Tag Archives: Adoption

News

Review of October Baby, a pro-life movie opening today

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Here’s the trailer:

Here’s a review from Jay Watts of the Life Training Institute, my favorite pro-life organization.

Excerpt:

This past weekend I was privileged to see an advanced screening of October Baby. You can read the promotional material for the film here.

October Baby tells the story of young woman – Hannah, played by Rachel Hendrix – who finds out that there is an explanation for her lifetime severe physical and emotional struggles. She was adopted by her parents after she survived a botched abortion. With the help of her best friend – Jason played by Jason Burkey- they set out on a road trip to search out her birth mother and the full story of Hannah’s past.

Whatever concerns I had about the quality of the film I was screening were quickly allayed.October Baby is not an amateur production. The filmmakers, Andrew and Jon Erwin, understand how to make a movie. Anytime you watch an independent film you know that the producers sacrifice some elements of larger productions – usually film quality and acting – in order to tell a more personal and intimate story. The Erwin’s seem to understand the limits of a production at this level and use their unusual skill to mitigate the weaker elements of small films, or – more simply put – they shot an independent film that looks great.

My only concern about movies about abortion is that they will bash the men and make the women out to be innocent victims. I did a little digging and it seems to be that this movie does not do that. I’m not sure, but I think it takes a subtle shot at feminism – something I read seemed to indicate that.

It’s endorsed by Fathers.com. This interview with the actor who plays the adoptive father says this:

NCF: The character you play, the father in this film, has his own journey through the film. Describe his journey and maybe what you saw as some of the mistakes he made and some of the things he did right and some of the things he learned through this journey that’s portrayed in the film.

JS: Well, my guy, he did a very right thing when his wife and he lost their twins, miscarried their twins, when his wife came to him and said, “There are twins up for adoption that would have been born around the same time our twins would have been born.” Obviously he supported that and they went and adopted these two little babies even though one of them was horrifically disfigured and not likely to make it out of the hospital—and the other one had health issues as well. So this is a guy who supported his wife’s desire to have twins, he supported her faith that there was a reason why she was made aware of these twins. So, he did that right.

The only thing as far as I can see … there’s a wonderful line of dialogue in there where the daughter says, “Why didn’t you tell me?” And basically, without saying this exact line, he said that, “I was always going to, but life kind of got away from us. We were working and …” he was at that point trying to become a doctor, he was going to school, and they had financial trouble, and it just kind of got away from him. It didn’t slip his mind, but the perfect time to have that conversation never really appeared. So he had to do it under duress. He had to do it in a doctor’s office when she was wondering why she was always so sick. So if he did anything wrong, that was it. Because he’s very protective of his daughter with her friend….

I love that about the movie too—the platonic, wonderful, buddy relationship between my daughter and her pal in his movie is so real. And as a movie-goer, you think, Okay these two have got to get together somehow. But it just is so wonderfully real. So my character, the dad in this movie, does a great job, I think, of protecting her against a teenage boy’s stupidity [laughs] … his judgment, from an eighteen-year-old boy’s perspective.

And I’ve said this to my kids many times. I haven’t said it recently, but … “One of the biggest differences between me and you is that I’ve been seventeen, and you have not been fifty. So your perspective is very narrow, very short. It is your perspective, and I’m not going to discount it, but my job as a dad is … if I’ve sat on a stove that you’re about to hike your butt up onto, my responsibility is to let you know it’s hot. I’m not going to keep you from sitting on it, but I’m going to let you know that it’s going to hurt when you do.” I think there’s that in this film as well, and I like that.

As far as what he learns, I think he learns in this movie that the resiliency of a seventeen-year-old girl is more than he thought, that a young person can actually handle more emotional information, more potentially hurtful information than you think they can. So there’s that wonderful scene where he tells her the whole thing about her brother, and it’s so moving. He’s a dad, and it pains fathers when their children go through that “Dad is an idiot” stage. It really pains them. It’s not just confusing, it’s hurtful. But the good news, dad, is that it does have a shelf life. They do love their dads through all that stuff too, they just don’t let you know it. But later on they do. I used to tell friends of mine, “Don’t worry. They turn back into people just as magically as they turned into aliens.”

I think it’s safe for us men to watch this – we won’t be blamed and bashed. The father character is strong and good. I have seen the trailer posted on men’s rights blogs AND pro-life blogs, so it looks like it’s worth a shot.

Please post comments below if you go see the movie.

Commentary

Should abortion be legal in cases of rape? Rebecca Kiessling tells her story

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Rebecca Kiessling: conceived by rape
Rebecca Kiessling: conceived by rape

In the liberal UK Guardian, of all places. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

I always knew I was adopted. My mother told me I’d been chosen and I should feel extra special. A tall blonde growing up with short, brunette Jewish parents, all I ever felt was awkward and out of place.

When I was about nine, I began to think endlessly about my biological parents. Was my father athletic, like me? Did I have my mother’s blue eyes? I stared at people on the street, fantasising that they were my birth parents.

I was 12 when I told my adoptive parents I wanted to find my birth mother. I was being bullied at school, because I looked so different from the other girls, and felt lost and unhappy. I thought if I could find out where I came from, I would somehow fit in better.

They were supportive, and gave me the name of the adoption lawyer they’d used, but he told me I had to be 18. I called him back on the day of my 18th birthday. I discovered my mother was Caucasian, with German, Irish and English ancestry, and had been 31 when she had me. I had a brother and a sister who were 11 and 13 when I was born. Under “Father” it simply stated: “Caucasian, of large build.”

I was confused. My father had obviously not been her husband, as I’d assumed. I read the file over and over, analysing every word. “It sounds like a police description,” I said to my adoptive mum. Then an awful thought struck me. Had my mother been raped? The more I studied the file, the more convinced I became. I rang my case worker.

“Was my mum raped?” I asked straight out, catching her off guard.

“Yes,” she replied. The confirmation was devastating. No wonder my mother had given me up; I was an unbearable reminder of a violent attack. My adoptive parents tried to reassure me I was loved, but my confidence was destroyed.

Read the rest. It might change your view, if you believe that abortion in cases of rape are OK.

I did a little checking on Rebecca Kiessling and found these things:

  • Pro-Life Activist and International Pro-life Speaker, in NYC this week lobbying at the U.N.’s Status on Women Conference and speaking at 5 events.
  • Family law attorney with four pro bono cases of international attention all involving the protection of preborn human life, including the “frozen embryo” case in Michigan. Two of those cases involved rape and abortion. Also, represented a woman sued for not aborting. (practiced law as “Rebecca Wasser” before she married)
  • May 1994 graduate of Wayne State Law School in Detroit
  • Mother of 5 (two adopted)
  • Served as vice-chair of a crisis pregnancy center for two years and on the advisory board of Michigan Nurses for Life
  • Currently serves on the Advisory Board of Crossroads Pregnancy Center
  • Conducts workshops, “An Abortion-Minded Client’s Life-Giving Legal Options” based on Michigan law.
  • Testified before the Ohio Legislature on the Prefer Childbirth Over Abortion legislation which would, in part, remove the rape exception from the ban on Medicaid funding of abortions in Ohio

Here’s a video she did for CBN:

The logic of the pro-life position is pretty clear in these cases. Let the child live and put her up for adoption. That logic is enough to win the argument, but I hope that Rebecca will stick in your mind and give you courage on this issue. Every person was made to know God or to help others to know God, and therefore every person has infinite value.

News

Democrat introduces bill to defund adoption agencies that favor married couples

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From the Washington Times.

Excerpt:

For the first time in Senate history, a bill has been introduced to encourage agencies not to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples seeking to adopt.

“As more and more LGBT couples are getting married and starting families, we have a great opportunity to place children without a family into happy homes,” said Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York Democrat and lead sponsor of the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, Monday at the Huffington Post.

The past year has seen many moves toward gay equality, and “the momentum is there to build on our progress,” she said, noting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” passage of gay marriage in New York and the “unprecedented assault” on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the U.S. Senate and in the courts.

Ms. Gillibrand’s bill would deny federal funding to any entity that considers sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status when contemplating prospective foster or adoptive families. A companion bill already has been introduced in the House by Rep. Fortney Pete Stark, California Democrat.

[…]In recent years, many religious organizations have protested when governments have begun insisting that unmarried couples be considered as foster and adoptive parents. Notably, Catholic agencies have withdrawn from child-placement services.

Still, many such adoptions occur. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute recently issued a report that said about 65,000 adopted children and 14,000 foster children live in homes headed by non-heterosexuals.

Part of the reason child-welfare and health associations support gay adoption is because advocates say research indicates that children raised in gay homes do as well as, or even better than, children raised by heterosexual couples.

However, a new in-depth review of 59 studies on gay parenting has concluded that such “strong assertions” about gay parenting are “not empirically warranted.”

Most of the 59 gay-parenting studies involve children of high-income white lesbian mothers or tended to use very small samples; studied children but not teens; and either had no comparison families or compared lesbian-led homes with single-mother-led homes, wrote Louisiana State University family science professor Loren Marks.

These and other weaknesses cannot support broad statements that there are “no significant differences” between being raised in same-sex versus mother-father homes, wrote Mr. Marks, whose analysis was included in the Oct. 15 briefs filed by the House of Representatives in its defense of DOMA in Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management.

The basic intuition behind this initiative is that children either do not need a mother or they do not need a father. Is that really true? I know for sure that children have a host of behavioral problems if they grow up without fathers, for example. I would expect that problems would also occur for children raised without mothers.