I Am Not Anti-Adoption Either

I couldn’t agree more.  

Adoption should be the last option after all other avenues have been explored. (While most adoptees wish adoption had not complicated their existence, all of us are grateful that our birthmothers chose life over aborting their unplanned pregnancy.)  Both of the Lost Daughters essays and the subsequent reader comments are vital in creating an informed dialogue that center around the complex aspects of adoption.

Conversation about adoption, its pros and cons, from various angles is necessary in order to comprehend the perspectives of those making up the adoption equation.  For adoptive parents imagining life without the child they adopted is unimaginable. For adoptees not knowing anything about the family that relinquished their parental rights is unimaginable.  For birth parents, making the decision to adopt is difficult. Every party has their point of view, their unique situations, and all except the adoptee have a choice in the matter.

As an adoptee, what has rankled me most about my closed adoption are two things.  Having not had a choice in being adopted was made more onerous by being prevented from knowing anything about who or where I came from.  Not only was I severed from relationships with my birth parents, I was denied a family history and a medical background. Due to stringent privacy laws that favor both biological and adoptive parents, adoption has often felt like an amputation.  I lost something, a sense of my self, and that was out of my control. Throughout my sixty years, I often resented being handicapped in this way.

For me the bottom line is this: I never wanted to be adopted and if I had a choice in the matter, I’d want to work out another solution.  Don’t get my wrong. I love my adoptive family, and I’m thrilled with the birth relatives that I’ve been privileged to get to know. I’ve spent eight years figuring out my adoption story.  When I located my birth mother after a three-year search, she denied contact with me. Eight months later she changed her mind but when asked, she gave me the wrong name for my bio-dad. Once I found him, my birth father died before agreeing to meet me.  Add to those disappointments the reality that my adoptive mother would not accept my reunion with my birth mother. Adoption has complicated my life, and it needn’t have. So, of course I agree with my fellow adoptees at the Lost Daughters. Adoption should be the last option when considering the choices for an unplanned pregnancy.

I’m all for the conversation, the dialogue, the blogs, the reposts, and the understanding.  Let’s keep talking! Share your comments.

Next week, I share a twist on how I view adoption and my adoptive parents. It’s a good one!

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