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.