Loyal to my image

‘Loyal to my image’ is a powerful documentary about adoption, mothering and personal identity. Through one woman’s experience as an adopted person and also as a mother who relinquishes her child in 1971, this documentary highlights the many complex issues associated with adoption. By structuring Fae’s adoption experience into seven sections: Fantasy, Loss, Virgin/Whore, Institutions, Searching, Identity and Progress, the issues examined include women as mothers, the politics of reproduction, the laws that implement family policy and the control of personal information in our society. At the completion of Fae’s story the documentary questions who is benefitting from the much proclaimed scientific advances in reproductive technology, when infertility is another disease to be cured. Who decides who has the right to mother and what are the emotional, financial and social costs in human terms?