The Shadow Knows

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep” - Johann Goethe

I agree it is in very poor taste. I further agree it is likely a hoax or piece of satire. I know people who have done similar things. I don't approve. In fact, I stopped being friendly with two folks online for their involvement in such things.

Yet for some reason, I could not help but think this site is the shadow of adoption as it exists today.

We find it horrible to think of adopting a child to harvest their organs. 

Yet so many find nothing wrong with adopting a child and harvesting their life.

Yes, their life.

In many adoptions of yesteryear and sadly still today, children are often adopted to be the replacement child. They are adopted by couples who dont have the best interest of the child in mind. They are adopted by couples who have their own interest in mind.

They want a child.They go to great lengths, often illegal, unethical lengths to obtain that child. They erase that childs life, their heritage, the existence of their family. They change their name. They keep the child even when the adoption is proven illegal and they are ordered to return the child by the courts. They dont take an organ from the child. They take the child's entire life.

Are they the majority? I would like to think not. But the fact that they exist and are allowed to operate as they do should give us all pause just like this site does.

Is using a child for their body parts really that much more horrid than using a childs life to make anothers life whole?

No doubt this hoax is horrific, but look deeper, is it really that different than what already exists in some places today? Or might it be merely a darker shade of the same sacred cow?

Why are we so horrified by it? Becuase it might happen? Or because it is already happening and this site shows it to us in black and white and pretty pictures?

Or does it force us to look at the shadow of adoption. Everything casts a shadow in the right light.  Everything has a dark side. Is this site showing us the dark side? Are folks upset that there is a dark side to adoption? Or are they worried that this may actually happen? And if it does, what are we going to do TODAY to stop it?

Comments

[laurie]

Ewwww

[Kippa Herring]

I think it's sending the same message as you too Suz.

Good taste is a facet of conventionality that satire seeks to challenge. Swift's "Modest Proposal" in which he suggests that the Irish relieve their poverty by selling off their children as food for the gentry was hardly an example of good taste.

This wouldn't have been anything like as effective if it had been jokey and less dark simply because it wouldn't have unsettled and provoked as it has.

I mean, Adam Pertman, even.
I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked ;)

[Elizabeth Beans-Bouffard]

Hi there,

I read your blog and love it and somehow this comment came out to me to comment on :) I like to keep my other comments directly to you, and I also wasn't really aware to post here on my comments.

Anyways, I sincerely hope this is satire. My feeling? If it IS satire put out by people that are, in many cases, rightly against adoption? It's in horrible taste. I would ask them to pull down the mask and actually TALK and DISCUSS their feelings. Would you ever put something like this out there and share with a child that you surrendered? It adds to the primal wound that people speak of and hurts. If I found out that my Mom Mary put this out there? I would be so horrified. I would be ashamed that someone would put ugliness and covertness out there instead of just sharing. Who does this help? Really? If this is something that people respond to? How does that help? If it is something that people read and laugh at? How does that help?

[joyceregina]

Is it true that all the site really wants is your email address? And they use it as their own.
How off is this stuff? We had a real situation here in CA. The young woman had leukimea (sp) couldnt find a donor, time running out. Her Mom got pregnant so that they could use the baby for transplant. They kept saying she really wanted to get pregnant it just all came at a perfect time. Anyway, everyone is alive and well. Initially I was shocked to read this

[Denise Roessle]

I emailed the Evan B. Donaldson Institute about this web site and got this response:

"It’s a hoax, and it’s horrible. It needs to be shut down … stay tuned; I believe it will be. Adam."

Adam Pertman, Executive Director
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
Author: "Adoption Nation"

[Denise Roessle]

If this is real, I'm going to hurl... Please, someone, if you know for sure that it's not, say so.

In any case, your point is well taken. That (many? some?) adoptive parents are using the children they adopt to satisfy some need of their own. Perhaps much more pervasive than an organ.

[joy21]

It didn't hurt me. I get what you are saying Suz, and I think the originator of the hoax is saying the same thing.

[suz]

Viral for sure. I said the same thing to my list this a.m. I know who I got it from and I know who they got it from but I dont know who he got it from. LOL.

[dawn]

I like effective satire (like that what white people like blog) but this one is too hurtful to adoptees. Although I agree -- it nails a lot of Really Bad Things. I think to be more successful satire it needed to be more obviously a joke. I think it would have been just as effective but it was too thorough. (I mean, you read the "photo listings" and it's clear it's a "joke.") But I read Mia's blog and saw the link right before the Child Law blog did a whole 'nother thing about Masha Allen and that made it even less funny and more horrific.

How are people finding it? I'm wondering how it started to go viral.