e-mail
A friend recently emailed me.
Did you hear about that news story where the birth mom in an open adoption kidnapped the daughter she placed?
No, in fact, I had not heard that story. Because that’s not what happened. A mentally unstable woman working in the nursery at a church kidnapped someone else’s child. She did not kidnap a child she relinquished for adoption because she has never placed a child for adoption.
Smith said she had no idea, until talking to Reid’s family, that Reid did not give up a child for adoption. She was floored to learn that the kidnapped baby was named Savannah, the same name Reid used in her story.
I find it frustrating enough that we in the adoption world have to fight off enough negativity from people within our ranks who misuse their words, their relationships and the law in their own adoptions. What I find more frustrating is when we are also forced to fight against people who are not attached to the adoption triad and feel the need to give us a bad name, a more difficult time than we already have at any given time. Now people will be saying, “See! Open adoption is bad! The birth mother can just walk into a church and take a baby.” Just like they claim that women who scam adoptive couples out of money while not even pregnant are “birth mothers” ruining adoptive families.
Please don’t let an unstable woman ruin open adoption. The truth is that the majority of birth mothers want their children to be happy with their adoptive parents. They don’t want to disrupt such a thing by doing something as extreme as kidnapping or even something as innocent as demanding to be called mother. We’re generally good people, just like the majority of adoptive parents. Don’t allow someone who doesn’t belong in our ranks to sully our name.
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Photo Credit.
This is a local story for us and it was very bizarre. My hope is that this girl is able to get the help she needs.
I’ve had to fight against these kinds of stories- which really have nothing to do with open adoption- when we first adopted Widget.