They Call Us Anti-Adoption

Titles can be annoying.  For some, it's easier to slap a title onto a group in an effort to deflect and sway the opinion of outsiders.  It's a handy weapon in the heat of battle, especially when there are those involved in the debate/battle who are not completely familiar with the situation at hand or the two opposing groups.

Trio and the minions love to refer to many of us as an anti-adoption group.  It was used during the last legal battle and is again being used in the more current legal battle.  It's a knee jerk terminology.  Something that strikes a nerve with the populace who is often only familiar with the feel good stories that appear in the local papers.  After all, who in their right mind is against an institution that helps find homes and families for children in dire need of one?  How often do you hear from those who talk about the need to find homes for the orphans in third world countries or those poor abused foster children who would have died if left in the care of their biological families?  When people hear the word adoption, this is what they see and believe.  Children who need a home.  Children who will die in their country of origin or languish in foster care if some wonderful family doesn't open their home.

They call us anti-adoption because we do not support all adoptions.  They believe that once the child is placed in that home, no matter what laws were skirted or outright broken, the child should remain there.  Refusing to support entitled couples who believe they have more right to a child than their own biological family means you're anti-adoption.  Refusing to support forced adoption means you're anti-adoption.  Refusing to support manipulation of the courts to keep a child a couple is not entitled to means you're anti-adoption.

SM and VB are just two cases in which the supporters for the abductors (i.e. potential adoptive family) have called us anti-adoption.  Refusing to support the discriminative laws in place that rob fathers of their right to their children means we are against adoption as a whole.  Never mind that these laws were put in place by the adoption industry itself in an effort to keep their commodity flowing.  Can't make their money if those pesky fathers have equal rights to their children, right?

Those who support the Hodgins and the kidnappers of VB support the dark side of adoption.  They are against families having the right to raise their children.  They support laws being skirted and in some cases, outright broken.  They support unethical means to obtain a child.  They support the current laws in place to keep fathers away.  They support ripping children from their homes and forcing them to live a life of slavery in another home with another couple and support forcing that child to call their abductors mom and dad.  They support foster couples side-stepping Children's Services and dependency laws in an effort to claim a foster child as their own, even with the child's family fighting to get the child back.

They support holding onto a child that is not theirs to hold onto in an effort to sway the courts and the public.  After all, how often do you hear "well, if the parents really loved their child, they'd give up and not take the child from the only home they know".  This is their ammo.  Obtain and restrain.  The longer they can hold onto the child, the better their chances.  Never mind if the child's family had been fighting since the beginning, once the legal battle has spanned a few years, the biological family is then seen as the monster trying to rip the child from their home.  And if you are unwilling to side with the wanna be adoptive parents, you are labeled anti-adoption.

I don't doubt there are those who are truly anti-adoption.  I have heard from quite a few adoptees themselves who believe adoption should be eradicated completely and only guardianship be available.  Adoption in its current form erases the child's history, that is a fact.  Seals their birth records and any information of their family of origin forever under the misguided ideal of "birth parent privacy".  Those who are truly against adoption are not against a child having a permanent home, but believe a permanent home with strangers should be a last resort and the child should still be able to keep their heritage, name and access to their records.  Guardianship gives a person almost all the same rights as a parent, but doesn't change the child's record of birth and history.  The only issue with this is that those who seek to raise a child as their own often want the records of the child's birth altered and changed to reflect them as the child's family.  They want the fraudulent birth certificate that erases the child's parents' names and puts the strangers' names in their place.  They prefer the "as if born to" ideal that has haunted the adoption world since the days of Georgia Tann.  

I'm not anti-adoption.  I support adoption when all is done legally and ethically (both parents consenting, no coercion, or the father being served properly and given time to contest should he wish to do so).  I support adoption when it is about finding a home for a child that truly needs one. It's clear in the SM case and the VB case that efforts were made to side-step the father.  Clear that it has nothing to do with finding a home for a child.  Both cases clearly are about finding a child for a couple at all costs.  Refusing to support the entitlement of strangers does not make us anti-adoption.  Refusing to support the current adoption practices and laws does not make anyone anti-adoption.  We are against illegal adoptions, unethical adoptions and the dehumanization of the child's family.  We are against those who seek to make it open season on our children.  Foster families should have no right to circumvent Children's Services or family in an effort to claim a child as their own.  Wanna be adoptive couples should have no right to battle a mother and/or father in court for the right to raise a child.  These cases highlight the proof that it is never about the child, but about the people hell-bent on taking that child.  

Those who seek to take children from fit families know they are wrong and know it is only about them and not the child.  The Capobiancos and the Hodgins are poster children for entitlement.  It was and is always about what they want and to hell with everyone else, including the children they claim to love.  And Trio encourages this entitlement.  Of course, the public cannot know it's all about the non-related adults who want the child as their own.  Easier to spin the tale of the deadbeat father who abandoned his pregnant ex-fiance or the jailbird father who spent most of the child's life in prison.  Hit the unsuspecting public in their heart.  Paint the entitled couples as saviors to these poor children who can provide so much more than the child's family.  

And if you refuse to believe their bullshit and dare to investigate the case further, you are automatically labeled as anti-adoption.