Adoption Triggers

Adoption writers, adoption meme makers, adoption agencies, facilitators, consultants, people wanting to adopt an infant, and whoever else I’ve left off that does the following.

Please stop using pictures of Expectant Mothers with their arms wrapped around their growing babe, or Hopeful Adoptive Parents doing similar to the Expectant Mother in your articles advertising adoption.

We get it, after all, we were the merchandise you seek in your promotion of those pictures.

For some, maybe many of us, those pictures aren’t warm and fuzzy pictures. For some, it could be an in-your-face reminder of everything they don’t have, for others, it could be a reminder that we, too, were simply the next in line to not be kept.

Adoptees are human, just like you, and using pictures of a pregnant woman in your advertising articles to bring in more adoption business, or HAPs hoping to adopt that Expectant Mother’s babe, sure seems like it removes both the humanity of the Expectant Mother, and turns those potential Adoptees into merely objects you want.

Please consider the full weight and gravity of what the Expectant Parents are considering, the long-term ramifications of choosing adoption, the grief that never fully goes away, before choosing to promote adoption that way.

It’s also disrespectful to Adoptees.

I have my original birth certificate that details my birth, I have it framed hanging on my wall. Next to that is the only picture I have of my mother who is about 8 weeks pregnant, you can see her baby bump (me) in the picture, with her snuggling up under the protective arms of my father. That picture was saved to give to me. It was proof that my parents were together, and based on their expressions, that they cared deeply for each other.

Few Adoptees have similar pictures, some have nothing but would give just about anything to have even one picture of even just one of their parents, let alone both showing deep affection for each other.

Adoption means different things to people in adoption, so I’d ask you respectfully to stop using heavily pregnant pictures of Expectant Mothers to promote adoption. Instead, work towards a world where private infant adoption is rarely needed, and only then, as a last resort.