THOUGHTS ON OUR CURRENT NATIONAL CRISIS

“It is always patriotic to protest wrongdoing.”

As a 73­-years-young witness to the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s ,90’s, and beyond, I have seen the Republicans in our current Congress abandon morality for fealty to their rich corporate donors, and have witnessed too many of them behave like the citizens in the Emperors’ New Clothes, none of whom could admit that their leader had fallen for a scam and believed his tailor’s magic talents dressed him in the best of the best…when in fact he was traipsing around in the nude. No one but a clear-thinking child had the courage to say exactly what he saw!

This is how the Republican Congress has behaved under Trump, with a decreasing percentage of US citizens who support them.  The Republicans repaid their wealthy donors with a tax bill that will eventually put over 90% of the country’s assets in the hands of the 1%.

The Republican Congress has ignored the facts outlined in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. This book, written by 27 of our country’s esteemed mental health professionals, provides their learned analysis of Trump’s mental illness and the danger it poses to our country.

Trump’s team tried to obstruct justice in January of 2018 by hiding evidence given to congress about actual recorded phone calls proving criminal associations between the Trump administration and Russian agents; the facts were recently released by Senator Diane Feinstein in defiance of Republicans who are colluding with the crimes of the administration.

Corruption destroys democracies. Mexico’s government has never achieved true democratic representation of the people’s needs and values due to criminal corruption, and the country is set to explode due to overpopulation, religious discouragement of family planning, and the poverty-driven increase in criminal recruits.

The American Dream is dependent on a system that supports the rule of law in a democracy designed to include all our citizens in the health, education, and self-actualization that comes from a united citizenry. Only patently ignorant or selfish people deny the value added to our communities through public support for higher education. Millions of people are ready, willing, and able to contribute greatly to our country’s fiscal health and growth, if we can contribute to their education and training.

To respect civil rights for all citizens, we must demand equal rights for the half of our citizens who are employed: women. Our economy and our culture will benefit greatly. Regardless of our political party, we must have the right to equal pay for equal work and an educational and work environment free of sexual harassment from male co-workers. The right to control our reproduction and health care choices should never be taken from us. The Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life states “As of 2017, public support for legal abortion remains as high as it has been in two decades of polling. Currently, 57% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” With Justice Kennedy retiring from the Supreme Court, the Trump plan is to replace him with a justice who will swing the court’s vote against Roe v. Wade and deny legal abortion in the US. Less than 22% of voters want to impose their minority religious beliefs onto citizens who do not share their views. Since they can’t win fairly at the polls, they want to override it by putting religious extremists on the Supreme Court.

I had two unplanned pregnancies for which I chose adoption over abortion. I never heard any woman say an abortion altered the course of her life (except botched illegal abortions) but thousands of women say adoption did just that. Why? Because of the huge difference in grief experienced, the lack of expert counseling, the social stigma, and the adoption industry’s bias toward adoptive parents’ comfort and security over the birthmother’s instinctive drive to know how her child is doing in their adoptive home. Adoption was my choice in 1963 because abortion was illegal. Adoption was my choice in 1974 because initially I was planning to marry and raise my daughter, but marriage plans changed when I was too far along to consider abortion. I was not willing to raise my child alone. It had nothing to do with religious beliefs.

Women will never be in control of their futures if they are denied control of their reproduction. The anti-abortion movement was initially driven by the Catholic church, and evangelical Christians who believe a man is the unquestioned leader of the family, and the woman’s role is subservient to his. The woman’s “godly” role is to stay home and have children, supplementing income where possible, but not in any full-time equally paid profession. Women without economic power, like my mother who never worked outside the home, are often forced to stay in unhealthy marriages because they can’t duplicate the standard of living they currently have if they choose to live independently. Considering that over half of first marriages fail, as do 67% of second marriages, and 73% of third marriages, it has been hypothesized that women’s financial independence as they age, makes them less dependent on marriage. (Psychology Today, Mark Banschick, M.D. 2012).

Women’s rights are a subset of civil rights. No one can say they love this country if they refuse to support civil rights and education for all its citizens. Discrimination produces conflict and violence. Without unity, we devolve out of a true democracy, into a predator-prey paradigm. Many short-sighted people are forgetting that our only viable competitive edge for leadership in the global economy, fostering global health and welfare, is our unified support for civil rights within the country and protection of free nations around the globe.

If you are sounding the alarm with your representatives in government, if you are working to elect legislators and policy makers who support the programs that educate, unite, heal, and protect our environment, our infrastructure, our diverse citizenry, our partnerships with democracies around the world, then––at this sensitive point in history––you are contributing to the survival of the United States of America. If you are young, don’t be politically passive. When my generation has passed on, you will have to set limits on greed, violence and corruption, inside and outside of your government, or the protections you desire for your career and your family will be lost.

If you are feeling victimized by hurtful, greedy and immoral people, hang out with survivors and overcomers…people who have learned how to get their power back. If you identify as a victim, you will recover at a snail’s pace. How do you know if you are stuck in a victim mentality? If you’re chronically angry, resentful, bitter, and judgmental, you are either in the first few years of a PTSD response, or you are prolonging your vulnerability with destructive beliefs, opinions, and expectations. There is no experience from which we cannot heal if we learn how to focus our thoughts and emotions into constructive action.

If you are reading this, you are in the minority…most people don’t read the entirety of any book they begin! (Okay, maybe you’re one of those who peeks at the end before you begin). Either way, go a bit further, especially if you enjoy the idea of evolving into the higher powers available to you. You will find references to ideas and books that invite you to view your humanity and your evolution as an adventure in expanding consciousness, instead of a day-to-day encounter with a consciousness-narrowing version of pre-digested religious dogma. If the mystical life is nothing new to you, then you really are a rare bird…keep flying high!

PART II PUBLICATIONS RELEVANT TO CRIME AND DRUG POLICIES

Most of these books are available for audio download and are well-narrated.

Cory Booker US Senator

DRUG USE SHOULD BE SEEN AS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE, NOT A CRIME

The Fire Next Door: Mexico’s Drug Violence and its Danger to the United States (2012). Ted Galen Carpenter’s thesis: The US strategy of drug prohibition, like the US prohibition policy on alcohol, does not work, and exponentially increases cartel violence in Mexico and excessive imprisonment in the US for non-violent drug offenses.

The solution: decriminalize the use of drugs, as did Portugal, and overall drug use will not expand. If the production and use of drugs were decriminalized, most of the 20 to 39 billion dollars a year that US citizens pay to black market drug suppliers would be eliminated. Mexican Cartels and US gangs would lose their billion-dollar incomes and would not be able to maintain their power: their power depends on increasing their current level of acquisition of weapons, political influence, and soldiers.

Drug addiction treatment would be the intelligent alternative to prison, because upon discharge, clean and sober addicts will return to society sooner, healthier, with services to assist with education and employment. If they choose to take drugs, there will not have to commit crimes to afford drugs. In this decriminalized scenario, more addicts can avoid recruitment into gangs, and avoid the trauma and cult-like conditioning of the gang lifestyle inside prison and after release.

Javier Sicilia, well-known Mexican novelist, essayist, peace activist, poet, college professor and journalist:

The flawed premise of prohibition is the mistaken

idea that criminalizing drug use, drug production, 

and distribution will lower sales, production, use,

and related violence. The facts are that the war on

drugs has increased and continues to increase the

destruction of individuals, families and the rule of

law.

                                                                                  

“The legal prohibition of drugs, as always, has bankrolled the industry of organized crime, as it did in the days of alcohol prohibition in the United States. Now, the escalation of organized crime into a wealthy, heavily armed military power, has pitted it against the military power of Latin America and the United States in the failed war on drugs.”

In closing, democracy and the rule of law are the only solutions that allow proper protection of US citizens, and global alliances built on trust and strength. Knowledge and unity is power. It’s not too late to pull our government back from the brink if we can organize effectively and remove those in in the US Congress and state government who promote destructive drug policies––such as more police violence and expensive, overflowing prisons––when we know current policies are not working, but are escalating the wealth and power of organized crime on a global level.

The World Health Organization is urging countries to end criminalization of drug use and asks for a commitment to addressing it as a public health problem.

Huffington Post   July 24, 2014

True, or False?

National Association of Drug Court Professionals: NADCP

Considering how much false information has been given on TV news about the character of the Mexican people and the victimization of innocents (over 1,000 documented deaths of children) from the drug policies our country supports, here are just a few questions.

1. If we legalize drugs for adults in the US and provide treatment instead of prison for teens and adults, drug use will increase. FALSE (See statistics for other countries who ended prohibition)

2. If we stop putting teens and adults in prison for possession of small quantities of drugs to feed their habits, gang recruitment in prison would decline. TRUE.

3. If addicts could get their drugs legally and inexpensively, they would commit fewer crimes. TRUE

4. When addicts are released from prison, the majority are typically rearrested for a drug-related crime. TRUE

 5. If arrested addicts were required to participate in treatment programs, and provided social supports instead of jail or prison, overall drug addiction would decline over time. TRUE.

In closing, it is common sense to pull our US dollars out of Mexico’s organized crime budget. The US government is NOT making progress in the War On Drugs. Just as they made NO progress for decades in Viet Nam and lied to the American public (as documented in the Pentagon Papers). If you saw the factual direct quotes imbedded into the screenplay for the movie The Post, the US government sacrificed 58,220 soldiers lives in Viet Nam, because “70% of their reason for continuing the war for 20 years was their unwillingness to ‘lose face’ as a global power and admit they lied about their reasons to enter the war, then lied to keep the American public supporting the war.”

When Wrong is Wrong: Comparing US government lies told to support a horrific unwinnable war in Viet Nam with a similar pattern of denial: The US Government’s lies told to support a horrific unwinnable drug war inside Mexico. (Note: my husband was a Vietnam Vet forced into the war with thousands of others).

                                                                                                                                                                         The only ‘benefit’ of the Viet Nam war was the billions of dollars made by the military-industrial complex, whose lobbyists were buying congressional votes for decades, to make money off weapons, ammunition, airplanes, bombs, and poisonous chemicals (agent orange, napalm) that burned, maimed and murdered millions of Vietnamese civilians; right along with soldiers. The US public was duped, and let it continue––until Daniel Eldridge sneaked over 4,000 pages of government documents out of the Rand Corporation think tank office (of which he was a part). Once the documents were available to the public, the greed, pride, and dishonesty of the government was exposed, more protests heightened the issues, and the war lost the support of the American people.

46 years since President Nixon declared the War on Drugs.

84% of all drug law violation arrests in 2015 were for possession only. Those charged with marijuana violations: 89% possession.

From December 2006 to the present:

1.6 million dead   27,000 missing in Mexico

Thousands of non-cartel civilians and migrants die every year.

The lies: The War on Drugs was promoted as a policy that reduces drug crime and drug use. The opposite has been true.       

More than 64,000 US users died of overdoses in 2016

See Mexican Drug War: Wikipedia for extensive graph

of all cartels and related statistics. 

US taxpayers cost per year for the War On Drugs:

More than $51,000,000,000! 

That’s fifty-one billion dollars a year!

The Drug Policy Alliance: DrugPolicy.org 

If we decriminalize drug use in the US, Mexican cartels will have 20 to 30 Billion dollars a year LESS income to buy tools of terror. Their ability to control government officials and law enforcement with cash, extortion, and public propaganda will be severely crippled. At present, they are branching out to large scale theft from oil refineries, among many other crimes. Not very nice, but the money they make from these other crimes like oil/fuel theft is not coming from financially squeezed US taxpayers. Source: The US Department of Justice cartel statistics as reported by CNN in Drugs, Money and Violence, March 27, 2017.

Part I PUBLICATIONS RELEVANT TO CRIME AND DRUG POLICIES

Most of these books are available for audio download and are well-narrated.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. Quinones is an American Journalist best known for his reporting in Mexico and on Mexicans in the US. Describes the role of the pharmaceutical industry, Mexican drug cartels, prescribing doctors, and economically blighted areas of the US. A highly recognized and award-winning book. 

Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes. One of the most esteemed journalists and writers of the decade, Harvard graduate Sarah Chayes describes the democracy-killing behaviors of corrupt organizations, criminals, politicians and mismanaged government policies at a global level. Our current period of history is exponentially more chaotic due to the globalization of the internet and the related vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure (transportation, water and power companies, military security, computer and media networks, etc.).  Cyber war, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and increasing major weather disasters and fires from climate change are on the rise. Chemical and biological weapons continue to have a place in the arsenals of dictators and terrorists who prey on innocent citizens.

Tim Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on the Pentagon and CIA––Legacy of Ashes (2007) and a ground-breaking factual history of the FBI––Enemies: A History of the FBI (2012). This is newly released information Weiner compiled from previously secret government files, released through the Freedom of Information Act. His caveat: “No republic in history has lasted longer than 300 years, and this nation may not long endure as a great power unless it finds the eyes to see things as they are in the world.”

These institutions have been through earlier eras of gross mismanagement, and at their core are struggling to evolve in the growing complexity of our current geo-political situation. At present, the FBI is generally well respected, and as Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey attests, the institution strives, under pressure, to stay independent from the interference of changing presidential administrations. and committed to a focus on the rule of law.

The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System, by David Skarbek (2014). The United States, China, Russia, and Brazil have the largest prison systems in the world. Prisons in California and Texas house 70% of our nation’s prisoners. This scholarly economic model of prison culture can be extrapolated to other systems outside the US.

Government policies that marginalize and incarcerate poor people instead of educating and employing them, steer them into an underground black-market economy. Of course, the disenfranchised must organize and survive: both in and out of prison. Skarbeck, a brilliant scholar, shows how millions of prisoners govern their gangs’ activities.

British Journalist and Mexico City resident Ioan Grillo has provided an impressive and comprehensive history: El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency (2012) and Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America (2016). Gangster Warlords describes the Latin American   trend    away   from   nation-focused    political   wars   to boundary-defying organized crime wars. Brazil, for example, has the fourth largest prison population in the world, and as in the U.S., and Mexico, incarcerated gang leaders participate in the management of gang activities far beyond prison walls.

Don Winslow authored two highly-crafted historical novels Power of the Dog, (2005) and The Cartel, (2015). Both novels personalize the well-researched interwoven, intricate relationships between Mexico’s organized criminals, US and Mexican authorities, and Mexican journalists. Winslow’s ability to show historical facts through the eyes of one DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) agent, personalizes the plight of many agents and Mexican citizens––those who sacrificed their lives to expose the drug cartels’ rampant terrorism––corrupting Mexican business, military, legal, political, and judiciary institutions. Winslow’s historical chronology across both books spans forty years, from 1970 to 2015.

A report published in 2015 by the Didactic Press, The Los Zetas Drug Cartel, Sadism as an Instrument of Cartel Warfare in Mexico and Central America, was written by George W. Grayson, and originally published by US Army Strategic Studies Institute and US Army War College Press. He is also the author of Bad Neighbor Policy, Washington’s Futile War on Drugs (2003). A 2015 Congressional Research Service Report states “80,000 people have been killed in Mexico due to organized crime related incidents since 2006.” Over 7,273 killings a year. CNN Library (2017)

PERCEPTIONS OF MEXICO, CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

I chose to locate half this story in Mexico because of what I love about Mexico, not because I have a desire to discourage friendship, trade or tourism between our countries. However, the US and Mexico share considerable pain because of our interrelated and problematic drug policies. US gangs and Mexican cartels have responded with aggressive recruitment and competitive wars against each other and against law enforcement.

Thousands of parents have lost children to drugs and drug crime; thousands of children have lost beloved parents, siblings, friends and family in the same way. We need to create more effective solutions, especially since the United States citizens who use smuggled drugs are funding the violence and growth of Mexico’s cartels and US gangs.

George Grayson’s report, published by the US Army Strategic Studies Institute, states that of the one hundred ninety-four independent nations who have diplomatic relations with the U.S., “…none is more important to America than Mexico, in terms of trade, investment, tourism, natural resources, immigration, energy, and security.” I would add that Mexico’s wellbeing is extremely important to the United States––because our shared 1,993-mile border (700 miles already fenced) is a fated relationship.

Mexico has suffered horrific difficulties because of the drug trade we share, and US citizens are sidelined into prison culture by the thousands every year, many with serious drug addiction problems. What happens to their children? Consider this study: The Drug-Addiction Epidemic Creates Crisis in Foster Care by Teresa Wiltz (2016) Pew Charitable Trusts/Research and Analysis, states “The tragedy of drug addiction is extended to the children of addicts, who are overwhelming the foster care resources of every state.”

 The foster care system had many financial and logistical challenges prior to the current level of drug-related foster care placements. The legislation that was to address these needs, the Family First Prevention Services Act, HR5456 has not received enough support in Congress to pass.  Congress has also failed to support more comprehensive drug addiction treatment for the parents of children in foster care.

Canada has its unique drug use patterns and economy, costing approximately 23 billion dollars a year, and Mexican cocaine is in increasing demand. Latin American traffickers are taking advantage of the Canada-US easy-access border. It is the longest border in the world (5,525 miles) and is regularly scouted and crossed by Latin American drug smugglers. Traffickers are using 100-foot-long submarines––each one built to smuggle two tons of drugs northward, some for direct coastal delivery in the U.S., more for Canadian users. Most submarine deliveries are destined for Canada, to be distributed back into the US. Hundreds of these submarines have been constructed, and production is continuing at a steady pace. One jungle production camp was verified to have produced over 70 in one year. (Joint Interagency Task Force, USA, Rear Admiral Charles Michael, June 19, 2012).

In September 2016, the US Coast Guard intercepted and boarded a self-propelled semisubmersible, carrying more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of 73 million dollars. This interdiction brought the total amount of cocaine seized in fiscal year 2016 (10/1/15 to 9/30/16) to over 416,600 pounds––an amount valued at more than $5.6 billion. (Business Insider.com).

We have friends, family, political relationships, trade, and a huge criminal drug industry crossing our north and south borders. Despite cartel and gang crime, there are still many places in Mexico and the US that provide some of the most hospitable and safe destinations in the world. Will we be able to say that in ten years? Only if we act to change our failed drug policies and the laws that enforce them. A viral phenomenon is spreading; inaction is not an intelligent choice.

Education regarding the components of the drug crisis is the first step toward a workable solution. Section III has an overview of publications relevant to crime and drug policies for readers who are interested in understanding and influencing the history and the scope of these problems.

MOVIES WITH ADOPTION THEMES

ADOPTION MOVIES

Domestic Adoption

The Other Mother (NBC movie 1995) (from the book of the same name written by Carol Schaefer in 1991). Available on You Tube. A true story, of Carol’s 1965 teenage experience with an unplanned pregnancy, a Catholic “unwed mothers” home, the subsequent adoption of her son through a closed adoption––culminating in a search and reunion in 1985. Realistic and well done. Reminds me of my own path to sanity following my search and reunion experiences.

International Adoption 

Lion (2016 Biographical film, based on the non-fiction memoir A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierly Available on Netflix). 

A touching story about a five-year-old Indian boy who falls asleep on a train that travels far from his rural village, becomes lost in a big city, speaking a regional dialect that cannot be identified, and is placed for adoption with an Australian couple. At age 25, he decides to search for his mother’s village with no memory of the village’s location or name. An Academy Award and Golden Globe award winning film.

One Child (TV Drama Series on Netflix, YouTube and Prime)

This is definitely worth watching. The core emotional issues of adoption are evident in the dramatic events of this series, and it is a rare view into international adoption. A large portion of the film is done in China.  With interesting and realistic scenes of family, organized crime and court culture. The story: First-born Mei was adopted from China by educated white Americans, who are portrayed as unusually supportive yet very anxious over their grown daughter’s decision to respond to a call for help from China. Mei’s brother had been arrested for murder, and her birth/first mother is convinced Mei could help him by coming to China for legal proceedings. Mei’s parents are worried for good reason, because she is taking serious risks to face the organized crime syndicate that framed her brother.

PUBLICATIONS RELEVANT TO ADOPTION AND INFERTILITY

Infertility Stress Syndrome, 

A Study of Infertile Pre-and Post- Adoptive Parents by Maryl W. Millard, Ph.D.  134 pages.  Contains measures for evaluating the extent of PTSD symptoms, as well as measures that identify the actual stress events encountered.

Trust between adoptive parents and birth/first parents is vital to any open adoption agreement. PTSD sufferers (adoptive and birth/first parents alike) can compromise an agreement when their insecurities are triggered if they have no expert help. ISS is a statistically-supported study of infertility/adoption-related PTSD. It comes with questionnaires created by the author from her clinical experience. One measure, the Impact of Events Scale, was authored by Mardi J. Horowitz, M.D.

The IES was used as a cornerstone measure of the study, because it is one of the most valid and reliable measures used in PTSD research. Dr. Millard’s study was the first to validate the retrospective validity of the IES measure. The study also validated significant gender differences in infertility and adoption-related PTSD, a dynamic which creates significant communication problems for couples. Any of Dr. Millard’s questionnaires in this study may be utilized in assessment of PTSD for the same population, (pre-and-post-adoptive parents in open adoptions). The IES (Horowitz) measure evaluates the severity of symptoms common to any type of PTSD. Copies of Infertility Stress Syndrome are available now on Amazon and Kindle .

Adopting After Infertility by Patricia Irwin Johnston

Infertility always has an impact on the quality of the adoption experience, before, during and after the adoption. We need counselors, therapists and educators who understand the ongoing legacy of infertility-adoption stress. When adoptive parents are helped through the maze of their insecurities into healing, they can avoid damaging the relationship with their adopted children; they can embrace the importance of ancestral relationships. In this way, their adopted children do not need to compartmentalize first parent and adoptive parent relationships as they form their identities.

The Family of Adoption: Revised Edition

by Joyce Maguire Paveo, Ed.D., LCSW, LMFT

“I am most interested in the best interest of the baby and child, not for just one moment in time, but for all moments of that child’s lifetime. Adoption is not an event. It is not a snapshot in time. It is a moving picture that goes on through this life, and into the ones that follow.”  Dr. Joyce Maguire Paveo.

As adoptees mature, they require a more comprehensive understanding of adoption. Some children mature in closed adoptions and are seeking to learn about their origins through a reunion with their birth/first parents. Other children are maturing with ongoing contact with birth/first parents. Decades of Dr. Paveo’s professional counseling experience in adoption, and insights from growing up as an adoptee, make this a valuable contribution.

·     The Spirit of Open Adoption by James L. Gritter

·     Life Givers: Framing the Birthparent Experience in Open Adoption by James L.  Gritter        

James Gritter is one of the most intelligent and compassionate writers on the subject of adoption. His understanding of the birthparent experience and his support for the birthparent’s dignity is timeless. Life Givers is a book filled with respect for every birthparent; and honest discussion of how the adoption industry has treated birthparents in the past, with recommendations for better practices in the future. Birthparents who read it may have their first opportunity to be in the presence of someone who strives to understand and respect them.

Adoption Nation: Adam Pertman: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming Our Families––and America

Revised Edition.

The Seven Core Issues of Adoption by Sharon Kaplan Roszia and Deborah Silverstein.  

A therapeutic focus on Loss, rejection, guilt, shame, grief, identity, intimacy, mastery/control. Excellent! As long as adoption exists, these issues will be present and deserve acknowledgment.

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Years Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler

The Girls Who Went Away focused on the Baby Boomer era, yet it is relevant to birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents who participated in closed adoptions no matter what era.

Looking for an Internet Book List? Search for the following: Top Adoption Books and Resources: A Not to Be Missed List––Chicago Now. Carrie Goldman.

CLOSED VS.OPEN ADOPTION VS. NO ADOPTION

I continue to support open adoption as the only form of adoption that is at all responsive to the persistent needs for information and contact felt by some adoptive parents, and by most adoptees and birth/first parents. However, wooing women away from abortion by telling them a closed or open adoption is the answer is greatly misleading. There is not one shred of proof that any soul incarnates into a fetus early in a pregnancy, and there is substantial evidence to the contrary in thousands of descriptions from the age-regressed psychiatric clients of Dr. Brian Weiss Dr. Michael Newton, and research by Dr. Jim Tucker, to name a few. 

As souls, we incarnate to learn important spiritual lessons, and as should be obvious to any observer, our planet's population of women of childbearing age has never been larger. Any soul who is considering a particular incarnation has plenty of alternative choices if a pregnant woman decides to have an abortion. Adoption‘should NEVER be considered an equal alternative’ to abortion, because the psychological trauma of adoption  for birthmother and child is significantly more severe and long lasting than the symptoms following an abortion. Religions that prohibit abortion are anti-civil rights, relics of a patriarchal social structure that is quickly losing credibility in modern society. For millennia, men have designed laws and religions that gave them more power and privilege than women, and women have consistently suffered because of this imbalance in civil rights. Open adoption, for example, is no gift to women with unplanned pregnancies.

                                     IS OPEN ADOPTION WORKING?

Because it was a relatively new concept in the 1980’s, open adoption agreements were not codified into law. Ample time has passed to create legally enforced rights of first/birth parents and adoptees to some form of ongoing contact. Decades of open adoptions have proven it a model  relatively unburdened by secrecy, but legal consequences for breaking open adoption agreements are nonexistent. Tragic consequences have befallen birth/first mothers who were promised contact in written ‘good faith’ agreements, then were unable to cope with having their child ‘kidnapped’ and hidden from them during the child’s growing years.

People who cite this model as ‘failed’ because the ongoing contact initially desired may not work out in every adoption, would also be advised to look at the model we have for marriage, which has a fifty-percent divorce rate, yet still serves as a meaningful, viable family   relationship with legal and social obligations for visits and support. However, this “marriage” analogy falls short from the adopted person’s point of view in that many feel their civil rights were violated because they believe they did not choose to be adopted.

Some adoptees, on the other hand, have considered the vast amount of research on children and adults who recall previous incarnations, and have a belief that they chose to incarnate knowing they would be adopted. Some people who were adopted have expressed significant disagreement with the adoption industry in general, and with adoption laws in particular. They rightly resent the loss of ancestral information because it robs them of medical history as well as ancestral identity development.

Open adoption offers reassuring “proof of life” to birth/first parents, and opportunity for contact, but it is no guarantee that birthparents will not experience significant grief. Adoption abuses, such as lies, betrayal, coercion, manipulative ‘counseling’ and intimidation, have wrongly removed children from birthparents throughout history and continue to happen every day. Adoptees in open adoptions who have adverse experiences during visits with their birth/first mothers may refuse to see them in future without the adoptive parents present. 

Adoptees are the only citizens in the US who are denied (in 43 US states) the civil right to obtain their original birth certificates, and they deserve to have this right. At the present time, open adoption is the only way to provide this document prior to the adoption being legalized and the original record sealed by the court.

Open adoption may provide full information at the time of the adoption, but in most states, adoptees cannot obtain their court-sealed original birth certificates from the state in which they were born, if the document provided earlier were lost or destroyed. A federal law, recognizing this civil right for all US adoptees, is the only way this right can be guaranteed.

Blood (genetic) relationships are important, and so are adoptive relationships. They are so important, that people hold very strong opinions and beliefs about every aspect of genetic and adoptive relationships.

When I first entered the adoption reform movement in the 1970’s, the landscape of terminology (adoption triad, birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees, closed adoption, open adoption) was being developed along with a demand for an end to secrecy. The term triad is being challenged because it implies three equal sides, and from a legal standpoint, only the adoptive parents have power, and the adoptee believes he or she had the least choice in the matter (precluding the situations in which adoptees believe they did make a choice).

Those of us who became mental health professionals in the adoption field called for reforms and created new models for adoption that acknowledged a woman’s right to choose adoption for her child, while at the same time, insuring that the adoptive parents processed their infertility-related trauma and made every effort to support the adopted child’s connection to his or her family of origin. In theory we know what a healthier version of adoption practice looks like, but it is likely that the majority of adoptions are not meeting this standard.

Some current adoption reformers with broad access to internet information, have scoured the adoption world with a fine-toothed comb and identified the amount of human trafficking associated with adoption. They have also extrapolated the similarities of some of these blatantly harmful illegal trafficking practices to pseudo-legal practices within the adoption industry itself. What they have found has enraged them, and understandably so.

Every reform movement has its radicalized members, but each organization has to be aware that radicalized members can retraumatize adoptees, birth/first parents and adoptive parents by bullying them to change their current perceptions, concerns, and associated terminology. Some radicals resent adoptees who want to move cautiously to bring their parents into an awareness of these issues, and often cast the adoptees’ bond with their adoptive parents as a false bond, a sham, with no inherent developmental value in its own right. Gross oversimplifications and generalizations like this are patently inaccurate, and, it appears, the accusers resent adoptees who are close with their adoptive parents. They appear to take some satisfaction is nullifying the value of bonds between all adoptive parents and adoptees because their own adoption bond was a disappointment.

Adoptive families can absorb new ideas better when they aren’t punished for choices and beliefs they formed under a different adoption paradigm. The people who manage and work in institutions associated with foster care and adoption require education and training, but when we demonize people they react with resistance. If we want them to be open to new ideas, we need to treat them with respect.

There was a reason that Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King became agents of sweeping cultural and political change: their commitment to peaceful non-violent protest. Granted, the civil rights reformers were informed by the opinions of radicals and even inspired by their refusal to kick the civil rights issues down the road, but they achieved success because of their dignity and civility in the face of opposition.

Were there tragic and politically-based abuses in India’s final transition to independence from Britain? Most definitely. Are there tragedies and abuses against women and people of color regardless of civil rights protections that were won despite tremendous odds? Yes. Is there something about the way human beings form democracies that are constantly under threat by criminal organizations, corrupt politicians and the agendas of racists, patriarchal fundamentalist religious zealots? Unquestionably.

Dignity, civility and non-violence are hallmarks of health. We need to take responsibility for our frustrations and impatience and channel those emotions into constructive ways to persuade and educate. As long as pregnant women are shamed or coerced out of abortions, as long as women have no substantive help with child support, day care and higher education, a number of them will choose adoption to avoid having themselves and their child trapped in poverty.