RADIO BASTARDETTE

Just in time for the new year! Tuesday (January 2) Bastardette will be a guest on Talking About Adoption hosted by Donna Montalbano broadcast on WSAR 1480 AM, Fall River, Massachusetts. The subject, of course, will be the Massachusetts records access fiasco. Jack Sweeley, a member of the MARTA Executive Committee will join her for what promises to be a rousing critique of SB 2690--the bill that makes some adoptees more equal than others.


WSAR isn’t broadcast on the ‘net, but you call in questions--or email them.

Call-in: 508-673-1480

Email: contact@speakingofadoptionradio.com

Speaking of Adoption is the only New England radio program exclusively devoted to adoption issues. Veteran broadcast host Donna Montalbano brings on the experts every week to inform and enlighten her listeners about the world of adoption.

BB CHURCH GRABS THE DISCOURSE: THE TRIAD IS DEAD!

For your weekend reading pleasure check out BB Church's new blog: The Triad is a Five-Legged Stool.

For a long time now, Bastardette, rather inarticulately and not often enough, has argued that the adoption "triad" is a lie--a semantic weapon created by the adoption industry to separate, segregate, manipulate, and control the people most effected by its machinations: Us.

The industry's "triad" is our "triad." Just how Good Adopteeing can we get?

How else can we explain the easy acceptance of "implied promises," "protective" legislation, and the eternal AdoptionLand pissing wars? As long as we let industry-constructed language define us, we loose.

While Bastardette blathers, BB articulates. In just a few hundred words BB Church deconstructs the Holy Adoption "Triad," our relationship to the industry and the state, and shows that language does matter. The political implications are evident.

This is important stuff. Anyone interested in taking control of the discourse and up-ending the bureaucrats, social engineers, and thugs in the lobby, needs to read this. And use it.

MARTA LETTER TO GOV. MITT ROMNEY: VETO SB 2690!

December 29, 2006

RE: SB 2690: records access for selected adoptees. Please Veto!

Dear Governor Romney:

Massachusetts Access Rights to All (MARTA) asks you to veto SB 2690. This bill creates an unfair, discriminatory tiered system in which adopted persons born in Massachusetts on or before July 17, 1974 and on or after January 1, 2008 can receive copies of their unaltered original birth certificates. Adoptees born between those dates, will not be allowed to receive their original birth certificates except by petitioning the court.

The precursor bill to SB 2690 was SB 959. The intent of that bill was to restore the right of birth record access to all Massachusetts-born adoptees without restriction, no matter when they were born or adopted. SB 2690, the amended version of that bill now on your desk, guts that original intent. It denies to thousands of Massachusetts adoptees, based solely on their date of birth, the natural right of identity and the legal right to access to their own birth certificates.

MARTA believes that all people born in Massachusetts should be able to receive a truthful copy of the state record of their birth regardless of their adoptive status. We believe that the state holds no legitimate interest in keeping this document and the information on it, including the identities of our biological parents, from us.

MARTA believes that tiered rights systems such as codified by SB 2690 are open to legal challenge. SB 2690 creates a class system in which adopted persons are segregated and treated different from everyone else (the non-adopted). To add insult to injury, it treats some adoptees better than others. Why, do adoptees, because of the date of their birth deserve “special rights”--or “special disabilities“--as the case may be? What makes a person born on July 18, 1974 less worthy of rights than someone born on July 17, 1974 or January 1, 2008?

SB 2690 is a mean-spirited, ugly discriminatory bill. It is a slap in the face of every person adopted in Massachusetts. Adoption is supposed to be about the "best interests" of the child. But when that child grows up he or she apparently loses "best interest" status. Our "best interest" is suddenly subjugated to a government-created mythological "interest" du jour--in the case of SB 2690, an inexplicable codification of an “implied promise of confidentiality”--a promise whose existence has been debunked repeatedly by adoptee rights activists, adoption advocates, legal scholars, and court decisions.

Please veto SB 2690 and let Massachusetts adoptees and those who stand with them return to the Great Court and pass a genuine records access bill that makes all adoptees equal to each other and the non-adopted.

Yours truly,
For the MARTA Executive Committee
Danielle Zecco
Fr. John Sweeley

BASTARD NATION LETTER TO GOV. MITT ROMNEY: VETO SB 2690!

December 29, 2006

His Excellency Mitt Romney, Governor
State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02133

The Honorable Governor Romney:

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee rights organization in North America, urges you to veto SB 2690 because it establishes an unacceptable tiered system for adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates. Instead of trying to treat all adopted adults equally, this bill creates different layers of adopted adults. Why?

(1) Adopted persons 18 years of age or older born in the commonwealth on or before July 17, 1974 or on or after January 1, 2008 or an adoptive parent of an adopted person under 18 years of age and born in the commonwealth on or after January 1, 2008 will be "allowed" unrestricted access to the original birth certificate.


(2) Adopted persons born in Massachusetts between those dates cannot access their original birth certificates without a court order as under current law. This just doesn't make any sense


(3) The bill also establishes a voluntary state-operated "contact information registry"--an apparent sop to blackholers, who will be forced to enroll in a government program with the hope that an original birth certificate might be forthcoming if their birthmother consents.

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization opposes legislation that denies any adult adoptees access to their own original birth records on par with all other citizens. SB 2690 grossly discriminates against adoptees. Those born on between July 16, 1974 and December 31, 2007 are not only treated differently from the non-adopted, but differently from those adopted before or after those dates. By creating this restricted class of adopted persons, promoters of the bill legitimize disproved arguments by the National Council for Adoption and other adoptee rights opponents of "implied promises" that original birth certificates would remain sealed records.


Adoptee access to original birth certificates is a basic human and civil right. The State of Massachusetts should not be in the business of denying adult adoptees access to their own birth certificates--and certainly not in creating classes of have and have-not adoptees based on age. What makes some adopted persons more worthy-or dangerous--than others? Why are some granted "special rights" status?

The tiered access system established in this bill perpetuates the violation of adoptee rights by making unaltered birth certificate access a privilege bestowed by legislative whim. Passage of bad legislation in Massachusetts could easily undermine efforts of dedicated reformers who are holding the line for adoptee rights in other states. What happens in one state impacts what other legislatures will consider.

Massachusetts SB 2690 is an insult to every adopted person in Massachusetts, the US and Canada. It is an abomination in light of the restoration of the right of records access to all persons adopted in Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire. Adult adoptees and all who support adoptee rights should stand united for unrestricted access laws and not sell out just to get a bill passed to "stop the clock" so some adoptees get their records while others are denied them. History shows that no state with a tiered system will grant access to blackholers later. SB 2690 is unethical, unjust, and makes no sense.

Please veto SB 2690 so that in the next session adopted adults and legislators can work together to fashion a bill that will treat all adoptees equally.


Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,


Anita Walker Field
Secretary, Executive Committee

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Marley Greiner, Chair
David Ansardi
Anita Walker Field
Patricia Marler
Natalie Proctor Servant

ADVISORS
Legislative: The Honorable Janet Allen, State Representative of New Hampshire
Technical: Donna Martz
Editor in Chief, Bastard Quarterly Newsletter: Marla Paul

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT! VETO SB 2690

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT!
MASSACHUSETTS SB 2690

Please forward freely

MASSACHUSETTS TRASHES ADOPTEE RIGHTS!

LEGISLATION CREATES TIERED SYSTEM OF IDENTITY RIGHTS BASED ON DATE OF BIRTH!

BLACKHOLES THE MIDDLE!

SB 2690 (formerly SB 959) passed the Massachusetts legislature on December 26.

It will hit Governor Mitt Romney's desk for his signature in the next few days.

Call or fax Governor Romney IMMEDIATELY and urge him to
VETO SB 2690.
(Contact information below)

A little over a year ago SB 959, a bill that restored the right of unrestricted access to the original birth certificate to all Massachusetts adoptees, had the overwhelming support of members of the Joint Committee on Families and Children who called it a "no brainer."

After a favorable hearing, in which some committee members literally told the National Council of Adoption's Lee Allen during his opposition testimony to shut up, the committee went silent.

The bill, with the support of certain "adoption reformers" was amended repeatedly and quietly, until the right of all Massachusetts adoptees to receive their birth record was reduced to a favor for some. The bill number was changed twice, and the newest version, as late as the first week of December, was not posted on the Massachusetts Legislative website. Repeated phone calls, emails, and letters from those not in the inner "reform" clique-- including in-state Bastard Nationals and members of MARTA (Massachusetts Access Rights To All)--to key legislators and sponsors to learn the content of amended bills and their status went unanswered with one exception.

On December 26, 2006 the newest version of SB 959--now called SB 2690-- passed the legislature. SB 2690 tosses a substantial number of Massachusetts adoptees, based solely on their date of birth, into a black hole without the same right of identity as everyone else born in Massachusetts:


(1) adopted persons 18 years of age or older born in the commonwealth on or before July 17, 1974 or on or after January 1, 2008 or an adoptive parent of an adopted person under 18 years of age and born in the commonwealth on or after January 1, 2008 will be "allowed" unrestricted access to the original birth certificate.

(2) Adopted persons born in Massachusetts between those dates cannot access their original birth certificates without a court order as under current law.

The bill also establishes a voluntary state-operated "contact information registry"--an apparent sop to blackholers, who will be forced to enroll in a government program with the hope that an obc might be forthcoming if their birthmother consents.

The bill contains the unintelligible section:

SECTION 4. Said section 13 of said chapter 46, as so appearing, is hereby further amended by inserting after the word “record.”, in line 171, the following sentence:- Evidence contained in the adoption record of a birth parent’s willingness to provide information about her identity to the adopted person shall, except in extraordinary circumstances, be considered sufficient evidence to warrant the granting of an order for release of the information contained in the original birth record.

We believe this means that if the birthmothers (apparently dads don't count in Massachusetts) of adopted persons buried in the black hole file a "permission slip" in their adoption files, those adoptees will be allowed to receive their obc --but we're not sure!

READ THE FULL TEXT here

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization opposes legislation that denies any adult adoptees access to their own original birth records on par with all other citizens. SB 2690 grossly discriminates against adoptees. Those born between July 16, 1974 and December 31, 2007 are not only treated differently from the non-adopted, but differently from those adopted before or after those dates. By creating this restricted class of adopted persons, promoters of the bill legitimize disproved arguments by the National Council for Adoption and other adoptee rights opponents of "implied promises" that original birth certificates would remain sealed records.

Adoptee access to original birth certificates is a basic human and civil right. The State of Massachusetts should not be in the business of denying adult adoptees access to their own birth certificates--and certainly not in creating classes of have and have-not adoptees based on age. What makes some adopted persons more worthy-or dangerous--than others? Why are some granted "special rights" status?

The tiered access system established in this bill perpetuates the violation of adoptee rights by making unaltered birth certificate access a privilege bestowed by legislative whim. Passage of bad legislation in Massachusetts could easily undermine efforts of dedicated reformers who are holding the line for adoptee rights in other states. What happens in one state impacts what other legislatures will consider.

Massachusetts SB 2690 is an insult to every adopted person in Massachusetts, the US and Canada. It is an abomination in light of the restoration of the right of records access to all persons adopted in Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire. Adult adoptees and all who support adoptee rights should stand united for unrestricted access laws and not sell out just to get a bill passed to "stop the clock" so some adoptees get their records while others are denied them. History shows that no state with a tiered system will grant access to blackholers later. SB 2690 is unethical, unjust, and makes no sense.

Please call or write Governor Romney today to urge him to do the right thing: VETO SB 2690.

His Excellency Mitt Romney Governor
State House, Room 360
Boston, MA 02133
Tel: (617) 725-4005
TTY: (617) 727-3666
Fax: (617) 727-9725
Gov.Romney's email address has been disabled to prepare for the new governor

DON'T LET MASSACHUSETTS BLACK HOLE ITS ADOPTEES!

I'VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE: IDENTIY-BASHING AND THE TRASHING OF KATRINA CLARK

It seems to me I've heard that song before
It's from an old familiar score
I know it well, that melody...
....Jules Styne, Sammy Cahn

Yesterday's Washington Post features two articles on anonymous donor insemination that cut to the heart of the “choice” Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels made to erase half of their twin’s heritage for their own convenience. The articles are way too long to paste in here, but I'm posting excerpts. My remarks follow them.

In My Father was an Anonymous Sperm Donor 18-year old Katrina Clark writes about growing up as a self-described “freak” and the search for her donor:

I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?

Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too. Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say.

I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.

We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are.

And we're ready to reclaim it.

...I really, truly would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.

...Those of us created with donated sperm won't stay bubbly babies forever. We're all going to grow into adults and form opinions about the decision to bring us into the world in a way that deprives us of the basic right to know where we came from, what our history is and who both our parents are.

The second article It’s All in the Genes, Except When It Isn’t Liz Mundy, a WaPo reporter and author of the forthcoming book Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction is Changing Men, Women and the World writes:

Is gamete donation like adoption? "I've always looked at this as adoption that is run by the medical profession," says Bill Cordray, now in his 60s, who is part of a group of donor offspring agitating for the right to know their donors' identities, arguing that people denied that knowledge are unable to understand themselves. Accepting this argument, some countries, such as Britain, have banned anonymous donation.

But in the United States, many egg and sperm brokers disagree. They point out that adoption involves the grief of relinquishing an actual baby. In donation, nobody's relinquishing. Everybody's happy. What a child needs, they say, is not a relationship with the genetic parent, but a coherent narrative about the way he or she was born.

WE'VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE
According to Liz Munday, donated sperm is used in 800,000-100,000 inseminations each year. In 2003, at least 15,000 IV procedures took place in which a woman's eggs and a man's sperm are united in a petri dish with the resulting embryos transferred into a uterus. She says that this number increases 20% annually. Moreover, over 1000 babies each year are born via surrogacy. And what about those lucky Snowflakes?

I don't know about you, but to me that's a lot of "genetic bewilderment" left to wander loose in the streets. An occasional turkey baster between friends is one thing, but this is serious commercial transference of body fluids and products between strangers. (How much money is floating in the Dixie Cups and uteri of the desperate and childless?) How many fruits of this misalliance will ever know that they are the products of biological jerry-rigging ? That they aren't who they think they are? My bet is a lot.

The reaction to Katrina's Clark dissatisfaction with the documentary erasure of half her genes gives us an idea. For those of us who are adopted, of course, the cudgels pounding Clark's head are familiar. We feel your pain, Katrina!

Dozens of readers have sent messages to the WaPo site calling Clark selfish, ungrateful, whiney, narcissistic, immature, snarky, bitter, angry, entitled, a brat, and a self-made victim. Clark should just shut up. She should just be grateful to be alive. (I guess she could have been aborted.) She was chosen. She should give daily thanks that she was planned lovingly by a selfless brave mother blazing the way for countess husbandless women who wanted babies and couldn't find men to marry them--unlike those selfless brave husbandless mothers who were sent away by their families and rendered cheap and disgraced and surrendered their also wanted babies to adoption because their men got outta Dodge when the bump popped up. How one woman is welcomed, the other shunned, isn't discussed, perhaps because the "good mother" didn't have "illicit" sex to procreate. And this brings up a question for another day: what exactly is a bastard? Why is one variety--damaged goods-- shamed by the state; the other--approved USDA prime-- promoted as a miracle of modern science, And why areboth condemned to historylessness so other people, as the "official" story goes, can feel good about themselves and be protected from us?

Children don't need fathers--or even knowledge of fathers-- to hear the busybodies talk. Clark's purposeful conception via anonymous donation to the sperm bank is no different than a one-night stand. Clark should be grateful her father was anonymous rather than on the premises every day committing rape, murder, abuse and general male mayhem on her and her mother. Plenty of kids are reared in 1-parent homes. What's her big deal? Some complain that Clark loves her mother too much; others that she hates her. A few claim she hates her father. A desire for genealogy, according to these geneophobes is comparable to getting caught shoplifting. Clark is advised to take up volunteer work with orphans, the elderly or the disabled to appreciate what she's got. Or how about a stint in a third world country? Clark needs a boyfriend. And, of course, the clueless question: "How would you like it if you'd never been born?"

One writer opines "There are children of adoption that never know any of their roots, and yet grow up to be functioning members of society," implying Clark's desire to know the male half of her heritage, renders her dysfunctional. A pop psychobabbler surmises that if Clark were older she'd be "self-absorbed to the point of psychosis"--but cuts her a break since she's a "donor child" who is to young to know any better.

Another expert accuses Clark of being a home wrecker, barging in on her sperm donor--despite the fact daughter and father were connected through a mutual consent registry and are quite happy to know each other.

A self-appointed literary critic lectures that the commentary is a "work of fiction with a political end."

Finally, we have the globalists who use Clark's essay as an opportunity to thrash women, feminists, lesbians, gay marriage, gay adoption, "free love," single mothers, divorce--especially male "death by divorce"-- "older-male" suicide, Democrats, liberals, "the war on marriage," rightwingers, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (and daughter Mary), "the "1970s," and the Iraq War. Ellen Pompeo and Wal-Mart can't be far behind.

What all this indicates is a particular American fear of biology, biological connections, and identity rights and a privileging of reinvention, anonymity and untruth when it comes to "alternative" family building. This, of course, begs, the question, if it's' so great why hide it?

Adopters, hoping to avoid pesky birthparents increasingly acquire children in foreign countries; sealed birth certificates are the norm in the US; adopted persons who demand their rights are vilified, infantilized, and demonized by special interests. The grown-ups--adopters, high tech repro recipients and their attached industries--pay the bills/collect the bills and consequently control our information with threatening terms like "privacy," "confidentiality," and gratitude. How dare anyone question the wisdom or received social engineering! Our heritage, genealogies, histories, names and biological connections are their business--not ours. Be grateful. Shut up. And don't forget to choke down your strained carrots. They're good for you.

We all have histories. Anonymous donor/high tech repro is not, as some WaPo posters claim, the same as a one night stand. Unlike a chance roll in the backseat, assisted reproductive technology (ART) is a thought-out, well-planned paid-for medical procedure used to fulfill the egotistical needs of adults to "parent " without the intrusion of the child's progenitors, even in the spectoral form of a written record. Purveyers of anonymity reject the right of identity by erasing identity. If it doesn't exist, how can it be regained?

The only difference between anonymous ART and sealed adoption records is that with adoption there is, in theory, the opportunity for the adopted to access information about themselves at some future date. Most of those created through ART in any of its forms do not and will not have that opportunity outside of a few mutual consent registries or the handful of cyrobanks that offer identified donation up front and far-sighted customers who oblige.

The personal attacks on Katrina Clark are the same attacks adopted persons duck every time we step forward to demand our identities and genealogies. Most of the posters seem to have no connection to genetic identify theft. Few identify themselves as ART recipients or products, adopters or industry shills. From their tone, most are clueless to the issues they address. They "just know." Yet their anger is vicereal, their reaction to Clark mean-spirited, nasty, and personal. It's puzzling, at least to me, since it’s not about them. Why do they care? Do we dis-identified adoptees and ART products threaten them that much?

The public, it appears, fears we disconnected mysteries of nature and law. Is it because we are the products of unnatural reproduction? Of sticky sex and non-sex? Adoptees: the perceived unplanned, inconvenient, unwanted products of illicit messy sex between impulsive people who can't keep their pants on. Anonymous donor conceivees: the planned, paid-for, wanted products of a ritualized sterile medical procedure between doctors and women who can't get their pants off (some of them, at least)? We, the weird sex products of these unnatural producers are anomalies, disconnected from our genealogies, free-floating in a world where genetics, kinship, and identity count--except when they don't. Perhaps we touch some inner horror in them. Perhaps we represent their own fears of mis-identity. Are we the unknowing monster within?

SELFISH BOW-WOW: AN OPEN LETTER TO MELISSA ETHERIDGE

Dear Melissa:

You know, I liked you--a long time ago. I could listen to Like the Way I Do for hours with a certain somebody in mind. Bastardette won't go into detail. Mr. Wunnderful is long gone, but not forgotten. It made no difference that you were singing about a woman-- which he wasn't. That song was hot.

But somewhere along the way--I guess when Julie Cypher dropped into your life-- you went from rocker to schlocker, and it's been downhill ever since. (Does anybody but the softball team buy your records anymore?) Your yabber in today's Music Contact.com announcing that your new twins Johnnie Rose and Miller Steven don't need to know their genetic heritage really nails the door shut:

We really only need Tammy and me to be parents in this. I feel very confident in us as parents." Michaels adds, "We are not going to be on the cover of a magazine going, 'Oh, the donor is George Clooney! We don't know who the donor is. "We don't want to know. We're in a lesbian relationship. It's two moms, period."

This is not a gripe about your idyllic lesbian relationship, Melissa. Or your ability to parent. Nobody but wingnuts cares about that. Good for you. You go girlfriend..... But, nobody forced you to out David Crosby on the cover of Rolling Stone. You could have kept quiet. (Trust me, it's not that difficult to keep personal information to yourself.) Your mouth ran on overdrive. What did you expect would happen?

Now your run in reverse, refusing to tell the world who the twins's father is (which is the ethical thing to do and what you should have done with the first set of kids), but you've fixed it so that the twins themselves will never know who their father is (which is not the ethical thing to do). I hope you and Tammy can afford the therapy bills when they come due. And a lifetime membership in Baster Nation.

Nobody claims that the sperm donor needs to take an active part in your twin's lives, but those children carry that man's genes and heritage. I know it's a stretch to comprehend as you and Tammy loll in your la-la-land of fresh baybeehood, but some day those kids will want to know where half of themselves comes from. They might even need their father if they get sick.

I am sure you are a fine parent, Melissa, but you are not the twins's father. You two need to get over yourselves! You could have used an identified donor. You could have given those babies the dignity of having an identified father. The identity of their father is their information, and their birthright, not yours. Not Tammy's. How will you explain to them that you stole it? What will you tell them? It's all about me?

Your former fan,
Bastardette

PS--George Clooney is happily childfree and intends to stay that way. You give yourself too much credit to think that he would share his sperm with you and Tammy for your noble experiment in fatherlessless genetics.

ARF!

CALL FOR PROPOSALS; ASAIK AT PITT, 2007

Call for Proposals

Encountering New Worlds of Adoption:
2nd International Conference on Adoption and Culture

Proposal deadline: March 1, 2007

Organized by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity, and Kinship

Conference Organizer: Marianne Novy (University of Pittsburgh)

SAVE THE DATE: Conference Date: October 11-14, 2007

Is adoption today remaking the face of the family? Is it redefining parenthood? How can literary critics, philosophers,anthropologists, historians, sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists, culture studies scholars, and others give perspectives to current adoption issues such as identity, esp. transracial and transnational, family, socioeonomic and/or international inequalities, openness, kinship, loss, and commodification?

Papers should discuss representations of adoption (this could include representations of birthparents) in literature, film, and other arts, and/or interactions between adoption practices and culture(s) in fields such as those listed.

Keynote speakers will be:

Susan Bordo, Professor of English, University of Kentucky, author of Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture,and the Body;

Emily Prager, author of Wuhu Diary: On Taking my Adopted Daughter Back to Her Hometown in China;







Dorothy Roberts, Professor of Law at Northwestern University, author of Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty and Shattered Bonds: the Color of Child Welfare.

Also expected are Jill Deans, Sara Dorow, Lorraine Dusky, Sally Haslanger, Ellen Herman, Emily Hipchen, Margaret Homans, Betty Jean Lifton, Sandra Patton-Imani, Carol Singley, and Barbara Yngvessen.

Co-sponsors to date include Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the School of Law, the Cultural Studies Program, and the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, Faculty of Arts of the University of Alberta, and the Barcelona Institute for the Child in the Urban World.

200-word proposals for papers, with a brief cv., by March 1, to Marianne Novy (mnovy@pitt.edu).

We would also be interested in creative work. Send samples of poems, memoirs, etc. (less than 10 pages) to the same address.

NOTE FROM BASTARDETTE: Bastardette is a long-time member of ASAIK and presented Where We Came From: The Natural Mother in Adoption Film at its first conference at the University of Tampa, November 2005. ASAIK is the the only organization that I know that really GETS adoption! I've learned more about adoption from George Eliot and Edward Albee that I have from activism--or my own experience. If it sounds a little too academic to you, don't worry! It's very accessible and attendance and membership is not limited to academics.

Unfortunately, ASAIK has no webpage, but as the conference grows nearer there will probably be something. I'll keep you informed in the meantime. Here's the 2005 conference page to give you an idea of what was offered


This is one event worth waiting for!

SUNDAY ON 60 MINUTES: LOST AND FOUND

Today I'm posting a couple of informational messages from outside Dom Bastardette that might be of interest to readers.

Bastardette

This is the first, coutresy of Pam Hasagawa at Adoption News Service.

Good morning. I wanted to give you a heads-up on a story that we'll be running this Sunday (Dec. 17) on 60 MINUTES that I thought you might be interested in. It's about a (relatively) new program being tried to track down and reconnect the families of children stranded in the child welfare system. It's a really interesting piece, and we're hoping to spread the word around beforehand to people who might have a particular interest in the subject matter. It would therefore be wonderful if you would consider sending something out to your listserve and/or putting something on your website.

The piece will be broadcast on CBS stations on at 7:00 ET/PT on Sun., Dec. 17.

Further details and other information to be posted on our website
which you're welcome to link to from yours. (And if your own site has relevant
information on this topic that might be useful to our viewers, please let me know. I'd be happy to send it along to our web folk for possible inclusion on our site.)

You'll find a short write-up about the piece below. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Many thanks,
Robin Sanders
CBS News 60 Minutes
phone: 212-975-7598
email: sandersr@cbsnews.com

LOST AND FOUND
They've been called some of the loneliest people on earth, the tens of thousands of children who were taken away from their parents due to neglect or abuse but were never adopted by new families. Stranded in the child welfare system, they move from foster homes to group homes. Now, several cities across the country are trying something new. It¹s calle Family Finding, and the goal is to track down the families these children were taken away from the in the first place to see if they can go home again. So does it work?

Leslie Stahl takes a looks on 60 MINUTES this Sunday,
Dec. 17,
7PM ET/PT on CBS.

MOTHER MAY I? GRANNIE ANNIE NAILS IT!

One of Bastardettes's favorite adoption bloggers Grannie Annie nails it in today's blog, Original Birth Certificates: Right or Privilege.

The Deformers in New Jersey have fashioned a “Mother, May I?” amendment allowing birthmothers 12 months following passage of the bill in which to file an affidavit of nondisclosure. This means that if a birth mother signs a statement saying she doesn’t want her identity known to her child of adoption, then that adoptee doesn’t get his or her birth certificate- possibly forever.

New Jersey is actually handing over its constitutional responsibility of issuing birth certificates to birth mothers who claim they want their privacy. These are the same birth mothers, I might add, who legally and irrevocably gave up all legal rights to their children at the time of the relinquishment.


THE MOMMIE/STATE OF THINGS
Tagging S1087 as a “Mother May I? bill” is a stroke of semantic genius. The phrase strips away the progressive façade of compromising adoption deform and exposes its underpinnings of self-defeat and internalized unworthiness.

Mother May I? bills accept the false claim that parents have the right to dictate the terms of identity retrieval to their adult children who they signed (willingly or not) into the adoption mill. These bills codify some weird recreation of a child asking Mommie for permission for the trivial: a Toostsie Pop. A pair of Hello Kitty panties. I’m not worthy, but if you’d be so kind…Mother may I?

Not satisfied with simply sealing parental information from adopted persons, Mommie/State, in collusion with self-deprecating Deformers in New Jersey, propose a bigger insult than the current law (if that is possible!): the release of original birth certificates to all adoptees, but with the identifying information deleted if a parent objects to being outted to her or his own adult child. And to top it off, if this bill passes, the Mommie/State wants to run an ad campaign to warn natural parents about the threat the law poses to their “right to privacy” so reluctant parents will have plenty of time to access their own special right to hide inside the WhiteOut bottle. Boo!

The keystone of adoptee rights has always been access and identity for all adopted persons who want it--without prejudice-- as a right, not a favor.

I know that many Jersey Deformers understand this principle. They have long held and still claim to hold the rights argument. Yet after 25 years of struggle, they now disown that principle out of expediency They will take what they can get--a soppy bill that solidifies the state view that adopted persons are different from the not-adopted. Adoptees, as the product of unbridled lust and de facto guilt, require special state supervision and monitoring simply because they exist. Something-is-better-than-nothing-at-this-late-date Deformers embrace the infantilizing S1087, which segregates adoptees into legal classes, treats women as incapable of personal responsibility and in need of state protection, and thrusts the long fingers of the state into the personal business of families and individuals. They call this progress. Or maybe they’re just tired.

THE TREE OF SHAME
Adoptee identity rights is not about reunion, though reunion can be a side effect of access. Adoptee identity rights is not about therapy, though some people are bound to feel better when they hold their own documents. Adoptee identity rights is about overthrowing a corrupt state system that seizes our most precious possession: our names, our histories, our heritages, our genealogical contexts--our identities. No amount of adoptee begging and compromise will fix that rotten system. By ignoring the real issue and framing the right to identity in terms a Mother May I? game, where adoptees remain scary and scared, compliant and obedient to the whim of state authority and a bogus "right to privacy" from one's own offspring, we all lose. Is it any wonder that politicians continue to slam the file cabinet on our fingers? What’s to respect?

Bastardette is sad for the adopted people of New Jersey. And she is sad for those who push S1087 knowing that the bill betrays the adoptee class that will reap the rotten fruit fallen from the New Jersey Tree of Shame, not just in Jersey but in the remainder of closeted states. Ironically, the New Jersey folks have named S1087 the Adoptees' Birthright Bill, yet they have sold the birthright of all for a favor to some.

As I quoted Maureen Dowd earlier, “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get less than you settled for.” The legacy of shame continues in New Jersey.

Read Grannie Annie. And pull on your boots.

“

DIMWITS: IN THE WORDS OF 9 NEW JERSEY ADOPTEE HATERS

Bastardette, as do all righteous bastards, opposes New Jersey’s S1087. That’s not a secret. Yet there is something about the Dimwit pols, wonks, and ambulance chasers who all oppose this bill--for the wrong reasons--that really conniptions her. I mean, if you're gonna oppose the bill, do it on the grounds that it screws adopees, not because it doesn't screw them enough. These Dimwits, no doubt suffering from over- exposure to Natural Enemy, believe with all their hearts and souls that adoptees are professional intruders, home wreckers, deviants, and ax killers with the sensitivity of Saddam Hussein and the manners of a competitive eater at a rib burnoff.

A survey of Dimwit comments from Dimwit anti-adoptee thugs regarding the New Jersey proposal suggests that they have warmer feelings towards the aforementioned Mr. Hussein than they do with the grown-up versions of those cuddly little bundles they've channeled into the local adoption mill. It is obvious that the adoption mythos pounds firmly in their pure white Chrisian hearts and ...they don't know what they are talking about. But since when has the industry let bastards and their natural parents speak with their own voice?

Still there is something comforting about knowing that we are hated by them. Can anybody say with a straight face that it is bad to be hated by NJ Right to Life's Marie Tasy who has her fingers in everybody’s crotch? If it’s not birth certificates she protecting from marauding bastardy it's baybees she rescuing from dumpsters, fetuses she's feeling up in CPICs, marriages she’s defending from queers, embryos she’s saving from the ice crusher, and the American way of life she's shielding from the Untied Nations.

Here’s the list. (Some of the bill numbers referenced in the comments are the former numbers of the current bill):

Dimwit #1: Deborah Jacobs, Executive Director, New Jersey ALCU:
(1) These are competing rights. The fairest way is for a mutual consent registry.
Randolph Reporter, December 22, 2004

(2) A lot of or rights in this country are things very few people take advantage of. We’re talking about people who made a critical decision based on the undersanding it was private.
NorthJersey.com, January 30, 2005

(3) The law said that their names would be kept confidential. To release that information retroactively and jeopardize the privacy of all those women is a violation of due process and privacy.
Asbury Park Press, May 22, 2005

Dimwit #2: Marie Tasy, Director, Legislative Affairs Director,New Jersey Right to Life
(1) But we are not in favor of a bill that retroactively opens adoption records and prospectively does not allow a woman in a crisis pregnancy the option of confidentiality.
KYW-AM, Philadelphia, December 3, 2004. (link no longer available)

(2) This unfairly tips the balance against a woman’s right to chose privacy in adoptions We believe the decision on whether to have an open or closed adoption rests with the birth mother, without whom adoption would not be possible. It should not be made by the state.
Burlington County Times, December 7, 2004

(3) If you take away the right of privacy, the only option wil be abortion....We support mutual consent and voluntary registration. They (proponents of the bill) want completely unfettered access to information regardless of the birth mother's wishes.
Randolph Reporter, December 22, 2004.

(4) So, clearly, the intent of the law is to find birth parents. If the birth parent doesn’t wish to be found, I’m sorry, but I don’t think the state of New Jersey should allow that information.
NorthJersey.com, January 30, 2005

(5) You’re not hearing from the birth mothers that don’t want to be found…The fear is real. For women for whom privacy is paramount, they will have no choice but to have an abortion.
Asbury Park Press, May 22, 2005

Dimwit #3: Marlene Lao-Collins, New Jersey Catholic Conference*
(1) [A mutual consent registry is] “ much more compassionate and less coercive than this legislation.
NorthJersey.com, January 30, 2005

(2) [A mutual consent registry] protects the dignity of both parties.
Asbury Park Press, May 22, 2005

(3) To change the rules of the game so far down the road is fundamentally unfair.
East Brunswick Home News Tribune, October 16, 2006

Dimwit #4: Lee Allen, National Council for Adoption
(1) When we’re talking about this, everybody seems to identify with the rights of the adopted person, but what is also important is to remember that the person who made the adoption decision also has rights. For many valid reasons, birth mothers in particular chose to remain confidential…If she wishes to maintain her confidentiality, then legislation like this whittles down her choice to one. She can confidentially and privately choose abortion…Birth mothers that we speak to and represent--many of them have made their decisions based on trust. How can a bureaucracy in the State House wipe away the trust they’ve depended on?
NorthJersey.com, January 30, 2005

(2) The legislation has the potential to limit a young lady’s choices down to one. It’s not a stretch to think that would happen.
Asbury Park Press, May 22, 2005

(3) Birth mothers past, present, and future must maintain control over their confidential information.
KYW-TV, Philadelphia, October 16, 2006

Dimwit #5: Newark Star Ledger, newspaper
Adoptees say they have a right to their birth certificates, but those rights must be weighed against the rights of mothers, and in some cases fathers, who believed their decision to give up a child for adoption would remain confidential To come back decades later and retroactively strip them of that conditionality is unconscionable.
unsigned editorial, December 10, 2004

Dimwit #6: Senator Robert Martin, (R-Morris)
(1)Young unmarried women relied on the word of priests or a counselor of some type that gave them absolute assurance they would have anonymity…I don’t know how we can in good consequence change that now.
Newark Star Ledger, December 5, 2006

(2) That assurance [sealed records] was made based on the law, and now we’re going to change the law. I don’t see how in good conscience we can do that.
Morris County Daily Record, December 5, 2006

Dimwit #7: Thomas Snyder, attorney; secretary to the Family Law Executive Committee of the New Jersey Bar Association:
(1)There needs to be more consideration and protection of birth parents
Newark Star-Register, December 5, 2006

(2) Applying this law retroactively is like trying to recreate history. We should just decide what the rules are now and move forward, not go back and change the rules after the fact.
Asbury Park Press, December 5, 2006

(3) Some people may have remarried and never disclosed to their spouse or children this private personal decision they had in their life.
KYW-TV, Phildelphia, October 16, 2006

Dimwit #8: Rep. Anthony R. Bucco, (R-Booton):
What about the husband or children of the woman who put up the child for adoption? What if someone came knocking on their door and asked for their mother. It could really turn a family upside-down.
Asbury Park Press, December 5, 2006

Dimwit #9: The Big Tent: Alliance in Defense of Privacy in Adoption, ie, Tom Atwood (NCFA), Rev. Bruce Davidson (Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry), Deborah Jacobs (NJ-ACLU), Marlene Lao-Collins (NJ Catholic Conference), Marie Tasy (NJ Right To Life):
Indeed, birth parents who consider placing children for adoption if S1093/S620 becomes law would no longer even have the option of confidentiality that is often at the crux of the adoption decision, virtually eliminating the option for a private adoption in New Jersey…While we sympathize with adopted people wanting to contact their birth parents, their interests must not negate the potentially oppositional interests of birth parents…We urge you to recognize the critical important of birth parents’ privacy and the threat to adoption posed by it’s violation.
Statement of the Alliance in Defense of Privacy in Adoption, no date.

The sick part about all this is that many of those leggies who support the deform bill carry the same fear of bastards as do the Dimwits. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have stuck a white-out provision in the bill , under the assumption that natural parents, especially natural moms, are cowardly, weak, voiceless victims of their own children who need to hide under the skirts of NCFA, Marie Tasy, and the state, to get through the day.

And it is even sicker that they have convinced themselves that their beloved institution of adoption is so fragile that it will collapse under the weight of truth. How ironic that according to their scenario, adoptees must be stopped lest the destroy adoption.

* For a good laugh see Access to Birth Records for Adult Adoptees, Myth v Fact

and

testimony of Marlene Lao-Collins, Oppose S670 and S1098 which would open adoption records, June 7, 2004

NEW LDA PAGE LAUNCHED!

"We-loved-you-so-much-we-couldn't-bear-to-tell-you-you're-adopted bastards have a new resource!

Bastardette's fav Bastard Ron Morgan has launched Late Discovery.org for this much ignored cohort of scammed boat-rocking adoptees who were so special they weren't allowed to know they weren't flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.

Here is Ron's announcement:

If you are a Late Discovery Adoptee, you are not alone!

If you discovered you were adopted, you may feel isolated, angry, depressed and confused. You are not alone; thousands of other Late Discovery Adoptees share your experience.

Come share yours.

The new Late Discovery website provides resources and support for Late Discovery Adoptees. Articles, stories, news, survey and more

Late Discovery

SOME-ADOPTEES-ARE-MORE-EQUAL-THAN-OTHERS BILL PASSES NEW JERSEY SENATE

The New Jersey Some-Adoptees-Are-More-Equal-Than-Others bill passed the NJ Senate today, 26-12-1.

No doubt its well-intentioned supporters consider passage a victory for adoptee rights. It is not.

S1087[pdf] is more of the same old same old with a new twist of the knife-in-the-back. Sure everybody can get their original birth certificate...but birthparents can make the state remove their names from it and create a second forged birth certificate even more insulting than the amended birth certificate. I guess nobody ever told the folks up there that the "original birth certificate" had to be complete and accurate. As long as it's branded "original" I guess that makes everything OK. Holy Immaculate Conception!

YOU ARE NOT WORTHY
What is really ingenious about this bill is that politicians don't have to change their attitude toward adoptees one degree. They can bestow a birth certificate favor on the adopted without restoring the birth certificate right. Nothing has changed.

The white-out opt-out affirms the doctrine of adoptee suspectability. Under S1087 adoptees remain a stigmatized legal and social class. Our identity rights are tossed around by the new and special whim-and-quirk right of a few birthparents who signed their children into the adoption mill 20, 30, 50 or more years ago, to now legally determine--unlike any other parents--what information is revealed on the birth certificates of their adult offspring. Adoptees can never be trusted. Adoptees never grow up.

Once this special right is codified under S1087, what other means will it be put to? Embarrassed that your son died of AIDS? Remove “cause of death” from the death certificate. Don't want your neighbor to know your property tax rate? Hand the clerk a bottle of WhiteOut. Squeamish that your husband might discover Gilbert Gottfried was your first husband?....

It used to be that records were just sealed. That made things easy. Over the last 20 years, however, the baby step strategy of the compliant grateful adoptee Deform Gang, willing to throw away the rights of all for the reunions of some, have created secrecy contracts between the state and birthparents where none existed before. Their disclosure vetoes, contract vetoes, and white-outs make the full restoration of the right of identity nearly impossible since once some are "given" their "rights" the issue can't or won't be revisited for the left-behinds. Favors are doled out to adoptees on a “by permission" basis. We have no rights, at least that neither politicians or deformers acknowledge.

Give me a tussle with NCFA pussycats any day.

If S1087 were only about New Jersey, it would be bad enough. Unfortunately, if the bill passes, it will likely be used as a model for other states where "activists" seem ignorant of the lessons of history--that clean records laws can and will be passed. According to Sunday's Oregonian, since the passage of Measure 58, 9,129 Oregon adoptees have received their original birth certificates. Bastardette can only wonder why those who are willing to take less don't look to Oregon, or Alabama, or New Hampshire, and demand more. Don't all adoptees count?

Luckly, the bill still has to be heard by the Assembly.

SETTLING FOR LESS THAN YOU DESERVE: WHY BASTARD NATION REJECTS ALL ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST NEW JERSEY'S S1087

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get less than you settled for.
.....Maureen Dowd

In 2004 I wrote a letter to several New Jersey newspapers in which I outlined why Bastard Nation rejected S1093, a compromised birth records access bill introduced in that state. The letter was never published. The bill has been reurrected as S1087 [pdf] and will go to the NJ Senate tomorrow for a floor vote.

I thought it was time to dust off the letter, update and expand it a little (including some adoptee-hating blither-blathers in today's Parsippany Daily Record), and post it here. More of Bastardette's comments on the New Jersey situation are at ACLU Slags Adoptees Again (April 24, 2005). You will find Bastard Nation's letter to the New Jersey Senate and our Action Alert just below this blog.

**********
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization opposes S1087. If passed, this bill will permit the distribution of true original birth certificates to some adults born and adopted in New Jersey. It will distribute falsified and defaced original birth certificates to others through implementaton of birthparent secrecy request.

Bastard Nation rejects ALL arguments for and against the current draft of S1087 as reactionary and anti-adoptee. We object to its compromise language that permits birthparents to order the state to remove their identifying information from the original birth certificate; thus allowing the state to legally mutilate an official state record making some adoptees more equal than others.

PROPONENT ARGUMENTS WE REJECT
Bastard Nation rejects the argument of S1087 proponents who claim that some records access is better than no access. We recognize that S1087 proponents have worked many years for passage of an open records bill, yet we cannot support the special rights compromise they have accepted –a compromise that promotes favors for some over rights for all. It is this willingness to roll over that has bogged down the adoptee civil rights movement in the US for more than 30 years. No state that has granted favors to some has ever revisited the issue and granted rights to all.

Bastard Nation finds the willingness to compromise particularly alarming since two states, Kansas and Alaska, have always recognized the right of adoptees to unrestricted access to their birth records and identities, and since 1999 three other states have restored that right: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama and New Hampshire through legislation. Why not New Jersey?

OPPOSITION ARGUMENTS WE REJECT
Bastard Nation rejects the special rights doctrine argued by the New Jersey ACLU. The ACLU argues that birthparents who signed away all parental rights 20, 30, or 50 years ago can now return and embrace a special right found in no other relationship: the right of one adult to deny another adult access to the publicly held record of his or her own birth.

Bastard Nation rejects the unsubstantiated argument of New Jersey Right to Life that open records for adult adoptees would cause a rise in abortion in the state. Marie Tasy, legislative director of NJRTL admits she has no evidence that abortion rates would rise; she “just knows” they will. A simple Internet search would show Tasy that Bastard Nation and other researchers debunked this notion years ago.

Bastard Nation rejects the cover-our-ass New Jersey Catholic Conference plea that the passage of S1087 would put Catholic Charities "in the position of having misled birth mothers" through promises it supposedly made that the state would protect their anonymity through sealed records. Outside of anonymous abandonment (and even that is questionable) there is no such thing as anonymity in surrender and adoption. The Catholic Conference knows this (or should). If Catholic Charities social workers told birthparents they would be anonymous, then these "professionals" were either inept or lying. Laws change all the time. What is the Catholic Conference and its associated agencies really afraid of?

Bastard Nation rejects the New Jersey Bar Association claim that the state has a duty to protect birthparents from the possibility of an unhappy "reunion." The state has no "duty" nor should it want the duty to protect its citizens from unhappiness. Valerie Brown, legislative counsel for the NJBA admits that the current sealed records law makes no guarantees of "privacy," but argues that there is a "reasonable expectation" of privacy that would be set aside with passage of S1087. Her argument is spurious. Most searches in New Jersey now are completed without an original birth certificate or other court documents that contain the names of birthparents. The original birth certificates of adoptees under S1087 would not be released to the public but to the person whose birth it documents of if a minor, to her or his adoptive parents. Any lawyer would be happy to explain to Brown, "privacy" does not mean anonymity.

Bastard Nation rejects all arguments posited by the National Council for Adoption. NCFA's founding reason in 1980 was to guarantee that original birth records be kept out of the hands of uppity ungrateful bastards. It won't let recent defeats stop it from its mission to disappear us into the Adoptee Identity Protection Program Unfortunately, links to NCFA's New Jersey statements are down. The general NCFA statement on "adoption privacy" though can be found here (though you probably know them all by heart already!) Suffice to say, NCFA's arguments are reflected by the New JerseyAxis of Evil: the New Jersey ACLU, New Jersey Right to Life, the New Jersey Catholic Conference, the New Jersey Bar Association and any other special interest group who devalues adoptees and believes we are dangerous to ourselves, our birthparents, our adoptive parents, and the institution of adoption. After all, if we learn our own names and histories and get own our own birth certificates in our grubby little hands, the entire adoption industry will collapse under the weight of truth.

RESULTS WE REJECT
After 25 years of fighting the adoptee-hating political machine, New Jersey adoptee rights advocates, many of whom we know and respect, are willing to take any crumb the state offers them. Bastard Nation would love to support a true records access bill in New Jersey. But BN leaves no one behind. We will not be party to this betrayal of New Jersey adoptees and their civil rights.

The New Jersey compromise hurts us all. If the New Jersey bill passes into law, and even one state looks to it as a model instead of the states in which unrestricted access to records is the norm, the gloomy results will hang on the shameful heads of Jersey advocates who opted to ask for what they might get rather than what they really want.

Half-measures are not acceptable. New Jersey’s adoptees deserve more. Why are they settling for less?

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557--COMPROMISED OPEN RECORDS BILL

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT! NEW JERSEY S1087/A2557

Please forward freely.

(See previous post for BN's letter to the NJ Senate)

STOP DISCLOSURE VETO/WHITE OUT LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY!!!

ASK THE NEW JERSEY SENATE TO VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557! DON'T LET PASSAGE OF BAD LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY THREATEN EFFORTS IN OTHER STATES FOR TRUE EQUAL ACCESS FOR ADULT ADOPTEES!!

IT'S BACK!

S1087/A2557, (formerly S1093/A 3237) is due for a floor vote in the New Jersey Senate on Monday December 4. Please email or call the New Jersey Senators immediately and urge them to VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557. Please see contact information below.

The bill contains a birthparent disclosure veto provision. It also provides for a one year period following bill passage in which birthparents can file a veto to prohibit their names from being disclosed on the original birth certificates.

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization opposes legislation that denies any adult adoptees access to their own original birth records on par with all other citizens. Please let the Senate know that this issue is not about relationships between adoptees and their birthparents. It is about basic human and civil rights and the relationship between adoptees and the STATE of NEW JERSEY. The New Jersey state government should not be in the business of denying adult adoptees access to their own birth certificates in a misguided attempt to appease a mythical adversarial standoff between adoptees and birthparents.

Inclusion of a disclosure veto in this bill perpetuates the violation of adoptee rights by making unaltered birth certificate access a privilege bestowed at the whim of birthparents.Passage of bad legislation is New Jersey could easily undermine efforts of dedicate d reformers who are holding the line for adoptee rights in other states. What happens in one state impacts what other legislatures will consider.

New Jersey's S1087/A2557 is an abomination in light of the restoration of the right of all records access to all persons adopted in Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire. Adult adoptees and all who support adoptee rights should stand united for unrestricted access laws and not sell out just to get a bill passed! Disclosure veto legislation is unethical and unjust!Please e-mail, call, and write the New Jersey Senators and urge them to VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557!

READ THE FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/S1500/1087_R1.PDF
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2004/Bills/S1500/1093_R2.HTM

CONTACT INFORMATION: NEW JERSEY STATE SENATORS

SenAdler@njleg.org, SenAsselta@njleg.org, SenAllen@njleg.org, SenAsselta@njleg.org,SenBark@njleg.org, SenBryant@njleg.org, SenBucco@njleg.org,SenBuono@njleg.org,SenCardinale@njleg.org,SenCiesla@njleg.org,SenCodey@njleg.org,SenConiglio@njleg.org, SenConnors@njleg.org, SenDoria@njleg.org,SenGill@njleg.org, SenGirgenti@njleg.org,SenGormley@njleg.org,SenInverso@njleg.org,SenJames@njleg.org,SenKarcher@njleg.org,SenKavanaugh@njleg.org,SenKean@njleg.org,SenKenny@njleg.org,SenKyrillos@njleg.org,SenLance@njleg.org,SenLesniak@njleg.org,SenLittell@njleg.org,SenMadden@njleg.org,SenMartin@njleg.org,SenMcNamara@njleg.org,SenPalaia@njleg.org,SenRice@njleg.org,SenSacco@njleg.org,SenSarlo@njleg.org,SenScutari@njleg.org,SenSinger@njleg.org,SenSmith@njleg.org,SenSweeney@njleg.org,SenTurner@njleg.org, SenVitale@njleg.org, SenWeinberg@njleg.org

FULL SENATE CONTACT INFORMATION:

Senator John H. Adler
District Office: 1916 Route 70 East, Suite 3, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003
(856)-489-3442
SenAdler@njleg.org

Senator Diane B. Allen
District Office: 2313 Burlington-Mt. Holly Road, Burlington, NJ 08016
(609)-239-2800
SenAllen@njleg.org

Senator Nicholas Asselta
District Office: Main Tree Commons, 1450 East Chestnut Avenue, Building 1,
Suite B, Vineland, NJ 08361
(856)-691-3004
SenAsselta@njleg.org


Senator Martha W. Bark
District Office: 3000 Midlantic Drive, Suite 103, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054
(856)-234-8080
SenBark@njleg.org

Senator Wayne R. Bryant
District Office: 501 Cooper Street, Camden, NJ 08102
(856)-757-0552
SenBryant@njleg.org

Senator Anthony R. Bucco
District Office: 75 Bloomfield Ave., 3rd Floor, Denville, NJ 07834
(973)-627-9700
SenBucco@njleg.org

Senator Barbara Buono
District Office: 100 Plainfield Ave., Suite 1, Edison, NJ 08817
(732)-819-8141
SenBuono@njleg.org

Senator Gerald Cardinale
District Office: 350 Madison Avenue, Cresskill, NJ 07626
(201)-567-2324
SenCardinale@njleg.org

Senator Andrew R. Ciesla
District Office: 852 Highway 70, Brick, NJ 08724
(732)-840-9028
SenCiesla@njleg.org

Senator Richard J. Codey
District Office: 449 Mount Pleasant Avenue, West Orange, NJ 07052
(973)-731-6770
SenCodey@njleg.org

Senator Joseph Coniglio
District Office: 205 Robin Road, Suite 216, Paramus, NJ 07652
(201)-576-9199
SenConiglio@njleg.org

Senator Leonard T. Connors
District Office: 620 West Lacey Road, Forked River, NJ 08731
(609)-693-6700
SenConnors@njleg.org

Senator Joseph V. Doria
SenDoria@njleg.org

Senator Nia H. Gill
District Office: 425 Bloomfield Avenue, 2nd Floor, Montclair, NJ 07042
(973)-509-0388
SenGill@njleg.org

Senator John A. Girgenti
District Office: 507 Lafayette Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506
(973)-427-1229
SenGirgenti@njleg.org

Senator William L. Gormley
District Office: Hamilton Mall, Suite 108, Black Horse Pike, Mays Landing,
NJ 08330
(609)-646-3500
SenGormley@njleg.org

Senator Peter A. Inverso
District Office: 3691A Nottingham Way, Hamilton Square, NJ 08690
(609)-586-1330
SenInverso@njleg.org

Senator Sharpe James
District Office: 50 Park Place, Suite 1535, Newark, NJ 07102
(973)-622-0007
SenJames@njleg.org

Senator Ellen Karcher
District Office: 400 West Main Street, 3rd Floor, Freehold, NJ 07728
(732)-462-8883
SenKarcher@njleg.org

Senator Walter J. Kavanaugh
District Office: 76 North Bridge Street, Somerville, NJ 08876
(908)-526-4222
SenKavanaugh@njleg.org

Senator Thomas H. Kean
District Office: 203 Elm Street, 1st Floor, Westfield, NJ 07090
(908)-232-3673
District Office: 57 Union Place, Suite 310, Summit, NJ 07901
(908)-918-0414
SenKean@njleg.org

Senator Bernard F. Kenny
District Office: 235 Hudson Street, Suite 1, Hoboken, NJ 07030
(201)-653-1466
SenKenny@njleg.org

Senator Joseph M. Kyrillos
District Office: One Arin Park Building, Suite 303, 1715 Highway 35,
Middletown, NJ 07748
(732)-671-3206
SenKyrillos@njleg.org

Senator Leonard Lance
District Office: 119 Main Street, Flemington, NJ 08822
(908)-788-6900
SenLance@njleg.org

Senator Raymond J. Lesniak
District Office: 985 Stuyvesant Ave., Union, NJ 07083
(908)-624-0880
SenLesniak@njleg.org

Senator Robert E. Littell
District Office: P.O. Box 328, 25 Route 23 South, Franklin, NJ 07416
(973)-827-2900
SenLittell@njleg.org

Senator Fred H. Madden
District Office: 18 Somerdale Road, Blackwood, NJ 08012
(856)-227-5900
District Office: 129 Johnson Road, Suite 1, Turnersville, NJ 08012
(856)-232-6700
SenMadden@njleg.org

Senator Robert J. Martin
District Office: 101 Gibraltar Dr., Suite 1-A, Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973)-984-0922
SenMartin@njleg.org

Senator Henry P. McNamara
District Office: 191 Godwin Ave., 2nd Floor, P.O. Box 68, Wyckoff, NJ 07481
(201)-848-9600
SenMcNamara@njleg.org

Senator Joseph A. Palaia
District Office: 290 Norwood Ave., Suite 204, Deal, NJ 07723
(732)-531-1303
SenPalaia@njleg.org

Senator Ronald L. Rice
District Office: 1044 South Orange Ave., Newark, NJ 07106
(973)-371-5665
SenRice@njleg.org

Senator Nicholas J. Sacco
District Office: 9060 Palisade Ave., North Bergen, NJ 07047
(201)-295-0200
SenSacco@njleg.org

Senator Paul A. Sarlo
District Office: Fleet Bank Building, 2nd Floor, 207 Hackensack St.,
Wood-Ridge, NJ 07075
(201)-804-8118
SenSarlo@njleg.org

Senator Nicholas P. Scutari
District Office: 1514 E. Saint Georges Ave., 2nd Floor, Linden, NJ 07036
(908)-587-0404
SenScutari@njleg.org

Senator Robert W. Singer
District Office: 2110 W. County Line Rd., Jackson, NJ 08527
(732)-901-0702
SenSinger@njleg.org

Senator Bob Smith
District Office: 216 Stelton Rd., Suite E-5, Piscataway, NJ 08854
(732)-752-0770
SenSmith@njleg.org

Senator Stephen M. Sweeney
District Office: Kingsway Commons, 935 Kings Highway, Suite 400, Thorofare,
NJ 08086
(856)-251-9801
District Office: 14 East Commerce St., 3rd Floor, Bridgeton, NJ 08302
(856)-455-1011
District Office: 1 New Market St., Salem, NJ 08079
(856)-339-0808
SenSweeney@njleg.org

Senator Shirley K. Turner
District Office: 1440 Pennington Rd., 1st Floor, Ewing, NJ 08618
(609)-530-3277
SenTurner@njleg.org

Senator Joseph F. Vitale
District Office: 87 Main St., Woodbridge, NJ 07095
(732)-855-7441
SenVitale@njleg.org

Senator Loretta Weinberg
545 Cedar Lane
Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 928-0100
SenWeinberg@njleg.org

BASTARD NATION'S LETTER TO THE NJ SENATE: VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557!

The compromised New Jersey "open records" bill S1087.A2557 (go here and type in bill number to read it) is scheduled for a floor vote in the Senate on Monday, December 4, 2006. Bastard Nation opposes this bill. Below is our letter to NJ senators. Our action alert will be posted here shortly with information on how you can voice your opposition, too.

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Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization opposes S1087/A2557 and asks you to oppose it, too.

If passed, this bill will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s).

Bastard Nation rejects this special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Why should birthparents have different rules?

Since 1999 three states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama and New Hampshire through legislation. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates as a favor, not a right--a right that the non-adopted enjoy without a second thought.

Are the adopted of New Jersey so dangerous that they cannot be trusted to know the names of their own parents or own their own heritage, genealogies and birth documents?

If New Jersey is truly interested in supporting the right of identity and records for its adopted citizens it should reject compromising those rights with reactionary and anti-adoptee legislation such as S1087/A2557. The New Jersey Senate should reject S1087/ A2557 and come back with a clean bill that guarantees the right of records to all New Jersey adopted adults, not just some. Until such a bill is presented, no half-measures are acceptable. New Jersey’s adoptees deserve better than this.

Please vote NO on S1087/A2557. It’s the right thing to do!

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
Executive Committee:
David Ansardi
Anita Field
Patricia Marler
Natalie Proctor Servant
Marley Greiner, Executive Chair

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