To find out the truth about her child, Damea Morris set up a GoFundMe.
A Black mother who was allegedly told that her newborn daughter said good bye to life at the hospital is demanding to know the truth after she learnt she has an open adoption with a white woman.
Damea Morris shared her story on Facebook, and it quickly went viral. Morris said on Sept. 6, 2017, she gave birth to a daughter, named RaeLa, at her home. The baby’s father went to fetch help and came home with another woman who helped her until paramedics arrived. This woman was not a doctor herself. She told Morris she couldn’t breastfeed RaeLa because the baby wasn’t breathing.
Morris said when paramedics arrived, they cut the umbilical cord and at that time, RaeLa started to cry. They transported Morris and her baby to St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. When they were at the hospital, doctors allegedly told Morris that her baby left her life but did not produce any certificate.
Morris said at a later date, she pursued legal help to obtain a certificate for the baby’s leaving life and learned she had an adoption open with a woman named Joanna Lentner.
Lentner and her husband, Jake, allegedly kept an online journal documenting their adoption journey which dated back to at least 2015. On Dec. 20, 2017, the couple shared a new entry on their “J & J Adoption Journey” Facebook page captioned, “That day seems like a blur. So distant, but unreal it was 15 weeks ago.”
The Lentners was believed to receive a call from St. Joseph’s Hospital, which said their maternity ward was closing, and they had one last patient. According to the Lentners’ post, the adoption would have been processed on Sept. 6, which is the same day Morris gave birth to RaeLa.
Twitter user @mami_manii tweeted several screenshots from Morris’ Facebook post on Aug. 9. The tweet has attracted 95,000 likes and over 49,000 retweets. In the replies, several people noted the similarities between the Lentners’ adopted daughter and Morris’ daughter.
Twitter user wrote: “They are 100000000% sisters. Ho.ly sh.it,”
Joanna Lentner, who runs Joanna Mae Photography in Rice, Minnesota, appears to have deleted her website, LinkedIn, and Facebook business page. She and her husband, Jake, also seem to have deleted their social media accounts and their online adoption journal, although a few entries from 2015 have been archived on the Wayback Machine.
The Daily Dot tried to reach Morris and Jake and Joana Lentner but were not immediately successful.
Morris has set up a GoFundMe, ostensibly for legal fees to get to the bottom of what happened to her daughter. In two days, it has raised $3,050 of its $10,000 goal.
Morris wrote on the GoFundMe: “I just need help figuring out how to get my baby back,”
“Through all trials and tribulations my kids are all I got through every struggle my situation is not perfect but I don’t deserve any of them to be takin [sic] from me.”
Source: Dailydot
