Now hand her over. Via Gimli_36 @ Flickr.
I knew Crisis Pregnancy Centers were bad, but I didn’t know they were this bad.
Here’s the deal:
Girl (or woman) gets pregnant, girl turns to “Crisis Pregnancy Center” for help, CPC pressures her to a.) continue the pregnancy and b.) give it up to a deserving couple, because abortion is murder and raising the child herself is selfish and stupid. CPC lies about the adoption process and cuts girl off from “outside influences” like family and friends. Girl has baby, CPC snatches it for adoptive parents and leaves girl in the dark for the rest of her life.
The baby thievery is happening all over the country and it’s happening on our dime. It’s raking a whole lot of dimes for the adoption agencies, too. No wonder the anti-choice movement is always claiming abortion is an extremely lucrative “industry:” projection.
I am angry, and I am sad for the women who’ve been through similar ordeals at the hands of “good, Christian pro-lifers.”
Why do you hate all Christians? I once knew a Christian man that gave a pregnant woman change for the phone!
I had started reading this article and it made me so livid, I couldn’t see straight. I didn’t finish it.
The article is really shocking and everyone should read it. There must be someone to petition to cease gov’t funding of these groups. Maybe our senators?
I’ve become very curious about ethical adoption, which seems rarer and rarer the more you explore the system (domestic and international). In my family, we have a totally positive adoption experience, though of course, I can’t speak for the first/birth family. They’re mostly a mystery to us.
My dad was adopted in 1950. He doesn’t know much about his birth parents (the records were sealed, but because he returned to his hometown to work as a lawyer he literally ran across his own records by accident in the courthouse files), but he does know she was about 30 years old, and had been married at least once. Because that doesn’t fit the stereotype of an unmarried teenage mother giving her baby up for adoption, I’ve always been a little curious about the circumstances. I’m definitely going to have to read the Fessler book.
Oh! And! My city has one of the last surviving Florence Crittenden homes – what would at the time have been an old-school “home for unwed mothers.” Happily, they have modernized, and their goal now is not to cloister pregnant teens until their babies can be swept away from them, but to provide a place where girls (who often have nowhere else to go, having been kicked out by their families) can get healthcare, parenting guidance, finish high school and have some help with childcare. I work with an agency that volunteers to do tutoring and crafts with the teen moms. I like to think it’s a more humane approach than the bad old days of shame.
This shouldn’t shock anyone, really. We’d like to think that these people don’t care about these babies after they’re born, but it turns out they do — because there is big bucks in it for them. So we have the best “Christian virtues” at work: hypocrisy and greed.
Sarah, you’ve mentioned before that you live in VA, so you might be interested in the current anti-CPC campaign of NARAL VA. They are drawing attention to, and hoping to end, money from the sale of VA’s ‘Choose Life’ license plate ($12 per plate) going directly to support CPCs in the state. Money collected by the government is being funneled to these repugnant organizations. Ugh times a million.
The website of The Womens Legal Defense and Education Fund has the most comprehensive info about CPCs I’ve seen.
Clearly, agencies like Bethany (mentioned in the article) don’t just oppose abortion, they oppose any woman they disapprove of trying to raise her own child, in her own way. Appalling. I use the term “anti-choice” to describe people who are opposed to abortion, but this takes “anti-choice” to a horrifying new level.
Oh my god, Skip. Thanks for the info; I’m going to look into it.
@spark
I gave up a child in a closed adoption. So from what I can tell I speak from the other side of your experience. While I can’t speak for the birth family of you child, I can say that my experience was as positive as it could be given the circumstances.
@all Please don’t think that adoption is inherently exploitative or negative. But yes, agencies that push mothers into adoption like the one in the article need to be shut down.
I meant to add also (but I was distracted by my two year old spitting a mouthful of chewed up almonds into my hand as I was typing) that I volunteered for NARAL VA on this campaign and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who were shocked to find the government collecting money on behalf of these groups. Not having services money assigned to the org, for services if doesn’t provide (like, say, women’s health care) which is, yes, gross, but doing year-round fundraising on top of that.
Alyssa, I’m glad to hear your experience was a good one. I wish people in this country got to hear more from the perspective of birth mothers. They are completely erased from the dialogue.
Thanks, Alyssa. I’m glad your experience was positive (for the situation). I’ve read such horrible accounts from first/birth mothers recently, and have begun to fear that it’s inevitable that our happy story is someone else’s tragedy.
If you haven’t read the Fessler book yet, RUN do not walk to your nearest library/Borders/whatever and get it. It blew my mind. My father was adopted during the Fifties and he’s never wanted to know anything about his birth parents. This book totally changed my perception of adoption and I think if I have the balls to talk to my dad about it, it might change how he feels about it as well.
I live in VA – the ‘Choose Life’ license plates caused me (and continue to) no end of anger, letter-writing, money donating, and time volunteering frustration. I’m so disappointed that they’re available.
Of course, I’m of the belief that if we can get 250 people to sign up for them, we should be able to get a special interest “Pro-choice” plate. Perhaps we can funnel $$ to Planned Parenthood or NARAL?
Actually, this isn’t a half-bad idea…
Shakesville had a phenomenal thread a few months ago about adoption… http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html
@ImTheMarigold
As you might have seen above, my dad was also adopted in the 50s. He has expressed pretty much zero curiosity about his birth parents, and he doesn’t mind talking about it, but he just really seems not to care. Myself, I’m a little more curious, particularly because my family is missing SO much of our medical history. I’m going to buy the book asap, and see if I can use it to strike up a convo with my dad about what he does know about his birth parents.
So let’s see: they lie to frightened, vulnerable girls and women about what they do. They perform medical tests they’re not qualify to administer or interpret. They find the woman/girl’s most tender emotional spots and beat them bloody so the girl or woman is unable to make a rational decision. Then they take the baby that they’ve emotionally blackmailed the woman/girl into having…and sell it.
I wonder how many of those babies for sale was non-white?
These people are vile beyond description.
This article was so depressing. And the implicit argument that, even if a single pregnant woman decides not to abort, she’s still a faulty moral influence just because there’s no man in her life?
I almost set my laptop on fire after reading this.
This shit is disgusting. These people are deceiving frightened and confused women/girls for their own ends, and that is unacceptable.