Amy,
Your opinion has some truth to it, but your personal experience is nill. Your opinions are based on the media and someone's outside view. I am not pro adoption for Guatemala, but I have adopted twins from this country, legitimately adopted legally and with all legal paperwok 2002-3. I am an adoptee and I hate adoption in this country because of how often it is a travesty. There is no easy solution to any of these causes and Guatemala has many corrupt people in the country seeking gain thru adoption. They also have one of the largest populations of poor people who are targets for those who coerce them into adoption. The american agencies are just as guilty in seeking the monies from prospective parents who are desperate for a family. I have personally been inside over 25 orphanages in Guatemala, interviewed all of the owners (including the aids orphanage) and the picture you paint is severely lacking. The country has major issues and poverty will drive many to do things that are not right. But let's not forget that everyone is at fault here. The adoptive parents are at fault for wanting a family and Guatemala is the closest and least cumbersome when compared to Russia, China or Korea. The agencies are making a living on adoption and therefore they are at fault. The facilitators and lawyers of Guatemala are at fault for taking advantage of a system in which a single adoption (they average one or two a month) nets them 3 to 5 times the average annual income of a high functioning Guatemalan employee. (Average income is 12,000 annually for a bilingual highly educated Guatemala city worker of a bank or major corporation.) And the poor people of the country are also guilty for surrendering their children because they are either too poor to feed them, are victims of the system as they are drug addicts or prostitutes and have chosen to give their children a life instead of using them as fronts on the street. Not to mention the legitimate orphanages are also guilty for taking these children in when they are dropped at the gates because their parents cannot feed or clothe or house them because of their impoverished or addicted state (I personally sitnessed this while visiting an orphanage - one of 23 - outside GC in 2003). Parents simply dropped off two young children (5 and 7) and drove off leaving them because they know the orphanages will care for them. And Guatemala is severely guilty for their abandonment law disallowing all orphan adoption if a single heir (any blood relative) can be located in the country, regardless if they are willing to care for their relative or not! And Amy, I love your heart, but you too are guilty for jumping on the bandwagon of those who generalize an entire program based on a single case or abuse of a system. I am also guilty because I wanted a family and my wife and I cannot have children due to medical reasons. I am also guilty because I don't believe in the local system and how they push children with severe disabilities and behavioral issues which have been caused by the system itself. (They save all infants for those with money who pay the state big money to get the infants.) Or the goofiness of a system that allows people to go on parade seeking to be chosen either by prospective parents or parents being chosen by surrendering birth mothers. Does this not fly in the face of stupidity? I'm going to go on parade so a young girl who already has issues and has made some questionable decisions is going to make the right choice of a family to raise the child they are surrendering? I don't believe in a system that is run by inexperience, bureauocracy, injustice and a court system that rips biological and foster chilren out of their natural and foster homes based on an outsider's invalid and often incorrect accusation, puts them in foster homes that abuse them mentally, physically and sexually and then won't help them when they get all screwed up. I am at fault for disagreeing with a country that allows people to obtain an abortion because they made a bad judgment call on a one-night stand and simply feel they are "entitled" to another "chance" or to do anything as long as it's "legal". And we are all guilty for being so naiive that we think we can base an opinion from afar. Voice your opinions, but please let's all stop being generalists and alarmists and pulling a single case out of the news and then throwing entire groups "under the bus". There is no perfect answer. I'm an adoptee and I hate adoption. I'm an adoptive parent and I hate adoption, but I love my family and it's the only thing in this life I value. If it were up to me, parents who abandon their children would go to court and have to pay child support to their abandoned children for the rest of their lives to make up for the injustices they have caused. Let's start looking at who the real creeps are in this country and take action and do something about them. Every adoptee who has been in a foster home should be eligible for medical the rest of thier lives. Every foster child who has never been adopted should be given a college education at the cost of the government, provided with housing until they are on their feet and then be allowed to go back to their records, seek out their birth parents and garner their wages for the grief they caused when they chose convenience over responsibility. Maybe we could even make them servants of the adoptees? My rant ceases for a day.....
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3 comments:
Wow, this is truly, truly unbelievable.
Is this a pathetic attempt to admonish your own guilt in the part you played in enabling the corruption in Guatemala to continue by taking advantage of the system yourself?
This isn't one isolated incident. The NCFA itself (not that I'm a fan of such an anti-adoptee organization) is asking that adoptions from Guatemala be halted. Do they not even have a valid "opinion" in your esteemed view?
But I ask you, just what are you even doing about this situation, besides sitting there with your prized adoptlings and casting your opinions and harsh judgments of women?
I would hope, that as an adoptive father of children from Guatemala, that you'd at least have some interest in seeing these injustices be righted, that you'd at very least have some interest in seeing the lives and living conditions of your childrens' people be improved so that this sort of thing doesn't have to occur.
At least AMY is researching, blogging, trying to get some ATTENTION drawn to the sad state of affairs going on. Just what are you doing?
Denying it and sweeping it under the rug are definitely NOT going to help, nor is flaming those who would seek to find a way to CHANGE things and make them better.
Shame on you, and really, I feel sorry for you. See a counselor, let go of your anger and hatred.
Nancy,
Just to set things straight Nancy, I'm behind all that Amy stands for when it comes to opening records. I was adopted in a closed state and had to spend three years to find my biological family. But just because Amy pushes that cause doesn't mean she has the wherewithal to comment on every issue of adoption and that the stance on closed records applies to all issues. Guatemala international adoption has no similirities to the issue of altered birth certificates here in the US.
Nancy, if you're going to accuse someone, step out and answer for your posts and don't hide behind a no-blog or anonymous post.
Second, stop generalizing and assuming your opinions are the only ones that ccunt and that your view has any substantiation just because you might have been hurt by someone in the past. Have you been to Guatemala lately? Do you know anyone on the congress in that country? Do you have anyone you know in an orphanage in Guatemala? Have you watched any children be abandoned and thrown out onto the street in this place? How many people do you know who are adoptees who feel different than you do? How many adoptive people do you know that have had their lives changed positively or negatively? Do you know anyone who has lived in Guatemala and now works in this country and why? Have you ever been on the streets and approached by a prostitute with a little child? How many lawyers or doctors have you met in the country of Guatemala?
Third, your assumption that you can comment on anythingeverything in the adoption world because you play a simple little one-dimensional one-sided generalistic role proves you live in the world of the liberal propoganda media and believe all they say. Maybe Amy's post rings a women's rights bell in your skull and you think because you agree that you are right?
And Nancy, your trust in media run goverment or private agencies proves you truly do believe trusting those who use their political prowess to build policy on single atrocities is worth throwing any program into the gutter because one person was wronged?
Adoption in Guatemala brings income to opportunists (corrupt and incorrupt agencies in the US and in Guatemala, upright and dirty lawyers, crooked and upright orphanages & finally facilitators who are just and unjust. At the same time, it allows those who are so poor and illiterate (uneducated and without access to medical or academic support systems) a way to see children they birthed be fed!
Many parents don't know the birth parents of their children. The birth parents of our children have five children other than our twins. They could not feed them. We know them and we will allow our boys to go and see them. My children are not "adoptlings" and how dare you refer to a fellow human being in such a negative manner. You're a disgrace to the who adoption/anti-adoption community to speak of those who are defenseless in such a manner.
Your endorsement of one point of the NCFA shows you agree with them. Unicef has the same argument and they'd just as easliy prefer to ride around in their 50,000 land rovers in Guatemala City and let these little children starve and be pimped as opposed to be adopted through international adoption. Or better yet, be put into an institutionalized orphanage so they can grow up with the deficiencies a solution such as this can cause.
I don't have a guilty bone in my body Nancy when it comes to adoption and all my posts are about real life experience. When you take away your short-sided and poorly thought-out reasoning and get your hands dirty and go out in the real world and start living, maybe you can put up a post that has some value. In addition, your statement of me passing harsh judgments on women shows you are the insecure one and your cause is simply equal rights for women and has nothing to do with adoption. Take your cause to Oprah or something, and get your posts where they belong, not here.
I am doing much about it, but I don't and won't defend myself to someone like yourself who has an underlying cause of "womanhood" and not engaging and playing the game and then seeing whether or not your opinions have any merit.
If you had any experience, you'd know that the empty statements of political and policy minded so-called unbiased government and in some cases, charitable organizations is not research, it's gossip and propoganda pushed by the elite and the "well-minded" dilettantes of our socialistic wealthy society. (Here is the definition because I wouldn't think you diligent enough to look it up on your own,)
noun
1. an amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge [syn: dabbler]
adjective
1. showing frivolous or superficial interest; amateurish; "his dilettantish efforts at painting"
In summary Nancy, your response has nothing to do with adoption, it's about "womanhood". You're an angry woman and you didn't read what I wrote, you simply reacted in defense of Amy. Amy has great experience in closed records, but shouldn't be commenting on issues outside her personal experience based on media-type research and purely unsubstantiated. Let Amy defend herself and you just keep watching Oprah and letting the world set your opinions.
It is truly a sad state of affairs when poor people sell their children for money.
I recently watched an Oprah show (god i hate oprah sometimes) and it was about americans paying women in india to be their surrogates.these women showed off their new houses and kitchens and said selling the baby improved their life.
there are just some things in life i will never understand.
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