After reading several stories about parents who gave their children up for adoption and then began the search for them, I began to form my own opinion about this issue. I myself was a child put up for adoption. I know absolutely nothing about my biological parents. To be quite frank, I'd like to keep it that way. I can respect the idea that they gave me up in hopes I would receive the family they couldn't give me, but I don't feel that they have any right eighteen years later to come back into my life like nothing happened. I think that it is awful that biological parents look for their children who they gave up the right to a long time ago. Have they even thought about the feelings of the child, or the emotional stress they have added to these people?

I was eight months old when my parents adopted me. I came from a small town outside of Seoul, South Korea. Ever since I can remember I have always known I was adopted and my family did everything any other normal family does to make me feel at ease and loved. I never for one minute felt unloved by my family. However, I can remember going through school being envious of the other children because they looked like their parents or knew the exact time and circumstances of their birth when I don't even know my real birth date. Perhaps this seems minor now, but to a nine-year-old child, it is a big deal. I began to resent my biological parents. Why would they have given me up? Was I not as beautiful as the other children who lived with their biological parents? My mother tried to explain to me that my biological mother gave me up for adoption because she couldn't guarantee me the life she wanted me to have.

I got used to this idea. Then several weeks ago, I saw a television show about a real life biological mother who gave up her son eighteen years ago and was on her way to finding him. She was upset that he was not very responsive to her. I gave praise to him that he even agreed to meet her. That took a lot of courage!

Don't get me wrong, I can understand the biological parents' point of view, but what angers me is that they don't seem to take the child's or the adoptive family's feelings into consideration. I could seriously hurt some people as well as emotionally drain them. Those parents gave up their children long ago and shouldn't have the right to enter the lives of the children after they reach adulthood.