"My child loves her abandonment story." No, she doesn't.

To the adoptive parents who are scared to search for birthparents. To the adoptive parents who fear that the baby they adopted from the orphanage was actually trafficked for international donation dollars. To the adoptive parents who fear that their nearly thirty-year-old adult adoptee will choose to leave them in lieu of their birthfamily. To the adoptive parents who cling to the vestiges of the pre-Hunan scandal days, to the pre-One Child Nation days, I say;

No, your child does not and cannot love their abandonment story.

It is you, your fear, which warps your vision. Even if the abandonment story were the only closure available to us, it is an impossibility, against the laws of physics-- one cannot love being abandoned. 

It is a cruel disservice to all adoptees have already survived to withhold from them the opportunity of knowing the truth. It is nothing short of torture to insist on peddling a narrative in which the adoptee was abandoned, tossed out, thrown out, just to save your conscience.

None of us were "simply" abandoned. There was no choice.

Many of us were never "abandoned" at all.

The carrot and the stick. The carrot was the money, the stick was the One Child Policy. 

Supply and demand. The supply was the orphans, the demand came from YOU. 

Every single adoptive parent who has adopted from China was a part of this economy. It doesn't matter that you don't want to believe your child came from an orphanage that was offering money to baby traffickers. You were the demand. They offered the supply. 

Chicken and the egg. Maybe there was a supply first, then demand, then supply, then a carrot, then a stick, or a stick and then a carrot.

In the end, it all boils down to this:

You adopted a child you thought was abandoned. That story is likely untrue. To find the truth requires personal moral reckoning, guilt, and fear. We adoptees are owed the truth. So don't hide behind us and bullshit me and tell me that you don't want to search for birthparents because, "My twenty-five year old adoptee LOVES her abandonment story."

I can assure you that she doesn't...but she might say so in case she loses you. 

Because no one can love being abandoned.