In a flame war sense, this is really just like throwing a grenade into a crowded room and seeing what happens. The only real positive I see anywhere in here is that I'm glad we have the first amendment around that let's us say whatever we want.

My birth mother, who I know, gave six of nine children up, because she couldn't afford to raise us, economically or emotionally. My Mom raised me. She couldn't have any more children after her two daughters. I don't know who this woman is, but she's wrong on all counts, and La Leche League will soon be getting a much longer letter from me. The Adopted Gay Son.

Don't know if anyone's pointed this out (haven't had time to read the other letters), but Ms. Shore was adopted herself, and there was evidently some, you know, "stuff" there. So of course, ever-so-logically, she extrapolates from her experience to determine that adoption is evil!

It's women like this who do nothing but lend ammo to the still-alarmingly-large "women ain't got no real sense" camp. Kinda fitting that she'd be grouped with the lacto-nazis, when I think of it.

I can't imagine that this will spark one, since this woman's views are so off the deep end, who here would defend her position?

The La Leche League, like attachment parenting and "natural family planning," has always been associated with devout Catholicism. One of the League's selling points about breastfeeding is that it "naturally" reduces the possibility of conceiving and increases the intervals beween children.

I still remember the talk on "natural family planning" at my Catholic high school which was given by a woman with nine children, who was also a leader in the La Leche League.

All of the positive things that can be said about breastfeeding and attachment parenting, their most prominant advocates are devout Catholics who at bottom have very conservative views about women. I find their views far perferable to those of fundamentalist Protestants who advocate hitting infants with plumbing supply line and feeding on a schedule determined by the parents (Babywise).However, both groups views on women are really not all that different.

At least it has room for atheists. There is nothing inherently religious about it. The main advocate (Dr. Sears) is Catholic, and I do know a few Catholic attachment parents, but most of the people I know who practice (or try to practice) this style of parenting are evil, atheist secular humanists like myself. Oh, yeah. Plus a hell-bound pagan or two.

What LLL is doing with this woman I don't know. Can't speak on that topic at all. But no one I ever met in LLL was overtly religious in any way - let alone against adoption, fertility treatments, or anything else. The one thing LLL is absolutely absolutist about is that LLL meetings are about breastfeeding and other nutrition issues only. If the conversation goes off that topic, the leader asks people to continue after the official meeting ends.

Well, Tricia Shore's biography, on her own webpage, has quite a bit to say on the subject. Not the usual stuff, I would think, that you'd find on a webpage primarily designed to be an resume for landing jobs as a comic (emphasis added):

Tricia was born in a maternity home in Richmond, Virginia. From what she has heard about this place, it was a cross between a prison and a private women’s college. Upper middle-class moms went there all the time to be pregnant in secret. They came away sans baby and sans telltale signs of having ever been pregnant, revirginized indeed. Her own mother was not upper middle-class; she just got lucky, or rather, unlucky. As they are today, healthy white infants were in high demand in the 60’s and Tricia’s mom promised her firstborn to the devil, er, social workers, before Tricia was even born. Read all about this lovely exchange and its repercussions in “Background Check,” “The Second Rejection,” and “Fooled by Desire.” Bitter? Would you be bitter for being separated from your family for over 34 years? But hey, she finally found her mother, father, and many relatives; and in doing so, found out that her wit and desire for comedy came from both her mother’s and father’s sides of the family. Oh, and Tricia has almost forgotten—she is supposed to be extremely grateful, as all adoptees should be, for having been separated from her family for all those years. Gee, thanks!

I really do sympathize with the birthmothers/First Mothers movement, which tries to point out the lasting emtional scars many women feel after being forced to carry and relinquish a child. The "baby snatch" days were/are a national tragedy. That is something nobody should be forced to do, directly-- or indirectly, through lack of economic, emotional and other support. And I really do sympathize with adoptees who struggle with the emotional fallout of decisions that weren't even theirs.

But, here's the thing. I have an honest question for Shore--what is the alternative to adoption? Lets not pretend that even with adequate welfare programs and such, that every baby would be wanted. If we don't create "artificial families" through adoption, then, what? Leave those babies out in the woods or something? Forced abortion? And you can't force birth parents to be parents at all, much less good ones--just look at all the kids in foster care, some which entered foster care at an "old" age. Adoption is completely inevitable. I am honestly confused about what Shore's opinion is on this.

Because they are nuts to begin with. That's why.

It is interesting that Shore would quote liberally from the Bible against adoption, because in the New Testament especially, the metaphor of adoption is important and prominent in terms of the Christian's relationship with God. Gentiles, because they are not Jews and are not descended from Abraham, have no literal blood relationship with God, but God chooses, by means of Christ on the cross, to adopt Christian Gentiles as his sons and daughters. Adoption is a beautiful image in the New Testament, with God portrayed as a loving father who accepts all children who are interested in a relationship with him. I'm curious as to what passages Shore was quoting, then, because anyone with a basic knowledge of the New Testament can tell you that the Christian God certainly considers adoption to be good.