Since you asked....
No.
Here's why.
1) You, with your dollars, continue to support an industry that exploits women so abjectly poor that they lose their children. Lose their children. With some support, these families could remain intact. That means that many of these adoptions are unnecessary. Unnecessary adoption is an evil in the way that unnecessary war is an evil. This is because adoption is war. War on poor women.
2) You continue to demonize, dehumanize, marginalize and otherwise project your own personal flaws on to pregnant women who are so poor that they find theselves faced with the prospect of losing their child to adoption. You use these projections to rationalize your actions. You want to maintain the charade of rationalization by making nice with your victim once you get what you want. You want her to be a good little girl , smile, and pop another bun out of the oven for you. You want her to tell you how wonderful you are when you're done emptying her womb. You want, demand, extort, cajole her to verbalize gratitude for her exploitation. You want to use language and social convention to conceal the fact that separation of mother and child by adoption is violent. This is violence done to her and her child for the sake of the dollars you provide. You fund this violence, this war, but you want to conceal that fact. In other words, you want her to make nice to support you in your denial.
Hasn't she already done enough for you?
You want more, more, more?
You need therapy, not adoption.
3) You continue to regard yourselves as some sort of saint, when in point of plain fact, the statistics say that your infertility is most likely the result of a lifestyle choice you made.
4) The injustices of the past have never been addressed. The exploitations of the present continue unabated.
No justice, no peace.
Barb, for myself
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friday, December 21, 2007
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
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
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