The Appointment

I want to preface by saying if you feeling strongly about Right to Life or you consider yourself a religious conservative, you will be offended by this post. You should not read on.

What do I say about our appointment yesterday? It was awful in soooo many ways. I'm quite sure the social worker went home and said a whole host of prayers for Steve and I last night.

I can't quite put my finger on when it started downhill.

It might have been within the first 5 minutes when she told us she grew up on a hog farm in Iowa where the well water was the best water she ever tasted, and that Iowa was land "meant to be settled." That didn't bode real well with my EPA Clean Water Act enforcement-minded DH.

Or it might have been when she referred to "them Indians" when discussing the Indian Child Welfare Act as one of the federal adoption laws. We refrained from telling her that both DH and DD are card-carrying Cherokees and DH's mom has a sweat lodge on her farm.

OR, maybe it was when she told me it would be best for our child conceived by donor eggs if I consider myself a step-parent and go through a "step-parent adoption" process. WTF???!?!

OR, perhaps it was when she told me that her home study would cost $1600. (I'm a social worker who is licensed to do home studies - I can get one done for $300.)

It clearly went south when we had the following exchanges of conversation:

Social Worker: "Is Jenna baptized?"
Us: No.
Social Worker: "Does her grandmother light a candle for her each night?"
Us: Uh, no.

Social Worker: "Do you believe people have souls?"
Us: Perhaps.
Social Worker: "Do you believe an embryo has a soul?
Us: Uh.....not particularly.

Social Worker: "Do you attend church regularly?
Us: No
Social Worker: "So, you couldn't make a faith statement on an adoption profile?
Us: Welll, we could make a statement about our spiritual beliefs.
Social Worker: "And what would that include? Christian beliefs?"
Us: Well, not necessarily.
Social Worker: "Do you teach Jenna to believe in God?"

And that's when DH told her I was a non-believer. Which I'm not even sure is TRUE. I think he just wanted to see her reaction. Which, to her credit, remained quite professional.

The highlight of the appointment was when DH told her we selected the 'donate your leftover embryos to stem cell research' option on the consent form during our one IVF attempt.

She loved us. She's going to match us immediately with one of the highly religious genetic couples she works with, who will most certainly choose us to adopt their soulful embryos and raise their genetic child(ren) in a home without weekly church attendance.

The whole appointment made me want to PUKE.

Why are we made to feel we are wrong or unworthy of embryos if we do not subscribe to her Christian beliefs? How Christian is that?

So, after 2 hours and $200, I learned the following:

A liberal, pro-choice, progressive couple with non-Christian spiritual beliefs should NEVER, EVER, even out of desperation, consult with an adoption agent without fully vetting said agent to determine if s/he is quietly affiliated with any sort of Christian-based, Pro-Life adoption organization.

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On a positive note, Steve is now interested in re-examining egg donation as a possibility for us. So, after I am fully recovered from this experience, I will do some exploring on that front.