On the Closure of Commonwealth Adoptions

Commonwealth Adoptions, based out of Tucson, AZ is closing.

I feel strongly compelled to blog in defense of Commonwealth Adoptions International, or to at least offer my opinion about the agency as they were in 1999-2000 when they facilitated my son’s adoption.

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I’m the ‘unethical’ in unethical Adoption?

Very recently my adoption was branded ‘unethical’ by the authority vested by an individual’s self in order to judge me as a ‘peer’. Seven years after adopting and I now face this accusation… Mind you, it isn’t the first time, and no doubt will it be the last, because one can’t please anyone all of the time.

Here’s my cat out of the bag, so to speak, when it comes to some facts about my son’s adoption:

You completed a foreign adoption under false pretenses - you KNEW you were getting a divorce…

Very shortly before I traveled to adopt and immediately after, I realized that I wasn’t in a happy marriage, or even being a happy person. However, I never thought in a million years that it would eventually end in divorce.

Adoption wasn’t the reason our marriage ended, but it was unfortunate that my son was caught in the middle. Getting divorced was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done and I still hold deeply cut feelings of guilt about being divorced post-adoption. For that, I have no excuse other than I’m human and imperfect, adoptive parent or not.

… you [adopted] knowing you had a possibly TERMINAL illness…

I do not have, nor have I ever had, a TERMINAL illness.

I adopted with full disclosure of my chronic health condition. In my dossier I was required to provide a ’standard’ certification of health, as well as many additional documents regarding my specific chronic illness. Several doctors/specialists were required to write letters on my behalf and explain in great detail the specifics of my chronic condition.

Being allowed to adopt/parent while living with with a chronic health condition wasn’t up to me to determine. The US government and the government of my son’s homeland decided that for me.

…which by the way you CHOOSE for years to endure possibly worsening your health [by your treatment choices] at the expense of your son’s [well-being]…

I was/am a 100% compliant patient. I followed every doctor’s order, went to every treatment, followed my diet restrictions to a ‘T’ and vigilantly swallowed every medication prescribed to keep me as healthy as possible. I honestly couldn’t have done MORE to keep my health as strong as it is/was.

Further - during the times when I’ve needed to make major decisions about treating my my chronic illness, I have always made them with my son’s well-being at the forefront.

I have always chosen the treatment that would keep me the healthiest while having the least impact my son’s life, until he reached an age where attempting another, more complicated, treatment would be easier for him to understand and emotionally deal with.

You also LIED to the government by getting married when you really aren’t. In order to get what? Money? Him to avoid being deployed. Tell that to all of the soldiers who go everyday when they are called, no matter what the situation.

We were legally married for 3 years before adopting - we had to provide proof of that as well, before we were approved for adoption.

The military didn’t give us any money to adopt a child, and other than the fact that the adoption made our son another military dependent (for the purposes of health care, and so-on) we weren’t given any extra help of any kind.

And avoiding deployment? LOL - At this moment, my ex is serving his third deployment tour in the middle east… even though the longest tour he had was 15 months in Afghanistan when our son was four.

YOU are part of the UNETHICAL part of adoption.

I’d also like to point out that we adopted using a non-profit organzation who (at the time) only worked with internationally adopting families. I also kept a complete itemized list of every penny that was spent to complete the adoption (the list was a public document on my adoption website for YEARS and I’d be happy to still send it to you - it’s now a PDF file). A year and a half after my son’s adoption, the agency asked us if we would help facilitate a humanitarian aid trip to our son’s former orphanage (which we did)… and years later, when I needed direction to help find my son’s First Mother, they provided us with as many contacts to persons in his homeland that could help us, if it could be possible.

YOU are part of the UNETHICAL part of adoption.

I don’t think I am, but I suppose there is always someone in the world who will disagree with anything they don’t like or can’t understand.

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