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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^ Yep, you are clearly a pro-adoption cheerleader and probably work in the industry.

And an industry it is.

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You know, if you were  angry about vaccines, and I showed  you viable data that  goes against your  belief,  you would accuse me of working for Big Pharma. Lol. Not everyone is profiting from  facts. Your argument  is immature and naive. Come up with a fact, not an ad hominem attack, it's  not  effective and it sours  your  premise. If you have a strong premise, you would  not have to resort  to  childish barbs. 
So, no, again. I am a history professor,  an adoptee who was literally adopted on the black market decades ago, and the "industry" you speak  of doesn't really exist now in  the way you think- it's not a defined concept  the way  it was in the 50s and 60s, it's an ad hoc organic opportunistic venture which can be ethical and oftentimes not with NONE of the same variables involved. Sociology has changed everything about sex , reproduction, women's rights, economics,  societal  norms,  and issues surrounding  identity. And, sorry, we would all hope that mothers would and could keep  their kids if they want, or abort if they  choose. However,  there are still mothers and fathers ( they were not  even considered  years ago)  who do want to give  up their  babies, if they haven't aborted.  It's  not even reasonable to assume  otherwise. You can improve the system  but it's  never going away. There will always be unwanted babies, as sad as it is.

And with regard to all your esoteric examples  of coercion, etc., these are outside variables  that  do somehow intersect the entire adoption paradigm,  but they don't  define it. There will always be bad actors and bad religion and culture, but it does not apply to everyone, or  hardly anyone. Laws and policies  have  changed what is supposed  to happen,  and  we didn't have those before.

You seem angry about your own experience,  whether  you are an adoptee or birth parent. Try to climb out of  your own circumstance in order to continue  to improve the future of babies, because your personal experience  doesn't not generalize  in this regard.  I 've done that, but I suspect  I've  had much more time to reflect. Best of luck. [/quote]

Following up months later, I am the PP you so condescendingly referred to in your reply dismissing my concerns about domestic adoption industry coercion as only religious and claiming this is nothing like the Baby Scoop Era.  Your rose-colored glasses about adoption are ridiculous.

It is NOT only religious adoption agencies that are coercive and shame based.  The entire domestic adoption industry in the U.S. is this way.  The only way to create a supply of adoptable, sale-able healthy infants is to convince vulnerable women that they are selfish, immature, and unworthy of motherhood if they even consider parenting their own baby,  this is NOT just a practice of religious organizations; it is the standard practice of all recruiters of women who can be persuaded to relinquish their babies either out of desperation, fear, or lack of resources.

As a professor, you are utterly ignorant about the realities facing women and girls in poverty.  We have almost no social safety net whatsoever in this country anymore.  Single mothers in the 70s and 80s may have had slightly more social stigma but they had a LOT more societal support from WIC to welfare to affordable housing to Medicaid.  Those programs have been whittled down to the nub now.  Young women with no health insurance, no child care, no maternity leave, no sick leave….they literally have no way to keep their babies with just government help.  And so the predators swoop in.

The issue of whether a person’s DNA can stay anonymous forever is irrelevant to the issue of adopters closing adoptions that were supposed to be open.  Relinquishing mothers have zero legal recourse when that happens, zero.  The fact that her child might - MIGHT - some day choose to find her through commercial DNA services does not in any way ameliorate the loss of family, the loss of connection, the loss of relationship through childhood that was promised during the predatory attempts to convince a vulnerable mother that she should give away her child forever.  There are NO laws in any state that protect a relinquishing mother and her child in this circumstance.  An entire extended family may have had the expectation and promise of an ongoing relationship when the child was relinquished and then all that connection, heritage, relationship…all that can be taken away forever at the absolute power of the adopter.  The baby never signed up to lose her grandparents, cousins, siblings, aunts, uncles, and parents…all of that is taken from her for a minimum of 18 years but potentially forever even when the relinquishing family may have been promised otherwise throughout the entire process.

My mother was a relinquishing mother during the Baby Scoop Era.  The shame and stigma felt by women in the vast and growing evangelical “Christian” community in the U.S. is no less powerful and damaging than what she faced 60 years ago.

You clearly have never read the scholarly research that is encompassed in Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson, which focuses solely on the domestic adoption industry in the last 15 years, not 60 years ago.  Marketing of adoption is deceptive, coercive, and predatory, now even moreso than when my mother was forced to relinquish because the coercive practice of pre-birth matching plus the fact that many pregnant women turn to adoption while in desperate financial straits means that women are under different kinds of emotionally manipulative pressures…the guilt at disappointing the would-be adopters, the fear of legal action or demands to repay support during pregnancy…the guns to the head of women considering relinquishment are, on a practical level, more intense than the shame that forced women into secrecy back then.

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I am the PP above who described a situation that fits this paradigm. IMO I think the way the couple adopted their child was coercive and predatory since one of them was in the medical field and that's how they met the biological mother.

Bio mom was in a very vulnerable position mentally but both her and bio dad's families had resources to raise a child. Bio mom (I'm sure influenced by adoptive couple) chose adoption and bio father went along with it. I think the promise of being so open and her being promised life-time access was a key factor. Yet now that things are getting complicated the adoptive couple are considering limiting or closing off access to child since it makes it too difficult to navigate. For them.

It was a private adoption handled solely through an attorney's office and I wouldn't be surprised if money changed hands in some form despite any laws prohibiting it. I don't even think they had a home inspection or significant background check not even with immediate family. We would have known.
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