Book Club: The Baby Thief with Heather Rodriguez

0:00there need to be children to find homes for not homes looking for children. I mean obviously there are going to be people who are willing to open their homes but it's a it's a very broken it's built I think it's an institution built on broken unethical foundations and it's got to really be reworked entirely. Welcome to the

0:33Open Adoption Project. This is episode 125. For The Nelsons, I'm La nette. And I'm Shaun. In today's episode, we are doing another book club episode where we have a conversation with Heather Rodriguez. We have had her on the podcast before as an adoptee and adoptive mother, and we love her perspective. Today, we're considering the book The Baby Thief, and this is by Barbara Vazance Raymond, and this is about the story of Jordan Tan. Yes, and so

1:03Georgia tan we've talked about on the podcast a little bit before she was an adoption Social worker back in the baby scoop era and had some very unethical adoption practices She really started a lot of the practices that we even see today that can be concerning So this is a really important book one that we really highly recommend reading at the author Barbara Raymond is an adoptive mother and she talks about how her experience

1:34personally intertwined with her professional experience as a journalist learning about Georgia Tann. It's a really interesting book. I think it's a really important read for anyone in the adoption community. So we will jump over to an interview with Heather. We are so excited to welcome Heather Rodriguez back to the show. Heather,

2:05thank you so much for being here with us today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, we are so happy to have you back. And for any listeners who haven't heard your last episode at this point, do you want to introduce yourself briefly? Anything you'd like to share about yourself? Oh, yeah. My name's Heather Rodriguez. I am a biological and adoptive mom of three. Also a Um, I guess a private adoptee, um, and, uh, yeah, excited to be here. Thank you so much. So for

2:37National Adoption Month, we are continuing our tradition of doing a book club where we talk about different books in the adoption world. And today, Heather and I are going to be talking about the book, The Baby Thief, the untold story of Georgia Tan, the baby seller who corrupted adoption. And this book is written by Barbara Vissance -Raymond. And Heather, What did you think of this book just right off the bat? It's a rough book. It has a lot of very difficult information, but I think it is a very important

3:08book because it gives a lot of really important information about where our process for private adoption comes from, how it was brought about, and why there's so much secrecy in the private infant adoption process today without sensationalizing it, which I appreciated. She sort of She's a journalist. I looked her up. I sort of learned about her and she brings a lot of professionalism to the topic, I think. So. Yeah, thank you. So

3:40before you read this book, did you know anything about Georgia Tan or about the history of adoption? I knew a very little bit about Georgia Tan. I knew that she was involved in some shady dealings with adopting babies out to some famous people. I knew she got some shady adoption practices past some judges in Memphis, but I had no idea the length at which she wanted to to get that done. Yeah, for me, it was the same. I was shocked as I read it was just like, oh my goodness, like, I can't believe this is even real. It felt like

4:11fiction. It was so wild. And it's not. Yeah. So this book is nonfiction. I don't think we need to have a spoiler warning for this kind of book. But yeah, I mean, it's just fact, right? But could you share maybe a brief synopsis of this book? Sure. So it follows Georgia Tan. It starts kind of with her life. As a young girl, she was raised by a judge. Her father was a judge, and she wanted to grow up and wanted to be a lawyer. She couldn't be because she was a woman.

4:42So she becomes a social worker. In the beginning, social work wasn't really a formed field, and she sort of saw an opportunity, I think, to have some influence and make some money in the way that she had originally wanted to be. She appears to be a deeply mentally unwell and emotionally unwell individual on top of that and she sets out and with the help of some influential people and the right social circumstances and obtains children and babies. through basically kidnapping.

5:13She traffics children. She kidnaps them. She adopts them to famous people with the help of some judges and lawyers and doctors. And because she has all of their help, she's able to get laws passed that create secrecy and adoption, the sealing of birth records, the sealing of adoption records. She changes social work and the way that social workers believe things should be done in adoption. And it has a lot to do with, I think, the prevailing narrative. She believed that it was better to not be born at all than

5:45to be born into a poor family. And that is kind of what underscores her entire actions all throughout the entire book. So thank you. That's a great synopsis. I felt like the way that Barbara Raymond introduced Georgia Tanna shared her backgrounds and her story. I felt like it was really effective and powerful. For me, it was really challenging because as I read it, I was like, okay, I'm like starting to sympathize with this person. And

6:16I know a bit of what's coming and I'm just like, I don't want to be sympathizing with this person. But I thought it was an effective way to show how she got there. And yes, it humanized her. It didn't really change how I felt about her or any of the things done. But but I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I think that's part of it is you see how she arrives where she does, and you also see that it's not just her. I mean, she's obviously 100 % responsible for her actions, but how kind of the perfect storm of culture

6:49at the time, societal norms at the time, all work together to allow her to do what she did. She wouldn't have been able to do what she did, had prevailing notions at the time, not been what they were, you know. So, yeah. For sure. Yeah. And I think that's another reason that the book is so compelling, because I can't fathom it happening today. And I mean, I don't want to say that if I could be wrong, but I just can't fathom it. Right? Like, yeah. Yeah. So what stands

7:21out to you as the ethical lines that Georgia's hand crossed? How do you think she was able to operate for so long without being stopped? I think what she did, the ethical line she crossed early and effectively is I think she realized if she could get the people in power to be complicit in a way that would cause them to be on the line for the actions, not just her, she could be protected. And that's exactly what she did. She adopted children out to judges. She adopted them out to doctors. She had judges. take bribes to pass

7:53laws. And when that was done, the judges did whatever they needed to do in order to cover up behind her what had been done. And that I think is what allowed it to go fully through her entire lifetime, past her lifetime. Even at the end, when the judges say, hey, yeah, she probably shouldn't have done that, they still didn't reverse any of the decisions that they had made. They said, but we're going to keep it the way it is. So that's how she did it. That

8:23was the key, was getting the people in power to not only agree with her, but to participate with her. And that's what kept it going so long. It's wild. And I feel like it's also really interesting. I'm in graduate school right now. And whenever I'm trying to go through adoption history, I'm trying to find things about Georgia tan to include to explain like policy, and what the background is on these policies that are in place today. And it's best in academic research to cite academic

8:54research, but a really hard time finding her in academic writing, like she really did cover her tracks so effectively. It's been decades now and she really is so hard to find information. So much so that she got, they were talking about, there was a part in there where they talked about, she got to the social workers so much that the social workers were teaching each other in practice that the secrecy and the the cover -up was best

9:28for the children and best for the birth mothers and they didn't even really have a precedent for why they were teaching that and that if the adoptees came back and said hey we want to know about our roots it was actually a problem with the adoptee and that was wild to me that it went that far um so yeah it's like this wild it's like gaslighting right like just turning everything on its head in ways where you're just like, wait, how did we even get here? It doesn't make sense.

9:59It doesn't. I think people looking back, I think people really believe that back during that time, and even people during that time believed that there were these orphanages full of children languishing without homes, and that was never the case. And instead, that image was kind of shown to them. Oh, look at all these children without homes. They talked about the ads she would take out with the pictures of the children. Saying that they wanted a home for Christmas, you know, you could this Tommy could be your Christmas present and These children had been

10:32stolen from their front yards. Yeah wild. Oh Absolutely. Yeah, so We've talked a little bit about how wealth and power Influenced Georgia tans work and the things that she did the crime she committed And so you've talked about how that protected her ultimately Do you feel like in today's modern adoptions, how do you think Georgia Tamp's legacy, and I say legacy without

11:03wanting to make that sound like a good thing, right? Right. But yeah, how do you think that is still present today? I think the fact that the American private adoption industry is in fact an industry. The fact that infants have been commodity have been turned into a commodity even in the no matter how you feel about it, even in the reversal of Roe v. Wade, when they talked about the reversal of that, and they said

11:33that there would be less supply for the demand of adoptable infants in that disk. And when Justice Scalia released that decision, the fact that that infants are seen as a commodity and that the adoption industry, it's like $40 billion a year. I believe the fact that you still see ads on Facebook or ads for adoption agencies or adoptions on Facebook, on YouTube, on... If

12:04you Google adoption on Google, the first three things that pop up are adoption agencies. And I think that's how that has transferred. It has gone from being a one -woman show about power and money to a an industry about finding babies for homes instead of finding homes for babies. Oh, so tragic. And so I feel like it's really interesting. As I learn more, I have so much

12:35I don't know, and so much to learn. But last year, I was reading a lot about the orphan trains, and about that history of adoption. And then adding to that, Georgia to him and this era of adoption where she really ushered in this shame and secrecy and all of these practices that are so counterintuitive really right like birth records and all of these things it's really interesting seeing the contrast but also similarities right

13:08where you have this minister from the 1850s who started the orphan trains wanting to do something so good. Yeah wanting to help these kids and it was a mixed program right there were yeah things that came from it but then you have this bad actor come in and I feel like it just really swept over everything and changed maybe some of the practices that might have been doing good

13:38or changing the better and Just completely overhauled it. I don't know. Do you feel like there's anything good that's come out of Georgia Tans work? Nothing. No. No, I don't I don't I think She did not, I mean there were no babies that were helped in her care. Even they talked about she killed multiple babies died in her care because they couldn't be adopted quickly. She would drug them while they were waiting to be placed or she was finding homes for them. They were paying people

14:10to have babies that she could essentially like baby farms is what they called them. they would pay them to have babies and sometimes the babies wouldn't survive. I mean, I really don't think there is anything positive you can pull out of anything that she did. There was nothing humanitarian, certainly, about anything that she did. And she erased these connections to biological family where adoptions before Georgia 10, from my understanding, it was... like you had it was more open right

14:41like where you have this connection to your biological family you know where you came from and you know about your roots and that changed with her where it suddenly became like it's as if you were born to this family right and like there's this past history as if born to yeah yeah which is just such a huge shift huge and the idea that um somehow An adopted child growing up wanting to know about

15:12their biological roots is a failure on the part of either the adopted child or the adoptive parents I've always hated that that is the first question people ask when you say hey, you know Yeah, I want to find my biological parents is well weren't your adoptive parent weren't your parents good enough My goodness. It has nothing to do You know, and the shame that that adoptive parents. I also feel bad for the adoptive parents during the Georgia tan era because and even now even

15:42up to and including now because they were. They were not informed about what was happening. You know they they were not aware of what was going on. They were sold a bill of goods as well. You know some of the more given toddlers that they thought were orphans that were actually stolen out of out of someone's home. Um, so, you know, just the tragedy of that all around is so, so awful. Well, and the way she would talk about Georgia, Tam would talk about adoption as if

16:12this child wouldn't have a history and trauma and there wouldn't be anything to work through, right? Like this is an easily kind of idea. That's just not feasible. It's not how it is. It's just not reality. And so she was really setting up. these adopted families for failure anyway, and then kids for a life of being misunderstood. And yes, yeah. And just the damage I think that

16:43shame does on all fronts, because the shame of of the parents that were not able to biologically have children, the shame of the mothers who were Unwed and having children and in circumstances that were less than ideal the shame that the children felt for being born into less than ideal Circumstances she was able to prey on that shame all around in every direction and it just caused so much hurt and pain because Everyone's trying to run from that shame when really there shouldn't have been shame in any of those situations I

17:15feel like and again, I wish I was like a scholar on adoption history, and I have not. But I feel like that shame probably existed before Georgia's hand, but that she really capitalized on it. She has weakness where you're right, there's shame all across the board, right? Where, especially in that era, there was a lot of shame about pregnancy, out of marriage, and there was a lot of shame about poverty, there was, and she's amplified all of the shame, shame about not being able

17:46to get pregnant or conceive a shame about being adopted, which I think back in those days that talk like illegitimate or whatever, like just wild, wild shame. And yeah, just amplified that. And I think that helped her keep people where she wanted them, right? Keep people silent and keep herself comfortable ultimately. Absolutely. Yeah, because they talk about and I've read a little bit about the fact that before the advent of birth control, even single moms were kind

18:19of embraced a little bit more by their community because it wasn't expected that women would really go to college anyway. So it's kind of like, well, just go get married and do your thing. And the single motherhood wasn't as much of a shame because they kind of just. enveloped into their communities and worked it out. But then it became the expectation of, no, you're going to go to college, you can wait, you can delay this. And then that's when the shame of single motherhood became heavier, because the expectations changed. Well, you don't want to be a mother that young, you know, that

18:50kind of thing. And that's when that or about that time when things were shifting in Memphis and in the south, especially during that time. So it's rough. Yeah, that makes sense. But Oh, how sad. Yes. I wish we could just erase shame from the equation. I think we're getting better as a community. Yes, I think it's getting better, but it's still really problematic. Yeah. So as you were reading this book, what stood out to you? What stuck with you the most? I think just

19:23the importance of getting the message or getting her story out as much as it's an awful story and I don't know that even everybody needs the brutal details because man, the details are rough. But I think if people can understand that the adoption practices that are commonplace, less so today, but have been commonplace for so long, are not rooted in any kind of study, or any kind of belief, or any kind of understanding of what is actually best for children, parents, families,

19:53or people in general, people would be more ready and willing to change. But I think people somehow got the idea of, oh well, this is what's been determined is best for everyone. So let's keep it going this way. These things were all done for, I think, to protect people from the shame, not from anything else, not from each other. This information is not dangerous. It was just that. That and how much evil one person can do when they are able to get with people in power

20:25and cover things up. You know, wealth and power can do a lot of damage when it's misused. Yeah. So yeah, it was a rough book, but I think it's an important book. And I think it was well done. And I hate, like you said, that you can't find anything about her really. I think she's starting to kind of, people are starting to say, wait, what? Who is this lady? What? Are you serious? This really happened? Yeah. And I think that Barbara Raymond was a big part of that from what I understand. Yeah, like in the book, she talks about how she was like, knocking on doors trying

20:56to find information about George and from people who were quite old by that point. And it was really rough where like people were threatening her and evading talking with her because I'm sure. And she and George had been long dead and people still wouldn't talk to her, which is wild. Right? Like this long lasting power years after her death. And that's Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, we touched on this a little bit earlier, but

21:27I'm curious. Do you think that Georgia Tam would be able to do the same things today or something similar? I don't think she'd be able to do it on as large of a scale as she did it back then. I do think, though, with enough money. Yeah. Yeah, she could. I think that you could broker just about anything, especially the market still to this day, the market for brand new white babies,

21:59which is a horrifying thing to say, but it's the truth. With enough money, yes, I think she could. I don't think you could do it on such a large scale, and I don't think it would be done through the courts. It would all be done under the table now. But I don't think she could affect public policy like she did. then the widespread damage would not be done today, I don't think. But there are, you know, the fact that there are still, I think we're up to 18 the last time I checked states that now have open adoption

22:30or open birth record laws now. Texas is still fighting. We're still fighting to be heard in the Senate. Yeah. There are still people fighting the legislation that she started rolling to this day. It's wild. I do think that the social media and the internet would make it a lot more challenging for her to impact public policy like you were saying. But you're right. We still hear about

23:02a lot of unethical adoptions happening even now where like we still see race -based pricing for adoptions. Yes. And the fact that adoption costs so much anyway, private adoption. can be extremely expensive. I think that's an earmark of some majorly unethical practices going on. Yeah, adoption tourism, which I don't know if you've heard much about that, but I would like to talk about that. Yeah, an issue. So just some of the things that that are still going on. I could see it happening,

23:35but not again, not on such a large scale. But I think as adoptees grow up, as more people like you guys and the people who are speaking out. public opinion will change and it will become more and more difficult for people to think that that is okay. Absolutely, I agree. So you mentioned adoption tourism. So as I understand it, adoption tourism is when an agency will bring a birth mother to a different state. Yes. And so like some states like Utah and oh it's a shame to

24:06say I'm in Utah. They'll fly birth mothers into Utah because the laws are adoption friendly, quote unquote, right? Yes. So she will come here and she's away from her own support systems. And they bring her here to evade maybe birth father laws they don't want to work with. They can use birth mother expenses a lot more freely. And then after relinquishment, they'll send her back home, but she doesn't have support systems.

24:37And it's like this. major issue and it's very coercive if mother Has been flown to a different state and then she's like wait, I don't feel good about this then agencies will often just say well, okay figure out how to get home then and feels trapped and a lot of these women are in positions where Getting home is going to feel impossible. And so it's really coercive. So it's just quick little blurb about what adoption tourism is Yeah It's yeah, so stuff like that is still

25:08going on and it's being challenged and it's being brought up and I think things are changing but There's still work to do. Yeah. Well and change is so slow Which it is it is sometimes it needs to be but at the same time it can be really frustrating when things like this are happening Yeah, and they should not be happening Exactly. So but yeah one thing at a time, you know and getting stories like out like this are important and I think this is part of it Yeah, one thing that I'm curious about your thoughts on. So, Georgia

25:41Tan brought about all of these changes in adoption that we've talked about, like how terrible this was. Do you feel like she influenced the way adoption was perceived? We've talked about she influenced how it was practiced, but do you feel like perceptions around adoption changed with Georgia Tan? I do a couple of ways. I think she did 1. I think she might have made it a little more societally acceptable, socially acceptable in the upper classes and maybe to even the middle

26:11class because previous to that, it was more community based and also more kind of Anna Green Gables where we're going to adopt a kid to work on the farm. Yeah. And I think she made it a little bit more high class, for lack of a better term. And I think she also made it a little bit more humanitarian, like go look at, like I said with the Christmas ads, look at little Billy who needs a home and you could be the home for him and he wants a dad to play baseball. One of the ads

26:41she showed was actually a little boy and it was like, all he wants for Christmas is a dad to play baseball with. And it's a picture of this, like, four -year -old boy looks like he's, you know, lost his puppy. I mean, it's terrible. But I do think, I think she changed the public's opinion of people being willing to admit that they were adopting. It kind of became a little bit more socially acceptable in that way. That could partially be because it was something she

27:12was targeting really wealthy families. So it might be a status symbol and maybe introducing some of that saviorism that was sometimes in adopted parents. But then I also wonder if she did introduce, I don't think she would get credit for it, but if some of these families adopting or seeing these children as their children and not as like an other and less than child, that might have changed some stigma too. And I wouldn't want to say that was because of her, but that could be because of the way that practice has

27:45shifted. I don't know. And I don't really, yeah. In some way she could have connected some parents who truly wanted a child as opposed to one at a farm hand. I think there were good families adopting kids before that, but it became larger scale. And I think that That might have started happening a little more but then there were also a lot of families that should not have been adopting if there was screening families or There's a line in the there's a line in the very beginning of the book where the one of the children says

28:16the grown -up georgia tan children says that they were living with the Consequences of going to a home that was screened for nothing but wealth So they screen them for nothing but their money. So no mental illness, no marital satisfaction, no stability of their homes, but just do you have money? Because for her, it didn't, Georgia Tann truly felt like money was all you needed to be happy. And she didn't care about the kids being happy. She cared about her money, but she

28:46thought that's all you needed to be, I think, a worthy member of society, truly, in her mind. I think she's kind of the person that introduced the idea of a home study though. If you look at that. I think she saw a very lucrative way to gain power and nobody else was doing it. She had the unique ability to do it. She took advantage of it and I think she saw her in and she took

29:16it and she was very effective. and very mentally ill and very, I just can't even imagine how depraved you have to be to be able to do that, the things that she did. Like you said, it reads like fiction. I'll warn anybody who's going to read this book, you're going to read it and the details in it read like, you want them to be fiction. You're reading it going, surely this is not true. Surely this is not true. But it is, all of it's true. It is what. So, yeah. Yeah. What did you think of Barbara Raymond's approach to telling this

29:47story? I think she did a great job. Like I said, I think she was very factual in her approach. I think she was very honest about how she went about trying to do it. I commend her as an adoptive parent for digging into that and then not backing down when what she started to uncover was very unpleasant. She even talks about her adopted daughter and she says, if her daughter had been born in that time, she would have sold very quickly because she's very beautiful. That's a hard thing

30:19to contend with when you start to think about those things, you know? So I think she did a really, a really good job. Yeah, I really appreciated that. She was really open. There's a section pro weight about halfway through where she just really openly talks about her own experiences. I feel like it's like a positionality statement, right? Where you can see. These are some things that might be biases. These might be things that are impacting what I'm seeing and thinking. And I think it's really helpful that she shares that,

30:49but you also can tell she's really working to share the truth. Yes. Yeah. And she doesn't, I mean, she doesn't try to sugar coat any of what went on or how it affected things or even how it may have affected adoption practices that she participated in. She doesn't seem to try to. Make herself look better or make adoption practices look any more Any more effective, you know, like you said I appreciate it she you can tell she's trying really hard to be honest in

31:19her approach. So Absolutely, I agree. Um If you could ask Barbara Raymond any question about this book or about her writing process, what would you ask her? I wish that she was here Maybe someday I think I would ask her how was working through that process with her daughter and herself as she was writing it, and how did she contend with the information she found? Knowing the positives that adoption is for her, how do you contend

31:51with that for yourself? I mean, she addresses it a little bit, but not on a deep level. That would be a great discussion. And I'm thankful she wrote it as an adoptive parent, because I feel like, especially when she wrote it, had an adoptee written it, it would have been, we would have been accused of sour grapes or sensationalizing it or having had an adoption experience. Yeah,

32:21that's so sad, but I think you're right. And so I'm thankful that an adoptive parent stepped up and wrote that book because I think it will be taken. Much more seriously from that angle because it's coming from somebody that actually has a lot to lose by writing it Yeah, and so I'm thankful for that too. That's a great point Who would you recommend this book to I mean obviously anyone who feels like they should read this book should read this book But is there anyone specific that you think this would be so beneficial for I think anybody who's looking into adoption Private

32:54infant adoption and wants to understand the practices that are in place now why there's so much discourse over open adoption versus closed adoption. Anybody who wants to understand why transparency and adoption is important and the damage that it causes when it is not present. Or anybody who thinks that open adoption should not exist. To see where the policies and procedures came from and to understand that these were not made because it was ever thought to be a good idea for children

33:26or families. It was made to protect very rich, very powerful people who made a lot of very, very unethical decisions and choices to cover up a lot of crime, honestly. So that's who I would recommend it to. Thank you. So if you were in charge of all of the adoption policies and systems going on in the foster care system and the adoption private adoption systems, what do

33:56you think would be helpful to put in place to prevent similar abuses in the future? Oh, that's a big question. Yeah, it's too much. No, that's okay. I don't know that this is sweepingly what I would do, but I would start with removing the ceiling of birth records across the board 100 % of the time. Birth certificates would be amended,

34:26but not sealed and replaced. So our son that we adopted his birth record, his birth certificate, would have an amendment on it saying he was adopted by us, but it would not look like I had him in the hospital, which is what it looks like now. It's absurd. It's absurd. I wasn't even there. That's one. Second, I would make open adoption the law of the land. Now, the degree of openness,

34:57obviously, that varies by situation. Pre -birth matching would not be a thing. I think that that would not be something that would happen in any sort of legal fashion. Foster care, better training for every, and adoption, better training for everyone. Re -education the whole way about why we have foster care, why we have adoption. And

35:27I think it's summed up, the best I've heard it's summed up is finding homes for children, not finding children for homes. Um, yeah, that's for me. I think the main thing is that, um, there need to be children to find homes for not homes looking for children. I mean, obviously there are going to be people who are willing to open their homes. Um, yeah, but it's a, it's a very broken. It's built, I think it's an institution built on broken unethical. Foundations and it's

36:01gotta really be. reworked entirely. Slowly, you can't, you know, blow the whole building up and start over. But yeah, so yeah, I totally agree. And I feel like a lot of the systems in place right now are really focused mostly on adoptive parents, maybe also birth parents, but not on kids nearly as they should be. I feel like it's really be about the children about birth family is about, I feel like it should be reversed basically

36:31of what it is. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I agree. And I think also, yeah, I think you're right. I think having it be child centered 100 % of the time would fix a lot of the issues because then we wouldn't be going back and forth even in foster care. If we're child centered, what bio mom and dad are doing, what foster mom and dad are doing becomes way less important than how what all of that is happening is affecting the kids that are involved. And that I think is a big, a big

37:01thing. And a lot of red tape could be avoided because of that. If we would focus on that. So, yeah. Well said. Well, Heather, I wish I could put you in charge of all of the stuff. I don't know about all that. Well, I have really enjoyed chatting with you about this book. Is there anything else that you want to share about it? No, just it's, it's worth reading, even if You have to skim the hard parts, even if there are chapters or parts that are too much. And even if you don't

37:31want to read this book, but you want to read things about her or look her up. There's another book by Gabrielle Glaser called American Baby that's a similar, has a similar bit of information in it. I encourage everybody to learn about her because your view of what you think you know about adoption will change when you start to learn. the foundation that American private infant adoption was built on. Absolutely. All right. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you. Well,

38:11we want to give a huge thanks to Heather for sharing her perspective and her thoughts on this book about Georgia Tan. Yeah, as Lanette mentioned in the beginning of the episode, there are a lot of practices today that are built on the foundation of what Georgia Tanna established from sealed adoption records to even just the secrecy and the shame that might come in adoption.

38:42And I think there's a lot that we need to continue to do to rewrite the errors of the past. Absolutely. Even practices that might seem more harmless on the surface. I feel like when they're rooted in a history like this, it's really problematic and it's something we should be addressing. I think at the root of a lot of the problems with the practices and policies instituted by Georgia Tann is this basis of parent focus, is adoptive parent focused. That's not what adoption should

39:14be. Adoption should always be child -centric. It should be considering the needs of the child first and foremost. Also the first family what their needs are obviously kidnapping children from their families because their poor is highly unethical and that's not in anyone's best interest. And just looking at the way that Georgia Tann was advertising children, printing out newspaper advertisements. for them as if they were puppies

39:44for sale. It's really icky and I think it can really give us pause in the adoption community to see these practices and say, what are we doing better today and what do we still need to fix? What is going on now that might still have some of this really dark history entwined in it? How can we? moved forward in a better way that's more ethical and child focused. Yeah, I think

40:14so many great questions come from this conversation that you had with Heather also from reading this book by Raymond. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like there's a lot that we need to continue to consider and dive in a little deeper on this topic in the future. Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project. National Adoption Month is wrapping up right now and we will have a couple more adoptee interviews coming out on the podcast in the next few weeks, so look for those and until then,

40:46thank you so much for listening and learning with us.

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