By Kathleen Hoy Foley
and Philip Foley
In case you don’t keep up with Hollywood, Philomena
Lee, adoptee advocate and blogger, once
voiceless and faceless to the world, is now famous. Made so by Judi Dench who portrayed Philomena in a movie about her trials at the hands
of the totalitarian Irish Catholic Church. Philomena, now
an old woman in her eighties, was banished to a convent for the sin of becoming
pregnant out of wedlock when she was a teenager in Ireland. The Catholic Church forced Philomena to place
the child in the closed adoption system. The film tells the story of two consenting
and willing adults forging a connection.
Philomena now uses her new-found notarity to
brutalize other women as she was once brutalized by the Catholic Church. By championing the cause of pursuing,
stalking, tracking, and hunting down private
citizens by stranger adoptees, Philomena advocates abuse
of innocent, often times elderly, women. Philomena enspouses militant tatics to expose
the names and information of women who have lived with devastating shame and held
desparate secrets for much of their lives.
Philomena’s situation is specifically her
experience and must not be generalized and used to justify and encourage the criminal
behavior of bullying and stalking old women.
Philomena ignores the significant issue of sexual abuse, the horror of
impregnation by rape, the desperation of a girl impregnated against her will
with no legal means of termination. The
confidential adoption process stood as the single means of rescue. Those girls are now aging and elderly women
being sought by the elderly Philomena. It
is woman on woman abuse.
No individual, no state, no church, no laws must
be permitted to force a girl/woman to make public the most intimate details of
her past, or forced to reveal and relive the most traumatic time of her life,
or be bullied into apology for being a victim of an unwanted pregnancy. Confidential adoption equals a catastrophic,
unwanted, traumatic, crisis pregnancy.
Hunting down a woman because of what happened to her in
the intimate confines of her body is ignorant, heartless, and abusive.
Women In Hiding Press supports consenting
and willing adults who have the adoption process in common forging a
mutual connection. We support a
national/worldwide registry where biological sources and adoptees can mutually
connect.
Philomena was condemned
by the Catholic Church as an undesirable, just like the aging and elder women
she believes it is OK to hunt down, marginalize, harass and eventually destroy
for selfish purposes. As thinking adults
we must remember what hunting down, marginalizing and harassing innocent people
really is. Elder women are often
powerless and voiceless, as once was Philomena.
These women, victims of horrendous ordeals, must be protected with
compassion, not threatened with destruction.
So it is that Ms. Philomena Lee is outraged that the State of
Pennsylvania is not currently willing to facilitate this hunting of elder and
aging women because they will not open sealed, confidential adoption
records. Philomena stands outraged that the Pennsylvania legislation is thwarting
her efforts demanding all access to the confidential past of elder women’s lives
and screaming unfair!! Oh, the injustice of being hindered from exploding an
old woman’s life to bits…
We are
thankful to the legislators in Pennsylvania that have the wisdom to understand
that sealed confidential adoption records were established for very valid and
life affirming reasons. We must protect
the aging and elderly women who do not have the physical, emotional and/or
financial resources to protect themselves from elder abusers like Philomena.
