New Jersey: ACLU's Deborah Jacobs Lobs Another Foul

A few days ago, the Parsippany Daily Record published a letter from Peter Franklin, a supporter of New Jersey's hugely flawed "Adoptees Birthright bill", ie, what passes for adoptee rights in the state. Mr. Franklin pointed out that while the American Civil Liberties Union protects the rights of "criminals and terrorists" (a practice Bastardette supports completely) it refuses to even entertain the thought that the Adopted Class has a right to its own original birth certificates. Mr. Franklin then turns the screw, observing that the NJ-ACLU board, which constantly yabbers about transparency in government, bars its great unwashed general membership from attending, much less speaking, at its meetings.

Sunday, Deborah Jacobs, the NJ-ACLU's bastard phobic executive director, wh onever met an adoptee who shouldn't be duct taped, responded to Mr. Franklin with a snooty letter in which she banged the ACLU's drum loudly proclaiming its grand authority in rights, implying that bastards are just dumb non-nuancing clucks who should be grateful somebody took us in.

The ACLU's experience negotiating tensions between competing rights has established the organization as an authority on the nuances of the law with respect to individual rights and freedoms.

Jacobs, who knows as much about adoption as she knows about medieval chansons de geste, and takes her cues from shivering deformers and the adoption industry, failed to mention what these "competing rights" might be when it comes to the government impounding and sealing adoptees' original birth certificates.

Perhaps because there are none.

Under normal circumstances, competitive rights and their balancing is a problem only when there is a conflict of rights. Since there is a presumed right to own one’s birth certificate, and no “right” to anonymity from one’s own offspring, there is nothing to balance.

Continuing the downward spiral and channeling Glenn Beck, Jacobs twists Mr. Franklin's words around claiming his letter is actually paean to ACLU fairness!

Jacobs' letter is beginning to collect comments. Posters are limited to 1000 characters. Please take a couple minutes to post your thoughts on Jacobs AND the half-assed New Jersey bill. I may go back and post some more, but this is what I posted a few hours ago:

The ACLU has never supported the right of adult adoptees to their own original birth certificates. Instead, it supports the confiscation of our government documents and the state creation of new falsified identity records to pass off as genuine; an illegal activity that under any other circumstance would be considered a criminal act of the state. Over a decade ago the Washington State ACLU declared that no one over the age of 18 had any need of a birth certificate and that if legislation were introduced there to seal all bcs from the persons to which they pertain, it would support that legislation.

Deborah Jacobs, like the promoters of the current bogus NJ "records bill" frames her arguments in terms of therapeutic reunion and personal desire. The right to a bc, which the not adopted enjoy, has nothing to do with either. It's about civil rights and equal treatment under law. If Jacobs' bc was confiscated and sealed by the state, we'd hear her squawking all over Trenton.

Yes, I admit it. I'm evil. I'd love it if Deborah Jacobs learned tomorrow morning that she's an LDA. And I'd love to see her stomp her pretty little foot over being just as insignificant to her colleagues in high places as we are to her now.

******

The ACLU's do-as-I say-not-as-I do is nothing new.

In 1940, national ACLU, threw Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, its own co-founder, sitting board member, IWW labor hero and Joe Hill's famous Rebel Girl under the bus, for having the temerity to practice her First Amendment rights and join the Communist Party USA. Years later, when she was sent to prison for her political beliefs, the ACLU sat on its hands and moneybags.

In 2006, under fire from board members critical of its massive failure to practice internally what it preaches externally on any number of issues, the ACLU board adopted a policy to gag dissident board members who privately or publicly complained.

Wendy Kaminer, along with Michael Meyers, was expelled from the ACLU board as a result. She has a written a revealing essay on ACLU hypocrisy, How the ACLU Lost Its Bearings, with a tasty menu of ACLU hypocrisy worthy of Dr. Laura. Kaminer a genuine civil libertarian, writes of the policy:
It included provisions that prohibited board members from criticizing the ACLU board or staff publicly and disparaged whistle-blowing (conduct the ACLU often applauds when it occurs in other institutions). Individual board members were admonished not to "call into question the integrity of the process in arriving at the board's decision." In other words, individual directors who had reason to believe that the board had acted unethically were said to have a fiduciary duty to conceal their concerns, not disclose them.

Also see Kaminer's book, Worst Instincts: Cowaradice, Conformity and the ACLU for an expansion.

******

Bastard Nation and Bastardette will fight New Jersey's current compromised Adoptees Birthright Bill to the death, despite Mr. Franklin's spot on analysis of the ACLU. At the same time, we cannot stay quiet on the absurdity that is Deborah Jacobs.

We are not surprised that Jacobs (and other adoption industry lobbyists) avoids the issue of rights by framing her objections in the same language as compliant New Jersey deformers, too afraid or tired to demand what they really want--obcs for all without restriction--settling instead for vetos, white-outs, medical histories, and blackmail. Deformers adopt (excuse me!) the language and claims the adoption lobby makes against them in the hope of "getting something" then act surprised when the industry refuses them even small favors and regurgitates their words back at them. It's a weird circle jerk in which deformers and industrialists accept each others arguments as their own confusing all but the most critical observer.

With civil liberties eroding in the US daily, you'd think the ACLU would have something bigger to worry about than ungrateful adoptees.

Are you Adopted? Are you Sure?: LDA Survey

Long time adoptee rights activist, bastard hero, and LDA Ron Morgan (he coined the term Late Discovery Adoptee) is updating his Late Discovery Adoptee survey. If you're an LDA or know someone who is, please let them know about it.

The Late Discovery Adoptee Survey is part of my ongoing research into the phenomenon of Late Discovery. I first developed the survey questionnaire in 1997 as part of my presentation "Are You Adopted? Are You Sure". I have decided to renew the survey and invite you to participate. Responses will be posted on Late Discovery, without identifying information, and will help shed light on our experiences. I hope to use the information provided in the survey in a book for Late Discovery Adoptees, their loved ones and others who have an interest in our lives.

CLICK here for the survey.

Thank You All!
Ron Morgan

THE LDA page is

Build It and They Will Come: California's Safe Haven Epidemic

Remember when "safe haven" do-gooders assured the world that "safe haven" legalized baby dumping, would be "rare?"

According to the June 30 Lodi News article, Mother safely, legally abandoned baby at Lodi Memorial that "rare" instance has reached epidemic proportion in California. Since the law went into effect in 2001, 348 newborns had been dumped anonymously on the state for their own good by parents who love their babies so much they'll kill them if they can't drop them on an ER counter with no shame, no blame, no name or molestation by pesky cops and courts.

This article and a TV report from KCRA-TV , Mom: I can't afford to raise baby give us some random stats for the state:

San Joaquin County: 28
2001 statewide: 2
2009 statewide: 52
1st quarter 2010 statewide: 16

The LA Times reported on July 6 in Mother surrenders newborn son at ER in Glendale, that since 2002, 79 newborns have been "saved" in LA County. Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the Los Angeles Inter-Agency Council, waxed poetic about the Glendale dump: The word needs to be out there that there is a recourse, there is a resource. What next? Baby Safe Haven Rap?

As for the Lodi mom. We know that she is 28 years old, gave birth at the hospital, is the mother of two other children, and "could not afford to keep her baby." A KCRA-TV reporter covering the story calls that dump a "happy ending." There is no mention if Lodi Memorial staff bothered to discuss ways to help the mother keep her family in tact. But then, this has never been about family preservation or even ethical child welfare and placement. It's culling the herd of the poor, the uninformed, and the scared. Another eugenics experiment on people who don't count.

In his 2003 essay, Dr. Pierce v Vichy, Ron Morgan, wrote, regarding France's sister "safe haven" Accouchement sous X laws which have anonymized over 200,000 babies since 1940, "once this social welfare practice became institutionalized, it became normalized."

348 babies proves that baby dumping is now a normal alternative to ethical child relinquishment. And that "safe haven" has moved from emergency child custody procedure to a cure for poverty.

British Tabs Have Field Day with Omar bin Laden Surrogacy Story

If this isn't enough to make Osama bin Laden rise from the grave, nothing is.

The July 10 London Daily Mail (NOT The Onion) published the heartwarming I'm carrying Bin Laden's surrogate grandchild...but the baby's parents have split up.

To make a long story short, Omar bin Laden, 29, and his 54-year old, 6-times wed wife and grandmother of five, Zaina, (formerly known as Jane Felix-Browne) are having a little problem plopping their bun in the oven and hired Louise Pollard, 24, a personal assistant and self-described professional surrogate to bake it for them.

Zaina and Louise have hit it off splendidly since the embryo implantation took. Omar, the 4th son of Osama bin Laden and his first wife, however, says since the procedure(s), at least according to Zaina, he's been hearing his father's voice in his head (no mention of what Osama is telling him, but we can imagine) and checked himself (or was checked into) a psych ward, leaving the girls to fend for themselves much to the delight of the British tabs.

How the story first got out--Louise blames her brother-- is confusing. Louise, however, takes pride in her work, seeing herself as an altruistic kinda girl with a special calling: making baybees. This baby is her fourth-- if you count her 7-year old kept kid from a "former relationship." According to the Daily Mail she contracts with surrogatemother.com If you think adoption agency webpages are bad, get the shovel out for this one.

Louise told the Bristol Evening Post that she plans to continue her career after popping out the newest bin Laden

"Yes, of course. I think I've got 20 more years of fertility in me, and that means I should be able to bring 20 more kids to 20 more childless couples. That can only be a good thing."

And how does she feel about surrogating Osama's grandchild?

As the Daily Mail reported exclusively last month, when Louise realised the connection with Osama Bin Laden, she immediately turned Zaina down. It was only on reflection that she changed her mind.

I basically thought that if I don't help this couple then no one will,' said Louise, who describes surrogacy as her 'calling' and has already had two babies for a London-based childless couple in their 40s.

FLASH! according to August 15 news reports, Omar/Zaina/Louise are expecting twins. Before the twins announcement, depending on which press reports you read, Omar planned to call the baby, if it's a boy, either William (for Scottish hero William Wallace)) or Osama. If a girl, Elizabeth after the queen. Louise prefers Ruby.

Louise Pollard reports that Omar is in near daily contact with his wife and that a reconciliation is very probable. This , despite Omar's July declaration, shortly after his release from the hospital that he'd like to move to the US and date Drew Barrymore, though he realizes they would probably never be a couple.

Monday: Erik L. Smith on The Take Away!

Advocate for natural parents in adoption and Bastardette guest blogger Erik L Smith will be a guest Monday morning (August 23) on NPR's The Takeway. Erik will discuss the proposed federal Putative Father Registry bill currently in Congress. Go here to find your local schedule. The show starts at 6:00 AM edst. His segment is scheduled as of this writing for 6:49 AM. I believe it will also be available later online.

You can read Erik's work at ErikSmith.org


UPDATE: Here is the link to The Takeaway discussion page on putative dads.

A Belated Tribute to Annette Baran

Pioneer adoption reform pioneer and adoptee rights advocate Annette Baran died on July 11. Due to my unplanned writing hiatus, I am only posting our Bastard National Memorial today.

Annette Baran was one of those rare people in adoption: she listened to bastards and learned. She abhorred adoption secrets and lies. Going against her social work training, she worked for decades, with much opposition from "professionals," lobbyists, and adoption bagmen, to undo the damage caused by the adoption industry. She may have been a traitor to them, but she is a hero to us.

No one enjoyed kicking Annette around more than Bill Pierce, founding president of the National Council for Adoption. His NCFA Factbook 3 (no longer online) is full of attacks on Annette's "junk science" of adoption openess and honestly. Annette was, in fact, one of the most radical thinkers in AdoptionLand I have ever known. In her lifetime she moved from being the keeper of adoption secrets, to advocating open adoption--and records--to promoting guardianship and simple adoption over the closed secret system. Annette believed in adoptee dignity, integrity and identity. She believed that each of us have a right to our own identity, history, and documents. She believed the industry must take responsibility for the damage it has caused and continues to cause.

Since I knew Annette mainly by reputation I can't speak to any deep personal relationship. We emailed occasionally, and I met her only once: at the 2004 Kansas City AAC conference. During her opening keynote address, Annette, much to my surprise, took a few moments to acknowledge and celebrate Bastard Nation and our leadership in the struggle to regain our rights.

Longtime adoption reform activist and poet Maryanne Cohen knew Annette well and wrote the following memorial, posted with Maryanne's permission, below.

Annttte's obit from the LA Times is here. A memorial page for Annette is here.

Annette

A small bright bird
Filled with life
she graced the space she filled
Always moving, never still
except to listen to a friend
which she did with full heart
Her kind eyes saw you
her silence let you fill the cup
Her words were milk and honey
on any hurt or fear

I knew her as grey but never old
Her spirit ever young, eager
for the next adventure, the next laugh
the next delicious shopping trip

Annette knew what to buy, and where to find it
What to read, I loved every book
she led me to, her wisdom
carried on, oblique, in other's words.
She showed me the lipstick that won't wear off
said, "it will change your life"
Her sense of style impeccable, unique
A joy to see
A joy to follow

My Yiddishe Mama, witty, wise
down to earth, a true friend
Annette stood before a crowd
at an adoption conference once,
and said "I am sorry
for what my profession has done,
for what I have done"
That's all, no excuses, no justifications,
No Big Buts......

Just courage, integrity, intelligence and class
She laughed at fools, the pompous, the self-righteous
She cried with those who truly grieved

Now we grieve her, her valor, her light gone from this world
But she shines on
In blessed memory
In her work we take up
In the quest for truth and justice
Still undone

She shines on.......



Mary Anne Cohen
July 2010
Rest in Peace, Dear Annette
The good race is run.

PENNSYLVANIA: Bastard Nation Letter to Rep. Oliver: Please schedule hearings for HB1978

This is the post I sent to Rep. Oliver today on behalf of Bastard Nation and myself. Please feel free to post your letters here on on the Bastard Nation blog http://bastardnation.blogspot.com/2010/08/pennsylvania-bastard-nation-letter-to.html

Thank you all.

Marley

**********
Dear Chairman Oliver:

I write today to urge you to schedule hearings for HB 1978, a bill that if passed would restore the right that all Pennsylvania adoptees once enjoyed: the right to his or her own original birth certificate (obc) with no conditions or restrictions. That is, to authorize the state to treat the adopted on the same legal level as those who are not adopted.

HB 1978 is an important bill. It is being watched by adoption advocacy and reform groups and individuals across the country.

The sealing of birth records is an archaic hold-over from an age when adoption was held shameful. That day has passed.

The restoration of the right of adoptees to their obcs is the keystone of ethical adoption practice not only in Pennsylvania but throughout the country. . As someone whose birth and adoptive families have deep Pennsylvania roots (Pittsburgh, Greenville and Bucks County), I would love to see Pennsylvania join the ranks of states that believe that the adopted and not-adopted should be treated equal under law. As an adoptee rights advocate, I am happy to see legislators in Pennsylvania come to the forefront to achieve that equality.

Please join us . Please schedule hearings for this most important bill.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the adoptee rights organization



Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee's historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.

Stalker Alert!

Please read Sandy Young/Musing Mother's latest blog Formal Notice regarding an AdoptionLand internet stalker. I have chosen at this time to not post the comment(s) I received yesterday.

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: Monday is "Contact Chairman Oliver Day" (Pennsylvania)

Please distribute freely!

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT

Give Pennsylvania unrestricted HB 1978 a hearing!

Monday, August 16, 2010:
“Contact Chairman Oliver Day for Adoptee Rights"

HB 1978 is a short, simply written bill to restore the right of all Pennsylvania adoptees to their original birth certificates without restriction. For months, the bill has been stalled, with no hearings, in the House Health and Human Services Committee chaired by Rep. Frank Louis Oliver.

To move this bill into hearings, Pennsylvania Adoptee Rights (PAR) is sponsoring “Contact Chairman Oliver Day”--a day dedicated to asking Rep. Oliver to schedule hearings.

Read HB 1978 here.

Read about Pennsylvania’s current access laws here.

Read the entire PAR action alert here.

You do not have to be from Pennsylvania to help. Please join activist around the country and contact Rep. Oliver. Messages shouldn't take more than two sentences.

HB 1978 deserves a hearing!

Restore adoptee civil rights in Pennsylvania in 2010!

Call, fax, or email Rep. Oliver now.

Rep. Frank Louis Oliver, Chair
Pennsylvania House Health and Human Services
PO Box 202195
Harrisburg, PA 17120-2195
Phone: 717-787-3480
Fax: 717-783-0684
foliver@pahouse.net

Bastard Nation is not affiliated with PAR and HB 1978 is not a Bastard Nation bill. We, however, support the action and endorse the bill as it is currently written, and will continue to do so as long as it remains clean.

NCFA Names Chuck Johnson Permanent Prez

The National Council for Adoption today announced the appointment of Chuck Johnson as its permanent CEO and president. Johnson has been Acting President since April when Mary Robinson, after a few inglorious months in office, left the position unannounced and from my perspective, unmissed. Johnson also held the post of acting prez after Tom Atwood resigned in November 2008. He is the former director of NCFA's Infant Adoption Training Initiative.

Johnson's appointment marks the end (so-to-speak) of NCFA's transformation into the nicer kinder NuNCFA, bereft of Piercian existentialism, angst and cranksterism. NuNCFA, for better or worse (it's easier to kick them around for worse) is more concerned with international and foster adoption and Beltway politics than calling Bastard Nation anarchists and terrorists and "birthdads" drive-by sperm donors, and locking pregnant unmarrieds in closets. We seriously doubt that Johnson has been booted out of Congressional offices or in times of high snit, has orchestrated a dirty tricks campaign against John McCain or other blowhard politicians. As Johnson said to me at one point ,"Folks want to work with us again."

Well, not everyone, Chuck! But enough to take NCFA off the endangered species list.

In other words, NuNCFA has corporatized and now swims in the mainstream with the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute,which it ideologically resembles, though both may deny it. Both are rooted in liberal do-goodism. Both love adoption as if it were sliced white bread, and make it just as boring. Both use worn-out triad and politically correct adoption language and project reunion and therapy and self-esteem issues on to us, dismissing our rights while pretending to address them in their self-projections. Neither represents bastard interests as political beings. The only real difference between them is that NCFA does what it says it will do, and the Donaldson doesn't.

If Bill Pierce could spin, he would.
Last month I attended the annual NCFA conference at National Harbor, which I still need to write about it. At no point-- just as at no point in my previous four NCFA conferences- was obc access even mentioned. I swear!

I have argued for years that adoptee rights activists need to revise their paradigm. The National Council for Adoption is not the only bad guy in town. Often, it's not the biggest one either. If NCFA were to go away tomorrow, our records and rights would still be difficult to get back. To be sure, NCFA founding president Bill Pierce invented the language and the framework of the anti-bastard political culture that now runs amok amongst the ACLU, anti-aborts, churchies, fake corporate feminists, newspaper commenters, and extends into the blue horizon of urban myth. Scratch a deformer and you'll find an individual or a group that has internalized Piercian ideology and language up-ending our bastardy into privilege for some, rights for none. Here is the Massachusetts example, where deformers there actually validated, for low political purpose, the very NCFA arguments they claimed to reject.

Dr. Pierce left NCFA 10 years ago and he's been dead for over six years. NuNCFA is not Bill Pierce's NCFA, and anyone that treats it as if it is, is a political naif. No serious rights advocate can live in the past. Sure, use the history (you'd be surprised at how many NCFA staffers I've met over the years have no idea why their corporation is loathed by the people they think they speak for) but work in the present. Know your enemy now. All of them.

No one is more responsible for pulling the NCFA dino kicking and screaming into the mainstream than Chuck Johnson. I talked to him several times during the NCFA conference. He made it clear that NuNCFA is willing to work with anyone where there is an area of agreement. Johnson is particularly interested in "ethics and responsibility" in adoption So far, of course, those ethics and responsibilities don't include obcs on request and unrestricted, but I'm not about to give up. NCFA has already raised the white flag on open, single parent and gay and lesbian adoption. Bastards are their last frontier. And we have have no white flag.

NOTE: that's a bad picture me in my Stop the Adoption of Evelyn Bennett t-shirt and Chuck Johnson at the conference. Photo by Gladney's Heidi Cox, believe it or not)