After just arriving home today from a long vacation, one would think I would be rested and ready to go with may new and exciting ideas about adoption, unfortunately this is not the case. I found you can go away for however long you like, but the same tough issues still seem to travel with you. Those issues don’t especially change, and they don’t ever seem to go away. Adoption issues don't take a vacation. Apparently while I was away, this battle about the perceptions of adoption, who is right and who is wrong went on with out me. I am ok with being excluded from the debate for a time.

My own personal beliefs remain the same. Being in a vacation condo for a week has done little to alter that. I still feel that adoption is a worthy consideration for mothers who are unwilling, or unable to parent. I still believe that it is better for some of those mothers to chose adoption first, rather than allow their situation to result in harm to their child, perhaps abuse and later removal and placement. Once a child has suffered it is too late.

I believe that the mothers of the world should be helped however possible to parent, but not at the expense of their child. Children cannot wait forever, their needs are in the present and those needs must be met in the present. Adoption should be an option. I also understand that no matter how a child comes to be adopted, they should have access to their own, original birth information, at the very least when they are grown. The quest for open records is very important and I fully support it.

It is obvious that many people out there do not like adoption, and they are anxious to convince the rest of us that if we feel anything less we are wrong, perhaps even evil. Talking about the complex issues involved is not going to allow them to see things any other way, they aren’t interested. Most of us who “approve” of adoption also understand that flaws exist, and many are working to see that remedied. I don’t believe adoption is ever going to just go away. There always be children who will not be raised in their family of origin, for whatever reasons. So where does all of that leave those of us with an interest? I believe the one thing we can all agree on, we can come together on, is that we need to make things better. Adoption needs to be made safer and more ethical. Adoption needs to be made better.

Summer vacation reading, for when you can't get adoption off your mind. . .

A Perfect World = No Adoption

Why Adoption?

The Responsibility Of Choices