Niels' blog

A new scientific truth does not triumph by
convincing its opponents and making them
see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up
that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

Ever since the 70's activists have been fighting over the paper trail, a generation of activists stuck in an endless succession of legal battles in a state by state course.  

Following the course activism against adoption practices has taken, names like Bastard Nation, Origins, CUB, Adoption Crossroads come by. All four of them being established organizations that stood by seeing the adoption industry getting more and more powerful, while avoiding to address the real issue: adoption itself.

The adoption industry has gained reputation and influence, having well known ambassadors in public figures like Angelina Jolie whose hours of airplay on the subject of adoption I wouldn't be able to count. Where were adoption reform activists against this tycoon of adoption propaganda? Sure there are blogs out there that criticize the adoption industry and some forums are shelters for people sharing their concern, but none of that reaches the headlines. In the mean time the Oprah Winfrey Show hosts another show around a celebrity whose loving concern have made them adopt yet another child.

I seriously started looking into the wheelings and dealings of the adoption industry, when coming across the work of David Smolin, who wrote several papers on the issue of child trafficking in relation to international adoption. In these papers Smolin tells how in third world countries money is made by putting pressure on women with just born babies, by stealing babies and by corrupt orphanages.

This is the darkest side of adoption and has such an appalling appeal, that news agencies pick up on it, and rightfully so. This is profiting from other peoples misery to its fullest extent.

Part of that same adoption industry are the adoption agencies, some of them for profit, but a lot promote themselves as not for-profit organizations, that way avoiding the smell of money around their enterprises. Sounds like improvement, doesn't it? Well don't be fooled. Not for-profit adoption agencies have a staff of social workers a director, administative personel etc. They have to, otherwise the wouldn't operate professionally. Not for-profit organizations are part of the same economy as their for-profit counterparts, need a steady income just as much and their modus operandi is not all that different.

Each social worker, operating on behalf of an adoption agency, is for his bread and butter dependant on the number of adoptions his agency is able to pull off. Some social workers are married, have children, making the number of people dependant on the income of the agency all the larger. How can anyone claim the best interest of a child is served under such conditions?

Not for-profit is just a slogan to appease the concern of some prospective adoptive parents, in the end its the same old industry over again and it keeps a pressuring for more and more babies for their clientele.

Romania needed to reform its child rights policy, as one of the conditions for its future EU Membership. Large ‘orphanages’ were closed and replaced by modern child protection alternatives.

The author, Roelie Post kept a diary on her work for the

European Commission

that aimed to help Romania reform its child protection.

I just found out my natural mom died, just a few days ago. I never met her again after our separation, over forty years ago. For a long time I didn't want to meet her, until I started having second thoughts, only last year. Right now it is too late to ever meet her. My own indecision has decided for me. Today I'd like to dedicate my thoughts to the woman who gave birth to me and honour her with my gratitude of giving me life.

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Contrary to many adoptees I've met, I know where I come from, I've always known where I come from. I am the product of a within-the-family-adoption. I was born September 9, 1965 in The Hague. So much for the verifiable facts, the rest is part truth, part legend, part fact.

My birth parents had been married for about 10 years and already had two children, a son 10 years older and a daughter 5 years older than me (fact). Their marriage hadn't been going well and being the sixties they started experimenting with the notion of free love (legend).

Somewhere down the line my birth father met another woman (fact) whom he fell in love with (legend), but before moving in with her he made one final attempt to patch things up with my birth mom (legend) and she receptive to that(truth, I am living proof). My birth father left to his new woman and by the time I was born this new woman was already two months pregnant (fact).

My Birth mother tried to take care of me and legend has it she did not do well. After a year she asked a sister-in-law of hers to take care of me for a while and that's how I ended up on the ant farm. While presumed to be in my interest, it ended up being very much in the interest of the woman I learned to know as my mother. She needed a child and I was the perfect opportunity to project all her unfulfilled desires upon and so she did. She got lucky, I didn't. She had a child and through that child she had a second childhood. That it was at the expense of me it never occurred to her; her selfish needs were just too strong for that.