With no plans to continue growing our family through adoption, I have experienced a strange shift. Stepping away from the space of waiting and of possibility and growth, and into the realm of simply parenting. Our family is complete (Lord willing), so now I look backwards at the entire process with what I hope is a slightly more objective eye.
Today when people ask me for advice on starting the adoption process, the big question tumbling around in my head often sounds like: How can we engage with a deeply broken system, and do it well?
"Well" meaning: with respect and great care for each individual involved.
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My phone dinged at a new email's arrival. I click to my inbox. Another email from a popular Florida adoption attorney whose mailing list I signed up for--out of sheer curiosity.
I scroll through the long attached document offering details on the "situation." Personal and medical details about mom, her rational for making an adoption plan, an outline of the estimated cost.
I note that the adoptive couple should expect to pay around $15,000 alone to the pregnant mother, to cover such expenses as food, rent, transportation... and who knows what else. The part that jumps out to me says: "The majority of expenses will be reimbursed post-placement, after the irrevocable consent for adoption has been taken."
I have no skin in the game, so I reply to his email. "Can you clarify? Does this mean the mom only gets the money if she places her baby? What happens if she doesn't?" The reply comes quickly and is brief. "Yes. She is given a check after executing consent. This minimizes the risk for the adoptive parents."
This conjures up an image in my mind of a sterile hospital room, a freshly post-partum mother presented with paperwork to sign that will irreversibly terminate her rights to the child she just birthed. She is offered a choice: sign, and receive a check upwards of ten thousand dollars. No baby, no money.
How could we sleep at night after this?
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So how can we engage with a deeply broken system, and do it well?
We can advocate for family preservation all day long, but the reality is that adoption isn't going anywhere. How can we do it well?
Social media is a beast in and of itself, but I see a consistent pattern among large groups of adoptive moms: They say proponents of ethical adoption are too harsh. Too negative. To soften the tone, soften the message, and maybe more people will listen.
"I know that there is brokenness in adoption," they say. "But isn't parenting hard enough without making it more complicated? I feel like I can't do anything right."
I wonder if we've lost sight of what it is we're doing.
We are permanently moving children from one family to another. We are making monumental decisions about the lives of unborn children that will permanently alter the trajectory of their entire lives, and the lives of their biological family's.
If this isn't complicated to you, then you aren't paying attention. THIS SHOULD BE COMPLICATED. And it should be done with extreme care.
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A post had been floating around Facebook about a small agency in search of an adoptive family for a soon to be born baby boy. I was given a name and a phone number, so I called. The owner of the agency was kind to speak with me.
The pregnant mother had been on her way to the agency several hours away when she was in a car accident. She had experienced brain trauma, but was expected to recover. The baby would be delivered via c-section that weekend, so the agency was in crunch mode trying to secure an adoptive family.
"Brain trauma?" I asked. "How can she consent to the adoption in that condition?" I was assured she was competent. And that, "thankfully," she was on "the right side of the state line" where the waiting period after birth would be shorter--around 12 hours, I was told.
The director continues, describing the personal care she provides the pregnant women she works with. She develops a close relationship with them, which often continues even after placement. "A lot of the women who come to me are referred by previous birth moms. I offer a $500 incentive for women who tell a friend about me, and that friend places her baby too."
"What happens if she doesn't end up placing?" I ask. I already knew what the answer would be: "Then they don't get the money. Their friend has to actually give up her baby."
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I remain firmly convicted that we can't begin to answer the question of how to engage with adoption well until we can stare the brokenness in the face and acknowledge it. We can't engage a broken system well until can admit that it is broken. And I don't mean broken in the effortlessly cliche way of saying "adoption always begins with loss." Yes, yes it does.
And it is an industry too often generating monumental amounts of profit on the backs of vulnerable women in crisis, where our children are the commodity and hopeful adoptive parents create the demand.
Only when we can see and acknowledge that, can we begin to answer the question:
How can we engage with a deeply broken system, and do it well?
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