4 Comments

Blake
June 13th, 2012 | 5:26 pm

Whatever the motives of the UN, I have to agree that “baby boxes” are horrible. There is no need to encourage anonymous adoption.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the sudden push to promote anonymous abandonment of children arose right as courts began to recognize the rights of adopted children to have access to their own records, and are often promoted by the same people who are on record as opposing laws granting adult adoptees the right to their birth records.

It grieves me that the Religious Right is working for both legal and social processes designed specifically to make it harder for adopted children to know or find the truth about who they are and where they come from.

Dale
June 14th, 2012 | 2:43 am

@Blake

I see the intent as not to hide from the right of adopted children to know where they come from, but to protect their right to be born when anonymity is the only circumstance in which some people are willing to consider going to term with a pregnancy rather than aborting one.

heloise
June 14th, 2012 | 10:07 am

Considering that in many countries or even within certain communities, mothers of illicit pregnancies face severe social or even criminal retribution, it seems the only way to safeguard both mother and child comes at that cost.

Look at China. I know four young Chinese ladies adopted by American families who will never know who their mother was. The way I’ve heard it explained to them by their various parents: their mothers had the choice of giving them life by giving them up or saving only herself. Their abandonment, in that light, can be seen as an act of love in a dire circumstance. Of course it is difficult for the girls to accept. Yet they are alive and healthy, and know they are loved.

You raise a valid point, especially applicable to children of anonymous sperm and egg donation as well. Yet if the choice is anonymous abandonment or no life at all, I know four children who prefer the first.

Blake
June 14th, 2012 | 6:45 pm

Considering that in many countries or even within certain communities, mothers of illicit pregnancies face severe social or even criminal retribution, it seems the only way to safeguard both mother and child comes at that cost

So we are expected to believe that the woman will have no problem hiding nine months of pregnancy and a delivery, but has no way of getting a child into the hands of people who will care for it unless special abandonment boxes are set up?

Really? You believe that?

Of course, my first introduction to these boxes was when they first came to America – introduced by the same political groups actively opposing legislation introduced on behalf of adult adoptees who want to have access to their own personal information.

The real motive here: babies who can’t be traced back to their birth origins are worth ten grand or more per child more than children who can. The beneficiaries here are not babies, nor mothers, but the people who want to adopt babies – people who are being deliberately fed fantasies about what is and is not really theirs to have and to control.