exposing the dark side of adoption
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Stop the films, stop the press, hold the phone calls... is this one correct?

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I read a new series of adoption documentaries is hitting local libraries in Chicago... typical seach and reunion stuff, but with a made-in-China twist.

Being the curious pup that I am, I went to the website of the Dr./film-maker and almost fell off my couch.  The title is "My Unforgotten Daughter", and it goes a little like this:

Adoption is a leap of faith, an adventure into the unknown, and an act of love. Each adoption is both a similar and a unique story. Similar, because it is a story of a child finding a loving home, a story of a family embracing a new dream. Unique, because not all stories follow the same line: you go to an orphanage in a distant land and meet the child you have dreamed about. Sometimes, the unexpected can happen…

When Rhoda Island native Meredith Bishop went to an orphanage in southern China to pick up her daughter, Jadra, she confronted an unexpected situation. Jadra had moles and birthmarks all over her body and doctors suspected they might be cancerous and she may not live more than one year. After spending two nights with Jadra in the hotel, Meredith made an extremely difficult and controversial decision: she would send Jadra back to the orphanage and let her daughter die peacefully in China.

However, Jadra did not die. When news of her daughter still alive in the small orphanage in China reached her almost three years later, Meredith knew exactly what she must do. But this time she was facing insurmountable difficulties...

My Unforgotten Daughter tells a touching story of a woman who is resolved to reunite with her daughter. It is a tale of love, choice, courage, and human dignity.

Directed, Written and Produced by Dr. Changfu Chang

So, the Amother returned the damaged goods, thinking she was doing the right thing; then she learned the child "near death" was NOT going to die, so the mom came back to get "her" "unforgotten" daughter, and all live happily ever after.

Is this the new-age international adoption story adoptees are supposed to celebrate?  Amother takes child home, doesn't like what she sees, re-abandons the child  returns the orphan to the orphanage, then leaves, learns a mistake was made, returns to the orphanage, re-claims what was previously purchased, and this is all "touching" and good?  [Anyone seeing this happen for Artem Justin Hansen (Artem Saveliev), the Russian boy, sent "home" with "love"?]

Because if this is the new-pattern to international adoption, I think adoptees expected to change, for the sake of their "chosen" adoptive parents, need to put their glasses on, (or good ol thinking caps) and ask what is going on in the minds of foreigners looking for a good orphan.

This is not a wonderful adoption story; it highlights all that is insane in Adoptionland.  This is crazy.

So is another story, about an AP who wanted to "fix" what was wrong with his little oriental girl:

Today's find comes from an Amother's blog, Adoptiontalk.  Kudos must go for the AP who finally sees just how crazy life can be for the adoptee "chosen" by/for a well-to-do family with some serious identity issues:

The speaker was a proud father. To illustrate his comments about a piece of art that celebrated the wonders of modern medicine (and which he had just donated to a local hospital), he told a story about his adopted Asian daughter. He described her as a beautiful, happy child in whom he took much delight. Her life, he told the audience, had been improved dramatically by the miracle of modern medicine. When she joined her new Caucasian family, her eyes, like those of many people of Asian descent, lacked a fold in the upper eyelid, and that lack was problematic—in his view—because it made her eyes small and sleepy and caused them to shut completely when she smiled. A plastic surgeon himself, he knew she did not need to endure this hardship, so he arranged for her to have surgery to reshape her eyes. The procedure, he explained, was minimally invasive and maximally effective. His beautiful daughter now has big round eyes that stay open and shine even when she smiles.

[From:  Eyes Wide Open:  Surgery to Westernize the Eyes of an Asian Child ]

The hardship this adoptee has to endure has nothing to do with her eyes.  Her hardship has to do with the way in which she is seen by her all-loving, all-accepting Aparent, who also happens to be a nut-job with a medical license and a knife.

[From:  An eye-opening look at the power of an AP

Good grief!  What is wrong with people?

by Kerry on Thursday, 31 March 2011