still says "His mother died when he was a baby," or "His mother divorced his father when he was a baby, and he has a stepmother." NOT "His birth mother died when he was a baby." In the "Real World," outside of the surreal and artificial landscape of "Adoption Land," there is no such thing as a FORMER mother!

That is why many natural mothers, who still love our children and feel that strong connection with them, reject the term "birthmother." We know the bond of motherhood, which even lasts despite years and decades of separation. We do not feel that it is necessary to be denigrated in dehumanized in order to "respect" another social group.

But no matter how difficult society makes the lives of single mothers who refuse to relinquish their children, those women who gave into the pressures suffer in a way the others will (mercifully) never know. For the saddest and most horrifying aspect of adoption is the amount of emotional damage inflicted upon the natural mother. To call her the 'birth mother' instead of the 'natural mother' allows her only the physical birth and denies her those feelings she wasn't supposed to have. -- Death by Adoption, Joss Shawyer, Cicada Press (1979), p. 62

The term "birth mother" as thus applied to mothers of adoption loss is -- in effect -- a blatant lie.