As an adoptive mother, I am surprised I’m doing it all wrong. And if you are an adopted child, evidently you’ve had a really horrible life.
So this woman is anti-adoption, but for abortion. Quite confusing, isn’t it? According to her, if a baby isn’t in your “reproductive freedom” plan, but you still have a modicum of decency and decide not to abort, deciding you want to give the baby to a loving family – this is not acceptable.
Rather, the child will then belong to a complicated and statist type of “guardianship”. Loving parents who want to adopt? They’re just looking for some type of “status”. Better to to leave child raising to the courts and the government. After all, they belong to “the community”.
And so here we have it, the most naked display of hideous progressive thinking:
And damn the ready, willing, and loving families waiting for children to raise.
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Jodi G. says: I’m adopted. So what this *woman* (and I use that term only because the word I’d like to use is not acceptable in a public forum) would have preferred my birth mother abort me.
Pure, unadulterated evil.
It’s beyond me how anyone can fall for this sort of idiocy. Some of us are adopted, some of us are not; some of us have adopted children, some of us have not; but everyone, without exception, knows people who are adopted, people who have adopted, and/or people who have released a child for adoption. And it’s clear to us that everything this woman is saying is wrong, wrong, wrong. How does anyone get taken in by such nonsense?
AzA says: Isn’t that what we used to call “orphanages”? Anyone else ever notice how many Progressive solutions sound awfully regressive?
Ach says: The logical end to “children belong to the community” line of thought – the community will choose whether you are forced to abort, or get to have kids. Or just sterilize you outright.
The community raises your kids? The community will decide if you get to have kids in the first place.
Steve S. says: In John Brunner’s “Stand on Zanzibar” – a Malthusian writ against overpopulation – the idea of the community deciding who gets to have children and who doesn’t is one of the main themes through the book, along with the social pathologies that developed from such a society.
We shouldn’t be surprised. Read what two leading feminists say abt mothers who raise their own children rather than abort them:
“The care of children is infinitely better left to the best trained practitioners of both sexes who have chosen it as a vocation… [This] would further undermine family structure while contributing to the freedom of women.” – Kate Millet
“No women should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children…Women should not have that choice, because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” – Simone de Beauvoir
Ray Eckhart says: Good blast at progressive thinking. How about an equal blast at traditional marriage folks thinking the same thing?http://igfculturewatch.com/2013/03/30/as-gay-families-come-under-attack-adoptive-families-suffer-collateral-damage/
Ray Eckhart says: Second link was supposed to be this one:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/war-on-adoption
Mel says: I couldn’t even read all of her drivel, because if someone hadn’t adopted my MIL, I wouldn’t have my DH & kids. She’s disconnected from reality. HOowever, I am not surprised that her friends, who are probably also liberal, have tried to talk her out of this. It’s a homophobic stance. How can male couples become parents without adopting?
Also, how can you call yourself “pro-reproductive freedom” and want to take away one of a woman’s options for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.
What this professed atheist doesn’t want, I think, is for kids to be raised in traditional homes with conservative, God-fearing values. Not every adoptive parent I know is in a Christian home,
but most of them are. And every single one of them values life and is grateful for the mother who didn’t abort.
Professor Moriarty says: You only need to read this one part, to understand where she comes from: “As you can see, adoption is not a benevolent institution at all. Rather, it is a capitalistic industry that employs the use of coercion, false promises, and secrecy to thrive.”
Remember, capitalism is EVIL.
Joe Mack says: what if we only allow adoptions by same sex couples?
bet she would be on board with adoptions in a second.
Viv says: What a delightful way to start my day learning a segment of the population wishes I had been aborted instead of being a productive, educated, law-abiding, tax-paying member of society. Regardless, it looks like I have the last word by living my life to the fullest despite their heartless wishes. *smile*
Catherine says: Viv…just “bless their hearts”…..lol
The widely circulated statics overwhelmingly show* that stable, natural, two-parent families raise kids better than single moms. Less widely known is that widows do fine and adoptive parents do slightly better.
Fulfilling the dreams of childless women (and men), giving children a home where you KNOW they are wanted, raising a healthy, happy, balanced society; what’s not to like?
*(http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-07-06.html)
This hostility toward adoption is, in part, due to the deep eugenic roots of abortion legalization proponents. “Unfitness” is regarded as genetic and thus not something that can be altered by adoptive parents. And given that a society is still stuck with certain numbers of ‘unfit’ children, it’s thought best that the State rear them so their failings will not halt the progressive agenda.
You see that in Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 feminist utopian novel. Located high in the Andes, a strange series of events leads to an isolated land populated with only women who nevertheless finds a way to have children (girls only). There, eugenics is proudly practiced. Over-mothers decide which young women are to permitted to undergo the mystical experience that leads to a no-men-involved pregnancy. And another carefully selected cadre of women manage the State-run child-rearing program.
Keep in mind that the foremost champion of abortion legalization in the late 1960s was Dr. Alan Guttmacher, president of Planned Parenthood-World Population and, revealingly, the former VP of the American Eugenics Association.
A generation earlier, eugenists had been alarmed by the high birthrates of immigrants (mostly Jewish) from Eastern Europe and (mostly Catholic) from Italy. It takes no great skill to imaging their alarm when the black birthrate surged well ahead of that of whites in the 1960s.
I give much of this, including quotes from Herland and other relevant sources, in my The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective. You can buy printed copies online and there are free PDFs floating around the Internet. Google Books has it here:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Pivot_Of_Civilization_In_Historical.html?id=NysSmD9t9o4C
–Michael W. Perry, Seattle
Catherine says: very very interesting, Michael Perry….thank you!
SPDudley says: “And damn the ready, willing, and loving families waiting for children to raise.”
Unless they’re gay, of course.
Steve White says: Jessica DelBalzo, the author of the piece you cite, is well known to me from the Usenet: she was on the usenet forum alt.adoption (as was I) a decade ago. I’m an adoptive father and quite forward in my belief that adoption (done ethically and properly) is a great option for birthmothers who are pregnant and desperately wish not to be.
Ms. DeBalzo (known on alt.adoption as ‘Jessie deBabbles’) is quite a piece of work. She is one of the nastiest, most vituperative anti-adoption people I’ve ever encountered, and even a decade ago she stated that her mission — mission, mind you — was to made abortion the number one preferred outcome for a pregnancy. Her 2007 piece that you cite is one of the ways that she’s been working as an anti-adoption activist, and it’s not the last. She fits right in with the most militant parts of feminism that indeed view childbearing and childrearing as loathsome activities that are best handed off to state workers.
Fortunately her viewpoint is open enough — and strange enough — that it is easy to identify her for what she is. But she’s persistent, and you’ll be reading about her again.
It would be extra ironic if she were using the favorite tools of the hipster D-bag: Macbooks and iPhones. (Full disclosure: am a longtime Apple user myself.) In her world, Steve Jobs would have been aborted rather than adopted…
Catherine says: I love all these comments…thank you….I’m learning even more about the dark soul of Ms DeBalzo. I so appreciate all the comments….bringing light to darkness is how to counter these hateful people.
Kate says: Actually Catherine… thank YOU for adopting. 🙂
Catherine says: I’m the lucky one, Kate!
Chris says: I have to say that the article by Jessica DelBalzo was really noteworthy.
There are a lot of stupid things written on the web but Delbalzo’s argument against adoption has to make the short list for the stupidest thing I’ve read this year. That is an impressive achievement on her part.
This is not new thinking for these people. Way back in about 1975, when I was in college, and quite the liberal, I attended a NOW meeting. They were discussing how abortion is a much better choice than adoption, because babies should only be raised by their “real” parents.
Now, I was adopted. I took offense at this statement, and asked them if they were serious – and dammit, yes, they were. I was told I would be better off dead, basically.
So, I never became a member of N.O.W. and I started my path towards conservatism.
Adoption is the very best choice to make.
Catherine says: That is true, Beth…and now we have you! xox
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