For decades, the institution of adoption has reigned supreme in the United States as the primary way of managing the care of children whose parents have died or lost custody, through myriad circumstances.

 

I was one of those children.

​

And yet, the same year I was adopted, 1989, the UN was meeting to discuss and set forth resolutions abolishing the practice of adoption as it is practiced in the United States, certifying a code of rights for children internationally, and establishing best practices for Legal Guardianship, a program under which a child's rights are paramount and the child is treated as a human being with dignity and attention to their best mental and emotional needs, as well as their physical care. 

​

Every other developed nation has established, for decades now, that adoption, particularly closed adoption and for-profit adoption, is inherently cruel and barbaric to the children involved, the children stripped of their identity, their dignity, and their rights. 

​

Legal Guardianship provides a humane alternative to caring for children in this unique situation: children are cared for by an assigned guardian, but they are never forced to :

- change their name

- be refused access to the identifying information of their family

- practice a religion of the guardian, nor are they kept from practicing their religion of birth

- practicing the cultural traditions of a guardian, nor are they kept from practicing the cultural traditions of their biological heritage

- withstand humiliating treatment, whether verbal, physical, or sexual abuse, at the hands of their guardians or their family, peers, or others

- have their status (as a child with a Legal Guardian) exposed via print, media, social media, or otherwise, without their explicit permission and with the proceeds of that media going directly to them

- place their financial support solely in the hands of a Legal Guardian without an account executor that acts in the child's best interests that is neither related to the Legal Guardian nor anyone in the household; an executor that must approve all expenditures on behalf of the child and ensures the remaining stipend is kept in a savings account until the child reaches adulthood.

​

These are basic tenets for the humane care of children who cannot be cared for by their biological parent, and creates a system in which abuse and exploitation of vulnerable children is far less possible or likely, as well as ensuring individuals who seeking a "replacement child" or a child to fulfill the desires left by infertility are unable to procure a human child to meet their own inappropriate desires.

 

Children do not exist to fill the desires of adults; whether to be a substitute for a lost child or for the potentiality lost to infertility. Children are in and of themselves individual, divinely created beings, who are born with identities in place, identities which should be preserved and honored above any desires of adults.  

​

Any adult who claims to care for the wellbeing of a child but simultaneously seeks to strip that child of their identity and family heritage and connection has proven with that action their true intentions, and children must be protected from this self-serving, exploitative behavior at all costs. 

​

For more information, click the link below to read my piece, "If Not Adoption, Then What?", on this topic that includes more detail on the UN and EU policies and declarations on the rights of children and best practices for Legal Guardianship.

​

If you’d like to advocate for the establishment of Legal Guardianship and the abolishment of Adoption, click here to find your local representative and send them an email to that end. Feel free to cite this article, and more importantly, the established guidance of the UN that is quoted and linked therein.

I also have a pre-written form letter that you can download and customize to your specific needs, if you prefer to print and mail a letter (or just copy and paste the body into an email). 

Click here for the Google Doc download.

Click here for the Microsoft Word download.

​

Thank you so much for your support!

​