Closed Adoption and found the birth mother

[Anonymous]

What? This is my second or MAYBE third response on this 22-page thread. You have me confused with someone else.
[/b]

Not one person believes this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only people who's opinions should count are the birth family's and the adoptee. No one else. Not the adoptive family and certainly not the random general public who have no idea or experience about adoption and couldn't possibly fathom what it's like to have placed a child or be adopted. Everyone else is talking out of their ass.

Like the woman who chose to give up her child for adoption, closed the adoption, didn’t want to be contacted, but had her family contacted (instead of her), regardless?

Adoptee didn’t find her family using a PI they gave their genetic material to a private corporation who btw didn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be contacting by ppl they wouldn’t want to hear from. Birth mother should be just as angry with her relatives.

nope
just because you found out your mother doesn't mean you have the right to contact her (much less insist on it) if she explicitly said she didn't want you to

Well when someone opts into being contacted on one of these platforms it does. That’s why you have the option to not do that. Have you ever used 23 and me or Ancestry? You select to allow people to contact you. Also as is obvious from the first post...OP’s sister didn’t contact her relatives through any other means besides the website.

This is being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse.

The adoptee KNEW it was a closed adoption, and that the mother was adamant she should not be contacted. In what world should someone then extrapolate that it’s okay to contact everyone else they can get their hands on and tell them their (and thus, also the birth mother’s) story? And the. Actually feels upset that no one wants to buy in?

NP. Because *other adults who have full agency are involved in this scenario.* If I had a half-sibling out there, I would want to know. And I would figure out a way to make contact and possibly form a connection without involving my mother or father. Yes, the birth mother gets to decide no contact. But the child can choose to pursue contacts with other blood relatives, and those blood relatives can choose to engage or not. Once it is clear that anyone in this scenario is not interested in contact, that right should be respected.

But the point is that having a child is a completely different situation. The child is a human being and very much an Intercal part of the decision that the mother unilaterally made. It is an unusual thing that one person can make the choice for another not to know his or her blood relations or to have any opportunity to see the people the child is related to. With that kind of extreme right, my view is that there is also a responsibility to behave humanely. These are often children who have no idea why their parents abandoned them. Why they weren’t worth the trouble, worth the sacrifice, worth even the inconvenience of being embarrassed later in life by being available to answer questions. To me, that is an incredibly selfish act for biological parent. It very well may be that placing your child for adoption is fully altruistic and benefits you were a child. But not offering to provide information or any contact when your own child approaches you to me is the upmost and selfish behavior. At core, I believe that we all owe each other common decency and, where we can provide it, information and enclosure. And when discussing a biological parent, in my view that responsibility is heightened extraordinarily. Giving up your child for adoption in my view takes away the responsibility for caring for and raising the child. It does not take away the responsibility of behaving empathetically and with an open heart and kindness to a life that you brought into the world.



So if it says no trespassing on the fence, it’s okay if I break in the side door?

So if you decide you don’t want to be resuscitated can you decide that every adult that is tangentially related to you won’t be resuscitated either?

No, but to follow your bouncing ball, if I write an order that I don’t want to be resuscitated, the; I don’t want to be resuscuitated. I don’t expect the medical team to contact my cousins to see if I really meant it, or for them to doubt my decision because it’s been a while.

The bio mother cannot make decisions and ultimatums for the entire biological family. Again, she doesn't have the proprietary ownership of this person.

No, but she does have proprietary ownership of her experience and what happened to her 20 years ago. This argument throughout this thread is akin to simple gossiping. Seriously. If you know something about someone, it doesn't give you the right to share that information with that person's nieces, nephews, aunts, whatever. Of course you have a right to share your own information, but it is just common decency to not spread the story of your BM with distant relatives (or any relatives for that matter).

So, adoptee could have contact her bio family and just said I'm related to you without sharing any more - but to share the BM's story is simply spreading gossip.

Are you seriously of the view that people have the “right” to not be gossiped about?

Yea there are certain actions that a birth mothers family should or could do to be kind. But having elected to have a closed birth does not mean they are required to do that. That’s the point that PP is making. Nothing about having a closed adoption means you can control the future behavior of your relatives or your biological child or stop people from using technology that did not even exist when you made that decision.

No, I didn't say she had a right not to be gossiped about (eye roll back at ya) I said it's just common decency. See bolded part.

+1
the analogy to gossip is quite useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What? This is my second or MAYBE third response on this 22-page thread. You have me confused with someone else.
[/b]

Not one person believes this.

Ask Jeff to check.

[Anonymous]

What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I'm sorry, but I think you mean well but you are not getting it. Its a shock to you women are raped and forced to carry children and some are forced to place. This still happens all the time. Some states severely limit abortions. Not everyone can pay for an abortion. Some families are against abortion. Adoption is a huge money maker for agencies, facilitators, and attorneys so there is lots of sleazy stuff going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

I’m a PP who posted about being raped and getting pregnant, but having a miscarriage so wasn’t forced to make that terrible decision, but Are you saying that if I had decided to have my rapists baby at age 14 and give it up for adoption, it would have been for selfish reasons? You think a baby would have been best off being raised by a traumitized teen who would see that child as a reminder every minute of how it came to be? That’s worse case scenario I suppose, but many women become pregnant by mistake and if they can’t bring themselves to terminate and choose adoption and make another couple’s dream of parenthood real, I can’t see how you can call them selfish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

Well put. There were a lot of ways to hide people in the past. One way was to hide kids born of teens in the home as if they were children of the parents, so the mother is actually being passed off as aunt. DNA has blown the lid off that, too. Disabled children were put into residential homes, etc. Babies were forcibly removed from unwed teens after they were sent to maternity homes. The stories out of Ireland and Boston are chilling. They were medicated in these homes, too, to keep quiet.Twins were often separated. Young children were separated from siblings. Sealed adoptions are part of the ugly past. Also, fathers had no rights at all- their children could be adopted out without any input from them, and given no options of raising the children on their own. These were all bundled up with a ton of other ugly civil issues that affected people through the 70s- for women, people of color, societal abuses- many based on faulty and dangerous belief systems.

There was this belief that wherever a child landed that it would be their new name, ethnicity, etc. Tabula Rasa...clean slate. We know now that this is all ridiculous and people who are adopting really want more information, too.Adoptions are open, or semi open, and everyone understands that information is controlled only for the time of a child's minority..until age 18- even if it is a closed adoption. Sealed afoptions really do not exist anymore. People who had them, as bio parents or adoptive parents, aren't going to be "grandfathered" under old societal mores, especially when we all realize how dangerous these ideas were.

For a long time, children were placed in ethnically similar homes with helped facilitate closed adoptions, but that ended in the 60s. There are now interracial adoptions, adoptions to same sex couples, single people, etc. Adoption is no longer a secret or astounding fact for anyone ( just like all the before mentioned situations in family types).... such as so many years ago.The game has changed and the child is his/her own agent- no one can really make any decision for another person once they reach majority. At that point they can seek what information they want about themselves and the circumstances of their birth. They can also find out the information may not be pleasant, but it is still their information. Most kids adopted in the last 25 years have some information- it depends a lot on how the adoptive parents handled it. For the most part, they are advised not to maintain any fairy tale ideas a child may have, and there is a lot written on the subject to guide parents today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

Well put. There were a lot of ways to hide people in the past. One way was to hide kids born of teens in the home as if they were children of the parents, so the mother is actually being passed off as aunt. DNA has blown the lid off that, too. Disabled children were put into residential homes, etc. Babies were forcibly removed from unwed teens after they were sent to maternity homes. The stories out of Ireland and Boston are chilling. They were medicated in these homes, too, to keep quiet.Twins were often separated. Young children were separated from siblings. Sealed adoptions are part of the ugly past. Also, fathers had no rights at all- their children could be adopted out without any input from them, and given no options of raising the children on their own. These were all bundled up with a ton of other ugly civil issues that affected people through the 70s- for women, people of color, societal abuses- many based on faulty and dangerous belief systems.

There was this belief that wherever a child landed that it would be their new name, ethnicity, etc. Tabula Rasa...clean slate. We know now that this is all ridiculous and people who are adopting really want more information, too.Adoptions are open, or semi open, and everyone understands that information is controlled only for the time of a child's minority..until age 18- even if it is a closed adoption. Sealed afoptions really do not exist anymore. People who had them, as bio parents or adoptive parents, aren't going to be "grandfathered" under old societal mores, especially when we all realize how dangerous these ideas were.

For a long time, children were placed in ethnically similar homes with helped facilitate closed adoptions, but that ended in the 60s. There are now interracial adoptions, adoptions to same sex couples, single people, etc. Adoption is no longer a secret or astounding fact for anyone ( just like all the before mentioned situations in family types).... such as so many years ago.The game has changed and the child is his/her own agent- no one can really make any decision for another person once they reach majority. At that point they can seek what information they want about themselves and the circumstances of their birth. They can also find out the information may not be pleasant, but it is still their information. Most kids adopted in the last 25 years have some information- it depends a lot on how the adoptive parents handled it. For the most part, they are advised not to maintain any fairy tale ideas a child may have, and there is a lot written on the subject to guide parents today.

So, basically you are saying that women should just abort if faced with an unwanted pregnancy - there is no other choice to be able to move on with their life without future repercussions. I hope you are pro choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

So maybe we should just start branding these women with some sort of symbol when they take away the baby so everyone, not just their family, can know how selfish and lacking in virtue they are. Considering the fallout doesn’t matter 18 years down the line, we might as well make sure they are (possibly) alienated by friends and family right at the beginning.

Oh, and as for the other poster talking about how adoption is a big money making scheme. It’s liekly true.. but do you know who bears the brunt and gets none of the money? The mother. But apparently, she has to suffer all the punishment, repercussions, and the rest of it, forever.

This thread has taught be a lot. I always thought adoption was a good thing.

[Anonymous]

I'm not going to be getting pregnant, but this thread has really changed my mind about adoption, too.

Honestly, I think the likelihood of potential future contact via 23 & Me, etc., is going to do more to swing back women's contraceptive and abortion rights than anything else could. There was really strong conservative pushback for the last few years, but that may change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

So maybe we should just start branding these women with some sort of symbol when they take away the baby so everyone, not just their family, can know how selfish and lacking in virtue they are. Considering the fallout doesn’t matter 18 years down the line, we might as well make sure they are (possibly) alienated by friends and family right at the beginning.

Oh, and as for the other poster talking about how adoption is a big money making scheme. It’s liekly true.. but do you know who bears the brunt and gets none of the money? The mother. But apparently, she has to suffer all the punishment, repercussions, and the rest of it, forever.

This thread has taught be a lot. I always thought adoption was a good thing.

What I’m getting from this thread is the best solution would be for the pregnant woman to either abort or just kill herself (along with the fetus).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to be getting pregnant, but this thread has really changed my mind about adoption, too.

Honestly, I think the likelihood of potential future contact via 23 & Me, etc., is going to do more to swing back women's contraceptive and abortion rights than anything else could. There was really strong conservative pushback for the last few years, but that may change.

The problem is part of the more co servatice agenda is to push adoption vs. abortion as a win-win.

Personally, I’ll be archiving this thread for any time I see anyone being pushed towards / told that adoption is the best answer.

[Anonymous]

This is why I would opt for an abortion over adoption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I find most disturbing about this thread is the stories of rape that went unreported. Imagine how many more times these perpetrators got away with similar crimes, whether or not those rapes resulted in pregnancy.

It's also horrifying to think of those girls who were forced by their parents to carry pregnancy to term. I wonder how often this still happens today? It really got me thinking about whether or not it could be legally recognized as child abuse, assuming the girl does not want to continue pregnancy.

I have some friends who have adopted recently and those adoptions are open, at least somewhat. The OP describes a closed adoption scenario that is more increasingly rare. Any person has a right to their medical information and family health history. No one has a right to impose a relationship on another person, and this includes adoptees who want to reunite with biological family members.

Overall, any woman who willingly chose to carry a pregnancy to term and made the sacrifice of adoption, should be entitled to personal privacy if that's what she wants. Part of her sacrifice should be the sharing of basic medical information for the health of the adoptee. Beyond that, it needs to be her choice. However, it seems reasonable that I had an adoptee could contact the birth mother initially to see if there is any interest in getting to know each other.

OP, your sister should not have contacted her birth mother's family but rather the birth mother herself. If there was no way to contact the birth mother, she should have left the family alone. I realize that is very painful for her, but she should remember that her birth mother already gave her the gift of life, and that may have to be enough.

Adoption has changed so much over the past 20 years that it is difficult to look at prior adoptions under the same lens as adoptions occuring today.

I respect your view, but see the situation quite differently. I do not view biological mother is as having made the sacrifice of giving up their children for adoption. For those women who chose adoption because they were unwilling to acknowledge the truth that they had had a child as they moved forward in life, they did it for selfish, or self-centered, reasons. Not to give a gift of life to someone else. The baby was just an unwanted by product. They did what they did to live up to cultural and family expectations, without having to raise the child or do any of the hard work involved in parenting. They, along with the biological father is, created a life. Those babies did not have the ability to consent or withhold consent from any document allowing the facts of their biological origins to be covered up for the convenience of biological parents wanting to conform to cultural norms or to withhold things from their future families. In my view, nobody has a legal obligation to be in a relationship with anyone else. Equally, though, nobody has a right to stop anybody from stating the truth to whomever they wish. Ethically, which can be viewed separately, I think it is apparent for someone prioritizing their ability to keep a secret they may be ashamed of as a priority over another person knowing who their biological family is. It is of course understandable that people would fear how their family members would react to finding out that information about another biological child had been withheld. But the reason family members may be upset about this is because they may view it as relevant to them. As something the biological mother should have shared. That she didn’t share it is her own choice. When you choose not to share a difficult part of your history, sometimes it comes to bite you back in unpredictable ways and there are consequences.

Well put. There were a lot of ways to hide people in the past. One way was to hide kids born of teens in the home as if they were children of the parents, so the mother is actually being passed off as aunt. DNA has blown the lid off that, too. Disabled children were put into residential homes, etc. Babies were forcibly removed from unwed teens after they were sent to maternity homes. The stories out of Ireland and Boston are chilling. They were medicated in these homes, too, to keep quiet.Twins were often separated. Young children were separated from siblings. Sealed adoptions are part of the ugly past. Also, fathers had no rights at all- their children could be adopted out without any input from them, and given no options of raising the children on their own. These were all bundled up with a ton of other ugly civil issues that affected people through the 70s- for women, people of color, societal abuses- many based on faulty and dangerous belief systems.

There was this belief that wherever a child landed that it would be their new name, ethnicity, etc. Tabula Rasa...clean slate. We know now that this is all ridiculous and people who are adopting really want more information, too.Adoptions are open, or semi open, and everyone understands that information is controlled only for the time of a child's minority..until age 18- even if it is a closed adoption. Sealed afoptions really do not exist anymore. People who had them, as bio parents or adoptive parents, aren't going to be "grandfathered" under old societal mores, especially when we all realize how dangerous these ideas were.

For a long time, children were placed in ethnically similar homes with helped facilitate closed adoptions, but that ended in the 60s. There are now interracial adoptions, adoptions to same sex couples, single people, etc. Adoption is no longer a secret or astounding fact for anyone ( just like all the before mentioned situations in family types).... such as so many years ago.The game has changed and the child is his/her own agent- no one can really make any decision for another person once they reach majority. At that point they can seek what information they want about themselves and the circumstances of their birth. They can also find out the information may not be pleasant, but it is still their information. Most kids adopted in the last 25 years have some information- it depends a lot on how the adoptive parents handled it. For the most part, they are advised not to maintain any fairy tale ideas a child may have, and there is a lot written on the subject to guide parents today.

So, basically you are saying that women should just abort if faced with an unwanted pregnancy - there is no other choice to be able to move on with their life without future repercussions. I hope you are pro choice.

It is not about me at all. It is about the reality which is: no more secret births. Technology and legal systems have done entirely away with that.