Win This Baby (Hell Freezes Over At ABC)

New York Post ^ | 4-28-04 | CHRISTENE BARBERICH

[My Favorite Headache]

By CHRISTENE BARBERICH -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jessica, 16, will choose new parents for her son on Friday's "20/20" with Barbara Walters.

April 28, 2004 -- A giant-sized controversy is brewing over a baby adoption special on "20/20" - and sending ABC execs into a tailspin. Millions of viewers across the country watched in surprise over the weekend as the network aired a sensational promo for Friday's segment, which pits five desperate couples against each other for the privilege of adopting a 16-year-old's baby. A very personal, intimate process was made to look like a reality-show contest, with prospective parents dubbed "winners" and "losers."

[Petronski]

Win this Liver!

Five terminal liver-disease patients compete for one donor liver, next time on 20/20!

[Skooz]

Nearly every domestic adoption is pretty much like a reality show contest, except there's a dozen or more childless couples vying for the infant, rather than just five, and there's no cameras.

But...but...but...the pro-aborts insist that so many babies are unwanted.

[Libertina]

This is profane. ABCNBCCNNBC marches on.

[mvpel]

One of my coworkers is a foster and adoptive parent to two crack babies.

[My Favorite Headache]

Soon enough...just watch..our sarcasm will turn into reality.

[BossLady]

Nothing like a good baby lottery to get the blood pumping....

[justanotherfreeper]

but far less gruelling and emotionally draining than trying to convince a knocked-up teenager that we're the ones she should give her baby to.

And two years down the road having her boyfriend say "she never told me she was pregnant! I want that baby!" and being dragged into court and end up having to give your child to the drive-by father, after bankrupting yourselves on attorney fees. No wonder most adoptions now are from foreign nations!

[MortMan]

For what it's worth, Glenn Beck's program this morning featured a segment on this show, and the child's mother apparently believed the program would be a feature on the process of adoption. The documentary morphed into an unreality show under the hands of the media dips at the network.

In the end, at least this baby will have a chance to grow up in a more normal environment (hopefully absent ongoing TV coverage) with a mother and father who loved it enough to choose to become Mommy and Daddy. It is a plus that this young girl, while making a foolish choice one night more than nine months ago, made the wise and loving choice to have the baby, even if she doesn't think she can handle being its full time mother.

As far as the baby being "screwed" - Consider that it will live after this fiasco in a home which promises to be (God willing) loving and nurturing to a responsible human being.

BTW - I am referring to the baby as "it" because I didn't catch the baby's gender in the article (probably my own lack of mental function:-).

[Inspectorette]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the possibility that the pro-abort folks may be pushing this. Showing the agony of the young mother as she turns the baby over to the adoptive parents, to illustrate that having an abortion would be much less painful.

[PAR35]

I was talking actual hours in the air. We started with a 12 hour flight to Frankfurt, then a 2+ hour flight, then another overnight flight to our destination in a TU-154 that Aeroflot had given up on an sold to a small start up operation.

[gi_jes]

"....but far less gruelling and emotionally draining than trying to convince a knocked up teenager to let us be the parents of her baby."
Wow, if I were the poor, misguided girl that we will all witness going through the most painful experience of her life I can tell you - you are the type of person I would never want to be an adoptive parent.
That is horrible language to use and very inappropriate for someone who may adopt a child soon, even if it is a child from abroad.

[mvpel]

Maybe being in a camera-free reality show developing a "marketing strategy" for the birth mother is an experience tolerable to some, but not to my wife or I.

Inappropriate? Take your sacntimony elsewhere.

[gi_jes]

I think that the entire concept of "Dear Birthmother" letters is a bit off, and I agree with you there. It should not be a contest, or a competition, and that is where, sadly enough, 20/20 is right. Adoption in America is a game show, it is a three ring circus!
What I find strange is that you are adopting, and yet using such a demeaning way to describe a young woman is okay? I wonder how you will feel about your child's birthmother, he will, after all, have her genes.

[denco]

As the grandmother of a beautiful little adopted grandmother, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving birth insted of choosing abortion. My son & his wife cannot have children. Their adoption is not open, but a mother had to make a very difficult decision and they are giving this precious child a very good lovng home. again thank you for those who choose to give life. Denco

[hunter112]

I suspect the birth mother of their child will not try to make a three ring circus out of the process.

I'm not advocating that birth mothers who give their kids up for adoption have to hang their heads in shame, but they shouldn't be looking for their American Idol moment out of it.

The couple that "wins" will probably have to deal with this particular young lady some years later, when she "realizes that she had been used by the news media". Hope they can convert the kid's college fund to legal fees to fight her off.

[gi_jes]

Birthmothers should never hang their heads in shame, but you see that is what society tells her to do. Once the word "adoption" is mentioned as part of her thought process, it is all over. Agencies, social workers, and society alike tell her to "do the loving thing, do the right thing for your child. Give these people a gift that they would otherwise never have..." She is crushed under the power of that influence, she is made to believe that it is the only right option, she will be "letting people down" if she doesn't go through with it, they would be "devastated" otherwise, she will never be able to give her child as much as a successful older married couple can, no other choice is right, and then.....she signs the papers.
As soon as that is done she is viewed in a totally different light. Now she is an abandoner, no longer the considerate girl making the ultimate sacrifice or honorable decision, she wears a cloak of shame. She walks among the whispers...."can you believe she could do that?" Those same people who helped make her decision are now apalled by her actions. Take the words of the adoptive father, for instance "I thought Jessica was an intelligent girl, How could she not say this beautiful baby that I brought into this world is going to stay with me."
So now it is implied that she is not intelligent because she chose adoption. How could she not take the baby home with her? Hmmmm, maybe there are other pressures here you are not recognizing, like your very presence in the situation!
The open adoption probably will not stand. The adopters probably will not uphold their end of the bargain. But then again, that happens everyday, everywhere, and that is where the birthmother learns that she is nothing, never real was anything....just an incubator.

[pnz1]

I don't know how familiar you are with adoption. What you say may apply in SOME cases. We have been through the adoption process and I can tell you that it is not always the case. I will be eternally grateful to the birthmother of our child.

[gi_jes]

I am glad that you feel that way and I hope that she really knows that and feels that inside. I do feel that people tend to turn a deaf ear however, when someone has something negative to say about adoption. Most people don't want to know that "open" adoptions are not honored very often by the adoptive parents, and that the natural mother is shut out with no legal rights in many instances.
This is not the case with adoptive parents such as yourself, and others who stay in touch with the natural mother in open adoption.
But there are more than a few women who are shut out and left in the dark after the papers are signed. And that is a reality most networks would never want to air. It may be bad P.R.

[ChadGore]

ABC: "We'll sell children of strangers
to save the failing career of a
has-been liberal"

Because life is cheap. Did we mention it's sweeps?

[gi_jes]

Life is so cheap, isn't it?
And here Baba Wawa is, an adoptive mother herself doing this show!
Funny how in the beginning of the show we know that Jessica is a sixteen year old girl, with her parents pushing the adoption process along, and even Jessica herself explains her personal situation and relationship with the father of the baby.....
But Walters finds the need to label Jessica in the next segment as "an unwed mother"
What was the need for that I wonder?
I guess to re-iterate to everyone out there that Jessica really was only doing the right thing by the baby, being unwed and all.....