‘We walked away with nothing’
One of Amara’s ethics advisers, Carole VandenBos, is acutely aware of adoptions’ troubled legacy of secrets because of her own past.
In an interview, the 84-year-old described the only sex education she received growing up was her mother telling her to be a “good girl.”
So in 1957, when she fell “head over heels” in love with her then-boyfriend and the couple conceived, she felt she had to place her son for adoption, she said, “so as not to bring shame to my family.”
Instead, she was left with emptiness and regret. Like many women at the time, VandenBos received no birth certificate nor any
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