Why JUNO Matters

The pro-life crowd is giving Juno rave reviews, since the teen at the center of the story opts for adoption over abortion. I'm not going to link to any of their reviews because I don't want to give them the hits, but they are singing the praises of this movie. In the way we have come to expect, they all praise and all criticize the same aspects of the movie, using almost the same language each time. Perhaps someone blast faxed movie critic talking points to each site owner/blogger. At any rate, the reviews are at once unsurprisingly and remarkably similar.

The movie is reviewed over and over as a fast moving and hip comedy with very appealing characters. Everyone falls in love with the sympathetic pregnant teen who makes an "heroic" sacrifice. BTW, the newest industry meme being hyped in AdoptionLand to sell adoption to teen moms is that it is an "heroic" act, but that's a post for another day. Still, I found it interesting that one of the most conservative prolifer bloggers around (Jill Stanek, blogging on World Net Daily) chose the word "heroic" to describe Juno's act of giving up a child for adoption. It's just not a word that has been used much to describe adoption relinquishment until very recently. More blast faxes?

Why JUNO matters is that teens will see it, most probably fall in love with the characters, and their outlook on adoption may be influenced by this movie. One adoption activist emailed the producer about the movie. She wrote that his response was that he had a "younger sister who was adopted and he hoped I would be as touched by the movie as he was."

I haven't seen the movie, but it's hard to imagine that it addresses the long concealed underbelly of adoption loss. And that matters.

What am I talking about?

Routinely, portrayals of adoption in books, press and other media simply gloss over the sequelae of relinquishment. Adoption is almost always presented as win-win-win, but in reality, in adoption one party experiences an overwhelming loss - the loss of her child. For adoption to survive, the first mother's loss must be either denied, minimized or reframed. (AdoptionLand is busily working to recast adoption as a heroic act, but, again, that's the subject for another diary.)

BUT....

As we have seen amply demonstrated in other arenas of political life, reframing or recasting an event does nothing to change the hard cold facts that eventually surface. The marketing strategies used to sell a war or sell adoption don't change the realities of dead bodies, or of grief that never ends.

And in adoption, it has been shown over and over that there is great potential for grief that never ends. The research shows (over and over) that such a loss places a woman at high risk for unresolvable grief and its concomitants.

So, when you go out to this movie or meet people who speak of it in glowing terms, I hope you take a moment to remember some of this information about adoption loss. After a period of denial, women who follow in Juno's footsteps can expect the following:



"Existing evidence suggests that the experience of relinquishment renders a woman at high risk of psychological (and possibly physical) disability. Moreover very recent research indicates that actual disability or vulnerability may not diminish even decades after the event.
....Taken overall, the evidence suggests that over half of these women are suffering from severe and disabling grief reactions which are not resolved over the passage of time and which manifest predominantly as depression and psychosomatic illness. "
-- PSYCHOLOGICAL DISABILITY IN WOMEN WHO RELINQUISH A BABY FOR ADOPTION, Dr. John T. Condon (Medical Journal of Australia) Vol. 144 Feb 3, 1986 (Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Consultant Psychiatrist)

" A grief reaction unique to the relinquishing mother was identified. Although this reaction consists of features characteristic of the normal grief reaction, these features persist and often lead to chronic, unresolved grief. Conclusions: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions.
Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions."
-- “Postadoptive Reactions of the Relinquishing Mother: A Review.” By Holli Ann Askren, MSN, CNM, Kathleen C. Bloom, PhD, CNM. In the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4):395-400



"Relinquishing mothers have more grief symptoms than women who have lost a child to death, including more denial; despair, atypical responses; and disturbances in sleep, appetite, and vigor." Askren, H., & Bloom, K. (1999) Post-adoptive reactions of the relinquishing mother: A review. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4):395-400



"Results shown in Table 3 demonstrate that mothers relinquishing a child for adoption tend towards more grief symptoms than bereaved parents ... ." ... "Table 3, comparing natural mothers in both open and closed adoptions with bereaved parents, shows that natural mothers suffer more denial, atypical responses, despair, anger, depersonalization, sleep disturbance, somaticizing, physical symptoms, dependency, vigor." Blanton, T.L., & Deschner, J. (1990). Biological mother's grief: The postadoptive experience in open versus confidential adoption. Child Welfare Journal, 69(6), pp. 525-535.


It very much matters that young women and their families fully understand what can happen in adoption. While JUNO may be hip and comedic and endearing, it matters more for its ommissions regarding adoption than anything else.

Barb, for BSERI

A Little Night Reading

Lately I've been doing some reading as a good friend and Sister-In-Arms shares her research library with me. An NCFA publication came across my screen this week. It is a booklet called "_____MOTHER, GOOD MOTHER, Her Story of Heroic Redemption" published in 2007 by the Family Research Council and the National Council for Adoption and authored by Charles T. Kenny, Ph.D. Page 3 of the booklet has one the most remarkable statements I have read in quite some time. (NB: The B word has been removed from this quote.)

From Page 3 of the booklet:

"Some of the _____mothers who placed their children fifteen or more years before the interviews took place felt extreme pressure and even coercion to do so. Their bitter feelings about their experiences set the stage for understanding the profound importance of involving _____mothers in the process of selecting loving families for their children. Many _____mothers who felt coerced or tricked into placing their children for adoption were not at peace with the adoption. The resentment one _____mother expressed regarding feeling forced into adoption was typical of those who had felt coercion: ‘Coercion, lies, and deceit... That worked on me... The mother-child bond is really strong. I think that’s more important than having two parents. My baby was denied breast milk, knowing his grandparents. I was denied watching him grow and have a life together. Fear is what makes people sign relinquishing papers, fear that it (keeping the baby) will make their life worse than better. (_____ mothers’) fear is taken advantage of... It is deceitful. It (coercive adoption) is not really concerned with the best interest of the mom and baby... It’s concerned with receiving healthy, white babies for people’."

"This _____mother felt that no one was really concerned about her and her child. She felt judged, refer to adoption as an "industry," rather than considering it a social service in the best interests of children. Because she felt forced into adoption, she did not feel the decision was her own and was bitter about her adoption placement. The _____mothers who felt this way were older,generally having placed their children more than 25 years earlier, when the stigma against single-parenting was far greater than it is today. Then, as the _____mothers described, it was also more common for social workers and nurses to pressure women into adoption. Women should never feel forced into adoption, and when they are, the system has failed them."

"Thankfully, such occurrences have become quite rare. The younger _____mothers felt they had made their decisions voluntarily, and as a result, they "owned" their decisions. As they struggled through the process of making decisions, they successfully resisted being pressured by others. One ______mother said: ‘It was eye opening... You need to control yourself, how to handle people and situations. Look, I made, or we made this decision. I’m giving myself back the power. I did something I’m not happy or proud about (getting pregnant), but it’s me that has the power. I’m in control. Nobody was telling me to do XYZ. They are just throwing out suggestions... When you are in control, you know I’m going to do A, then B, then C... Look at me. Yes, this is what happened. Look what I did. Look where I am now’."

Do my eyes deceive me? The NCFA is saying BSE moms were coerced!

Barb, for BSERI

New Organization to Probe Adoption Abuses

An organization has been formed to investigate what is known as the “Baby Scoop Era.” This was the period between 1945 – 1972, when unprecedented numbers of unmarried mothers surrendered babies for adoption, often against their will.


The Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative, also known as BSERI, was founded in October 2007 by two mothers, Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh and Barbara Franks-Morra. Both lost newborns to adoption during this period.

Franks-Morra explained that maternity homes radically changed after 1945. As social workers took over management from altruistic religious organizations, homes that had once sheltered single mothers and prepared them to raise their children began instead to promote closed, stranger adoption.

Wilson-Buterbaugh stated, “The social work profession brought a psychological bias to their work with single mothers. They introduced the untested notion that single mothers were ‘neurotic’ and could be cured by taking their babies. This idea radically altered the outcomes for single mothers during this period. These practices persisted through 1972, when the number of domestic adoptions began to drop dramatically.”

“These homes, which were sometimes little more than reformatories, often used coercive practices such as shaming, blaming, and removing or withholding babies from new mothers to force adoptions. Mothers were then told to ‘go on with their lives’ as if nothing had happened. Obviously this was impossible for most of them.”

Franks-Morra said, “We demand acknowledgement of the historical truth surrounding past adoption practices in the United States. We demand recognition for the millions of women who were systematically denied their inalienable right to raise their infant sons and daughters.”

“The Baby Scoop Era has become a footnote in American social history, except to the mothers who survived these practices. These women have carried into their adult lives burdens of worry, grief, pain and a corrosive secret. The lifelong consequences of these forced adoptions are still operating in the lives of millions of American women.”


For more information, http://www.babyscoopera.com/ or email bseri@babyscoopera.com