Tuesday, November 11, 2008

MS. SAXTON AND MY REPLY

Here is Ms. Saxton's reply to my email:

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I have received several e-mails, but yours was the most helpful because of the source material you provided.

I am planning a follow-up article, which I hope will address some of the issues you raise here. For now I'd like to point out that (a) not to have a formal policy against something is not the same as supporting it and (b) when one considers statistics, one must also consider the source.

Neither do I think it is necessary to automatically differentiate between foster-adoption and other kinds of adoption: The children who wind up in foster care are there largely because their parents were ill-equipped to be parents in the first place, and their failure to choose adoption from the beginning caused even greater damage than if they had simply made an adoption plan in the first place. If we want to encourage young mothers to parent instead of choosing adoption, it is crucial that we look at the patterns of failure that leads to the wide-scale abuse and neglect of young children. Desire alone is not enough. Neither is throwing money at the problem. A whole skill set must be taught if these young women are going to succeed -- starting with the importance of both a mother and father, married to one another for life, in the life of a child ... and sexual relations being acceptable only on those terms.

My final reply back to her:

Ms. Saxton,

Again you are missing the point. Bastard Nation and Unsealed Initiative is about adoptee access thus about the adoptee. Adoption is about the adoptee not finding the perfect adoptee for the adoptive parents. That is what you are presenting in your article. You are presenting adoption is equal to abortion. It is not. These are two very separate decisions. One occurs before the other is even considered.

In this world, as long as men will not take responsibility for their actions, there will be single women having children. In fact, there are single women adopting children now. Are they wrong? However we can reduce the numbers of abortion by having a comprehensive sex education, by having contraception available (gasp), by teaching sexual responsibility ( for both boys and girls), and by teaching parenting classes in junior high and high school. No unwed mother is obligated to give her baby to an infertile or married couple. We can also provide resources for a woman or young teen to raise her own child. We must teach boys and men that if they lie down and have sex, they must take responsibility for their actions. They don't get a scott free ticket any more. Its not a one way street. Do you want women to have abortions or not? As long as that child is born alive, why does it matter if she is raising her own child? That is right. It reduces the adoption industry's source of income. Your own church organization stated that we as a country need to provide more resources for women in order to reduce abortions.

Your attitude is totally flip to adoptees, natural parents and adoptive parents. Please look outside the box before making sweeping judgemental statements about us living adoption.

Is this woman ready to condemn the single adoptive parents too? This whole article is filled with so much stupidity. I am beyond anger as well as many of my adoptee friends are. I am betting the adoptive parents and the natural parents will be as well. Maybe she should be a Mormon as she is professing many of their beliefs.

Here is her final email to me:

Adoption equal to abortion? Adoption about finding the "perfect" adoptee for adoptive parents? What bunk. I never said either of those things. Adoption is a choice for life, abortion a death sentence. Adoption is about finding a loving, permanent, stable home for EVERY child who needs one, and expecting those old enough to make adult choices to behave like adults and not inflict their own bad choices on others more than necessary.
Adoption and abortion MUST be presented together, in tandem, to give an expectant mother ALL the choices available to her. They are mutually exclusive. You can't adopt a dead baby.
Of course both young men and women must take responsibility for their actions. Nothing I've said negates this. The difference is ... you want to exploit women by having them poison their bodies with contraceptives -- treating a natural function as a "disorder" or a "disease" to be treated, rather than a gift -- in order to allow men to objectify them, and to enable themselves to settle for momentary passion rather than life-long commitment. And we are ALL the losers for it. Contraception has singlehandedly destroyed countless lives -- and marriages. By contrast, the divorce rate of those who practice NFP is less than 2%.
Only women can carry children and nurture life. We MUST be the gatekeepers, the keepers of social order, if you will, if we are to survive. This isn't my idea -- this is natural order combined with thousands of years of cultural anthropology speaking here.
Although both men and women experience sexual pleasure, the role of women in family life -- and our motivations for entering into committed relationships -- are generally complementary, not interchangeable, with that of men. You may not like that, but it doesn't change the facts: Men will take responsibility for their actions when AS A SOCIETY decent women make it clear that they can't get what they want any other way. Marriage and family is the proper order of family life; as your letter amply demonstrates, when we ignore this order the innocent suffer. Widows, orphans we will always have with us, and as a society we must help them ... but what we have in America today is nothing short of the destruction of our society -- and it all began when women abdicated their feminine power just so they could be "just like men."
How sad, when we have the potential to be so much more.
Thanks again for the information you sent.
Heidi Saxton

Well back in the day, I can say that there were a great of rapes because of this mentality. Its not even worth replying to. She is determined to be ignorant of everything concerning adoption and life in general.

5 comments:

The Improper Adoptee said...

"Marriage and family is the proper order of family life; as your letter amply demonstrates, when we ignore this order the innocent suffer"
AND FORGIVING WOMEN FOR HAVING SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE AND A CHILD OUT OF WELOCK AND FORGIVING HER FOR THAT AND NOT TAKING HER CHILD AWAY FROM HER IS THE PROPER ORDER OF CHRISTIANITY THAT BONEHEADS LIKE YOU REFUSE TO GET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!And yeah, you are right you @#^&^%#$@!@, the innocent do suffer, BECAUSE OF IDIOTS LIKE YOU-you take us from our Moms and seal our records. It is confirmed. Being a Pro-Adoption Christian IS A FORM OF MENTAL ILLNESS. I am as pissed of and outraged as you are Amy-damn people like her hell. She will be hearing from me too....:)

Anonymous said...

"Christians the gatekeepers of social order?" Geez I am getting frightened just thinking about it. I can now understand why Islamic law prohibits adoption in their society. They believe an orphaned should be raised by their countrymen, relative, neighbor, etc., Moslems equate adoption to Christian Capitalistic principals of buying and selling children like they are merchandise.
I grow sicken of listening to every hypocrite Zealot Christian who believes they are perfect and correct and everyone must live by their personal opinion. Hypocracy of talking about "killing babies and abortion is wrong" when so many of these same Christians care less about the children/babies being blown to bits by our military in Iraqi, and Afghanistan.
100,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of our carelessness and over 6,000 Iraqi Christians (yes there are Christians in Iraq) have been displaced and living in refugee camps.
If you do gooder Christian Asses want to do something for this great country of USA. Why don't you adopt one of the 113,000 AMERICAN CHILDREN PAPERREADY in our foster care system? www.adoptuskids.org
Instead you "create" your BS Adoption ministries in places like Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, etc., and other poverty stricken places. Not to mention you adopt very sickly children with severe special needs and many of you end up relinquishing your adoptions, abusing your kids (even killing them) or dumping these children back onto the American foster care system.
Why? Because you didn't adopt for the right reasons to love and be a part of that child's life. You adopt because "GOD TOLD YOU SO" So did God tell you to spend over $30,000 to the Adoption Agency that pays barely 25% of that in fees to the in country facilitators and then pockets the rest?
No surprise that many countries are closing down their adoption programs and many agencies have closed down: Waiting Angels, Reaching Arms International, Seattle International, Project Oz, Main Street Adoptions, Tedi Bear Adoptions. THE FUNNY THING IS THEY ALL CLAIMED TO BE CHRISTIAN ADOPTION AGENCIES DOING THE WORK OF THE LORD. Amen.

Unknown said...

Someone should remind her of Jesus' warning to "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Seems that the milk of human kindness runs to skim in her judgmental self. Ms Saxton, FU! and the High Horse you rode in on!

Good response Amy. You rock!

Unknown said...

Can I just find her and barf on her shoes? As a woman, I am appalled that women like this puport to represent any of us, let alone a supposed Christian. I wonder if she a converted Catholic went to her marriage bed intact? I don't think I know a single woman who did. Why is it that marriage and then family is the proper order? It hasn't always been that way, once upon a time, a single woman who had children was highly sought after, having proven her fertility, made her a highly desirable partner. I find it disgusting that in this day and age any woman would spout this sort of drivel. I also find this woman insulting and demeaning to mothers, adoptees and adoptive parents. I can't even think straight enough to reply to her on the website she published this on.

Amyadoptee said...

I don't get her. She is one of the absolutists. She thinks that we must go back to the sixties and before. It is not going to work. We have opened the box. She also acts like we have just started this process. We all have been fighting for years now. Bastard Nation has been involved in this fight since 1995. CUB has been in it longer than that. Lets not forget ALMA and many others for twenty to thirty years. Give me a break. If you really want to reduce abortions, then you have to include contraception. We have to come to a middle ground somewhere.