[HappyMomAnna]

As an adoptive mother I see our situation as a

temporary solution to a permanent problem

I know that my children will one day want to have contact with their birthmother and my only prayer--hope and desire is that by the time they do want to contact her she will be healthy and OK and they will have a chance to know her.

Our birthmother reliquished one child on her own free will and then gave birth to our daughter whom lived for four years in a shopping cart on the streets. Many support services were offered and not accepted by the birthmother. Housing, food, counceling, child care, mental health service, drug treatment, medical care, and support services galore. Four years later a drug addicted baby was born. The children suffered and the situation was permanent with no change in sight.

This summer a fourth baby was born in the woods.

I gave birth to two children and raised both of them and certainly had no compelling reason to raise anymore. I have no NEED to be a mother--no reason to want another womans children!

I have a need to END a cycle and hopefully change their future by being a parent. ALL CHILDREN GROW UP AND MOVE ON. No child is property and none of us own a child. ALL PARENTS ARE TEMPS!

I feel that a woman has every right to do her very best for her child and if she chooses to raise her child our society does in fact provide many supportive means to do so. I was a 20 year old mother myself and I know it is hard to be a mother and it takes every moment of every day to give our children the very best life we can offer them.

I have watched even members of my own family view their children as property and raise them in caotic distructive lives. Children are adorable when they are little and helpless and need mommies to feed them and care for them. Children are not that cute when they have lived 12 years as a opeice of property with little or no care.

In a perfect world all babies would be wanted, loved and raised by the parents who created them. It is NOT a perfect world.

A birthmother should feel NO SHAME in realizing that her baby might need more then she is able to provide. It is a selfless act when a birthmother comes to understand this and allows her baby to be loved and cared for by parents who WANT that child.

Adopters if this is the term we are using here do not always adopt because they wish to own a child. Many adoptive parents do so because they are able to provide temporairy care for the permenant life of a future adult.

There is simply NO BALCK and WHITE to these issues there are only PEOPLE.