a friend recently scoffed at my suggestion that Korean adoptees had higher than average divorce rates. i don't have a shiny study to back up this claim - just my own experiences, the experiences of adoptee friends and personal observation. i know of at least two Swedish studies that show Korean adoptees have startlingly high rates of suicide and suicide attempts. i too, have personal experience with this.
the truth is, the struggles of the adoptee are complex and complicated. they may look different from person to person, but that doesn't mean they aren't real. and if you haven't been there, you just. don't. know.
i searched for three years before i found my birth mother. and that process and time broke my heart in ways i can't describe. ways i would have never predicted when i sent out my first email to my adoption agency. or the third.
but despite my struggles, i am one of the lucky few, one of a very tiny percentage that found something. found someone. i have a chance to look at a photo and see myself. and maybe, i will meet my birth mother face-to-face, or my half-siblings. no matter the outcome of our reunion (and believe me, they run the gamut) i am one of the lucky ones because i am now connected to someone. some thing.
i know so many adoptees who have been searching for much longer than me. and many of them will never find anything. or anyone. they may have had several false positives along the way, consecutive heartbreaks that i can't comprehend. they may have searched only to find what they were looking for was gone, left only with whispers from distant relatives.
but this is not a pointless ramble.
it's this babybox, you see, that has me all twisted up in knots. because it only encourages anonymous abandonment, something which is currently legally possible in Korea, but the babybox makes it final. there is no possibility for that child to ever find their family, there is no way for that mother to find out what happened to her child (because yes, birth mothers are human beings with emotions, not just uteruses that turn out cute, trendy, brown accessories for the discriminating shopper).
since the babybox's installation, the only statistic to change has been an increase in anonymous abandonment. it does not prevent infanticide. it does not save lives. it ruins lives.
i imagine, and i can't breathe. the sheer force of the suffering this babybox will cause to the generations of orphans it manufactures is unbearable. the pain i felt for three years would become a lifetime. it would become final. just imagine. but you can't. you. just. can't. unless you've been there.
we have had so much done to us. adoptees. so much taken from us. by social stigma, by neglect, by greed, by colonialism, by imperialism, by war, by sexism, by racism, by history.
many of us have been told the "anonymous abandonment" story to make us more palatable to overseas buyers. blank slates. it also discourages searching and upsetting the status quo and keeps the shady underbelly of overseas adoption hidden.
it's no coincidence that all of this press around the babybox comes hand-in-hand with efforts from the agencies to undo changes made by the Special Adoption Law. changes that, while huge, are also just baby steps towards bringing Korea's adoption industry into ethical compliance. the agencies don't want to see their gravy train of fresh, baggage-free orphans for export dry up. plain and simple. so all of this babybox media attention, the movie with it's lies and misdirection, the facebook virality, it all serves to make agencies rich on the blood and tears of unwed mothers and their babies.
(many folks, much more knowledgable and articulate than i, have written criticisms of the babybox. such as this one, by adoptee Shannon Heit. tonight, heart/hurt bursting, i just had to sit and write out some thoughts. this is by no means comprehensive or well cited.)
every child deserves to know where they came from.
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