Ends Justifying the Means in Order to Parent: A Comparison

Anyone reading the news over the past week is bound to have encountered the story about the 1987 baby-snatching of Carlina White by Ann Pettway that occurred at a New York hospital.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/ann-pettway-woman-raised-carlina-white-face-kidnapping/story?id=12746441

[ABC News 1/24/11 By Andrea Canning and Jessica Hopper]

Carlina’s parents took her to the hospital for a high fever when she was 19 days old. There, Ann posed as a nurse and comforted them. When the family left the baby at the hospital in order to get some much-needed rest, Ann kidnapped Carlina and disappeared. Carlina said that she never felt like she was a part of Ann’s family, and could never obtain a birth certificate or other vital identification papers.

Here is an important point: In addition to investigating her own circumstances and finding her biological parents in an incredible feat of perseverance, this child was essentially trafficked for the purpose of fake “adoption” because the kidnapper raised her as her own child.

It has been universally reported that the fake “mom” (many times put in quotations) is bad. No one is arguing that Ann’s actions are justified because she had fertility issues. Instead, we have read comments about punishment along the lines of “She should get no less than 20 years.”

Many other comments are blunt about the impact this kidnapping/trafficking had on Carlina and her biological family. They follow the logic of: “That fake ‘mom’ hurt an innocent little baby, the parents, and all other family members. She hurt all of them, in ways that can never be fully understood by anyone that has never been through it, and for all of that, she deserves no pity, but a life behind bars, with no parole, so she can think of the damage her actions caused to so many, especially to the baby girl. She needs to return what she stole. The years of this child’s life spent without her family and the love that only a biological parent can offer can never be replaced. How can you not despair about the years of heartbreak from both parents whose child was stolen from them?”

So, why are we reporting this here, you may wonder? Because when international adoptive parents who pay money for their adoption yet their child has been later found to be kidnapped or harvested from a poor person, the story focus is usually on the adoptive parent, not the impact or feelings of the original family or the child or the fact that an adoption agency was at fault.

Just as heinous, the adoption agency in cases like the above almost always gets off scot-free. The adoption agency is just like Ann Pettway in this story…yet they are not punished for their crimes against humanity. They get to play “innocent.” They cry and moan and say stupid, selfish things like they didn’t know or “the child is better off now in the rich American family.” Really, how is this sainted adoption agency who is “only doing this for the sake of the poor little orphans” supposed to figure such a thing out? Wasn’t it all someone else’s fault—like the sending country? (We do have to concede that the sending country is partially to blame, just like the NYC hospital is partially to blame here.)

Furthermore, adoptive parents often defend the agency in these circumstances. This leads to the whole cycle repeating itself, all over the globe.

Before the expansion of adoptive parenting groups and searchable information on the internet, information about kidnapping and harvesting was very hard to come by for prospective parents. For the first wave of parents affected by this kind of circumstance in any country, it is too late for them to do anything to avoid or prevent it. Unfortunately, they still have to live with knowing what happened to their children, and finding original families sometimes takes years or is ultimately impossible. If an adoptive family is lucky enough to find the original biological family, then citizenship and language and emotional coping issues will be ongoing issues for all. If some original family members were complicit with the harvesting, then there is a whole new can of worms to contend with.

Where is something similar to the heinous tale of baby Carlina’s trafficking happening right now? Answer: Nepal.

We are utterly disgusted with the Nepal prospective parents/recently returned adoptive parents and their full-out “Look at Me” media campaign. These parents were given multiple State Department warnings that paperwork issues were almost never going to be solved due to rampant corruption in rampantly corrupt Nepal, but instead they denied, denied, denied, and get rewarded not with the guilt and shame they deserve but by accolades in the press. Of course, they are also backed up by the adoption industry and adoption lobbyists. It is a despicable masking of the real situation.

So let’s compare the Nepal adoptive parent media blitz to Carlina’s situation. Those adopting from Nepal decided that they were entitled to those “orphans.” They denied or discounted all warnings, not just from the State Department but from other adoptive parents who had previously adopted from Nepal and knew how corrupt the system is there. But these current adoptive parents did not care. They wanted to parent; they had paid tens of thousands of dollars for that right; and everyone else in the world was wrong because those babies needed a home in the USA and no one was going to get in their way!

Well, didn’t Ann Pettway do the exact same thing? She knew stealing a baby was wrong, but she wanted one and felt entitled to one and no one was going to get in her way!

If Ann Pettway were able to mount a lavish media campaign showing how much she truly loved Carlina, how different is what she did all those years ago from what Nepal adoptive parents are doing now? Why shouldn’t everyone back up her decision? Didn’t she have needs? Didn’t she deserve to be a mom because she wanted to? Did it matter how her daughter came to her? Why should it –it’s all about the one who wants to parent, right?

Wrong. No one is entitled to parent. But the Nepal adoptive parents have the sympathy of the world because they’re “saving the orphans.” Never mind that no one seems to care how those “orphans” got into the orphanages. Never mind that there always have been strict rules for immigration and that Nepal orphanages refused to cooperate with US investigations into the individual background of these children.

Seeing how hypocritical these “save the poor orphans” campaigns is a real eye-opener, isn’t it? Adoptive parents can’t have it both ways. Too bad most of them don’t have the guts to ever admit that their flimsy “It’s Nepal’s culture” excuse for lack of cooperation is as phony as Ann Pettway.

REFORM Puzzle Piece