Response to Reader Editorial
Response to Reader Editorial:
Self-Victimization by Birth MothersOh, really?by Sissy Wilburn
After reading the article, I am wondering if Ms. Bogus did give up a child for adoption, and if so, in what era. Unplanned pregnancies in the 1980's and 1990's were entirely different from unplanned pregnancies prior to the "sexual revolution." I know, Iwas there.
I can accept responsibility for the unplanned pregnancy, but not for the society that made no effort to embrace or support the woman who chose to keep and raise her child. Additionally, I was, like most other middle-class teenage girls, carted away to a secluded home. I was counseled constantly that the only responsible act was to give upmy daughter. I was told that I should go back home and never tell anyone, since no "respectable" man would want damaged goods or another man's child.
My parents made it clear that I could come home, but that my daughter could not.
I suppose I could have overcome all of this in some reasonable fashion if I had not returned to a home where I was to pretend that my daughter never existed. I was not comforted by my mother in the loss of my daughter. I was told that I didn't know how it feels to lose a grandchild.
I was not comforted by my father in the loss of my child. He folded his arms around me and looked down the front of my nightie,telling me that most girls who have sex with older men really desire their fathers.
I was not comforted by my pastor. He came to my home talked with me for a while. When he was leaving I walked him to the back door,since my mother was giving piano lessons in the living room. As we got to the door he hugged me and then tried to French kiss me.
When I think of the adoption process, I don't think of the crisis of the unplanned pregnancy as much as I think of all the people for whom I ceased to be a person. I became a baby-maker for the Baptist Home and Adoption Center. I became a source of shame for my family. I became a possible source of physical gratification for both my fatherand my pastor. There was no person in my life with whom I could share the loss, the loneliness, the guilt and the fear.
Subsequently, when I tried to share with friends the pain of my loss, I was most often met with a kind of confusion, because it is like death and not death. Not until I found other birthmothers did I begin to understand the sickness of the secrecy. With them I am allowed to mourn. With them I find women who understand that having to pretend that you never had a child is like infection of the wound of losing that child.
Adoption itself was not the culprit. The lack of any real choices coupled with the complete denial of a mother's need to grieveand find strength within the members of her family and church family are the greatest source of injury.
I am glad, Ms. Bogus, that you accept the responsibility for the choices that you made. I still suspect that you had more of a choice than many of us ever did. I would like to believe that you were supported and comforted rather than shamed and exiled by your family.
The fact that you didn't feel victimized by the process points more to your family than to you personally. I am happy for you. Still, your judgement of others who experienced social, familial and ecclesiastical duress is probably due to the fact that you have no idea what tactics used to be employed to separate us from ourchildren. I hope that I am correct. I hope that we are coming to a place where no mother is ever again ostracized and scandalized simply because she wants to give birth to and love her own child.
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