Dear Adoption Agencies – Yes You!

Now is the time for those of you who pride yourself on being a Good Ethical Adoption Agency to stand up and say No, this isn’t how adoption should be practiced. To speak up loudly and often, not just once. To demand this is not anywhere close to how an ethical adoption is done the right way. My goodness, the adoption agency receiving the baby from the safe haven baby box doesn’t even need to report that they received a safe haven baby to the regulatory authority in Indiana. No one there to even give the mother a handout and phone numbers to call that they’d do at a Fire Station or Hospital, just put your baby in a box and walk away.

Damn and double damn.

Indiana’s Adoption-in-a-Box Pipeline

Who thinks it’s okay for a scared mother to feel she has no other option than to put her baby in a Safe Haven Box? What happened to humanity that this would be fine with anyone, at least at a fire station or hospital they are offered help. What about the mother, scared, likely alone and post partum? Where are the County Social Services Agencies in the State? What processes do they have in place when a pregnant soon to be Mother reaches out? At least, they’d likely offer services and support to her and the law would be followed, but without promoting your service to the public, it’s likely the mother doesn’t even know to go to you and feels she has no other option.

My heart breaks just thinking about what the mother will go through, alone, scared, no one to turn too.

Where is the education to point her first to resources to parent, and if not parent, then at least to be involved in finding the right solution for her child via adoption or guardianship. Because this guaranties the adoption will be closed, and the child who grows up will have no idea why her mother did that, no story other than being left in a box, no adoption agency to contact if she/he wants answers to that ever present question of why. No Non-Id information, no nothing other than you were left in a box, no one was there, no one cared enough to try to get help for either the mother or the infant.

The adoptee as an adult will be left to try dna testing to find any answers at all. If they are lucky, they might find a distant relative.

The Baby Scoop Era (1947-1973) is over, and yes, fewer babies were available after the BSE was over, but that’s a good thing, more mothers keeping their babies.

Dear Adoption Agencies – the time is now to demand potential adoptees be treated as human beings first, and then products second.

And yes, I’m rightly angry because I’m sure there will be a line around the block of people wanting to adopt a newborn and won’t give a second thought about how wrong-headed this type of adoption is, the impact on the child over a lifetime, or that we are sliding back to the BSE, different reasons, different methods – yet the same result. Actually, not even the same result, it’s worse, as there will be no files you could get via a court order, no original birth certificate, no non-id from the state, no way to know where you were even born, or what day you were born on.

Damn. Not even going to try to fix this post to be less angry and more persuasive. This type of adoption isn’t right, so it certainly can’t be a good adoption, despite the reality that many HAPS dream of getting a baby that way.

Ethics and Humanity be Damned.

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