BABYKLAPPE NEIN DANKE! GERMAN ETHICS COUNCIL SAYS NO TO BABY DUMPING

Oh Oh! The English language edition of Deutsche Welle, the expat The Local out of Hamburg, and dozens of German language media sources this weekend reported that the German Council on Ethics has called for the closing of the country's 80 Babyklappen (Baby Flaps/Baby Hatches). In American lingo: anonymous birth and baby dumping.

Deutsche Welle reported that the Council called babyklappen "illegal,"while The Local says "morally 'problematic."

The babyklappen statement itself is not posted on The Council's website, so we must go with news reports.

The Local quotes the statement:

But on Thursday the Council said that the hatches, which parents have used to give up some 500 babies so far, should be closed because the most at-risk women fail to use them and they deny children the right to know their origins.

“The German Ethics Council suggests that pregnant women and mothers in emergency situations be aided as much as possible without damaging the rights of others - their children in particular,” a statement said.

Deutchse Welle reported (my emphasis):

But most of the 26-person ethics committee, which includes scientists and legal experts and church leaders, did not agree [with the minority of the committee that opposed the statement.] Some felt that the services created more problems than they solved and even encouraged mothers to abandon their offspring.

"Clearly, this option creates a demand that was not there before," said committee member Ulrike Riedel.

With dozens of news stories, nearly all in German, it's difficult for a non-German reader to suss out the whys and whos of the recommendation and the dissent, I've Google-translated several but am using English language sources in this entry. Here's more.

The Local: It has been possible to give up babies without providing one's name since the 1999s, with around 130 hospitals in Germany offering anonymous births. In addition, there are around 80 baby hatches, warm incubators often in the walls of hospitals, where women can leave babies anonymously who are then put up for adoption.

Advocates of the system say it helps women who might otherwise have their babies alone and could stop newborns from being harmed or killed. Baby flaps, they say, allow women to give up children without leaving them on cold hospital doorsteps.

Deuche Welle: Instead, the council said that women in need should be better informed of the help available to them. It recommended the introduction of a 24-hour hotline for affected women and placements in homes for mothers and children.

The council said that the legality of anonymous adoption was problematic legally because it damages the rights of children to know where they come from.

Here's some reaction to the recommendation:

The Local (my emphasis): On Friday, the Catholic Women’s Welfare Service, which oversees 19 baby hatches, said the call for change deserved recognition. “We simply can’t continue this way,” the organisation’s leader Maria Elisabeth Thoma (right) told daily Frankfurter Rundschau, adding that the legal concerns of the Ethics Council were convincing. She encouraged the German government to find a way to insure legal certainty for the mothers and children in such situations.

Meanwhile deputy parliamentary floor leader for Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Ingrid Fischbach (left) told daily Rheinische Post that the country needs a new legislation to protect the rights of mothers and babies. “We want a law that insures confidential birth and improves the counselling services for pregnant women in need,” she told the paper. This law would include temporary anonymity for women who wished to give up their babies. After a limited period of time their information would be handed over to the civil registry office where it could potentially be accessed by their child.

Baby Chums (direct link won't work with Blogger; go to www.babychums.com and type "babbyklappen in search engine) reported from the Rheinische Post, further (my emphasis):... the party’s deputy parliamentary floor leader Ingrid Fischbach said, “We want a law that insures confidential birth and improves the counseling services for pregnant women in need.” Fischbach stated that such a law would make the anonymity of a woman who wants to giver up her baby temporary rather than permanent. A civil registry office would receive the relevant demographic information of the mother after a short period of time, making it potentially available to the children later.

"We want to create a law for confidential birth and extend the advice for pregnant women in need," senior Christian Democrat Ingrid Steinbach told the Rheinische Post newspaper.

Back to Deutsc Welle: In the emotionally-charged ethics council debate, those in favor of anonymous services said that there was no better alternative.

The central committee of Germany's Catholics said that anonymous births in hospitals saved the lives of children and offered mothers safety and a protected space for the delivery.

"In many cases, the mother subsequently decides in favor of spending her life with her child," said committee president Alois Glueck.

******

A December 5, 2006 Deutsche Welle, article, Germany debates ethics of anonymous birth, outlined the arguments the Ethics Council brought forward as well as opposition arguments:

But while the advocates of Babyklappen say they prevent distraught women from leaving their babies to die in cellars or garbage cans, the critics say they offer women a convenient way of getting rid of an unwanted baby without having to jump through daunting bureaucratic hoops

Not so, said [Katrin" Kliesow [director of the Hamburg based baby saving organization Sternipark]:

"Obviously, we'd rather talk to the women first and offer support," she said. "The Babyklappe should only ever be a last resort. But these women are having a baby, whatever happens, and it's first and foremost a question of helping them do so safely, and without risk of legal recrimination."

Here's the real kicker: Anonymous birth in Germany is indeed illegal! Here's a lengthy quote from the same article: (my emphasis)

Nonetheless, their defense -- well-meaning as it is -- also highlights the problems inherent in anonymous birth. Ethical matters such as child's right to know its parents and a parent's duty to a child aside, law experts agree the practice is actually illegal, but tolerated.

Every time a hospital carries out an anonymous birth, it's committing a criminal offence," said CDU member of parliament Beatrix Philipp, a vocal opponent of the Babyklappen. "By offering this service, you actually create a demand. A generation of foundlings is emerging in Germany, with state approval. It's time public prosecutors intervened to shut down these Babyklappen and ensure anonymous birth is not legitimized by hospitals."

Alfred Wolf, a professor of law at the Humboldt University who has written extensively on the issue, agreed.

"What it does is actually encourage women to break the law," he said. "We don't even need new laws, we need to enforce existing ones. This is a violation of public order. No matter how desperate these women might be, they always have legal options available to them."

******

Sound familiar? Creates a demand that wasn't there before.

Babyklappen will not go gently into the night. Feminist, socialist, Green, and religious do-gooders seem ready to put up a battle against sane people. And it looks like Catholics are split. This could get interesting. How Germany handles its babyklappen could influence the outcomes in other countries that have started similar NGO programs--especially since each member of the EU has a national Ethics Council. But how much power does an Ethics Council exert? I have no idea.

******

Look at the picture below and tell me what it is.

When I first saw it, I said, "a bun warmer." I showed it to a friend who knows nothing about baby dumps in the US or Germany. His first reply was: "the Ark of the Covenant." Hmm, try again. "A pizza oven." What do you think it is?

Answer: A BABYKLAPPEN!

TROY DUNN TALKS ABOUT GLADNEY AND RECORDS

I was going to write about something else today, but I'm going to fix dinner and go read a book that has nothing to do with adoption. The rest can wait.

In the meantime, check out what Troy Dunn has to say about NCFA founding agency, the Gladney Center over on Lorraine Dusky's First Mother, Birth Mother Forum under The Worst Adoption Agency in the World: Gladney.

Dunn posted a comment to an earlier entry from Lorraine about the repulsive HufPo piece, Adopting a New Attitude, by the repulsive faux feminist and adopter Peggy Drexler. Lorraine has reposted Dunn's entire comment now in a separate entry.

I know that some people don't care for Dunn, but what he says about Gladney records "practice" is important to get out to as many people as possible. Dunn, writing on why he takes few Gladney search cases told Lorraine:

The reason for our hesitancy is simple- the majority of the cases we have reviewed/researched/solved from Edna Gladney were stuffed full of pages and pages of falsified documents.

And then goes into detail.

Can anyone doubt that Gladney is the first cousin of Georgia Tann?

I have an article on Dame Edna published in a late 1940s issue of Collier's on the lengths Gladney and her troops went to to hide her "girls" and babies from fathers and families. The FBI must have modeled it's witness protection program on The Gladney Plan. It went beyond obsessive, even for it's time. I need to dig it out and write about it soon.

DO NOT BE FOOLED.
THE GLADNEY CENTER IS NOT A MOVIE SET.
IT IS REAL!

"FIND MY FAMILY" REDUX

Adoption law scholar Elizabeth Samuels has a letter in Saturday's Washington Post in response to TV critic Tom Shales scathing review of Find My Family: The family weep-stakes. I agree with his broader critique of the show and its reality porn genre, but did Shales have to muck up his cultural criticism with a cheap shot at first parents Sandy and Scotty Steinpas:

Then the Steinpases decided to forget about the legally binding agreement they'd signed in 1979, pledging not to search for their former baby or upset her home life. Why should Scotty and Sandy let a nasty old contract get in the way of their whims?

WTF??? Of all the complaints I could raise about Find My Family, some alleged breech of contract is as far away from my radar as Antoine Vermette's reaction to the latest Columbus Blue Jacket's loss. To show how far away that is, I had to look up the Bluejacket's roster to come up with his name to write that last sentence.

Shales sees himself as a latter-day Gilbert Seldes. He treats TV like it's theatre or film--an admirable, but in the case of Voyeur TV--absurdist endeavour. Reality porn is not Man of Aran or Hour of the Furnaces. It's not even The Truman Show. Shales seems to object that Find My Family is bourgie melo without Douglas Sirk artfully lifting the rock. Actually, the rock is lifted, it's the artlessness of the whole thing that gets to him. The sordidness of teen sex. The intrusiveness of tiny cameras. The copious public tears. The commodification of private space. The ungrateful bastard.

The media is the message.

The media is the cheap massage the public craves.

BB Church writes:

These shows succeed by creating empathy with the audience, who are the not-adopted. The not-adopted can, for a half hour at least, imagine what it would be like to lose ones family and then find them. A neat bundle of instant catharsis. The fact that our government creates and regulates the crisis just complicates things…

Find My Family, Shales says, reminds him of the pioneer creepie peepie gendered shows Queen for a Day, It Could Be You, This is Your Life, and the "shut-in" favorite Strike It Rich with Warren Hull, popular daytime shows full of tears and cool consumer shit and reunions with long lost family members, teachers, and lovers. As a child Bastardette voraciously consumed these shows. I once, no kidding, saw Joan Rivers reunited with her sister, a lawyer. They didn't seem real long-lost. Only bi-coastal. Everything is phony.

Shales moans:

It really is amazing how far back in television history these for-profit invasions of privacy go -- and depressing to face the fact that they'll probably never go away.

Of course, it's depressing, and of course they'll go on. Adoption records remain sealed. and the public loves melo as long as they're not the subject of it. Significantly, Shales forgets...the government created the mess that is sealed birth certificates that created Find My Family. And he forgets...

There is no "invasion of privacy" when all parties willingly forgo their "privacy,"an act of autonomy. Shales, the cultural critic of privilege, can't comprehend that Find My Family contestants (and that's what they are) WANT to, dare I say, find their family. Due to moronic identity stripping laws that de-identify families and anonymize its members in the name of a state-convoluted and enforced "privacy right" to protect the adopted from themselves and their biological families, they can't. So when a show like Find My Family or its progenitor, The Locator comes along they jump through hoops to get on. To the political bastard, searching is a subversive act. Searching is a political act. Unfortunately, the contestants so far seem to prefer sentimental reunion to political action. Too bad, since a bastardcentric show could be politically energizing. Screw you, Wisconsin!

Shales, the TV intellectual, doesn't see adoption like the rest of us who live it. He worries himself over a spurious breach of contract he pulled out his nose, when the real problem is government confiscation and sealing of our birth records and the state's continued interference in our personal relationships, something you'd think a cultural critic could get his teeth in. As Bastard Nation writes,

Generally, however, the courts have determined the right to privacy to mean protection of individuals from government intrusion, not the right of one individual to remain anonymous from another."

But, it's not as if the producers of Find My Family bring it up, and nobody asks and nobody tells.

Here is the Sirkian irony Shales so needs to revisit. Elizabeth Samuels opened the door in her WaPo letter:

They [contract promises] were a condition imposed upon the birth parents, without consideration for the future wishes of the child. The birth parents surrendered all rights and would not even know whether the child was adopted or kept in long-term care. After adoption, documents in the hands of adoptive parents often contained the birth mother's name.

Now, in a piece of cruel irony, when birth mothers overwhelmingly support proposed state laws to give their adult children access to their original birth certificates, the mothers are told that the certificates were sealed to protect their anonymity. It is not a whim to grieve the loss of a child and to long to know whether the now-grown child is alive and well.

There are plenty of reasons to genuinely dislike Find My Family The show manipulates exploits, and weeps. It sentimentalizes adoption "dysfunction" as a personal and individual "problem" not policy rot. It perpetuates the ideology of adoption secrets and shame by remaining silent on sealed records. It leaves the adoption industry and its political lobby untouched. It would probably be too much, though. to expect a reality show to be anything other than what it is: inexpensive, easily-made entertainment in a time of political and economic uncertainty. One person's incarceration is another person's escape.

Still, Find My Family (and The Locator) are visual documents well worth studying and deconstructing for what they say about adoption and the relation of bastards to the state. If your issue gets made into a reality show, then you're in serious trouble.

KITTIES SPEAK OUT ABOUT ADOPTION

I'm doing some editing and research today. I don't have much time and asked the Bad Cats, Abbie and Jonathan, to write my blog. As foundlings themselves, they are very sensitive about adoption, especially their own. All we know of their past is that their mother, suspected of being an undocumented Siamese, was allegedly run over by a horse trailer in West Virginia when they were but a few days old. The babies, and their brother Tiger, were rescued by Bruce, Brenda, and Sean and, brought to Columbus. Eventually they ended up with me.

The kitties wanted to tell their own story. They spent the day scouring the 'net hunting down possible relatives and friends of their mother Unfortunately, their drive-by dad is unknown. Everyone they talked to either clammed up at the words," Iz youz my famblieez?" or told them to "shutz yer trap, be grateful you iz in Columbus, Ohio and not on a farm outside of Buckhannon eating micees."

The poor kitties were so traumatized they had to double up on catnip and take to their respective beds in their respective rooms. (They suffer huge attachment issues and refuse to share a bed, much less a dinner.)

Up until today, although missing a piece of their lives they were content with their lot. Being "chosen" they were "special." A princess and prince. Now that they know they are on the same level as human adoptees they are hissy-pissed, locked and loaded.

THANKSGIVING: I'M GRATEFUL FOR CELEBRITY ADOPTERS!

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Since Bastardette regards cooking something people are paid to do, BF Bastard and I did China Dynasty this year. Big Chinese buffet along with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, and some knockout maple syrup mashed sweet potatoes. I considered taking pictures of my meal to post here, but that's just so....Facebook!

Since everyone is saying how grateful they are this season, I suppose I should add my two cents: I am not grateful for the legislatures of 44 states and their industry bullies and hangers-on that continue to treat bastards as chattel. I'm grateful, however, for my Bastardette buddies, Bastard Nation, good friends, family, and the Bad Cats.

But most of all, I'm grateful for celebrity adopters, the true heroes of National Adoption Awareness Month. Without them, adoption would be as popular as the wringer washer, the buggy whip, and beta videos. Their altruistic acts of child gathering are an inspiration to middle America. Adoption = upward mobility. There's a little bit of Hollywood in each of us, and what better way to live like a star than to adopt.

Jim Hamilton posted this on nu.adult.adoption on Facebook and it's worth re-posting here as NAAM wears down: a photo album of 110 Celebrity Adopters. As Jim wrote: bring on the towel!

Personally, I think it takes a lot of chutzpah to include a picture of Joan Crawford and her abusee Christina. And I'm disappointed that the album doesn't include Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young (who pretended to adopt), Andy Devine, Wallace Berry (!) Dick Powell and June Allyson (1 Tann acquisition), Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson, Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and June Haver.

Whereis Zazu Pitts? She and her husband Tom Gallery adopted Marvin Carville LaMarr, son of Zazu's close friend silent screen actress Barbara LaMarr ("the girl to beautiful to live") after LaMarr died in 1926 of TB and nephritis aided by mean smack and coke habit. Gallery grew up to be a prominent LA-based boxing promoter, actor, and TV sports executive. A couple years ago he told the LA Times that he's writing a book about his mother.

Inexplicably, Jane Russell is off the A List. Russell (dated BF Bastard's uncle before Howard Hughes snatched her away) and husband football star Bob Waterfield, adopted three children. For decades she was an active adoption promoter, especially international adoption. She founded WAIF (World Adoption International Fund --no webpage) that is reported responsible for the adoption of 51,000 babies.

If I were to be adopted by a celebrity, I'd choose Jamie Lee Curtis and Art Buchwald, though not as a couple. Christoper Guest might object and Buchwald is dead. If given a choice between Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, I'd take Madonna. She's got a good art collection and great underwear.

"SAFE HAVEN" SURVIVOR

In Columbus this summer a Grove City-area woman "surrendered" her newborn (and on Bastardette) into the Ohio "safe haven" program. Later, she and her mother talked to Columbus Dispatch reporter Rita Price about what had happened According to them, the 20-year old mother agreed to the "safe haven" under the influence of delivery-room medication. She received no counseling and was under the impression that "safe haven was a "Christian adoption program" not an anonymous baby mill. Naturally, officials at Doctors Hospital have refused comment. Last we heard, the mother had gone to court to retrieve her baby. (I am working on a longer piece on this case and ODJFS shenanigans for here and broader publication).

This woman is one of the very few "safe haven" mothers who have been granted a public voice, be it ever so small. Now, we have another voice: Melissa from Michigan.

Melissa sent her story to blogger Baby Love Child, in response to an earlier entry on "safe haven" mislabeling." While her comments remain on that entry, BLC has also posted them together with a short commentary in a separate entry A Critical Perspective on Baby Safe Haven Baby Dump Programs. Melissa tells us that in 2001 as a panicked teen who had just give birth secretly, she "safe havened" her son in a Westland Michigan hospital with the "help" of an adoption agency. She writes in part:

I never had any intentions on throwing my baby in a trash can nor did I want to abandon my baby under such a law but was in shock from delivering a butt breach baby and was terriffied because I hid my pregnancy. The adoption agency I dealt with was evil and self serving and repeatedly tried to talk me out of filing for custody telling how I would regret my child and it would ruin my life which none of that is true my son is the best part of my life hes an amazing little boy. Something needs to be done about these laws its being a abused by all people involved and it disgusts me this law was put into effect to keep young women from throwing newborns in trash cans not to circumvent adoption laws among other things its been used for...

To rescind the "safe haven" Melissa and her family were forced into a 5 week legal battle full of dirty adoption agency tricks. Basically, they were able to "buy" back her child from the state and the agency for about $20,000 in legal expenses. The kicker: the agency turned around then and tried to sue Melissa for ITS legal fees. Melissa does not name the agency, but I can think of a couple of prime suspects up there.

This is an important story and I hope you all read it. It sounds way too familiar.

Thank you Melissa for telling the truth about state baby dumping!

FIND MY FAMILY: WHERE'S THE RECORDS?

Did any of you watch Find My Family last night? It's the talk of the AdoptaSphere. "Unfortunately," I didn't. The CRAZY HOUSEGUEST commandeered my TV to download off his Play Station (or whatever he does) a lecture by some crackpot talking about lizard people who colonized earth a million years ago, circle the earth eternally to"protect" their half-blood progeny (us), and promise to unplug the Federal Reserve if things get too dicey. They also oppose the European Union and Barrack Obama. (I am NOT kidding)

It's always folly to talk about a TV show you haven't seen, but since this is my blog I'll do it anyway. So far, the reaction in AdoptionLaLaLand to Find My Family, except for Lorraine Dusky who liked it, has been a lot of "triggering" and weeping over reunion, even if adoptaviewers claim they hate the show. Beat me. It feels so good.

I figure Find My Family must be pretty bourgeois since do-gooders aren't complaining as they did over Who's Your Daddy, which, with its big boobed adoptee/soft porn actress on the make, truly was fun. (NOTE to the National Council for Adoption and The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute: Nobody cares what you think. Who's Your Daddy did not destroy adoption as you moaned. Adoption is doing a quite nice job of destroying itself without TV's help.)

I've read a couple of open boards on the program. (ABC is probably the most civil) There's the usual spate of ungrateful-you-could-have-been-aborted lectures and, don't-worry-be-happy chripers on the other side. Adopters complain that their leg of the "triad" (there we go again with that naughty word!) was kicked out from under them in the reunion, aka after all we did for you. Well....Will Robinson... for once something about adoption is about the two who got the shit end of the stick...not you. (The reviewer on that site, btw, really really hates the show, but not for the reasons we could hate it for.)

Naturally, the elephant...er gorilla... in the room is sealed records. The ever witty, astute, and acid-fingered Ron Morgan (right at Studio City "Honk if you're my Daddy" action) posted on FauxClaud D'Arcy's FB page:

It's the 800 lb gorilla in the green room...shows like this thrive on mystifying the process of identity theft and positioning sentimentality in it's place. "somehow this person NEVER KNEW their family of origin but tonight they will be REUNITED! And now a word from Preparation H...."

Of course, reunion shows wouldn't be so titillating to the lego public if bastards could just walk down to their local vital stats or courthouse and pick up their birth certificates at leisure like everybody else.

Another thing bothers me. Who's doing the searches? Reportedly no one was acknowledged on the show. TV searches are outsourced to professionals. I know someone who did one. Since Troy Dunn's got his own gig now, who's there to pick up the slack? Rumor has it: search angels. Now, I am aware of some excellent search angels, but they are few and far between. Do we need to go there? And why would anyone work for ABC for free?

I've always thought that reunion shows were soft propaganda (and I admit it...my guilty pleasure, like Lawrence Welk.) Everyone is so benign and teary and happy, unlike the way the government portrays us. Nobody bitchslaps her mother. Even the doofiest adoptee gets big hugs from his mom and sisters. The occasional aw-shucks dad is as dangerous as Ozzie Nelson. It all seems natural and harmless to KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM, even if the government tags you a Bader Meinhoff lamster or Charlie Manson is your dad. For legos it's genealogy. For bastards it's homewrecking.

There's no movement to ban reunion shows from TV. The shows feel good. They're warm-hearted, especially during the there's no-place-like-home-for-the-holidays platitudinal season. Too bad, then, that all of those Barcoloungers who find reunion shows so heart-warming, homey, and lovely-dovey, like a warm cup of hot buttered rum, don’t put their money or their body where their mouth is and demand that lawmakers unseal obcs in their own states.

Unfortunately, we live a country where the simulacrum that plays on the screen is "real," bereft of archaic laws, high muckety-murky legislators, and snake-oiled adoption industrialists and their special interest self-perpetuating smirkers and thugs on both side of the aisle. So why mess up an entertaining reality show with reality? And politics? Let the monkeys dance!

Will Find My Family, as some hope, become a forum to expose the sealed records system? It's highly doubtful. Find My Family, full of melo and tears, won't shit in its own box.

November 25,2009 1-:55 AM, Addenda: Triona Guidry (adoptee73) has a good blog today on the show: Adoption, search, reunion, Is reality TV good for our rights, or adoption exploitation? She writes:

What we need are some shows that follow the demonstrations for our rights, the late nights writing letters to legislators and the media, the indignity of trying to say your piece while those same legislators are walking out on your testimony.

I cannot remember any national show covering adoptee civil rights since MSNBC's April 2, 1997 The Site: "Parent Search" segment with Soledad O'Brien. Producers worked closely with Bastard Nation, we were heavily featured. The end product was very good. The link is no longer available from the network. 12 years and nothing else?

JOAN WHEELER IS A BAAAAD GIRL!

Monday's CBS News published a lengthy article, Adoptees face sting of discrimination. Joan and her crappy adoption story were featured.

This entry isn't about Joan's story however. You can go to her Forbidden Family webpage and blog and read about it (and her forthcoming book) yourself.

This entry is about the reaction to the story: the usual shut-up and be grateful comments. It was bad enough that Joan is sufficently ungrateful for being adopted and lied to in the most egregious ways, but when she voiced her unhappiness with the CBS article itself and offered up corrections, she went from being just plain ungrateful and whiney to being a heathenish example of what's wrong with Americans today. She wasn't called a Communist, though she clearly is!

I think my favorite responses are:

I was adopted forty years ago in CA. I always like to say that God chose my parents for me after I was born.....

Posted by:
napsan22 1:23 PM

Wendy - God does not make mistakes. He gave you to your birth mother who gave you to your parents. Just a thought.

Posted by:
tjsills 10:06 AM

I am very worried that once the openness of adoptions may come out, there will be an even bigger rise in abortions. People have abortions often to hide what they have done. Before abortions people were hidden away or ran away to give birth. Making everything "open" would set us back so far. There are plenty of "open" adoptions now. As far as those "way back", IF your birth parents are looking for you they will find YOU. Do NOT go looking for them and force your way in. There are too many ways to find each other and if you don't, then assume that it's because they don't want to be found. You truly don't know what you may have been saved from. Times have changed but we should force people chosing life to be put back in a closet or to make an even worse choice.

Posted by: kab4usa10:37 AM

I must say that once again I see one of America's problems: accountability. I did not succeed because I "was adopted." I didn't get the job because I "was adopted." I did not go to college because I "was adopted." Pick yourself up and move beyond. As a child that was adopted almost 41 years ago, I can say that I was lucky. Yes, I am white and was adopted by a white family. My older brother was not. Never once did I feel ashamed or unwanted. Never once was I discriminated against. Never once did I not feel apart of the family. If anything, I was special. This article is crazy and places people's issues and burdens on others instead looking towards the real source, oneself.
Posted by
marybethandtpurvis Nov-23

But this entry is also about other reactions.

One of the real fun things about blogging or having a webpage is going through your stats to see who or what is reading you. Why is someone in Albania reading about sealed birth certificates in Illinois? Why does somebody in Peru care about what I have to say about Madonna? Who could be looking for what with the keywords "Utah, Grand Funk Railroad, firemen, douchebag?" And, it's always fun to check out the people and organizations I've pissed off. European Adoption Consultants, for instance, went through a spell of checking in on me about every 90 minutes. For awhile I had a regular visitor from Haliburton. Apparently after the CBS article hit, Joan's stats hit the roof propelled by some pretty impressive ISPs.

Joan sent me and other activists the following email and has given me permission to repost it here. She adds that after further investigation it is the US House not the White House that's checking her out.

Dear Friends in Adoption Reform,

Thanks to the negative/postive publicity of the ABC news article

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/adoptees-cite-discrimination-landmark-study-push-open-birth/story?id=9138141

my website is booming from readership in Washington, DC!

http://forbiddenfamily.com.

The Pentagon is reading my website! Ohhh! I am such a threat!!! Various IPs from around Washington have been reading my website for weeks, while my dysfunctional sisters still are causing me trouble to the point I must go to the police to stop their interference.

The White House also looked in on my website.

Yippey!!!

Will Somebody finally start paying attention to the real issues??

Oh, Maybe I'll be arrested. Good.

Go make some comments on my website. Make some comments on your own websites.

Discrimination against adoptees and our natural parents in the form of government seizure of our birth birth certificates and fraudulent new ones must end! We must win the civil rights to the truth of our births!

Sorry to be making blanket emails, and for not re-joining some memberships. Money is tight, but I will be back to BN and AAC and others soon. I have even let go my activism on Change dot gov. Dying parents and getting my book out are time consuming.

Love to all of you!!!

Joan

Joan also asked me to let you know:

Please make a note in your blog that I just got a call from the hospital. My adoptive mother is having a four hour blood transfusion right now --- 9pm.

We wish Joan well, and congratulate her for stirring up the trogs.

Hit Joan's website! Hit the CBS site. Hit your blogs. Bastards never shut up!

MARLEY MISSING FROM SHELTER

I haven't said anything about this before, but now that it's hit the press, I thought it best if you heard about it from me personally. I was put up for adoption.

A few days ago I was "surrendered" to the Citizens for Humane Action shelter in Columbus: Marley Missing from Citizens for Humane Action Center... but don't worry, I was stolen back. And during adoption hours no less. It was quite an experience, and not over yet. Yesterday we were in Obetz, but I think we're headed for St. Paul.

It's tough blogging on the lam , especially since my parents won't tell me why they took me to CHA in the first place. I know a lot of people call me a dog and a bitch, but I didn't think my own family would disown me. I mean what have I done to deserve this? Personally, I think it has something to do with National Adoption Awareness Month. Mom and dad were touched by the sad stories of desperate lonely couples they read about in the paper. I believe in a moment of utter but misjudged compassion, gave me up to make someone else happy. Surrender in haste. Regret at leisure.

THE AAC AND ADOPTEE RIGHTS: A REPLY TO THE EXAMINER

The Examiner has a 4-part interview with Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress. Part 3 is dedicated to the AAC's policy on records access. Eileen talks out of both sides of her mouth:

Adoptees never agreed to the sealing of their birth certificates, and no one had the right to forbid them access to the key document that is available to all other citizens. The AAC does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate, because they relinquished all parental rights, including the right to control the birth certificate access. The appropriate balance is the one enacted in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine - the birthparent can file a contact preference form, to indicate a willingness for contact.

and

The AAC believes that the decision to compromise must be made at the state level, depending on the assessment of local advocacy groups.

I've been meaning to write a response to a statement along the same lines that Eileen made in the last issue of the AAC newsletter, The Decree. I still intend to, but this Examiner statement needs to be answered now.

I sent off a response to the Examiner, but (I think) due to space limitations only the first four paragraphs appear. Here is my comment in full with some re-writing and a one-paragraph addition towards the end.

MY REPLY

Unfortunately, Ms. McQuade' statements contradict each other.

While the AAC in theory "does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate” in practice it supports and promotes legislation, inside and outside its organization, that includes restrictions on access such as disclosure vetoes (DV) white-outs, and prospective measures that leave large groups of people behind.

The AAC opposed Bastard Nation's successful ballot initiative in Oregon saying we would turn the clock back 20 years. Yet in the 20 years they had been in operation at that time, they and their friends had not gotten passed one single unrestricted access bill, though they’d gotten discriminatory restricted bills in place which continue to muck up the civil rights for the adopted in those states making our job much more difficult.

Not one state--ever-- has fixed any compromised law. Once the state has made a DV agreement with a parent, it cannot unilaterally change the law and lift the DV. Even if a DV-state passes a bill retroactively opening all records, DVs on file would remain valid, leaving a blacklist of adoptees that cannot get their obcs unless their individual DV is rescinded—even by court order.

The ACC, no matter what its stated political view may be, is at heart reunionist. Its records agenda is based in desire, not rights. Bastard Nation certainly does not oppose search/reunion, but that’s not the issue. The issue is rights.

All arguments for obc access must flow from the presumed right of all adults to unrestricted access and possession of their original birth certificates, not just a majority class. Otherwise the right to one's birth certificate is not a right but simply a favor the state grants to some, a proposition which we doubt courts want to consider. The real issue, then, moves beyond “reunion” and the personal to the public and the political: who owns your identity: you or the state? What interest does the state have in keeping your birth certificates sealed? What is adoptees’ relationship to the state?

These are questions the AAC and other reunion-based groups neither address nor seem to take seriously.

Bastard Nation has drawn the winnable blueprint for change. Before BN developed its successful no-compromise strategies, only two states in the country allowed obc access to adoptees, Kansas and Alaska, both of which had never sealed records. Unrestricted access is now the law in four new states. Oregon and Alabama were direct BN projects. In New Hampshire we worked with a loose coalition of organizations and individuals, including AAC members. (right) Our own Janet Allen, a member of the NH House, worked tirelessly for passage with sponsor Sen. Lou D'Allesandro. We were not involved in Maine, but the folks there clearly followed BN's no-compromise principles. Without BN's clear vision, courage and core beliefs, none of those states would be open today.

Reformists can't be as dumb as the box of rocks they pretend to be. Yet, compromise on access, despite all proof to the contrary, remains their strategy of choice and ease. Reformists continue to take the same old tired path of self-defeatism for reasons that I can't even begin to comprehend. (NOTE: In 1999 Bastard Nation staged a protest at the old NCFA office in Washington, DC. In the Belly of the Beast was held during the AAC annual conference in a nearby Virginia suburb. When a couple of AAC board members exhibited an interest in attending the protest, AAC president Jane Nast not only forbade their attendance but called a mandatory board meeting for the same day and time to guarantee obedience to her and their absence from our ranks.)

The AAC has done some excellent work in other areas of adoption reform, but imo, they are the chief impediment to the restoration of our rights. Our natural opposition operates in a predictable manner: NCFA, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, “right to life” organizations, the Catholic Bishops. No matter what is proposed--clean or compromised--they don't budge their opposition. Reformists, however, go to great lengths to explain how they "believe" in clean bills. At the slightest sign of opposition they then inexplicably cast their principles before swine, hoping if they toss enough to them, they might get something. This waffling reeks of indecision, insecurity, and amateurism. Moreoever, the AAC by leaving the decision to compromise up to local groups indicates a lack of leadership and exhibits ideological weakness. Wag the dog. Wishy-washyness does not command the respect of NCFA et al and certainly not Bastard Nation. Why should it? They compromise clean bills. They promote discriminatory bills. They seldom pull a bill gone bad. Anything is better than nothing. “Baby steps” is better than nothing. The thing is, we aren’t babies.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Well, not really, but I started a major project of scanning and downloading lots of picture on my personal Facebook page. I'm working on strictly Bastard Nation pictures this weekend, but geared up with some Bastard Nation activities outside of the organization. Much of what I have is pre-digial camera so it's a big scan job. I'll have more pictures soon, but here's the first patch

California Open 2001 party, press conference and hearing for AB 1349, January 2002

Bastard Nation at the AAC 2007

Bastard Nation at the Ethics in Adoption Conference 2007

Bastard Nation at the AAC 2009

You don't have to have a Facebook account to see this.

ABC NEWS LOOKING FOR ADOPTEES: DISCRIMINATION

From Bastardette's Mailbox:

A reporter is looking for domestic adoptees who have experienced adoption-related discrimination and bias that carried over into adulthood. If anyone fits this description and is interested in talking to the media about it, please contact the reporter directly at:

Susan Donaldson James
Reporter/Producer
ABCNews.com
7 W. 66th St., 2nd Floor
New York, N.Y. 10023
212-456-4875 (office)
609-529-0268 (cell)

This may be related to the report the Evan B. Donaldson released today. When I get around to reading it, I may have something to say. Maybe not. You can find the Executive Summary with a link to the whole report here

BEYOND CULTURE CAMP: PROMOTING HEALTHY IDENTITY FORMATION IN ADOPTION

Authors: Hollee McGinnis, Susan Livingston Smith, Dr. Scott D. Ryan, and Dr. Jeanne A. Howard
Published: 2009 November. New York NY: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
Document Type: Research (112 pages)
Availability: PDF Full Report | Web Page | Press Release | Executive Summary

This study, released in November, is the broadest, most extensive examination of adult adoptive identity to date, based on input from the primary experts on the subject: adults who were adopted as children.

The principal recommendations of the 112 page study include:

* Expand parental preparation and post-placement support for those adopting across race and culture. Such preparation should include educating parents about the salience of race across the developmental course, instruction about racial identity development and the tasks inherent in such development, and assistance in understanding racial discrimination and how best to arm their children to combat the prejudice and stereotypes they will face. Preparation also should include the understanding that seeking services and supports is a positive part of parenting - i.e., it is a sign of strength, not failure.

* Develop empirically based practices and resources to prepare transracially and transculturally adopted youth to cope with racial bias. This study, as well as previous research, indicates that perceived discrimination is linked with greater psychological distress, lower self-esteem, and more discomfort with one's race/ethnicity. Hence, it is essential to arm transracially adopted youth with ways to cope with discrimination in a manner that does not negatively impact their identity.

* Promote laws, policies and practices that facilitate access to information for adopted individuals. For adopted individuals, gaining information about their origins is not just a matter of curiosity, but a matter of gaining the raw materials needed to fill in the missing pieces in their lives and derive an integrated sense of self. Both adoption professionals and the larger society need to recognize this basic human need and right, and to facilitate access to needed information for adopted individuals.

* Educate parents, teacher, practitioners, the media and others about the realities of adoption to erase stigmas and stereotypes, minimize adoption-related discrimination, and provide children with more opportunities for positive development. Generations of secrecy, shame and stereotypes about adoption (and those it affects) have taken a toll, as the respondents in this research make clear. Just as discrimination based on color, gender, sexual orientation and religion - all components of people's identity - are broadly considered to be socially unacceptable, adoption-related discrimination also should be unacceptable. Professionals and parents also need to be better informed about the importance of providing diversity and appropriate role models.

* Increase research on the risk and protective factors that shape the adjustment of adoptees, especially those adopted transracially/culturally in the U.S. or abroad. More longitudinal research that combines quantitative and qualitative methods is needed to better understand the process through which children, teens and young adults progress in confronting transracial adoption identity issues. Additional research is also needed on the identity journey experienced by in-race adoptees - and, pointedly, more of the studies of every kind need to include the perspective of adopted individuals themselves.

ADOPTION IS A FEMINIST ISSUE: DAWN FRIEDMAN TAKES ON THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION

Hey, Bastardette's friend, BEA (Buckeyes for Equal Accss) stalwart, and blogger Dawn Friedman takes the National Council for Adoption to task big time in BITCH today! Adopt-ation: A feminist take on the state of the adoption industry (NOTE TO DAWN: How can Bastardette pitch to BITCH!)

Here's a couple snips (NOTE: go to the original to download her links. Some aren't working with this format)

The NCFA is so all about adoption that they commonly speak out against the rights of adopted people to make their point. Their fight against the open records movement, (which argues that adult adopted persons have a right to their original, pre-adoption birth certificates) is based on the belief that it causes people to abort otherwise adoptable children.

Obviously, some number of women with unplanned pregnancies, who would otherwise choose adoption, would choose abortion if they could not choose adoption with the assurance of privacy. What that number would be is impossible to tell, but what does it need to be? The loss of human potential from even one abortion that would have been an adoption is unknowable. And the ratio of adoptions to abortions in New Hampshire is already extremely low. In 1996, New Hampshire had only 43 domestic infant adoptions placements for every 1,000 abortions.

From Consent versus Coercion: How SB335 Harms Adoption (a position paper about a New Hampshire bill that would allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates)

and

Right now the dominant voices in our cultural discussion of adoption are those like the NCFA who perpetuate stereotypes about the women who place their children and the women who receive them. It's a conversation that tries to erase the presence of the women who give birth to those children by pushing t-shirts that equate adoption with pregnancy thereby obliterating the origins of adopted people. The way we look at adoption – especially domestic infant adoption – is a manifestation of our Madonna/whore complex where birth mothers are saintly sinners – angelic enough to give away the babies they aren't good enough to keep.

We feminists need to start looking at adoption in new ways. We need to let the first mothers among us speak about their experiences past and present because their voices have been missing from our discussion. In the blogosphere we have feminist thinkers like FauxClaud, like Suz, like Jenna. (Suz and Claud right, blogging at the 2007 Ethics in Adoption conference). They can tell us how Juno will likely feel five years from placement, ten, twenty or more.

One quibble. Dawn writes:

Adoption is a feminist issue because it is a reproductive rights issue. It is an issue about the value of women as mothers and who has "earned" the right to be one. It's about how the states supports or does not support women who fall outside of the "good mother" rhetoric. It's about privilege. It's about class.

I absolutely agree with the last three sentences, but disagree on the first. Adoption is not a reproductive rights issue. Reproductive rights involves personal autonomy and right to decide to carry to term or not. Adoption involves a born, separate live person with fundamental rights.

Unfortunately organized mainstream feminist talk about adoption hasn't moved beyond the 1970s's consumerist/choice nobody-held-a-gun-to-your-head blather that blames a specific group of de-priviledged women for their own de-priviledging--that privileged feminists have been all too happy exploit without a care to get their hooks into babies. But as Dawn pointed out, adoption IS about privilege. I would add that adoption is mainly a middle class issue as well, since today the rich and poor are seldom on the giving end of the "adoption option." (Of course, that can always change with the economy)

There is little feminist critique of adoption outside of academia, and even there it is top-heavy with adopter discourse--some of it spot-on., and I don't want to dimiss it. But, Feminist Bastard and Feminist First Mother voices are generally limited to blogs, forums, and obscure conference workshops. I don't know why.

I've addressed adoption as a feminist issue here before in Open Letter to NOW: Is Maria Elena Salinas a Friend to Women , Surprise! No Reply from NOW! and probably some other entries I've forgotten about. Other Bastard Feminists who have written extensively on adoption are Baby Love Child and Janine Baer who published the pioneering Bastard Lesbian newsletter, Chain of Life.

I wrote this in my Open Letter to NOW, and I think it's worth repeating here now:

A few years ago I received an email from a member of New Jersey NOW who opposed the restoration of identity rights to adopted adults. She smacked my fingers and accused me of lacking “feminist credentials” and respect for women, especially “courageous” birthmothers.” I should shut up and be grateful that somebody adopted me and I wasn’t tossed in a dumpster.