The Possibilities for the Ministry
The Birth Mother Ministry could be a combination of any of the following, and add on aspects later also...
1. Open an Adoption Agency/ or Pregnancy Center (Founded and personally managed by Birth Mother's of adoption)
Birth mother's as counselors, not case workers!
The adoption agencies do a great job, but it is impossible for them to not be biased in their advice to birht mothers...Sometimes they are in fact .. We are advocates for woman being told the TRUTH all the time, whether it be from the pr-choice or pr-life side, it should be accurate information which is told and ALL options must be given. Even the adoption agencies have little respect for birth mothers "intelligence" as they assume their rhetoric and obvious mm actually would be the deciding factor in such a huge decision as placing your child. and we believe that the abortion clinics and centers by only telling of "some" options to pregnant woman are thus directly lying to the woman by not providing all the aptions. areJust as we believe young women who are not told "all" of the options available. The agencies also provide yu with a "counselor" when you first visit or move into a pregnancy center/dorm. Wees later these counselors then turn into your "case worker" and "counselor" (although they hardly ever mention the first) now they become the one in charge of making the adoption happen..and know you and your deepest toughts. It's rather clever.
Sometimes in our opinion (two birth mom's) we think even the most reputable agencies try "too hard" sometimes. We may be pregnant, but we aren't retarted. Since counselors pretend to see only two alternatives, aborting the child or giving it life, they may try to tip the scale toward life by awakening the maternal instinct. As the woman falls in love with her unborn baby, the center may shower her with baby gifts, give her a handmade quilt or blanket, and introduce her to previous clients who are now cuddling beautiful babies. Once her maternal emotions are ignited, the mom might not be able to let her child go. (The 1991 study found that pregnant teens counseled in programs that introduced them to teen parents were four times less likely to choose adoption.) I had my daughter for a full month and the more time I got with her..the more on uneasy they got! We would encourage the women the best out of anyone to adopt!
Many agenciesspend millions on seminars and training woekshops fro their case workers to learn more ways to reach these women in their care. But while counselors target the client, the counselors should be the ones we take a look at. Those who have had children may harbor an unconscious bias against adoption, because many cannot understand how another mom could "give up" her own child. "We find that one reason counselors are ineffective in presenting adoption is that it's not settled in their own hearts," says Pierson. "They don't understand what it means to be an adopted child of God; they don't understand Scripture." Pierson believes that a better understanding of the biblical teaching about adoption--how it suggests God's unconditional acceptance of people into his spiritual family--can help counselors present it more effectively. OR you could recruit birht mom's! (Shh, once the secret is out, it will be out!) Even if agencies took our idea to hire birt moms..I think they would still be at a loss because we have the advantage of being young and recent birth mother's wo can appeal and befreind 30 birth mom's a day! They have approach birth mom's as an agency worker, not a birth mom, who is tryng to maximize profits. Maybe not all are though. Are main goal is to save lives so maybe theirs is too.
We propose a solution to this problem
by developing a Birth mother run, Birth Mother's Dorm...possibly a chain of them too. This is providing the one thing ALL 30 women in our dorm wanted to have...a birth mother for a case worker! One to answer all thei questions! There were so many no one knew the aswer too, but the answer would of so comforted us throughout the entire decision making process. The ones that dont go through with it n the end....are usually the ones that had too many unanswered questions anyways, in my opinion.
The agencies come to us, not the other way around!
Books on "grieving a pet" are plentiful - yet there are almost no books on grieving the loss of one's son, daughter or grandchild to adoption. Few counselors (or case workers) in North America are knowledgeable of the intense delayed suffering "disenfranchised grief" a mother may experience even long after losing her child to adoption. This makes it difficult to find a good counselor. In addition, counselors may have attended workshops and training in which some attendees have been told that mothers who have problems following the loss of their child to adoption are "few in number and mentally ill".
We (the birth mothers ministry) can't count how many times we have heard from our adoption case workers to the birth mother to be: "If you really love your baby, you'll "give" her up for adoption." Sure, they may be correct, but we dont need to hear this from them. We wouldn't be here if we didnt already know that! We owuld give the woman more credit, as well as acknowleging the cases where our influences are needed more (the 12 and 13 yr olds)
An underlying ignorance about the damage these woman experience. It is not just that social-workers are not able to assess the psychiatric syndromes or are ignorant in this area, but that they are dabbling in an area of illness for which they are totally untrained. They ignore research about the nature of grief and the connection of Pathological Grief to breakdown in Mental Health which has been known for decades. Their unawareness of their own ignorance when dealing with the severely damaged is like taking lighted tapers into a gunpowder storage. Their use of groups when a distressed person requires extensive individual assessment and debriefing is destructive.
In addition to individual counseling, women contemplating adoption participate in an intensive, 20-week adoption class. The course covers everything from legal issues like the birth father's rights to preparing for birth, handling grief, and deciding whether to write a letter to the child that the adoptive parents can put aside for later. (The LIGHT House does not encourage ongoing contact between the birth mother and the adoptive family.) "The scariest part is these feelings you're having," Gibson says. "You think you're the only one having them. It's reassuring to learn that [all] birth mothers feel the same way. After the birth, if you feel like changing your mind, that might be an intellectual decision--or it might be an emotional decision. We ask them to think: Are the reasons you initially decided for adoption still valid?
"Many girls are crying as they're being driven in," Bell says. "They're not joyfully exercising some right to privacy; they are in trauma. Seeing that was very important in reinforcing my belief that this is the approach we need to take." An approach, that is, that demonstrates pro-lifers can stand outside an abortion clinic doing something peaceful, positive, and ultimately hopeful.
Among society's most pressing problems is the seemingly endless supply of pregnancies to unwed mothers. Pregnancy centers have 30 years' experience in offering mothers the personal support and encouragement needed to make a life-affirming choice. But once born, that baby deserves a better life than welfare and single-parenting can offer. Pregnancy centers, which have already done so much to better the prospects of women and children, need to expand their vision one more time. They should do far more to encourage mothers to consider adoption. This is less a criticism of pregnancy centers' valiant work than a discovery. It turns out that we've found the mittens after all. We just need to put them to use
