Think first

While in the USA adoption profiteers and adoption-advocacy groups have filed a petition to save international adoptions…

Adoption.com, an American company that profits from adoptions,  and adoption-advocacy groups have filed a petition requesting pres. Donald Trump investigate the causes behind the decline in international adoptions.

One of the biggest concerns of the company seems to be the continuous decline in international adoptions. The CEO of Adoption.com, which he founded 20 years ago, said if that trend continues international adoption could completely end within four years.

The adoption profiteers say, “Every child needs a loving, permanent family, whether that child is in a foster home in the U.S. or in an orphanage in another country” and “Adoption prevents child trafficking.”  The CEO of Adoption.com sees the number of international orphans as too large to ignore and cites statistics of orphans who commit suicide or a crime, become homeless and of the girls who age out of orphanages and are forced into prostitution.

 

 in other parts of the world,…

orphanage tourism is a big business;

Orphanages recruit kids to get foreign donations. “The children are being commodified and placed in orphanages for the sole purpose of bringing in donations and other donated goods. The children have families, they’re exploiting vulnerable children, vulnerable people, vulnerable guardians.” Click on the image above to view CNN video.

Networks of traffickers are suspected of recruiting and deceiving children into orphanages to gain money from abroad, the Haitian state research authority believes. Indeed, Lumos found evidence of parents believing their children would receive a better education in orphanages, orphanage directors paid “child finders” to recruit children to the orphanages, and in some cases families were paid $75 to give their child away. “Many parents are deceived into giving up their children, purely so that unscrupulous individuals can make a profit,” said Lumos’ CEO. Click on the image above to read more.

Lumos is an organization that  rescues children from orphanages and reunite them with their families.

Lumos is an organization that rescue children from orphanages and reunite them with their families. They change education, health and social care systems so they can all be protected and protected.

Other people and organizations help vulnerable children escape poverty and be cared for within their families or communities. Tara Winkler is one of them. In her conference at TED (click on the image below to watch the video of the conference), she speaks out against the spread of orphanages in developing countries, caused by the good intentions of foreign donors, and of harm that comes to children when they are separated from family and left to grow up in institutions.

Tara is the Managing Director of the Cambodian Children’s Trust (CCT) which she established with Jedtha Pon in 2007 in order to rescue fourteen children from a corrupt and abusive orphanage. She has led CCT through a number of significant organisational changes, including the closure of the initial CCT orphanage in favour of a family-based care model to empower Cambodian families to escape poverty, assist institutionalised children return to families, and help orphanages transform to a family-based care model. Her first book, ‘How (NOT) to Start an Orphanage – by a woman who did’ was published in April 2016.

“How (not) to start and orphanage… by a woman who did” by Tara Winkler

 

in Nigeria (April 2018), the authorities shut down 2 illegal orphanages and a baby factory 

In Nigeria, 162 children were rescued from a baby factory.

 

Pregnant women sometimes end up in the baby factories after they have been promised health care, but after delivery their babies are simply taken away from them. In other cases, women are raped and conceived. The babies and children are then sold for adoption, used for child labor, smuggled to Europe for prostitution or ritual murder. In 2013, seventeen pregnant teenagers and eleven babies were rescued from a home in the southeastern state of Imo. The girls declared to be raped by one man. Click on the image above to read more.

The first reported case of baby factory was published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2006. Several more baby factories claiming to be orphanages were revealed over the years by police raids.

In 2014, the proliferation of baby factories and child trafficking in Nigeria has led Denmark  to ban adoptions from Nigeria after raid on baby factory. In 2016, Denmark also banned adoptions from Ethiopia after a series of inspection at adoption facilities in the country. Early this year, Ethiopia banned adoption of children by foreigners. Ethiopian MP said orphans and other vulnerable children should be cared should be care by local system, in order to protect them from abuse abroad. Ethiopia is not the first country that stopped adoptions by foreigners. Country after country has closed due to corruptions, and when a country is closed  adoption agencies simply moves to another country where the stories repeat.  (Read the article, The Lie We Love and watch the documentary, Search a Child, Pay Cash).

Child trafficking through international adoption continues despite regulations

Think first before signing their petition.

Those who need kids to stay in orphanages the most are the adoption agencies and prospective adopters. The adoption industry needs the orphan industry to supply the demand. And prospective adopters need the orphan industry to get what they want (babies). The demand of adopters is for healthy babies or young healthy children.   International adoption creates more new baby ‘orphans’ and adoptable ‘paper orphans‘.  It seldom saves the existing real orphans who are older or disabled than  requested by adopters.

While in the USA, people are signing the petition launched by adoption profiteers and adoption-advocacy groups  to save international adoptions,

In their own country,…

American born babies, mostly African American babies, are sent for adoption to Canada and Europe

Canadian parents pay less to adopt African American babies

America’s unseen export: children, most of them black

“But that organization is mired in controversy, because of the fees it charges its Canadian clients. According to its information package, the costs attached to adopt a white baby can be as much as US $44,000. Biracial? A bit cheaper. But for black babies? Even less. On average, no more than $35,000 US — a discount of close to $15,000 US.”

“Just as the U.S. looks to China and other countries, Canadians look to the United States,” says Jane Turner of Adopt Illinois, a private adoption agency. Adopt Illinois is one of 26 agencies in the U.S. accredited by the State Department to handle adoptions involving an American-born child and foreign parents.

Adoption of US-born children by non-US citizens approved in France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

This statistic shows the number of outgoing (emigrating) adoptions processed in the United States in 2016, by receiving country. In 2016, total  89 American children were adopted by families living in Canada or Europe; 39 of them were adopted to Canada.

children are advertised on Internet for re-adoption (legalized rehoming of adopted children);

With WIAA (Wasatch International Adoption agency), you can adopt children and give them back for re-adoption if you’re not satisfied or you can adopt children second hand

Adopted children are advertised on their Facebook page, Second Chance Adoptions

“this is a child you could adopt with much less cost and much less time”, says an ad.

“Available. This kid is being relisted…was adopted from Africa 5 years ago”

“…was recently adopted (March 2018) internationally from an Asian country”

 in an annual event called Meet The Kids, companies and associations use highly marketing methods to place children;

catalog of children abandoned by their adoptive families

children parade to find parents

Images above from a French documentary, Enfants jetables (Disposable children), about rehoming of children in the USA.

children on Internet to find parents

images above: photolisting of children to find parents

children are rehomed through Internet, given to strangers their adopters have never met;

watch the youtube video child exchange or click on the image above to read the detailed written report.

some unwanted children are kicked out from their adoptive homes and end up homeless;

 

 

children are abused or murdered in their adoptive homes

Hana Williams, adopted from Ethiopia, was murdered by her adoptive parents in 2011.

 

Sherin Mathews, 3 years old adopted from India, was murdered by her adoptive father in 2017.

adoptees are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than non-adoptees;

 

adult adoptees are not given automatic citizenship and face deportation or are deported back to their birth country

Adopted at 8 from S. Korea into an American family, Phillip Clay was deported 29 years later, in 2012. He ended his life on May 21, 2017 by jumping from the 14th floor of an apartment building.

 

Adopted at 9 months old from Vietnam, Denise discovered she wasn’t as US citizen when she sought her birth certificate to apply to become a Philadelphia police officer in the mid 1990s.

“We call on Congress to uphold the promise to adoptees by fixing the legal loophole and passing the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2018 allowing citizenship for all adoptees of US citizen parents.”  Adoptee Rights Campaign.

Fix first before demanding to bring in more children!

 

Advertisements

The first time I heard of adoption

When I was kid ( a non-adopted kid in Korea), after I entered first grade, we became so poor that we once searched in the garbage dump for foods and we gleaned  radish and cabbage left in the fields after the harvest.

My sister was friend with the daughter of a rich family in our neighborhood. They lived in a house of more than one room, they owned a TV, and a piano and they had a beautiful rose garden in front of their living room. Everything they owned was unusual at that time. Compared to a family in the Western country, they weren’t rich, but they were the richest in the world to my knowledge as a child. She always wore wore beautiful clothes (while other children had only one set of clothes to go to school and one set for home). My sister would draw her new clothes for my paper doll. I thought she was lucky until the day I heard she was adopted. I didn’t know what adopted meant, so my sister said her parents were not her real parents. I then had assumed that her real parents were dead, and although she didn’t look unhappy I thought it was terrible. The sad revelation made me appreciate my life and my family. I tried to imagine my life without dad but couldn’t imagine. It was too horrible. I didn’t want to live with another family for all the clothes in the world, nor even for all foods in the world.

That’s how much my family meant to me.

Ironically I got adopted three years later into a rich country where there were clothes and foods in profusion, while my father was still alive. When you take a child from the poor and give him/her to the rich in exchange of money, what’s left to the poor? Nothing.

My father had nothing else after losing me, but the “birth” parents don’t matter for people who promote adoption.

I just need to comment to a comment

Someone to the post Almost Aborted wrote, “Be a round Korean, learn Korean and serve in the Korean Army.”

Korea sent me to a white community  where there were no Asians.
A community where I was mocked, bullied and threatened for my slant eyes.
I was called “The Chinese” or “La Chinoise” if not “la sale Chinoise (the dirty Chinese)” by everyone around me, even by the few black people.
Korea sold me  to white people who taught me that to be an Asian was a shameful thing, that to be Asian = to be a geisha.

Koreans sent me to a foreign land where there were no Koreans around me.
As I mentioned in the post “Almost Aborted”,  Koreans crossed off the date of bearer’s return on my visa to ensure I wouldn’t go back to Korea for a long time.
I completely lost my language within two years of my arrival on this land for having nobody to talk to.
The loss of mother language was traumatic.

To be told to to be around Koreans, to learn Korean  and to serve in the Korean army sounds sardonic to me.

 

 

 

How an adoption agency can gaslight a child

Today I expanded my vocabulary with the word gaslighting. Gaslighting is a form of manipulation and brainwashing that seeks to make the victim to doubt her or himself, to make him/her question  her/his own memory, perception and sanity.

I had actually seen the word before but I had never bothered to read its definition until I saw it again today. I’m glad I took the time to read it because it perfectly fits what I’ve experienced as a child (and also as adult) in my adoptive family. However I will not tell my experiences of being gaslighted by my adoptive parents,  because there are many articles on internet that give examples of gasligthing in a family, in a relationship or at work and also because it’s a painful memory that I’m not ready to tell on a blog. Although equally painful, this post is about my experiences of being gaslighted by Holt adoption agency as a child (and later as young adult), because there is no example of an organisation gaslighting a child.

It’s not too difficult for an adoption agency to gaslight a child. All they need to do in a first step is to change the identity of the child. That’s what Holt agency did to me. They changed my birth date, my age and made a fake story to sell me to a Canadian couple.

I started to talk about my life and my family in Korea  15-16 months after my arrival. I could have talked earlier, probably six months earlier, if we hadn’t moved to Quebec, which forced me to learn another new language (and forget the little bit of English I had learned) only seven months after my arrival to the USA. One of the first thing I told my parents was that my birthday was not my birthday. I told them that a man had asked me my birthday only to give me a  different birthday and age and that he had ordered me to give my new birthday if someone would question me later.

As I was becoming more fluent in my new language, I would often recount  my life in Korea to them. They never told me directly I was a liar, but they would ignore everything I said and remain silent or act as if I was  lying.

For examples, if I said, “my mother died in a bus accident when I was six years old,” my mother would reply, “No. You were only four when your biological mother died.” If I said that I got lost after visiting my older sister at the house where she worked as a maid, she wouldn’t say a word. If I recounted the day I got lost with more details, such as, “I didn’t find my father where he was supposed to wait for me after I went to see my sister, so I left the street…”, then she would say, “No. Your father abandoned you to his landlord and after four days, the landlord brought you to a home for abandoned children. ”  Some time later, I told  my parents a couple of times that I believed I was not abandoned after all. I panicked when I didn’t see my father and I didn’t even wait a second for him to return, so I left believing that he had abandoned me and I got lost. Maybe he returned to the place  but  I was gone. My mother said that  he would have searched for me and found me if I was lost and I must accept the fact that I was abandoned.

(As I’m writing this, I’m in tears. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind  just like I felt when I was kid. So I have to take a break now …  )

Sometimes I felt angry but I never showed my anger. I often felt  like I would lose my mind. But I didn’t doubt myself. I continued to recount my past life, because I was so nostalgic I needed to talk about my past life. I told her about my sisters, my brother, my nephew, the games we played together, the food we ate, etc. My mother would listen to me without contradicting me when I told her about life in general in Korea. For example if I said there was no modern toilets in Korea, but there were outhouses, she would say, “So, Korea is thirty five years late compare to Canada” or “It was like that here too thirty five years ago.” That encouraged me to tell her more about Korea. But every time I spoke about my life in Korea involving my family or a member of my family, she would either remain silent or contradict me.

I gradually stopped talking about it… until the day, on the second year of my adoption, I read my adoption papers which were never hidden from me.

The papers were filled with lies and omissions.
Example of lies: “parents: unknown”. Example of omissions: the place I lived; my three siblings. (About 35 years later, I obtained an additional paper from Holt, my family background information, which only contains lies. “Myung-Sook says she has neither brother nor sister. She does not remember, either, where she lived before her coming to Seoul.” Read details here.)

I cried. I told my father that it was all lies. I felt like I would go crazy. I still remembered  my mother’s name. I told him her name and that I had one brother and two sisters. I told him their names too, except my elder sister’s and my father’s names which I had already forgotten since long time. I told him that I gave them my former address in Seoul where we lived before my biological father and I moved to the country side. There was nothing new in what I said that moment.  He yelled at me to stop crying, it was not a reason to cry. I stopped immediately, but it hurt like hell.

I imagined all kind of scenarios to explain the lies and the omissions. In each scenario, I imagined my elder sister  telling to write the lies because she didn’t want me in her life.

We knew a Korean-American man. It happened he called us and told us he was going to Korea soon. My parents asked him to stop by St-Paul’s orphanage to ask the nuns about my siblings.

The nuns told him I had never spoken about my siblings to them. (It was partially true. I never talked about my siblings to the nuns because they never questioned me. However I had often talked about my siblings to my friends in front of one of the nuns and other staff including my housemother. I also repeatedly talked about my siblings to the housemother of another group, and I told her that the director had promised me to search my elder sister’s house to bring me to her.  I also talked about my brother and sisters to the director of the orphanage. Click here for more details). The nuns also said they didn’t deal with adoptions, they only took care of the kids, and only Holt dealt with adoptions.”

My parents said it was true, that only Holt took care of adoptions. It was the first time I heard the name of Holt. Before then, I thought everyone I had met worked for the orphanage. They explained me that Holt was an adoption agency that placed children for adoption while St. Paul was an orphanage where I lived. That day I learned Holt and St. Paul were entirely separate.

I had told them that St. Paul’s director had written my address in Seoul when he had came to my first orphanage. If he didn’t keep it, then  Holt or my first orphanage must have kept it. But I didn’t know the name of my first orphanage. I don’t know if the Korean American man asked them or not, but we didn’t get any answer about it.

They asked Holt. Holt said I had no sibling. And there was no additional information.

Again I felt going crazy.

My father placed an ad in a Korean newspaper, to no vail.

Did I imagine my life? There were brief moments I doubted myself. It must be a bad dream… I have to forget… No I can’t forget, I must not forget if I want to be reunited with my father…. Those are the kind of thoughts that came to my mind whenever my family came to my mind.

In 1988, the Seoul Olympics reminded me I had a family in Korea. My father placed another ad in a Korean newspaper, without result. I also asked a Quebec journalist who was in Korea during the Olympics for help, he promised me he would help me but he never contacted me again.

Bear in mind that I don’t blame my adoptive parents for this gaslighting.   They believed the lies they were told by Holt agency. I only blame the adoption agency… However, I never blamed Holt as a kid. On the contrary, I admired Holt agency and the Holts because I had often heard my mother praising them for having saved thousands of unwanted babies after the Korean war. But I was unconsciously angry at Holt for their lies.

In 1989, fourteen years after my adoption,  we went to Korea  with Holt Family Tour. I was 23, the oldest of the adoptees participating the tour. My anger at Holt that was buried deep surfaced once before and a few times during the trip. At the same time I admired the Holts for saving unwanted and orphaned babies, I especially admired them when they brought us to Holt Ilsan Center for handicapped children. Besides they ( Holt staff and the Holts, mother and daughter) were so nice that I felt I had no right to be angry at the saints.

On one of the papers we had received before the tour, my father had highlighted a paragraph that said, “You will be able to meet the staff at the Holt office. They are willing to help you if you are particularly interested in seeking information about your background. If you were abandoned, however, there is no where to turn further information.”
He had told me, “You understand. You were abandoned, so they cannot help you.”  I felt angry, but I had replied calmly that I was abandoned but old enough to remember I had given them an address, old enough to remember the names of my parents.

Old enough to remember, but not old enough to retain my mother language.

When I lost my mother language, I also lost the names of my friends and of most of my family members. Names, proper nouns, common nouns, all became foreign words. I was able to retain only the names of my mother, my brother and my second sister.

I tore the page of the telephone directory that contained the name of my brother in my hotel room. I asked a staff member to telephone each number by the name of my brother, Kim Daeyeul. The man laughed  saying, “Oh! My name is Kim Daeyeul too.” But he ignored my request. It was very frustrating I felt I would burst with anger, but I stayed stoic by habit. I asked the name of my first orphanage (I also asked to a St. Paul’s nun), they wouldn’t answer.

My only reason for wanting to be part of the Family Tour was to search for my natural family. For my mother, it was only to honour a promise she had made me a year after my arrival, that’s to bring me to Korea.  At the same time, it was going to be her last gift to me, our last trip as a family together, before their divorce. Killing two birds with one stone, she was keeping a promise she had made a Korean girl we had fostered for six months in 1987 and with whom we had lost contact with. So my parents spent the only free days at the end of the trip to search for her and forced me to follow them and I didn’t get to search my family as I wanted. (I wanted to search only by walking in the streets of Seoul.) We managed to find the girl and meet her with the help of someone who had worked for the organization that had placed her with us and a Holt staff  member (We lost .contact again a year later!)

But Holt wouldn’t help me find my family. Nobody would help me. I found it extremely unfair that to help my parents find the girl they had foster for six months, a man had telephoned every school an entire day until he found her, while nobody wanted to call a few numbers on a telephone directory page to find my brother whom I lived with for the 8 first years of my life.

The tour leader said we could write any request on a piece of paper, such as a special place to visit. I wrote I would like to go spend time with  Korean family, to eat together, to sleep on the floor a night (just like I used to with my family), to visit places that were not touristic (I had in mind that I might miraculously find the place I used to live) and the name of my first orphanage. My requests were simply ignored. Meanwhile, an adoptive mother’s request to visit a school was granted.

In 2001,  a Korean friend I met at University invited me to go to Korea to search for my family. She found me a family to stay with. I wrote my story in 4 pages for the TV program that helped to reunite families. I’ve been so brainwashed to think the Holts were saints that the first thing I thought was to bring gifts to the kids of Holt Ilsan Center and money  to donate (a meager sum but earned  on a hard working by painting job). When I had visited Holt Ilsan in 1989, I had convinced myself that people taking care of disabled people couldn’t be bad and that their lies were only a mistake. But I was still very angry at Holt for their big big mistake. (Confused I was!) I called Molly Holt and emailed her.  She was so nice that I was impressed. She told me to send her my story, she would help me find my family, which surprised me.
I went to Holt office a week after my arrival to Korea. Again I was confused and surprised. The man who received me was extremely nice. He took note of what I said. He was going to help me find my family. I had a moment of anger and was extremely hurt when he brought me to a room where they prayed for the babies that were going to leave for adoption that day. He introduced me to a staff member who was an adoptee. For the first time I was with someone who could understand me completely.  She said I should go stay at Molly Holt’s house for the rest of my trip, and suddenly all was decided (I should say she decided and arranged everything, and I moved to Molly’s house). A few days later, I was volunteering at Ilsan Center. I talked to Molly about my anger at Holt. She admitted there had been some mistakes. She told me about three siblings who had been processed for adoption, but thanks God, their father had found them on time before they were sent to a foreign country, another story of a boy who was lost and sent for adoption (by another agency). She even told me another adoptee was abused by her adoptive father…. Everybody was extremely nice. Everyone was willing to help me and I had forgiven their mistakes.  Suddenly all was fine, I had forgotten everything.  After all they were all good Christians and I too was Christian. I thought I judged them wrongly, there must have been one person who made a mistake, but Holt was a good organisation.

I found my family through TV two weeks before the end of my stay. I stayed with my sisters the last week of my trip. I felt guilty for not being able to volunteer during that week and thankful that they didn’t say anything about it.

When I came back from the trip, I sent a thank you card to Molly for helping me find my family.

In 2003, I went back to Korea. at Molly’s house at Ilsan Center again. It’s during that stay I started opening my eyes to their ugly business of selling babies and started feeling again extremely angry at Holt. I found another place to stay for the remaining of my trip because I was too angry to continue to be at Holt Ilsan. But I was still confused, I was angry more at Korea than  at Holt. Molly had told me, “what can we do, if they (Koreans) abandon them?”
“It’s not Holt’s fault, it’s Korea’s fault,” I repeated myself. I bought a cloth for an abandoned baby who was at Ilsan. When I went to Holt office to bring the gift, I saw the foster mothers coming out from the office crying. Again I felt angry at Korea for selling babies and extremely sad.

A few weeks after I came back home, I realized that Holt hadn’t help me at all to find my family in 2001.  I had written alone my story which was translated from French to English before going to Korea. I had received the call from KBS to appear on TV before I had moved to Molly’s house, when I was still at the family’s home my friend had found. The only help I had gotten from Holt was  to go to KBS station, Ilsan Center’s driver drove me there. But it was his job to drive anyone working or volunteering at Ilsan Center.

According to wikipedia, gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief. Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

Holt has lied about my identity, my family history, and made me question my memory, perception and sanity.

Because Adoption Is Love

 

I hate love because of you.

You, my (adoptive) parents, who told me,
“Your biological father must have loved you very much to abandon you.”

You who didn’t know nothing of my story and yet, in your vain attempt to make me speak, said,
“Your mother abandoned you because she loved you so much she wanted you to have a better life.”

You, strangers who told me,
“You parents are so generous (for adopting you), they must love you very much.”
(You must guessed I’m adopted by my slant eyes being different of my parents’ round eyes)

You, my classmate friend, who confided to me that you were adopted too and you scolded me because I didn’t want to repeat after you that,
“We are more loved than other kids are because we were chosen.”

I hate love because to be loved means to be abandoned.

 

I hate love because of you.

You, the relinquishing mothers.
Your love requires too many conditions that babies/children can not fulfill: to be born be with the right gender or to be born at the right time (after you get your diploma, after you achieve your career…)
Your “unconditional” love  reminds me I was abandoned and rejected.

I hate love because your unconditional love means rejection and abandonment.

 

 

I hate love because of you.

You, my parents, who were once strangers.
When we were strangers, there was no love between us, there was only your desire for parenthood.
Your desire for parenthood have destroyed my family. And then your love reduced my real parents to DNA and genetic strangers.

I hate love because your parenthood that requires love destroyed my family, the family that I used call my family without adding the words natural, real, first, birth, biological or genetic to it.

 

 

I hate love because of you.

You, all adopters, who pursue pregnant mothers to procure their baby.
You who build your family on the destruction of a (natural) family.
You who build your happiness by destroying a mother-baby bond.
You who take advantage of the misfortune of others to build your family.
You who use the love of a mother (“If you love your child, then,…”) to give up to you her unborn baby.
You who use love to imply that genes, DNA and biology don’t matter.

I hate love because love means separation  (mother-child separation, family-child separation) and destruction (of family).

 

 

 

Bring My Sons from Afar, by Bertha Holt

I hate love because of you.

You, Harry Holt, who took advantage of the love of the mothers to procure their babies in the aftermath of the war.
You who put a clean break and forever between a heartbroken mother and her not yet weaned baby.

You, David Kim, who recounted to us your work with Harry Holt to save the war babies.
You who told us  that we (who were born 15 to 20+) were abandoned at places like the City Hall  but our mothers loved us and they stayed hidden and cried at the City Hall to watch us until we were picked up. (But I wasn’t a baby when I was supposedly abandoned and you never told me why your agency fabricated my story.)

I hate love because love makes me sad. Love makes me sad when I think of  the love of all the mothers who were/are given no other option than seeing their babies starving or abandoning them for adoption.

I hate love because love can be used to separate mothers and their child, and love can be used to sell children to strangers.

 

I hate love because of you.

You, Bertha Holt, who said, “All children are beautiful when they are loved.”
I’m the girl  K-6714 that your agency sold to a couple that needed a child to build a family.
Before becoming the holt product #K-6714, I had a family that loved me.
But you (your agency) tore apart my family (and thousands of other families) so that strangers could love me.
By using the word love to sell children who already have families, you have put the love of my family and a non-existing love of  a stranger who had never met me on the scale and you decided the love of the better off people superior was superior  to the love of my family.

I hate love because love makes me sad.
Love makes me sad when I miss the love of my real parents, the parents that I used to call my parents without adding the words natural, real, first, birth, biological or genetic to it.
Love makes me sad when I miss my family, the family that you destroyed, the family you reduced to genetics and DNA.
Love makes me sad when I think of the love of every parent who lost their children to adoption trafficking.

 

I hate love because of you.

You, the adoption agencies.

I hate love because love makes me angry.
Love makes me angry when I think of the adoption agencies  using the love of the mothers/parents to take their babies while making huge amount of money to sell them.
Love makes me angry when I think of all the people using the love a mother to convince her to put her unborn baby up for adoption.

I hate love because you use the love of a mother to procure her baby, and then you use love to sell her baby.
I hate love because you dirtied the word love.

 

 

I hate love because of you.

You, the supposedly “forever” parents, who love their adopted children so much you give them up for re-adoption.
And you, adoption agencies, who use the word love again to sell them.

I hate love because loved means abandoned 2nd time.

I hate love because adoption is love.
I hate love because of you, Adoption.