Late yesterday afternoon, T and I had a meeting with the adoption coordinator at Bethany, where we had originally started the adoption process back in 2002. The adoption coordinator was the former pregnancy counselor when we were there before. She is a very nice woman, friendly and open to sharing with us some additional particulars from the failed placement we had (amazing that she remembered it from over 4 years ago!). We talked some about what has changed in the program: they do direct consent now instead of the agency placement, which is good since it means that the agency doesn’t have overriding guardianship during the time between placement and termination of rights or finalization. I feel that gives the natural mother/father a better chance at ensuring their child goes to the family they desire rather than the possibility of the agency picking a different family for some reason. I have no idea how often it happens but it could, therefore I like direct consent better. They do facilitate adoptions to be more open than before, another good thing, although she did reference the idea of being semi-open at first with the ability to be more open. Both T and I said, “Oh, no. We are just fine with being fully open unless there is some sort of obvious safety issue.” We talked about our bankruptcy and how that might affect the homestudy process, which she said she would have to run it by their director but she thought it might only mean we would need to meet with a financial counselor to show we’ve learned from our mistakes and that we are planning well for the future. I was feeling less ambivalent about using them again.
And then I brought up my questions about their pregnancy counseling. Now their current pregnancy counselor is birthmom herself with a kinship placement (her child is with I would guess either a sister or a brother). I thought okay, this should help make sure things are done better than I have heard from other situations. I then asked about parenting counseling and tried to relay that I wanted to know they weren’t just saying parenting is hard, expensive, choose adoption. Instead I got exactly that, “We do go over parenting. They do homework to understand what the expenses would be, where they would live, health care and so on.” Valid things to do, but there was no indication that they were not using it to enforce the idea that adoption is better. The kicker was this and I don’t remember what my question was to her that brought her to say this, but she said “[The pregnancy counselor] and I willingly work nights and weekends to make sure a placement happens.”
And that statement has been gnawing at me ever since. I did wonder if I was making a mountain out of molehill, something I have been known to do, so I called my older sister, M, whom I love, though sometimes I’m not sure she “gets” what I’m saying when I talk about adoption, and I knew she would tell me what she thought plus she’s a psychology major. I didn’t tell her what I thought, I just asked her opinion on something adoption coordinator said. When I told her, M promptly said, “Well, that sounds to me like they are trying to pressure some poor girl into giving up their baby because they have a list of waiting people.” I have not talked to M much about my feelings on ethics in adoption, so I was greatly relieved that someone fairly outside the debate would feel the same way I did. She also told me she felt Bethany’s practices may not have been the greatest when we had our failed placement and she was surprised we were even considering them again.
So we won’t be using them again and I urge anyone using them to really find out what kind of counseling practices are going on in their office.
