SMAAC NEWS

SMAAC: Senior Mothers Adoption Activists Coalition

WATCH IT NOW, SMAAC IS GOIN’ TO TEXAS!

How fantabulous is that!

It’s high time American women (our sisters) of adoption loss started speaking out against the corrupt adoption industry that has, for the last century, forcibly and deceptively taken and sold women’s children, then legally withheld the whereabouts and identities’ of those women’s missing daughters and sons.

I’ve always been surprised by the adoption industry’s position that keeping identifying information (true records of birth) from the adopted-away daughters and sons of these women is a means of mother-self-protection. Why, then, doesn’t the industry advocate for these women to know who their daughters and sons became and where they are? If the industry is so concerned about the well being of these women, why deny them information about their own children?

We won’t be surprised one bit after Mothers start taking their voices to the advocacy arena, when the true motive for sealing records rears its ugly head. It doesn’t take much reading and listening to figure out that who these sealed records are supposed to protect, are those raising other parents’ children and the industry’s insidious and financially motivated baby/child scooping schemes.

Neither has it ever been written into law or included in any adoption contract that mothers and their daughters and sons be compelled to a lifetime of anonymity from each other.

I certainly appreciate it when Mothers of adoption loss speak out against sealed birth certificates, but what I’d really like to see is these women fighting for the right to obtain identifying information about their own children. What about their human rights? It’s not the surrendering Mothers who seal the information – it’s the industry and the government. This is not and never has been a battle of adoptees vs. mothers and who’s got the more justifiable right to information. The system sealed all of it – and it's against the system itself where all effected by these discriminatory secrecy laws should wage war - not each other, and not one or the other.

The first time I was in Nova Scotia meeting my relatives, one cousin said to me after I’d explained sealed birth certificates to her, “So, this means that it was against the law for us to know you?” I hadn’t given that angle much thought, as I was always focused on my rights and my information belonging to me. But, seriously - how accurate she was. The sealed records business discriminates not only against the adopted person, but also against parents, all immediate family members and all relatives.

Being a mother and not knowing the location and identity of your child is beyond my understanding. A law that seals information from you as a mother about the identity and whereabouts of your own child is a concept I simply cannot grasp.

Does it matter if your child is missing because of adoption? Does it make the confusion, grief and loss easier? My guess is No. A missing child is a missing child no matter the separation circumstances. What’s different, perhaps, is the coping methods and stories conjured up to explain away the absent child/ren and the approach in which a person receives ‘support’ from society and professionals. If you were told over and over by everyone around you that your loss isn’t important, well . . . wouldn’t you start believing it after a while? As an adopted person I certainly bought into all the adoption lies and myths, so why wouldn’t our Mothers have done the same?

Even a woman with the means to raise a child, but felt that surrendering her baby/child to the system of adoption was her best option, still would not know how that decision to surrender her child to strangers would impact her. She likely has no idea what the sealing of a birth document really means or the long-term implications of that legal process. With an adoption contract and procedure, the Devil is most definitely in the detail.

One reason why mothers don’t always search is because they don’t believe they have the right to contact and know their own children. Adoption laws and propaganda were deliberately created and implemented to program the brain to think like that. It is only after years and years of self-introspection and seeking out people with similar experiences does the truth and validation start trickling in.

Next August (2011) SMAAC will be working a booth at the National Convention for State Legislatures (NCSL) in San Antonio, Texas. There they will speak the truth – crack open the vault of adoption lies and demand justice from lawmakers.

Stay updated through the protest and NCSL booth organizing team, The Adoptee Rights Coalition and by visiting Sandy Young, Musing Mother and SMAAC executive.