Part Five: Re-Homing & Sex Trafficking When Parents No Longer Want the Child they Adopted
The conclusion of The Most Compelling Abortion Argument That Neither Side Is Discussing: What Happens to the Unwanted and How Does that Impact Us All?
Photo Credit: 60 Minutes episode entitled, “‘Re-homing’: America’s Shocking Trade in Unwanted Children.”
Part Five: Re-Homing & Sex Trafficking When Parents No Longer Want the Child they Adopted
The “cuddle program” came to an end and something called “Re-homing, took over” This process can best be explained in this summary of a 60 Minutes episode entitled, “‘Re-homing’: America’s Shocking Trade in Unwanted Children.”
Imagine a fashion show for children, except it’s not their fashion up for grabs but their very lives. Children whose parents are no longer able to care for them will turn them over to foster care organizations to be “re-homed,” just like dogs who are looking for a “forever family.”
The children are paraded on a runway and advertised on websites like used furniture on Facebook’s open marketplace. Their image with a small bio punching up their best qualities are placed on view for anyone to see. It’s completely legal and no vetting or court orders are required for any person to show up and request to take these children home. It’s an underground trade of children operated in plain view and most people turn a blind eye using the socially accepted phrase, “It’s not my problem.” Where are all the people who voted to end abortions in the name of saving the children during this phase in their lives when they most need protection?
Adam Pertman of the Boston based National Center on Adoption and Permanency had this to say about the re-homing program, “There should be legal and social structures and professionals who know what the hell they are doing around all of this. If we don’t protect vulnerable children, who do we protect?”
Over 40,000 adopted children are signed over to anyone in the program who is showing an interest in them be they potentially loving parents, or serial pedophiles like Nicole and Calvin Eason who scoured foster adoption chat rooms for potential adoptees to abuse.
When Poppy was just seven years old, she was “re-homed” and signed over to the Easons, a couple whose own children had been removed from their care due to abuse. Their house was ramshackled. The children they took in were exposed to watching pornography with the naked parents as if it were a family movie— the Easons sexually assaulted Poppy and admitted to being abusive.
The Easons were serial pedophiles. This was a pattern they repeated from state to state, never getting caught until one, brave and caring woman took a stand with courage. Lynn Banks noticed red flags in the adoption chat rooms and took it upon herself to reach out to authorities to rescue the children. She spent nearly a decade collecting evidence as a concerned citizen, against Nicole and Calvin Eason before the FBI would get involved. Eventually, The Easons were sentenced to 40 years in prison for crimes against children. Poppy was adopted by the woman who ran the chat rooms that connected Poppy to the Easons, the woman who physically drove in her car and removed and rescued Poppy from that home herself.
This is a story we heard over and over again when working with foster care runaways through The ReachOut Program. Unwanted children have very few advocates and those they can find are inconsistent. When you hear their stories of going from one foster family to the next, one abusive environment after another, and you see the suffering and hardship these young people endure with little evidence that it will ever end, you come to gain insight into the torment of Toni Morrison’s haunting novel, Beloved—when the men who raped and brutalized the character Sethe came for her children, she ended their lives stating that her children would be better off dead than enslaved.
Can we collectively pause to consider that abortion is often an act of compassion to an unwanted fetus to prevent further suffering once it’s able to survive outside the womb and becomes an unwanted person? If you are someone who is against abortion because you want to “save the children” yet you also believe that children are being trafficked for sex, ask yourself where do the children who are trafficked for sex come from? Put out the fire and then blame the match.
The Middle Way
The way of wisdom often falls down the center. My intent as a writer is to conclude each piece with solution journalism: steps we can take to make a difference. Here are eight steps we can collectively take to maintain reproductive freedoms.
1. Embrace Erica Chenoweth’s 3.5% rule that states that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts when at least 3.5% of the population come together, they have never failed to bring about change.
2. Fight like Hell in organized and effective ways across party lines and take action that creates and repeats: Government Of the people, By the people, For the people. Remember, the majority of Americans support reproductive freedoms. By the laws of democracy, the right to a safe and legal abortion should be protected as long as the majority of Americans vote for it to be so.
3. Harness the tactics in “The Art of War”
and bring in our power pieces to respond. Focus on the instructions in chapter three (Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army and Cities—this explains the process that was used to take our freedoms away, and the process by which we can re-gain them.
Study chapter six (relative weakness of the enemy) and chapter twelve (the five attacks).
Get on the bus—or don’t— (Birmingham Bus Boycott) that’s how one of the most successful peaceful protests ended racial segregation and that’s how we can end the attack on reproductive freedoms—we just have to find our version of the “reproductive freedom bus” in 2022.
4. Vote with our dollars and time as much as with our signatures.
5. Realize that this is a game of chess and right now the queen is in the center of the board being attacked by power pieces on all sides. If we use all our resources to fight one piece at a time, we will lose—there just aren’t enough moves left in the game to take that approach. It’s time to call in reinforcements.
6. “The best defense is a good offense.” As the first born in my family and one of the tallest kids in grade school, I became the child who stood up to bullies to protect those who couldn’t. It’s not easy but it is simple. It requires courage and support, but it is possible to stop one from hurting another by standing in between. We need everyone to stand.
7. Relocate to where anti-abortion strongholds have power and change the balance of power by voting where your vote counts the most on this issue. Every state has two senators regardless of population. States with only half a million people get the same power of the senate as states with 30 million people—which means a vote in a less populated state can pack more power. Populate the places of power and change legislation at the state and federal level. There’s roughly half a million people in Wyoming and closing in on 40 million people in California (whose population is greater than the entire country of Canada). This means that smaller populated states like Wyoming have a disproportionate amount of power, nearly 80 times the voting power of larger populations in states like California. Upside: its less expensive to own land in less populated places and many jobs are now remote—so a great many of us can live wherever we want in the country and still work from home.
8. Finally, stop allowing unelected officials to create and dictate our freedoms through Faustian bargains.
In Closing
I support reproductive freedoms not just because I’m a woman, but also because I care about children and think they deserve to come into the world wanted. I do not see abortion as murder, instead, I see it as an act of compassion for an unwanted child that our society cannot and will not care for.
If the government wants to encourage women to carry unwanted fetuses, they should provide a secure parent in waiting, pay for the health care of the woman and child that will be, for their entire lives, offer a living wage incentive for stay-at-home parents, and secure that the living wage matches the cost of living. Provide that unwanted child with a support system, a safe home, clean water, nutrient rich food, health care, and a free education. If they can’t provide those things, they have no business expecting someone else to.
If the government wants to lessen teen pregnancies, they can increase teen sex education that places a focus not on abstinence but on methods of sexual gratification that do not lead to pregnancy.
If the government wants to decrease abortions, they could increase male birth control through mainstream advertising and promotion of men coming forth who use male birth control.
The choices we make in the moment of now, have long standing ripple effects for generations to come. Children will continue to suffer until we fix the system. Reproductive freedoms help to end suffering. If you want to “Save the unwanted children” provide a world that’s safe for them to enter, ’cause this world, at this time, ain’t it. There are numerous ways to reduce abortions without taking away civil liberties and reproductive freedoms.
Holding On to Our Freedoms
The best way to hold on to freedom, is to not give it away in the first place. There may never be a more crucial period, in my lifetime at least, to hold on to our freedoms, than in this moment of now. I do not have a political agenda—as I said, freedom does not belong to a single cause—it belongs to all of humanity. I’m not an advocate for abortion as much as I am an advocate for freedom.
When we fight against each other’s freedoms we weaken our own. Abortion must be kept safe and legal for the sake of all of humanity—for stripping one gender of their reproductive rights will set a precedent of stripping all genders of their rights, reproductive or otherwise. A vote against reproductive freedoms is a vote in favor of a dystopian society. It is an inherent unalienable right of a woman to have dominion over her own body, of any human to have dominion over their body. This makes abortion not just a woman’s right, but a human’s right. Reproductive freedoms protect many unwanted children from being raised in severe poverty, or foster care, or sexually trafficked through re-homing programs.
This concludes the five part series, The Most Compelling Abortion Argument That Neither Side Is Discussing: What Happens to the Unwanted and How Does that Impact Us All?
Sage Justice is intensely sincere. Balancing wisdom and humor she most often writes deeply personal solution based pieces about the enduring virtues that connect us all: love and healing. She is an award-winning playwright and critically acclaimed performing artist who has appeared on stages from Madison Square Garden in New York City, to The Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. Ms. Justice is the author of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, an activist, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and an alumna Artist-In-Residence of Chateau Orquevaux, France. She is a co-founder of The Unity Project which fuses activism with art, to educate and inspire, with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness. She has a series of short reels about living with the rare genetic disorder, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that you can find in a highlight reel on her Instagram page @SageWords2027
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