FORCED ADOPTION

 A Girl Like Her

Feature - 47 min

From 1945-73, 1.5 million unmarried young American women, facing enormous social pressures, surrendered babies to adoption. Lacking sex education and easy access to birth control, they were forced into hiding while pregnant and then into “abandoning” their infants. In her latest film, Ann Fessler, Professor of Photography at Rhode Island School of Design, reprises the subject of her award-winning The Girls Who Went Away (National Book Critics Circle; Ballard Book Prize), which Ms. readers named an all-time best feminist book. 

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. Like it or not, people, but this is where Trump’s Supreme Court, the current Republican Party, want to take us back to. The past is their idea of a Great America with no desire to lead us into a prosperous future for all.

An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than 100 women as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.

We hear only their voices, which detail wrenching experiences against images from vintage newsreel and educational films reinforcing stereotypes of women’s roles following WWII. This gripping documentary will help today’s students grasp what life was like before the sexual and feminist revolutions had fully dawned.

"I never wanted to give up my baby. It was taken from me". These are the recovered narratives of the unmarried pregnant girls of early 60s America who "surrendered" their babies, told to us decades later. Here, the silenced are given a voice. What do they share? Just how great and impact their histories of surrender and silence have had in the long-term. 

"It didn't happen to nice girls," one voice remembers. "But nice girls do get pregnant". The voices of a hidden history, one that affected over a million women, are relayed anonymously. They are the stories of women who became pregnant, were banished to maternity homes, and forced to "surrender" their babies for adoption. These are women who have experienced trauma. Their candid accounts are accompanied by archive footage from the time: from TV ads to educational films, which provide a stark contrast to the very real experiences we are told.

These women are given back the voice that was taken from them the moment they fell pregnant. Hidden away, a recurring question dominated: "What am I going to tell the neighbours?" Their memories are marked by this shame, and by sorrow and loss. "I was in no way prepared for how desperately I wanted to hold that child," one woman utters. Yet they always returned home alone and completely ostracized. "It was over for you", one voice explains matter-of-factly.

Struggling to control feelings of anger, powerlessness and deep sadness, these women still battle with past traumas: "I had my 70th birthday not too long ago", one woman says, "so it still colours my life". Despite some successes elsewhere, how this has defined their lives and controls every part of their existence is unavoidable. "I can't tell you how many people say: aren't you ever going to get over it?", one voice says with a trembling determination, "You never get over this".

https://youtu.be/ArcGxUr4XEI

When you don’t have facts, when your ancestry, culture, birth is kept from you, hidden from you, your imagination takes flight. Fantasy becomes your reality. As you grow and learn more about the true history of the time of your conception and birth, you adapt those truths to your personal story. That is natural. That is human intellect doing its best. 

Yet there are those who say you are wrong. That cannot be your life. They say to your face that you lie. They say that pointing to no facts of their own, so the only motive must be a desire to hurt you. Why? The question of the ages. Why do some people get off by hurting others? Fear? Jealousies? Or a spirit depraved by religion? 

What boggles my mind, especially now being a grandparent, is trying to understand the twisted pride a grandmother must possess to turn away from their blood, their grandchild. This is not part of the natural order of things. It is part of a being so vain, so self righteous, so mentally deranged, so morbidly deprived that they believe babies are disposable, merely another commodity from which profits can be made. So don’t lecture me about the sanctity of life as long as society tolerates baby black markets, human trafficking. Don’t lecture me about your religion and how pious you are. “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” - Mark Twain -

ADOPTION IS A LIE 

We have failed as a society. We put more emphasis on everyone having a baby than we do on what is right. We know that a baby needs their mother but we have adoptive parents in the delivery room. We prematch adoptive parents before the baby is born. We donate money to hopeful adoptive parents to buy a baby. If the mother asked for help to keep her baby, the same people would tell her she should have kept her legs closed. We should be more concerned with keeping a family together than selling the baby but the adoption industry has everyone convinced that the baby is a blank slate. We listen to an industry whose sole purpose is to make money. They need babies to sell for their profit. They don’t care how many families and lives they destroy. These are all failures on our part for buying into the lies. 

To prevent trauma and for the betterment of society, adoption should be the last option. Family preservation not only prevents trauma, society is better off. When we reduce trauma we reduce the need for prisons and other facilities that our taxes pay for. If we supported families at the beginning instead of separating them, we will all benefit. No one deserves someone else’s child. Babies suffer for the wants of strangers. 

Adoption permanently traumatizes a baby. We can do better if we want to. Next time someone asks for money to adopt ask where you can donate to the mother for  her to keep her child. Stop the trauma by keeping a mother and child together. Adoption is a lie. 

#adoptedchameleon