by Michelle Ann Newton

Created on: October 31, 2007   Last Updated: August 30, 2010

I am an adoptee, twice over.

Yes. You read it correctly. I was not once, but TWICE adopted, prior to the age of nine. I have three legal names, and associated birth certificates, the first of which is my given name at birth, not yet identified.

The most frequently asked question is, "How did that happen?" My birth mother, who was married when I was conceived, had an affair. I can only assume she believed I was her husband's child, which is the reason why she chose to carry out her pregnancy in the first place. By the time I was two, it become more than evident, I was not her husband's child. At that point, her husband, who was a highly decorated military officer, demanded, "Either she goes, or I go." Ultimately, my mother complied with her husband's command, and soon placed me with an agency for adoption.

At age five, I was adopted by the first family. Before my ninth birthday, I would have suffered unfathomable mental and physical and sexual abuse, so much so, that I ran away, in the middle of winter, wearing slippers and short sleeves, to escape yet another beating. Not long after this event, I was taken away from the first adoptive family and placed with a second adoptive family. There too, I was horribly brutalized in emotional, physical and sexual ways, and still suffer the long-lasting effects of surviving, abused.

Adoption, as it pertains to the person or persons responsible for making a decision or choice to keep or give away their own flesh and blood, IS SELFISH. In simple terms, adoption is the equivalent of a real-life, repetitious "Little Red Riding Hood" tale. An innocent (a child), is in essence, lost inside a forest, and hunted by a big bad wolf lurking deep within the shadows. A child, who may or may not be attacked, and who may or may not be able to escape the wrath of the stalking hungry wolf. Little Red rarely escapes this tale unscathed.

No other choice in life is as significant as determining the fate of a life you've bore. The entire premise of adoption is cruel beyond your wildest imagination, unfair to the parents and the children it involves, and is often unjustifiable by mere desperation or relative circumstance.

How is adoption selfish? Adoption is like an alien invasion, one that will inevitably affect all parties involved, for the entirety of their lives. Why? Because it is designed to remove a child's identity, rightful heritage, and genealogy, forever. In my case, my birth mother didn't bother to inform my birth father that I

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