I think the real reason is so that the father doesn’t turn up one day and demand custody of the child he never relinquished. The aim of this requirement is to prevent disruption to adoptions.

We are the millions who learned our lessons from the horrors of the baby scoop era in the 50′s, 60′s, and even 70′s when we saw our sisters, cousins, roommates, and best friends forced into shameful maternity homes where many of them performed unpaid labor and were physically abused while giving birth. We saw the aftermath of depression, alcholism, drug abuse, and even suicide. Why do you think there are so few white healthy infants to adopt? Families who lived these horrors are turning to kinship arrangements instead and are saying “Adopion? Over my dead body!”

One very Happy Grandmother

Agreed

Josh you said: “I don’t think this is a helpful way of thinking about the issue, because it rarely reflects today’s adoption situation.”

We will have to agree to differ on that one Josh, I think it does reflect both modern overseas adoptions and it certainly reflects what is a happening in the UK at the moment. For more info: http://www.forced-adoption.com/

The Bible also tells us that “you shall not covet your neighbours house, wife, manservant,maidservant,ox ass or ANYTHING that is your neighbours.
It seems to me that people who can not or do not want their own children are coveting their neighbours children if they want to adopt. This is very clear from the way they write on the internet

The bible also tells us to “love thy neighbough as thy self”
Mothers seldom if ever give their baby’s up because they just feel like it.
They normally give up their baby’s because they feel they have no other option. I understand that they normally live to regret it. I think you are also discounting the fact that there is a large demand for healthy baby’s these days to fulfill the needs of infertile rich couples.

If we really loved our neighbour as ourselves, we would do everything in our power to keep the sacred mother-baby bond intact.

We would not covet our neighbour’s child and snatch it from her breast.

Josh you said: “The law should protect the birthmother’s rights to make this decision with minimal government intrusion”

I say what about protecting the baby’s rights.? Namely a right to a relationship with their own mother and extended family, a right to their own family history and heritage. A right to a dignified life without feeling (like the poster above) that they wished they had been aborted.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. How can any mother understand all the complexities of surrendering a child for adoption and how that will impact her and her daughter or son. It’s impossible. Adoption agencies do not inform mothers or fathers about the long-term effects of losing a child for adoption or how losing a mother, father, family, culture, homeland and identity may effect the adopted person.

One mother I know was alone (19 yrs-old) in a hospital about to give birth, she checked-marked the “Have you cnsdiered adoption” question on the admission form. She did so because she really didn’t know what adoption was all about, and thought she would receive some help, not have her baby taken and legally adopted.

The next day an adoption agency owner and a lawyer showed up in her hospital room. They had the documents ready for to sign. She asked if this meant she would lose her child – they assured her that wasn’t the case.

She was unsure and feeling scared and vulnerable – she finally told them that she was not interested in adoption – next thing she knows she being given medication – the doctor who had delivered her baby had a family for her….so she had an adoption agency, a lawyer, and the doctor all trying to get her baby from her. She lost the fight – her baby was taken and sold. She was told she would have an open adoption – the adopters left with her child….no forwarding address.

This woman’s story is not unusual – it is, in fact, more common than people would like to think. The stories vary somewhat, but the point is that what many of these women need is support and encouragement – not to have their children coerced right out of their womb. It is not the government’s intrusion, it’s the 1.4 billion-dollar adoption industry that is intrusive. They are stealing mother’s children and robbing humans of their parents.

To learn more about what adoption has done to people around the world, please listen to some of my shows on: http://www.theadoptionshow.com

The segment on Modern-Day Coersion is quite illuminating.

When Job says “The fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt,” he’s lamenting the oppression of the poor by the greedy/evil rich. A couple points:

(1) Job isn’t merely condemning the wealthy (Job was the wealthiest man in the region a few chapters prior), but instead is attacking economic oppression and greed. A lot of opponents of adoption try to present a picture in which rich (=greedy) adoptive parents take children away from poor (=oppressed) birthmothers. I don’t think this is a helpful way of thinking about the issue, because it rarely reflects today’s adoption situation.

(2) Job is talking about a practice in the Ancient Near East of seizing children from widows in order to receive compensation for a debt. The child becomes an indentured servant or slave. The widow has little choice if she wants to survive. Any parallels to adoption would be (in my opinion) strained.

However, I agree that adoption professionals and other counselors might not always present birthmothers with all of their options. When they do, however (and I think/hope this is what happens in most cases), many or most birthmothers are placing for more reasons that simply economic conditions, even when poverty does play a role.

I’ve witnessed several relinquishments, and in all of them, the birthmothers were given many options and repeatedly told that they could stop the process and seek additional help. Few of these birthmothers seemed to be relinquishing for merely economic reasons. Some were young and had other life goals. One was older and realized that her life choices to that point had created a home which would be (in her opinion) bad for her child. Birthmothers aren’t merely economic pawns without free will.

Birthmothers who choose relinquishment are intelligent agents who make their decision through a combined assessment of the child’s interest and self-interest. The law should protect the birthmother’s rights to make this decision with minimal government intrusion.

Josh,

My knowledge of the scriptures is sparse. However in answer to your comment “I know of no biblical evidence that indicates God’s disapproval of human adoption”.
I would like say it does say somewhere something about it, I think it is somewhere in Job “The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;
the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.”

The problem with adoption it seems to me is that it is about best interests of the adults.

You say “But no one here wants to argue that adoption is the default way of forming a family or the best option for most birthmothers and children. It is the best option in only a tiny fraction of all births.”

The problem is these days all to often women with very little resources are encouraged to give their babies to another family who have more resources materially. This is not in the babys best interests.

You raise an interesting biblical point. You note that the citation “what God has joined let not man separate” is said in the context of marriage.

As a general principle in interpreting any text (the Bible included) you have to make the context king. If we simply extract a “non-separation” principle, then we don’t have any way of constraining the principle’s application. For example, the family unit is joined together by God, but the Bible clearly says that marriage separates child from parents (“for this reason shall a man leave father and mother and be joined to his wife”). So the “non-separation” argument is unique to marriage without wider application.

A second point (“surely the mother -baby relationship is even more sacred” than marriage) is also not supported by the Bible. See for example, the quotation above (biblical marriage requires that the marriage relationship becomes primary and the former parent-child relationship becomes secondary). The Bible also emphasizes repeatedly the non-negotiable permanency of marriage, because a marriage is created by an oath with God as witness. Of course, this is a side issue with little direct application to adoption.

At the heart of your comment, I think you’re driving at the truth: the mother-child relationship is sacred. But in cases where that bond has to be broken, adoption is a legitimate option — I know of no biblical evidence that indicates God’s disapproval of human adoption. His use of a adoption as a metaphor for our relationship to HIm argues against the idea that God disapproves of adoption. (Dan has posted about this repeatedly here on the blog.)

But no one here wants to argue that adoption is the default way of forming a family or the best option for most birthmothers and children. It is the best option in only a tiny fraction of all births.

One commenter accused Ms. Beauvais-Godwin (“Laurie” as the commenter said) of being selfish, and the other accused her of being a hypocrite. The first critic signed her post with a made-up email address, and the second offered no address. This is my notice to both commenters (in the absence of email addresses) that I am happy to have their views represented here if they can moderate their language and focus on the issue rather than perceived motivations.

This is our policy for all posts and all comments on this blog. When we ourselves fail to live up to our standard, we hope that our readers will hold us accountable.

Thank you all for your interest in this topic.