Mothers Story Project: A Mothers Story

I was 19 and had no help or support from family or my baby's father. Being a resourceful person, I looked in the phone book for help for struggling mothers. I contacted an organization that claimed to be a non-profit (their tax status was revoked by the IRS soon thereafter), licensed (not knowing that their license was about to be revoked) organization that helped mothers find out about options and make an unpressured decision (which also turned out to be the furthest thing from the truth). I was constantly discouraged from keeping my baby and told how I could never make it, wasn't good enough, and would ruin his life. I was given all kinds of false promises and lies about adoption and the prospective adopters. I finally gave up, persuaded that I was incapable of being a mother to my own son.

Losing my son caused me tremendous grief and sadness. It also motivated me to be a strong, independent woman who would never again be in a situation where I would be unable to keep a baby. It motivated me to become an outspoken activist leader in the movement to strengthen mothers' rights related to surrender and keep mothers and their babies together. I think of my son and talk about my activism all the time. It's central to my life. I created a website, www.babybrokerwatch.com to expose the truth about the operation that took my son.

I would like to see openness and honesty in child custody and an end to the falsified and sealed birth certificate system. I would like to see keeping families together as the top priority and families separated only as a last resort after all efforts to keep them together have been thoroughly exhausted. I would like to see better options for struggling parents, such as more housing where pregnant women and mothers with babies can live together and the mothers get help to get on their feet and prepare to care for their babies independently. I would like to see more mentors for single mothers, improved social welfare programs and other assistance for mothers in temporary need of assistance. I would like to see an end to money-making by baby brokers and baby sellers. I would like for mothers to receive complete, unbiased information and legal counseling that they need to make informed decisions. I would like for the current termination of parental rights and adoption system be replaced with supports to help families stay together, and, as a last resort, kinship care and permanent legal guardianship in which birth certificates are neither falsified nor hidden from the parties named on the birth certificate.