Baby Scoop Era

You know, no records, no medical history, no full truth of where you come from.

Giving a little bit of education about what black market adoption is and the desperation of couples that we have and what it looked like in America during this period, because your story happened during what is now referred to as the Baby Scoop Era, which was between the years, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was 1945 and 1973.

And when I was reading your book, which I, as I've mentioned to you already ad infinitum and multiple people as well, this book just absolutely broke me into a million pieces.

I was yelling, I was screaming, I was crying.

There's also something called the gray market, which is sort of its legal cousin, also done through a private attorney with no oversight, but it turns to the black market when money really becomes the, the motive there, right? Now, if all that money that my parents had been paying had actually made it to the birth mother, and the attorney was just taking his standard legal fees, and paperwork and such were all delivered, then that would have been a gray market or what they call a private adoption.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, the Baby Scoop Era w- sort of emerged after World War II because at the time, being an unwed mother was a scandal that you, you just couldn't survive back in the day.

The, the...

I can assure you of that.

And it's not just because it was a miracle story, but because woven into this book, I've tried to share the common thoughts and experiences of those of us who are domestic adoptees born in the baby scoop era with the closed and sealed records and what that process is like for us and that Only 17 states are still, you know, are open in the United States of America and that we need to see change and to help people try to understand what some of us have lived through.

And so I feel like this is the project of my life.

I mean, because I'm not just weaving the story of me and my father.