UPDATE; NEW HOPE MATERNITY GIRLS STILL RUNNING!

California there they went! Our girls are still on the run!

Carlos Rivera, the 18-year boyfriend of one of the desperados, says his girlfriend called him and an aunt about four days ago, and that the trio is probably in California. A news update posted a few hours ago claims that the New Hope van has been ditched in Cal, though no city was mentioned.

Gina Castro, mother of Rivera's girlfriend, isn't too happy with the handling of the case by American Fork Police Chief Lance Call. Call, she claims, won't talk to her personally, preferring to let the unhappily frying panned, Jana Moody act as his sock puppet. Call defends his odd behavior claiming he simply wants to get along with Castro and the other parents. "Some people get very intimidated in talking to a police officer directly," he assures. "If we can just keep this as cooperative as we can, we'll be in a lot better shape for everyone." Why Call believes the parents are uncooperative remains a mystery.

GINA CASTRO SPILLS HER BEANS:
Mother Castro now admits that Bad Daughter, didn't really enjoy the scenic view from her New Hope cell (or maybe it was that red, white, and blue shower curtain that set her off) and... wanted to keep her baby. Imagine!

From the Provo Daily Herald:

Castro suspects that her daughter didn't want to give her baby up for adoption, when friends and family members were telling her to. It may be one of the reasons why the girls decided to run...

Castro said she knew her 16-year-old daughter didn't like being at New Hope. Far away from her friends and boyfriend, the girl didn't like not being able call or e-mail them. That's what her mother wanted, originally. That was my whole plan, trying to get her away from the whole elements in Chicago, going through a teen intervention program," Castro said. "Now she's in a worst position when she started.

Yeah, it really sucks. To save yourself from the embarrassment of a little bastard in the house, you incarcerate your nasty daughter in a Mormon Behavior Modification Camp cutting her off from her boyfriend and her entire support system. Now, because of your prissy self-esteem issues she's charged with aggravated assault, stealing a vehicle, using the stolen credit card...and kidnapping!

Can Plymale & Associates be far behind?

IT REALLY IS 1962!
The Provo Daily Herald claims that "pro-choice blogs" are running almost as wild as the maternity girls on the incident. Strangely enough, when I did a Google search tonight I saw little on the the other aisle--the anti-aborts--outside of a couple tongue gluckings over ungrateful girls. Perhaps they're too busy marching through Washington to pay much attention to real-- life women affected by their whacky agenda. Whatever...

Feministing, a feminist blogger Bastardette actually likes, has posted a short piece with a lot of good comments. One of the more surprising responses (though I don't know why) is that so-called liberal and progressive feminists have no idea that maternity camps still exist. Did they think familial embarrassment and disapproval over an oopsed teenager went the way of white gloves and Gidget? As liberals they must have slept through Bushian fulminations snorting full-blown from the nose of Wade Horn (sample ) Marvin Olasky (sample), and the earlier rantings of Charles Murray, Michael Novak and the late Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (both). Shotgun marriages are also nice, though they tend to get in the way of maternity homes and generating product for the adoption industry. But then, we don't live in a perfect world and fish are bound escape the net.

For FY 2002, the Bush administration proposed that $33 million in taxpayer dole be used to fund "maternity group homes" as a means to decrease abortion and increase the adoptee population. During the July 11, 2001 House Ways and Means Committee meeting, committee chair Bill Thomas explicated happily that the return of the maternity home movement was part of a greater program for federally funded abstinence education to rid the nation's public school system of factual sex education. Thomas blamed contraceptive use on unplanned pregnancy.

This isn't just about girls getting pregnant. This is about young boys impregnating girls. But because they teach about contraceptives, even though they teach heavily about abstinence and it is abstinence that is really serving them, they don't get a dollar of Federal money. So I think we need to look more realistically.

Of course, since then, the nuts have taken over the asylum as shown in the recent appointment of Eric Keroack to head the Department of Health and Human Services’ family-planning program and control Title X funds. Keroack, like Bill Thomas, believes that contraceptives increase the number of pregnancies. In fact, he calls contraception "demeaning" to women. Karoack also promotes the idiotic abortion-breast cancer link and holds the odd belief that multiple sex partners leads to an over-production of oxycotin hindering women's ability to bond.

If the ice pick hasn't been shoved deep enough into your eye socket, you might enjoy reading The Implementation of Maternity Group Home Programs: Serving Pregnant and Parenting Teens in a Residential Setting found on the Health and Human Services webpage. The writers of the report acknowledge the input of the late Greg Foltz, former NCFA board member and director of the anti-adoptee rights St. Andre Home in Maine. Gee, would he have an agenda? The report informs us that teenagers--well women in general--to receive the full benefits of maternity home life need to make a full 2-year commitment (what an appropriate word!) to their own incarceration. Whether New Hope demanded our girls--or rather their parents--commit to 2 years at their mountain retreat is not known. Two days would be too much. Sort of like spending your vacation in Minerva, Ohio.

I have no idea how much New Hope was sucking out of Gina Castro, but Feministing has a link to the costs of selected maternity homes that should blow your socks off. With that kind of money Bastardette could buy a new car--or a mom who can't afford to keep her kid, could.

Here's to our maternity girls.
Be safe.

At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin out over the line
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
Its a death trap, its a suicide rap
We gotta get out while were young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

RUN GIRLS RUN!

BASTARD NATION'S SUBMITTED TESTIMONY: OPPOSITION TO NEBRASKA LB 6--SAFE HAVEN

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization--the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America-- opposes LB 6 which if enacted would permit parents to “legally” abandon infants 30 days old or less.

Because infants surrendered under LB 6 are expected to be placed for adoption, Bastard Nation's objections to LB 6 focus on how the law will effect negatively the civil rights of adoptees.

(1) LB 6 erodes adoptee civil rights by increasing the number of anonymous children available for adoption through unethical and unprofessional practices.
LB 6 establishes parallel child welfare systems, where one system opposes the long-standing principles of the other. Those long-standing principles are informed consent and a full record of identifying information and social and medical histories. LB 6 eliminates adoptees’ rights to identity by denying their access to original birth and heritage records. Safe Haven laws were enacted right after Oregon and Alabama restored adopted adults' right to their original birth records. That was no coincidence. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA), a trade organization of conservative adoption agencies dedicated to sealed and secret adoptions and opposed to adoptee identity rights have admitted before various state legislatures, that Safe Haven laws are the response to the growing and successful movement in the US to restore the civil right of identity to adoptees. NCFA claims that only through anonymous abandonment can courts maintain “parental privacy“--though adoption proceedings are already closed and confidential in every state.

LB 6 denies parents--particularly non-surrendering parents (usually the father) --their right to due process by eliminating their ability to locate the dependency proceeding to which they are a party. LB 6 contravenes the family reunification guidelines of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act and parts of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act. LB 6 replaces professional best practice standards with unprofessional and unethical "non-bureaucratic placement" by letting parents abandon solely for convenience or out of ignorance. The law preys on parents who honestly believe they are surrendering their child for adoption instead of providing evidence to be used in a dependency hearing at which they have a right and duty to appear. The law encourages parents literally to default at their hearings. The supporters call that "proper" and "courageous."

(2) SB 6 disenfranchises natural parents, encourages unethical behavior, and hides crime.
There is no evidence that Safe Haven laws have decreased unsafe abandonment or saved lives. A 2005 survey of county coroners in California found that the number of newborns dying from abandonment and neglect since 2001 remained at 13-15 per year.

Save Havens are promoted as an easy solution for mothers so desperate that unless they can abandon their newborns anonymously the mothers will kill the children. State-written reports and news accounts tell a different story.The “Safely Surrendered and Abandoned Infants in Los Angeles County” ICAN report published in 2002 and updated in 2005, identified Safe Haven-protected parents who were interviewed as poor, overwhelmed, and ignorant of child welfare practice. Some parents appeared to be undocumented workers, leery of professional assistance.

News accounts throughout the country regularly tell us of clean, immaculately dressed newborns with stuffed animals, baby blankets, and notes to doctors, left at ER’s in no danger of neglect or death. Newspapers have also reported instances in which hospital officials, in conflict with established hospital programs that discourage incidents of “boarder baby abandonment” encourage identified, confined mothers to leave their newborns at the hospital when they are later discharged with no ethical parenting or child placement counseling to guide them.

Safe Haven laws are open to further abuses as shown by the Twyana Davis case in Ohio. Davis, an adult, conceived a child with her 12-year old cousin. Davis recklessly abandoned the newborn. After years of supporting Safe Haven laws , Davis admitted the father's identity and age. Last fall she was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison for rape. In April 2006, in Rochester, New York, Lamar Brown, 31, tried to drop off a newborn he claimed he found in a nearby park. When hospital personnel became suspicious and called police, Brown admitted that he had had sexual relations with the 13-year old mother 9 months earlier and had helped deliver the baby. He was charged with 2nd degree rape and endangering the welfare of a child. Safe Haven proponents would have Davis and Brown legally abandon these babies anonymously and then call them heroes. The government is essentially offering parents who have committed, or are contemplating, crimes a cover up.

Abuses are not the exception. In several cases the parent has communicated to the Safe Haven recipient that they were surrendering the child anonymously out of love or because they lacked resources. Those parents did not feel homicidal, but simply wanted a quick or secret adoption. Temporary and permanent surrender options have existed for decades and are used by thousands of new parents every year. We have welfare and other programs through children's services that new parents can use when they lack funds or support.

Unfortunately, Safe Haven proponents have convinced parents they have only two options: The Dumpster or the Safe Haven.. The responsible alternatives to baby dumping are not mentioned: counseling, public assistance, temporary surrender, permanent surrender for adoption, and family communication. That omission keeps new and potential parents ignorant of real solutions.As Bob Brandt, Executive Director of The Nebraska Children’s Home Society said in 2004 when a similar proposal to LB 6 was presented to the legislature, “Safe Haven laws are a way to circumvent adoption laws and have unintended consequences…I hope society doesn’t get to the point where they think abandonment of a child is a good thing. We just get the word out there that there is safe help We think we have laws that allow us to protect the babies.”


Finally, Nebraska law does not need fixed.
There is no epidemic of newborn abandonments and neonaticides in the state. Since 1996, 3 discarded newborns have been found alive and 1 found dead from unknown causes.SB 6 trivializes baby abandonment by presenting it as just another consumer choice. No blame. No shame. No names.Furthermore, by encouraging identity erasure, parental ignorance, irresponsibility, and secrecy, and by refuting the due process rights of parents, LB 6 endangers the integrity and safety of all families in the State of Nebraska--not just those at risk for unsafe abandonment. No law is valid because it might "save a life." Otherwise, we would not have our Bill of Rights. We do not let the police pull drivers over randomly and give them Breathalyzer tests because "it might save a life." We do not outlaw guns because “it might save a life." The state should not help parents hide their own children’s identities and histories because “it might save a life.” It should not help parents hide children from each other because “it might save a life.”

Protect Nebraska families! Vote Do Not Pass on LB 6.

Marley Elizabeth Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: The Adpotee Rights Organization<

UPDATE: PREGOS GONE WILD!

Here's more out of Utah on our teens behaving badly.

News reports verify that I was correct. New Hope Maternity Home..er... excuse me...."group home" is the late residence of our runaways. According to this morning's Salt Lake City Tribune, after whacking Jana Moody, wife of New Hope owner Spencer Moody, in in the head with a frying pan, one of the girls apologized. "You're a good person." We just need to do what we need to do." Indeed!

Spencer Moody remains clueless as to why the girls may have found his mountain retreat anything less than an exceedingly pleasant experience, though he admitted that most of them "are not happy to be there when they first arrive." And the maternity girls' parents were certainlly pleased with New Hope's results. "We've had parents call us and thank us for giving their girls back the way they used to be." They returned home virgins?

Mr. Mooney, told the Trib that he plans to close New Hope. "After this, we've decided it's the end of it."

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So far no word on where the girls have gone. A national attempt-to-locate alert was issued for the van. The girls also confiscated Jana Moody's credit cards, check book, and cell phone, but there's nothing in the press reports to indicate they've been used.

Can a movie be far behind? Or better yet, a state investigation into Moody's activities?

RUN GIRLS RUN!

WELCOME TO 1962: UTAH PREGOS GONE WILD!

I'm in the middle of some other projects and won't be able to post for a few days, but I had to share this news story out of Utah.

The girls must have been reading Ann Fessler--or OSUA. Hmm, no. Silly me! They'd not be allowed near a library or a computer. They're Maternity Camp inmates.



Pregnant teens beat up group home employee then steal her van
The girls, ages 15 and 16, may be headed out of state
By Nate Carlisle
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated:01/18/2007 10:59:35 AM MST


Posted: 10:55 AM- Three pregnant teenagers at a group home in American Fork are accused of beating their caretaker with a frying pan, tying her up and driving off in her van. Police are still looking for the three girls, who are from Illinois, Texas and California. The stolen vehicle is described as a 2005 Dodge Caravan, Utah license plate 128VTX. Police are not disclosing the girls' names. The attack occurred Tuesday morning at a state-licensed home near 1000 North and 400 East that provides services to pregnant teenagers, said American Fork Police Sgt. Shauna Greening. "We haven't had any problems with that home before," Greening said. A caretaker at the home, Greening said, told police the teens hit her over the head with a frying pan then used electrical cords and duct tape to tie her up. They also put a sock in her mouth and wrapped her mouth in duct tape, Greening said. The teenagers then stole the caretaker's purse, credit cards, cell phone, video camera and van, Greening said. The caretaker was able to free herself. She went upstairs and found another girl, a 17-year-old, who also was tied, Greening said.

The caretaker freed that teen and called police.

Greening said the girls could be arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, car theft and criminal mischief. The teens might have fled to one of their home states, Greening said. It was unknown what stages of pregnancy the teens were in, Greening said.

One of the girls is 15 years old, 5 feet 2 inches tall, 103 pounds, with brown hair, blue-green eyes and a pierced belly button. Another 15-year-old is described as 5 feet 5, 152 pounds, with brown hair and eyes, a piercing in each ear, a scar between her eyes and a mole on her left leg and back. The third girl is 16, about 5 feet 7, 153 pounds, with brown hair, green eyes, a piercing in each ear and a scar on her forehead.

Anyone with information about the girls can call American Fork police at 801-763-3020. ncarlisle@sltrib.com



WELCOME TO 1962!
I did a quick search of maternity homes in American Fork (not that I expected a clump of them) and came up with New Hope Maternity Home, which I am 99.9% sure is the afore mentioned Bad Girls Home. (And if I'm wrong, you should know about this place anyway.) The location, in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, is breathtaking, the kind of place you might go to for a secret tryst or to hide out to write the Great American Novel if you could bring your own stuff to personalize the place. But for the "maternity girls" as New Hope likes to call its "residents," the message is clear. You're not gettin' outta here, girl. Shut up! Behave. Conform. Comply.

Here are a few excerpts from New Hope's propganda page, but be sure to read the whole thing. While you're at it, take the slide show tour for a lesson in soft sensory deprivation. Then read Robert J. Lifton's 8 Conditions for Thought Reform--particularly Mileau Control, Confession, and Doctrine Over Person to see how closely they align.

The setting is pristine and private, allowing your student to make significant modificatons in her life in a setting conducive to both growth and change

and

Location: Utah valley just North of Provo, Utah in the small comunity of American Fork. The benefit: In most cases, you need to act quickly to get your daughter out of her current situation and away from most of her friends. You don't want her to go where they will have access to contact her, and it is also a great benefit to be far away geographically. By taking her totally out of her envirohment into a new, safe, and secure environment, she will be better abale to start making better choices.

and

New Hope students are enrolled in East Shore High School, an alternative school in the local Alpine School District. However, our students do their school work right here in our Maternity Home. As they complete each unit, our staff accompany them to the testing center at East Shore High where they complete tests and essays.

and

While adoption is not an easy choice, it can bring positive results for all involved. The choices made around an unplanned pregnancy are difficult in many ways. It is natural for a young woman to experience grief and loss when she chooses to let her child become a permanent part of another family's life. This pain and feelings will eventually be replaced with a peace of mind and inner strength knowing that her child can experience a life of opportunities because she made the unselfish decision to give her child to an adoptive family.

Isolation, sensory deprivation, helplessness.

Why is involuntary incareration of teen women in totalist indoctrination camps permitted?

If these "maternity girls" were of age, these shennighans would be illegal.

RUN GIRLS! RUN!

FAUXCLAUD'S MONTEL MOMENT

Blogger Fauxclaud taped the Montel Williams Show the other day. Her venture into the talk-o-sphere, where she attempted--and I emphasize attempted--to hold a cogent discussion on the pathetic state of contemporary adoption can be found in her Musings of the Lame, Montel, Not the Great Hope at All (January 12, 2007).

Since I don't want to spoil Claud‘s story, I won't comment other than to say that Claud's experience with Montel mirrors my own time in hell with John Walsh. The only difference is that Claud received a $25 per diem, and a free Montel t-shirt and hat for having the forethought to leave her baseball bat at home, while I received a $60 per diem and got to pose backstage for a picture with Walsh after the show. Thankfully, John Walsh didn't demand of me "How can I get a baby?"

Welcome, Claud, to the Sacred Hall of Adoption Media Martyrs! Patsies, set-ups, fools, naifs, suckers, and rubes all. It’s not like we don’t know that the talk show circuit is a big fat-ass circus that we should take as seriously as Paris Hilton’s 2006 abstinence pledge. For some inexplicable reason, though, we are old fashioned. We are moths. We maintain an odd belief in the democracy of the air waves. We pretend that by letting rich talk shows hosts turn us into shills for things nobody wants we will win a nameless audience to our side--or at least "educate" them. Do we really believe that the politicians who screw with us spend their days watching talk TV? The politics of our grievance effects are our brains. No hope is too high. No humiliation is too great. Maybe we have transcended our egos. Perhaps our self-esteem is so low that its residing in Badwater, Basin, California. Maybe we are all narcissistic potential Oprahs... if we can save just one... Strangely, those on the other side, ie., our enemies, suffer from the same feeling of helplessness when the camera rolls. Ambush! Hijack! Unfair! glide from their lips. We are all dupes.

You did your best and we thank you. I don't want to patronize, but you may have done better than you think you did. Don't quit. I know I won't. Hope springs eternal!

Be scared, Claud! Be very scared! Since my appearance on the John Walsh Show I’ve developed a peculiar affinity to Maury’s Who’s the Daddy guests.

No word on Claud's air date yet.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES: TRIAD

BB Church's announcement that the triad is dead is getting around fast. While wandering mindlessly thorugh the streets of Columbus I happened across the above sign. Anyone involved in retail will tell you, when a store says it's "temporariy closed" it really means it's dead. Now let's go after the real enemy!

LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH: COMMENTS ON LORRAINE DUSKY'S "MARY CHENEY'S BABY WILL SOMEDAY ASK WHO IS MY DADDY?"

Lately the media as been abuzz over sperm donors. Kicked off in large part by Mary Cheney's announcment of impending motherhood-by-donor insemination followed by Katrina Clark’s Washington Post op-ed, there’s been a steady stream of articles, commentaries, blogs, and forum discussions. Scientific American, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Washington Blade, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Bay Area Indy Media, and of course, Salon, have all paid their two cents to get into the freak show.

In Kansas, a sperm donor is suing a lesbian couple to have the right to play a role in their twins' lives. An Ontario court last week granted parental rights to the other half of a lesbian couple; thus, recognizing her, her partner (the biological mother) and the friend who donated his sperm, (he is listed on the birth certificate), as the 3 legal parents of the child.

Even the NRO’s normally abhorrent David Frum, weighed in rather reasonably for once:

The sperm donation industry exists only because the government agrees to enforce the contracts that make the whole thing possible. The man sells his paternal rights for $25 or $50; in exchange, the woman disclaims any right to support - and through this contract, the ensuing child is cut off from any rights to her father's care. This in a country where (as my AEI colleague Sally Satel points out) it is illegal to sell a kidney.

The best comments, in my opinion, though, come from long-time birthmother rights and adoption reform activist Lorraine Dusky. Published in the obscure Sag Harbor Express on January 4, Dusky’s commentary, which deserves wide distribution, Mary Cheney’s Baby Will Someday Ask: Who is My Daddy? (click on title) nails down the “rationale” of genetic anonymity through ART.

If love were truly all that mattered, Mary Cheney wouldn't be having a baby at all. She would have found someone to adopt. Maybe not a white infant of high intelligence and good health, since they are a scarce commodity in the baby business today-but certainly she and her partner could have found an older child that needs love and the finer things in life that their money and connections can buy.

No, for Mary Cheney, genes matter. It's her DNA that she wants carried to the next generation. The attitude is: genes do matter; except when the adults decide they don't. But note bene: it is not the origin of their own DNA they're saying doesn't matter. It's someone else's.

Dusky also writes:

Genes matter. Knowledge matters. Heritage matters. Love is not enough. Love does not answer questions. Love does not give one a sense of being a whole human being, the way answers about the most basic question--Who am I?--can.

LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH
I hope that every person entering into adoption or ART has pondered the questions of knowledge, identity, and love, how they braid through the lives of the documentary displaced and genetically engineered, and how as parents they will address them.

Nine years ago when I was doing some Bastard Nation outreach I had an interesting talk with a woman who had adopted an older child from foster care. I have thought back on that conversation freuquently. A couple years earlier he'd been removed permanently from his parents care and separated from his siblings due to abuse. The social worker told the new mom that love would fix it. It didn’t. Abuse, while an issue, was not the over-riding problem. He grieved the loss of his biological family and, who he had been. . By the time I heard this story, the boy was in his early teens. His adoptive mother had been able to fill in the blanks age-appropriately (thanks to “accidentally“ acquiring a detailed history), and she hoped he could meet his original family--or at least his siblings--when he felt ready, which he wasn‘t then. She believed the loss of who he was and would have been would always haunt him, no matter how well the adoption worked. And it was working well. She described it like this: imagine coming home one day to find your house empty. The furniture is gone. The carpet's been pulled up. Your family is gone. And you’re told to never think of that old house. It and everything in it didn’t exist, though you know it did.

This mother knew what many recipients of genetic anonymity know: where we come from--our stories-- is important. To have that information purposefully taken from us through statute, public policy, or by somebody’s “choice” is wrong.

As Lorraine Dusky writes, "The stories may not always be uncomplicated. And the conclusion may not always bring a happy ending. Relations may form, or they may not. But the story and the history will be uniquely theirs. Life will no longer revolve around a question."

Why would anyone want us to live with those questions?

Why would anyone want us not to know our stories? Our answers?

IT'S OFFICIAL! SB 2690 IS DEAD!

It's official! SB 2690, the Massachusetts bill that would have made some adoptees more equal than others, is dead. Outgoing governor Mitt Romney pocketed the bill. Of course, Bastardette, Bastard Nation, MARTA and all those who hold that records access are a right for all, not a whimsical dole-out for some, are thrilled. If this were New Year’s Eve we’d be popping corks. The downside though, is that Romney probably refused to sign the bill for all the wrong reasons. We find it incomprehensible that Romney, an L-d-S member in good standing, believes adoptees deserve anything but a baby buggy in every pot; a parent in every garage.

ABC, (Access to Uncertified Original Birth Certificates) who sponsored the original bill and let it get out of control with apparently little desire to stop it, was strangely quiet in the last few months. Well, everybody was. In the last year countless phone calls, emails, and letters to the bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Susan Fargo and key Mass leggies went unanswered. Every adoption reform/open records organization, national and Massachusetts-based, that I know of was stonewalled (except for ABC, I guess). Shut out. Even members of the press. Just like our records, the status of the bill was none of our business. SB 2690 wasn’t even on the Massachusetts Legislature webpage so opponents (or supporters, for that matter) could see what the state had in store for them. I don’t know about you, but that’s sure a weird way to run a legislative campaign--especially a campaign that’s supposed to alleviate secrets.

ABC has issued a statement on this “huge step forward” (throwing 34 years worth of adoptees in a black hole). They blow their cover:

Passage of a bill, which covers access to as many adopted people in the Commonwealth as possible, has been our sole priority since its inception ten years ago!

Think about it:

which covers as many people in the Commonwealth as possible

They were willing to go for less from from the starts. And remember that the original bill, SB 959, was a clean unrestricted bill with so much support in the Joint Committee that committee members virtually shouted down NCFA‘s Lee Allen when he spoke in opposition. I’ve heard stories from impeccable sources of how a good bill went bad. Until I have documentary evidence to back up those stories, I’m not going to post them. I’ll write only from my personal experience or documented sources.

ABC LEGITIMIZES ENEMY ARGUMENTS
Selling out Massachusetts adoptees should be enough to remove ABC from the ranks of adoption “reform.” But it gets worse. Read the ABC faq for the amended version of SB 959 which morphed into SB 2690:

Senate Bill #959 acknowledges an “implied promise” of confidentiality to some birth parents. These birth parents, who relinquished between July 14, 1974 and the present when all adoption records and birth certificates were sealed under Massachusetts law, believed that the adopted person would never have access to a birth parent’s identity.

ABC rolled over. And brags about it. “Implied promises" of confidentiality, debunked years ago by activists, legal scholars, judges, and many adoption professionals--and despite NCFA rhetoric, have never been demonstrated --is now accepted by Massachusetts deformers as “fact.” A lie we have to “respect.” Perhaps ABC will be so kind as to pull out those implied promises and share them with NCFA. Tom and Lee must be high fiving. Do I hear a chuckle in heaven?


ABC's statement, says it’s coming back with a new bill. Does the group actually believe it has credibility after this fiasco? What person who ABC so easily tossed in the black hole would believe a word they say? Ever?

ABC likes to say that the "clock needs stopped." That is, sealed records needs stopped. We agree. But in their attempt to get their name on a bill, ABC, instead of walking away in dignity, was willing to stop the clocks of a generation of adoptees. If they did it once do you think they’d hesitate to do it again?

ABC closes its statement calling SB 2690 “an historical milestone.” More like a millstone dragging Massachusetts adoptees down the river.

**********

Thanks to all who worked against SB 2690 and stood the course for our rights!

NOTE: Over the last 14 months I've written extensively on the Massachusetts situation So much, that it's difficult to put links here. If you want to read more, the best way is to use the Blogger search engine and type in "Massachusetts." or some other key word or use Google.

MORE ME ME ME: SHOULD WE TWO MOMMIES TELL THE CHILD WHO THE SPERM DONOR WAS?

More on anonymous "donation."

In today's Salon, "Baby Daddy or Not” asks advice columnist Cary Tennis if she and her partner, who are going for donor insemination, should use an anonymous contributor. Partner wants a faceless nameless dad, the writer wonders if they should use a known donor. The question of identity, unsuprisedly, doesn't play. "Baby Daddy," instead, is concerned about the need of the proposed child (especially if it turns out to be a boy) to have a "father" involved his/her life. She weirdly wonders that she may be suffering from "internalized homophobia" "that we need a man to raise a child."

Cary says, yeah, it would be nice to have a dad around, sure, but then gets to the heart of the issue:

All I know is what I would want. I would not want to know that I came from an anonymous sperm donor. I would want to know that I came from somebody. I would want to know who he is. I would want my birth to be acknowledged and celebrated by all parties responsible. If some man's sperm were responsible for me, I would want that man to be able to look at me with pride and say, Hey, that child and are players in the same incredible story of species survival...By frankly acknowledging how we got here, we honor that whole incredible genetic history. We honor biological reality. We honor science. We honor social progress and freedom. To go the other way, toward secrecy, just doesn't sit right with me.

There are quite a few responses to the article (76 so far), including mine, "This is not about pitching a ball. Its about identity rights." Some responses are good. Some, of course, actually a quite a few, are not. But except for an idiot named Al who thinks that war rape is good for "the local gene pool" in the long run, the discourse is about 47 steps above the WaPo trashing of Katrina Clark.

Whenever I read one of these articles on ART I'm reminded that there is no difference between baybee entitled adopters and baybee entitled ARTsians. It's all about them. Of course, not all parents involved in either of these family building schemes are selfish, cloddish mini-me's. In fact, I think a lot of people get it. But as long as identity and narcissistic child acquisition are "all about me," secrets will continue to be protected for the people who shell out the money and have the most to “lose." And the rest of us continue to get the old screw you.

WHY GO BACK 50 YEARS? DETROIT NEWS READERS HAMMER NATURAL MOMS

Nail meet hammer!

Two weeks ago the Detroit News published a remarkable series of articles, "Empty Arms/Empty Hearts," on the social management of the unwed pregnant during the baby snatch era. Reporter Marney Rich Keenan relied heavily on the narratives of Detroit-area women much as Ann Fessler did nationally in The Girls Who Went Away. You can access the entire series from this point, and then hit the various links on the right to read all.

Reponses to the series appeared in the News on December 27. They are not nice. Except for 2 letters, one from a snatchered nmom Susan Schnirring and the other from CUB’s Region 3 Director, Mary Ross, the letters charge Keenan and The News with pushing….you guessed it…abortion! So what if abortion has nothing to do with the women featured in the article? Can we expect any less from chattering anti-abortion busybodies who view every mention of “adoption” as an awesome opportunity to exploit their pet bete noir; any criticism of how it operates as "anti-adoption"?

Bastardette, of course, should have seen it coming. Having misspent 2 weeks of her youth each summer luxuriating on the beach at Gratiot Inn on Lake Huron, however, I thought a little better of Michiganders. Nonetheless, ruffling the feathers of the Golden Goose isn’t something that MSM does every day. In retrospect, why should Michiganders be any different than say South Dakotans or Mary Ann Kuharski when it comes to the yin and yang of abortion and adoption?

Transgressive mothers dissatisfied with their lot obviously are of the same ilk as that other recent troublemaker, ART trophy, Katrina Clark. Ungrateful, whiney, entitled, selfish, clueless birthmothers (Scott & Jamie Bahr) who speak out are culpubable sluts (Larry Gillis) who should celebrate not mourn their donation to the gene pool. How dare you voice an opinion about yourself! Shut up! Crawl back into your hole--and cover it up while you're at it! And those snotty anonytons they “gave life to” should be grateful, too. (Suzanne Calvano). Dad's aren't even rated.

According to these chatterers, coerced abortion is the real problem, not coerced adoption which after all has a happy ending--for somebody. No "real woman," of course, would ever undertake an abortion willingly. Abortion, for these snoops, never has a happy ending. That coercion in both instances denies female agency and is always wrong escapes these know-it-alls. To them the end is always more important than the means. Female agency doesn’t mean squat. Women are stupid.

Come to think of it, I did see it coming. Bastardette has sat through enough legislative hearings, read enough editorials, and listened to enough evangelical folderol and adoption “theology” to know that we always lose when these people claptrap their way into the statehouse and fly their baybee banners. They know nothing about adoption, but since when has that stopped them from spreading their factoids into every nook and cranny of the brains of legislators and newspaper readers? These frauds like to say they “sympathize” with adoptees who want their identities. They like to say they “commiserate” with birthparents who “believe” that they were treated poorly. But the sun goes down on us. These refugees from the loony bin have to “save the baybees” from the likes of us selfish uppity bastards and desperate housewhores without whom there would be no adoption to start with. We should just “get on with it” and tend our picket fences. We should sacrifice our genealogies, histories, and rights--make ourselves invisible--so the wingnuts can doze comfortably behind their Do Not Disturb signs.

Break out your hammers! Pry those signs off their doors! These are OUR lives, not their imaginary mythologies that keep them warm at night.

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The letters are short enough to re-publish here, but I’ll make you look at them yourself. As always you need the full effect.

Go here to write see how to send a Letter to the Editor. Marney Rich Keenan can be reached at mkeenan@detnews.com.