"Why don't you just adopt?" It's a question that every infertile person has been asked at one time or another. Well-meaning folks sometimes ask this question like it's as easy as running to the supermarket, going to the babies-with-brown-hair-and-blue-eyes aisle, and selecting your favorite bundle of joy.
In reality, adoption is a long, arduous, expensive process that is interfered with on every level by government bureaucrats, mothers of worthless sperm-donor fathers who want to raise "their" grandchild, and a completely corrupt court system that chooses biology over adoptive parents every time.
I have known people trying to adopt and seen the hell they go through. I have seen them attach themselves to an infant, only to see that infant ripped out of their arms after a year because some father who wasn't honorable enough to marry the child's mother decides it might be fun to have a little mini-me in the house. As far as I'm concerned, if a so-called "father" is unwilling to marry the mother of the child, he should not have a right to object to that mother giving her child up to a better life.
And the money. Well, in the case of international adoption, there are a lot of people that need bribing, a lot of people that need favors, and a lot of people that need convincing to give their orphans up to a foreigner.
And we all know that newborn American babies are extremely hard to come by. There are simply too many abortions. And as for mothers who hope their out-of-wedlock babies will be raised in an LDS home? They are even fewer and farther between.
Which brings me to the point of this post. I recently read an article where a reader commented that "doing IVF is going too far. There are many children who need good homes...", basically going on to say that anyone choosing fertility treatment over adoption is a selfish jerk.
Pardon me for being cynical, but these sound like the words of someone who conceived a baby on their honeymoon, and can't understand the divinely-instilled longing to give birth to one's own child.
I think people who adopt are saints, and I think people who take in foster children are worthy of immediate translation, but my desire to have my own child does not make me a bad person. And my decision to put myself through fertility treatment does not make me selfish in any way.
Yes, there are children that need good homes. But there are also spirits that still need bodies.
To the person who says IVF is going too far I say, "You have a lot to learn."
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2 comments:
Amen. Amen. Amen. And those three completely in agreement words are not going far enough.
Ugh. I hate when people decide what's best for other people without even understanding the situtation. Obviously, no one can fully understand ANYONE else's situation, and that is where witholding judgement and sweeping generalizations comes in. Of course, I am never guilty of either, but people who are are total jerks who should move to the Sahara for the rest of their days ;) No, really, I do hate that. Adoption is not an easy solution. I hate how difficult and expensive it is to adopt! It's heartbreaking how many children around the world need a home, but the adults in charge or involved make it so dang difficult...We would love to adopt someday, but I am also in the group who wanted to experience what it was like to nurture a tiny life inside me. There is nothing like it in the world.
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