I’ve made a late-in-the-year resolution to keep up my blog a whole lot better than I have. My apologies — and appreciation — to those who check for new posts. I have a lot of items on my hit parade. So I’ve resolved to post more frequently even if it means more sloppily.
So, first off, let me say I understand how easy it is to get discouraged as we witness The Great Unraveling in our society. The breakdown of family accounts for a huge part of this, especially the separation of children from their parents and the layers of confusion adults are heaping on kids for the convenience of said adults. Broken homes create broken children. And so many broken children portend an ever more dysfunctional society.
The road ahead seems very dark now, especially as we feel the increasing hostility to the idea that children have rights that override the convenience of so-called grown ups. Let’s face it: we humans are not naturally ethical beings though so many of us truly do like to think so.
But if you look around, you’ll see some beams of light emanating from the cracks in all of the social chaos.
For example, at the Reagan Library last week the International Children’s Rights Institute had its inaugural conference to discuss the inherent rights of children to be born free — not manufactured as chattel — and their right to know their origins.
I for one think it’s past time that adults get a bit out of their comfort zones and start looking at life through the eyes of the child. There is harm when a child is separated and isolated — by design — from any clear answer to that existential question: “Where did I come from?” Please click on the links throughout this post to learn more about the conference and its participants.
The Conference theme was “Bonds that Matter.”Alana Newman, founder of Anonymous Us, talked about her experience as a donor-conceived child, and how artificial reproductive technologies de-stabilizes a child’s sense of self. Such children are wounded and puzzled by the way they came into the world — as commodities — and why one or both parents didn’t care to know them. But they’re told to shut up about it since they wouldn’t be here otherwise. (Alana rightly compared the accusation to being a child of rape: yes, I am happy to be alive, but not about the rape.)
Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture talked about the surrogacy industry and how it turns children into chattel as it treats women as cattle. Jennifer Morse of the Ruth Institute discussed the impact of no-fault divorce on the lives of children. And adoption experts Cathy Swett and Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy walked us through the topic of adoption from the eyes of the adoptee, because even in the best of circumstances adoption still forces a child to emotionally “work out” the absence of his or her biological parents.
Congratulations to Robert Oscar Lopez who organized and emcee’d an absolutely fantastic conference. Hopefully the first of many!
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