I was talking with hub the other day about the anti-adoption movement on the Internet. Hub’s jaw dropped as he asked incredulously, “Why would anyone be against adoption?” I explained that there are people who have been harmed through adoption, such as children placed into unsafe homes or birth mothers who regret their decision to place a baby for adoption. I assured him that there were people who did not support adoption. Hub has been an adoptive father for over seven years and had no idea about any sort of anti-adoption movement in the United States.

From what I can tell from glancing over some of the anti-adoption information on the Internet, it sounds like many anti-adoption folks are angry with adoptive parents because they believe that adoptive parents have all the power. If adoptive parents did not pay for adoptions, then the adoption industry would end. Because adoptive parents control the purse strings, they are ultimately responsible for all that is wrong in the adoption world.

I find this viewpoint interesting because I never felt like I had any power when we were going through the adoption process. I had no power to become a parent. I tried in vain to become pregnant for years and never succeeded. Then, I paid thousands of dollars and jumped through a bunch of hoops to get my home study approved, and even that did not result in my becoming a parent. I had to wait … and wait … and wait … for an expecting mother to choose me to parent her unborn baby.

Once I was chosen, I could just as easily be “unchosen.” I parented a baby until he was fourteen days old before I even knew that I would be his forever mother. If his expecting mother had chosen to parent him, or if the adoption agency withdrew its support for some reason, I would be back to square one with no baby but also out thousands of dollars. I was powerless in this situation.

If I wanted to become a mother (and I did – very, very badly), then I was at the mercy of all of these people. If I did not do whatever the adoption agency and expecting mother told me to do, then I would not be able to adopt the baby. Period. Where is the power in that?

Yes, there is a lot wrong in the adoption industry. However, I do not think that adoptive parents are to blame for this. I think that whenever there is money to be made in a situation where people are thinking with their hearts instead of their heads, unscrupulous people are going to take advantage of that situation. They are the ones with the power and the ones who create the problems in the adoption industry.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt