Another day, another closure due to an ongoing pattern of falsified documents.

Today the U.S. closed off adoptions of children classified as “abandoned” or foundlings in Nepal after finding an ongoing pattern in previous American adoptions of children labeled “abandoned in Nepal, the “documents presented in support of the abandonment of these children in Nepal have been found to be unreliable and circumstances of alleged abandonment cannot be verified because of obstacle in the investigation of individual cases.”

Nepal is just one of several countries Americans have turned to due to the relative ease with which they have been able to gain access to children. As was noted in a MAy 2009 Slate article, The Orphan Trade: A look at families affected by corrupt international adoptions, their interest has had everything to do with the relatively shall we say, “lax” legal climate in Nepalese adoptions.

When one country’s adoptions are closed down to regulate or stop the trafficking, the adoption industry moves to the next “hot” and under-regulated country. (For Americans, these are currently Ethiopia and, to a lesser degree, Nepal.)

The joint statement on the Suspension can be found here. It really leads to questions of why only suspend the adoptions of those children deemed “abandoned” in light of this mess.

The Department of State’s recent interactions with the Government of Nepal and its efforts to review and investigate numerous abandonment cases, including field visits to orphanages and police departments, have demonstrated that documents presented to describe and “prove” the abandonment of children in Nepal are unreliable. Civil documents, such as the children’s birth certificates often include data that has been changed or fabricated. Investigations of children reported to be found abandoned are routinely hindered by the unavailability of officials named in reports of abandonment. Police and orphanage officials often refuse to cooperate with consular officers’ efforts to confirm information by comparing it with official police and orphanage records. In one case, the birth parents were actively searching for a child who had been matched with an American family for adoption. Because the Department of State has concluded that the documentation presented for children reported abandoned in Nepal is unreliable and the general situation of non-cooperation with and even active hindrance of investigations, the U.S. Government can no longer reasonably determine whether a child documented as abandoned qualifies as an orphan. Without reliable documentation, it is not possible for the United States government to process an orphan petition to completion.

The U.S. State Department Alert of the Suspension can be found here, and its Nepal adoptions page has a (now out of date) backgrounder including recent  adoption statistics.

A few highlights from the Alert:

Q. Why is the United States government suspending adoptions from Nepal

A.  The Department of State and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have decided to suspend processing of new adoption cases from Nepal that involve children who are claimed to have been found abandoned, because documents presented in support of the abandonment of these children in Nepal have been found to be unreliable and circumstances of alleged abandonment cannot be verified because of obstacle in the investigation of individual cases.

Q:  Adoptive parents have received immigrant visas for their Nepali children from the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu as recently as a few weeks ago.  What has changed since then?

A.  A review of recently processed cases established a disturbing pattern indicating that available documentation cannot be relied upon to make determinations that a child reported abandoned qualifies as an orphan under U.S. immigration law.

Q:  Does the suspension apply to all cases or only to cases in which a child was allegedly found abandoned?

A.  The suspension applies only to cases where a child is alleged to have been found abandoned.

Q.  When is the suspension going into effect?

A.  The suspension is effective as of August 6, 2010, for all new adoption cases involving children from Nepal who have been reported abandoned.

and

Q.  Based on what authority is the U.S. Government suspending adoptions from Nepal?

A.  The Department of State has concluded that the documentation presented for children reported abandoned in Nepal is unreliable.  Without reliable documentation, such children cannot meet the definition of orphan under U.S. immigration law.  Based on this determination and obstacles in the investigation process the U.S. Government has suspended the processing of new adoption cases that involve children who are reported abandoned.

Q.  What evidence does the U.S. Government have to support the suspension?

A.  The Department of State’s ongoing interactions with the Government of Nepal and the review of numerous cases, including field visits to orphanages and police stations, led them to conclude that information regarding how children arrive at orphanages is consistently inadequate and that documents presented to establish that a child was found abandoned are unreliable.  Investigations of abandonment cases have been hampered by the unavailability of officials involved in reports of abandonment, and police and orphanage officials’ refusals to allow consular officers access to police and orphanage records.

Naturally, the American “solution” to the problem is to encourage Nepal to sign the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption.

Q.  Has the U.S. Government made any effort to address the problems with the Government of Nepal?

A.  The U.S. Government, in cooperation with other countries that are active in intercountry adoptions, has consistently encouraged the Government of Nepal to ratify and implement the Hague Adoption Convention.  Nepal is a signatory to the Convention.  We have also urged the Government of Nepal to implement the recommendations made by the Hague Permanent Bureau Intercountry Technical Assistance Program (ICATAP) as a first step toward fulfilling its commitment as a signatory to the Convention.  We believe that the Hague Adoption Convention incorporates the best practices in intercountry adoption, which are intended to protect the rights of the children and the families involved in intercountry adoption.

Bastard Nation (among others) expressed concerns back before the treaty was enacted, pointed out a few of its many fatal flaws.

Once it was enacted, the U.S. has pushed it as the end all “best practices” standard that it believes all countries should sign on to.

Yet clearly, the evidence continues to mount, Hague signatory countries can be just as prone to abuses as non-signatory nations.

Roelie Post has shown in her important piece, “The Perverse Effects of the Hague Adoption Convention” and as I have been documenting here for some time now, (specifically, be sure to see my post, How’s that Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption workin’ out for you then?) that the Convention, far from any sort of a “fix” merely maintains the ongoing brokenness, while giving it a polite cover to hide under.

Simply put, the US and other countries are playing bully with a big stick, demanding other countries sign on to the Hague as a means by which to keep up appearances of “best practices” despite the clear failures of the treaty to actually prevent the abuses it was allegedly created to rectify. All of which has more to do with proving soothing reassurances to would-be-adoptive clients than any actual form of child protection or genuine family preservation.

Those would-be-adopters with adoptions “in the pipeline” should not be characterized as having been ‘taken off guard’ by this latest alert, as the American State Department had previously issued a broader statement this past March about the ongoing falsification of paperwork on adoptions from Nepal. Going ahead with an adoption at that point should have put couples and families on notice.

Note that in the March 4th State Department Alert the concerns were not narrowed to children deemed “abandoned.” It was a full on waving off of ALL adoptions from Nepal:

The U.S. Department of State strongly discourages prospective adoptive parents from choosing Nepal as a country from which to adopt due to grave concerns about the reliability of Nepal’s adoption system and the accuracy of the information in children’s official files.

In May, in another Alert, the State Department spoke even more frankly about the situation (bold in the original):

The U.S. Department of State strongly discourages prospective adoptive parents from choosing adoption in Nepal because of grave concerns about the reliability of Nepal’s adoption system and the accuracy of the information in children’s official files.  The Department also strongly discourages adoption service providers from accepting new applications for adoption from Nepal until reforms are made, and asks them to be vigilant about possible unethical or illegal activities under the current adoption system.

As to what may have changed since May 26th, causing the US to only close adoptions of kids deemed “Abandoned” instead of a full closure of all adoptions from the country, one can only $peculate.

The May alert is very clear about the situation, at least one child had been presented as an “orphan” for adoption, even as their parents were looking for their missing child.

Although the U.S. Embassy in Nepal has only seen a handful of adoption cases since the new Terms and Conditions went into effect, we share many of the concerns outlined in the Hague report.  As a case in point, in one of the first cases processed by the Government of Nepal after the revision of the Terms and Conditions, the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu found that the adopted child was not a true orphan and that the birth parents were actively searching for the child.

Those of us who care about the children and families of Nepal are left to the obvious question, in light of such ongoing patterns of behaviour, does this latest suspension go anywhere near far enough?

Or does it merely continue to enable the people participating in these criminal practices to continue on, after just readjusting or refocusing their efforts?

“Americans for African Adoptions”, widely credited as the first agency to facilitate adoptions from Ethiopia, sits squarely at the center of a latest round of  lawsuits in relation to yet another Ugandan adoption scandal.

Uganda has an ongoing history of adoption corruption, even as the number of kids being imported to the US continues to rise, see Uganda orphans on sale abroad for example. Also see the U.S. State Department notice on Uganda.

Whether the agency was an active participant in the scam or merely cluelessly naive and negligent in light of falsified photos, forged documents, and the collection of large sums of money being handed over remains to be seen.

Earlier this month we were treated to yet another round of articles pertaining to this latest mess.

Take SD couple hope courts will help in adoption scam for example. As usual, the article focuses upon the would-be-adoptive couples and approaches these crimes from a consumer protection model.

Cori and Chris Schmaus said they contracted with an Indianapolis company, Americans For African Adoptions, in early 2008 to adopt two Ugandan children whose mother supposedly gave them up after giving birth to them as part of quintuplets.

The Schmauses received photos, birth records and letters about the children, named Sowali and Fatina Bangi. Having paid $11,500 in initial fees, the couple began sending the agency $400 a month for the children’s care.

Each month, they were assured the adoption paperwork was near completion. It wasn’t. The Schmauses said there never was any legitimate paperwork.

Last October, they found out from a New Mexico couple trying to adopt the other two surviving quints that the Bangi children had lived with their mother since birth. The New Mexico couple flew to Kampala, Uganda, met the mother and learned that she never had agreed to give up her children.

Since then, the Schmauses learned that a Ugandan named Joseph Kagimu reportedly staged photos, forged documents and collected money for dozens of children such as the Bangis, then used the information to collect money from unsuspecting Western parents through the Indianapolis agency.

As of last October, the Schmauses had paid $16,800 to Americans for African Adoptions. Recently, they sued the agency in Minnehaha County, alleging that its director, Cheryl Carter-Shotts, was negligent because she failed to catch on to the scheme. A handful of others, including the New Mexico couple and another in Michigan, have filed or plan to file similar lawsuits as well.

Carter-Shotts claims Kagimu scammed her as well as the families.

You’d think the would-be-adopters might have caught on themselves at the demand for $400 a month for the care of two children in Uganda (a fortune by local standards) but, no they forked over the funds, assuming this was just the cost of doing adoption business in Uganda, and still thinking they were getting a good deal compared to what they might have been asked to pay in other countries.

Would-be-adopters continue to bargain hunt and African children are often priced lower than their  highly prized white peers. The Schmauses felt they were still getting two for the price of less than one kid from another country.

The Schmauses always had wanted to adopt. Cori Schmaus’ family had adopted kids, and Chris Schmaus had worked with foster children at McCrossan Boys Ranch.

After hearing about Africa from missionaries at their Sioux Falls church, they decided to try for an international adoption. But international adoptions can be expensive. The average cost to adopt one child from most agencies is more than $20,000, Cori Schmaus said.

Still, when she came across Americans for African Adoptions and spoke with Carter-Shotts about the smaller upfront costs, she was sold. Carter-Shotts has a strong reputation. Her agency, founded in 1986, is widely credited as the first to facilitate adoptions from Ethiopia.

According to an Indiana court records search, the agency never has been successfully sued.

When the New Mexican would-be-adoptive couple met the mother of the children and learned she had never consented to relinquishing her children at all,  the full reality of the scam came to light.

These couples were all paying money to Americans for African Adoptions for kids that were never available for adoption in the first place.

As so often appears in articles like these, the would-be-adopters bemoan having paid out the cash, but not gotten the ordered products, the kids. The utilize all the usual framing of how these were to their minds “their” kids, and how they are now heartbroken over how “their kids” never came “home” to them.

“The most upsetting part for me was that I was emotionally attached to these children,” Chris Schmaus said. “These were our children. It was like losing a child when we found out what was going on over there.”

I’ve written before at length about how disingenuous these attempts to characterize children  marketed to prospective adoptive couples as “their children” are to their core.

Wanna-be-adopters are all too often simply incapable of getting their heads around the fact that other peoples’ kids are NOT THEIRS.

That they have  no LEGAL basis upon which to even think of someone else’s kids as their own at this stage in the game.

Just because one is sending $400 a month off into the unknown, that does not entitle anyone to any given child, AND that money may or may not be spent on anything they would even remotely approve of, let alone caring for a specific individual child.

Further, reading many agencies contracts makes it clear enough, they do not guarantee a child (any child) and usually funds given are explicitly explained to be non-refundable.

Yet each and every year, couples continue to sign those contracts, continue to get out their checkbooks, month after month for years on end, and then find themselves in courtrooms, angry and feeling betrayed wanting “their” money back. These couples continue to feel the circumstances they find themselves in are somehow incredibly exceptional rather than merely the latest chapter in an ongoing saga that has played out across decades all over the world.

Far from being “special” in being defrauded of thousands of dollars, they are simply added to the pile, another snapshot, another statistic.

The world of cash and adoption is an unregulated black hole.

The bottom line remains as always, “caveat emptor” or “let the buyer beware”.

Would-be-adopters feel all kinds of emotional investment, that is precisely what scammers of all stripes count on.

They back that emotional investment up with financial investments, sometimes taking out second mortgages or loans to raise the funds. Some (stupidly) even put their adoptions on credit cards with double digit interest rates.

The industry itself certainly knows a thing or two about the desperation and “Give-me-children,-or-else-I-die” frenzy adoptive couples work themselves up into as well as how the ongoing threat of lawsuits hangs in their air over their industry.

I’ve sat in the National Council for Adoption’s (an industry lobby’s) annual conference listening to what it sounds like from the agency end. The constant fear of lawsuits is as close as the conference exhibits or the program book with marketing materials for agency insurance  on through to the speakers at the podiums.

Everyone knows once you start paying into the notion of a specific child, the emotional commitment goes off the charts.

Those who would chose to take advantage of that emotional and financial commitment enter into a perfect symbiosis with desperate couples, pushing their buttons and prying the money out of them.

As I wrote earlier in my post Orson Mozes and the perfect symbiosis, speaking to Mozes and the couples he scammed,

Sadly, a perfect symbiosis has formed between the desperate infertile and those who view their desperation as an opportunity to expand their personal fortunes.

As the various would-be-adoptive couples compared notes with one another and made trips to Uganda the scam became more and more apparent.

More than merely wanting  justice, the couples want refunds (perhaps so they can try another stab at adopting with yet another agency.) But what they, like may who pay into these scams fail to understand is that the money is apparently  long gone.

The Guests and Schmauses said they haven’t been repaid the fees they sent to the agency. Carter-Shotts insisted she has paid back the Guests in part but can’t refund all the money and that some initial fees were understood to be non-refundable. Besides, she said, the fraud destroyed her business.

“Joseph took all the money. We don’t have any income coming in,” she said.

and

Guest doubts he’ll see a refund, either, suspecting Carter-Shotts used the money to pay for day-to-day operations.

None of which is any surprise to those of us who have seen it all hundreds of times over.

The problem remains, when it comes to adoption, (with apologies to P.T. Barnum) there’s a wanna-be-adopter sucker born every minute and no matter how “reputable” the agency is portrayed as, there really are no guarantees nor protections.

Sad, yet simple facts more and more would-be-adopters are learning only long after the cash is long gone, years later, in courtrooms.

Many people assume that the intentional stripping of parental rights for Indigenous peoples ended with the closure of the American and Canadian “Indian Residential Schools” or with the Indian Child Welfare Act (or ICWA, here in the States back in 1978,)   or even by the signing of Public Law 110-351, (link opens a pdf) which offered the potential of federal support for tribal foster care programs and kinship care across the country, tragically, nothing could be further from the truth.

First Nations children are still being removed from their families and tribal contexts and put up for adoption, and are still represented in disproportionate rates in both American and Canadian foster systems and pools of children made available to adoption.

Over the past 7 years, organizations in Iowa and Nebraska have held an annual event a, “Memorial March to Honor Our Lost Children” to draw attention to this ongoing injustice.

This 2008 joint press release (link opens a PDF), for example, lays out the heart of the matter, and speaks a truth heard over and over from any number of parents, tribes, and organizations around the world who have lost their children to adoption. (Emphasis added.)

“The mantra for this march for the last six years has been: ‘when our children grow old, they must know that we fought for them,’” said Frank LaMere, a co-organizer of the rally and Director of the Four Directions Community Center in Sioux City. “As a community, it is important that we come together to seek change for our families and that we continue to make our voices heard, year after year, until that change is fully realized.”

Pictures from the 2009 march can be found here.

This past week Indian Country Today published another article about the ongoing battle in Iowa, “Fighting for the children: Iowa Native leaders protest child welfare practices.”

Native American children swept up in the Iowa child welfare system face perils ranging from loss of culture to death, according to Vicky Apala-Cuevas, Oglala Lakota, a member of the Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs.

The commission, a division of the state’s department of human rights, recently met with the state’s attorney general about several issues, including the disproportionately high rate at which Indian children are taken from their parents and doled out to non-Native foster and adoptive families.

The problem occurs throughout Iowa, but the disparities are worst in the county that includes Sioux City, according to another meeting attendee, Frank LaMere, Winnebago, director of the Four Directions Community Center, a local advocacy group.

“In Woodbury County, these policies have ravaged the Native community. Indian families have been torn apart, thanks to collusion among attorneys, adoption agencies, and others. Their actions are sinister at best, criminal at worst.”

Ultimately, no matter what laws sit on the books, the ongoing removal of children remains a constant.

Apala-Cuevas was less sanguine. “The attorney general said he was on our side but that there was not a great deal he could do at this time. Apparently the Iowa and federal Indian Child Welfare Act laws have no teeth. I was very disappointed. There are penalties for illegal parking, but nothing when it comes to separating Indian children from their families. “Our children are not up for grabs.”

The efforts to circumvent and outright undermine the laws appears intentional, calculated, and systematic, involving adoption agencies, facilitators, attorneys and Judges, not in the least bit dissimilar to how agencies ship pregnant women to “adoption friendly” states like Utah to give birth.

Several Indian youngsters have died in foster care in recent years, with little notice in the media or among the public at large, said LaMere. In contrast, he said, the state “came unglued” in an equally tragic situation, when a white toddler was killed in a manner that social services agencies should have been able to prevent.

A pattern that an Iowa newspaper, the Quad-City Times, uncovered in a multi-article investigative report – with adoption attorneys shuttling pregnant women and then their newborns among several states to cover unethical and illegal practices – occurs within the state of Iowa as well, said LaMere.

“It appears that Native kids are moved to rural counties, where the federal and state ICWA laws are not understood or perhaps not known. Judges in those places can be persuaded to hand over our children to adoptive or foster parents. That’s not all, though. Unscrupulous attorneys and officials find even more ways to do an end-run around Iowa’s department of human services, which is on our side. We need an investigation of these practices.”

Indian children fall prey to the system for various reasons, according to Apala-Cuevas. For one, non-Native people involved in their cases may not understand the extended family and larger tribal community to which an Indian child belongs, or may choose to ignore these relationships.

Money plays a part as well. Tens of thousands of dollars in fees may be at stake for attorneys and other facilitators when an adoption occurs, according to the Quad-City Times report. Native children appear to be especially prized by prospective parents, increasing the likelihood they’ll be snapped up by a corrupt adoption agency or attorney, said Apala-Cuevas.

Organizing within the communities has been ongoing.

Four Directions Community Center has held gatherings for survivors, including hours of testimony from children who had been reunited with their birth families, said Apala-Cuevas. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.”

On Aug. 16 and 17, the organization will hold public hearings on the issue. “We’ll talk about ICWA and the way it’s ignored in Iowa, we’ll discuss the possibility of strengthening our state law legislatively, and much more,” LaMere said. “Attorneys general in other states also need to know this is a problem. We have to protect our children, here and across the country.”

On Nov. 24, the center will hold its eighth memorial march to bring attention to the issue.

For my part, I hope to see more in the adoptee, Parents, and Bastard communities educating themselves, spending some time listening, in order to gain at least some understanding of both the history and the ongoing work that must be done to put an end to these crimes. It is long past time we add our voices to those demanding an end to such abuses.

Perhaps more importantly still, would-be-adopters need to stop coveting, fetishizing, and buying Indigenous children, (same could be said for any targeted population of kids, for that matter.)  Market demand remains the underlying driving engine.

So to list a few resources, The First Nations Orphan Association could be one of many starting points, the blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES – Lost Children, Lost Ones, Lost Birds is another, as is Trace A. DeMeyer’s important book “One Small Sacrifice: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects”

I’ve blogged several pieces on these topics (barely scratching the surface) as well, please see:

Adoption as a tool of cultural genocide, the “child grabs” Canadian First Nations peoples have endured, my main history and theory post on the subject

and

“A life filled with scars,” the lasting legacy of the Indian Adoption Program about a previous article in Indian Country Today that focused on the life story of Susan Harness, an American Indian/First Nations adoptee placed into a white family by way of the Indian Adoption Program (or IAP) and the difficulties she has had to face as a result of such.

(A continuation of my parody from part 1, about the adoption related aftermath of the worst earthquakes to strike Maryland in 252 years.)

<sarcasm> <parody>

Day 7

As the first week after the quakes came to a close, America’s most important disaster relief workers, adoption agencies, shifted into high gear.

80 young survivors were loaded onto a plane bound for Philadelphia. There, they were united with their forever families for the first time.

The July 16th earthquakes devastated Maryland and also disrupted thousands of adoptions that were in process.  Eighty of these in-process adoptions will be closer to completion as the “MD 80” join their new families in Pennsylvania. Of the 80 children, 58 came to Pennsylvania through Bethany Christian Services, the nation’s largest adoption agency.

The children are beneficiaries of a swift humanitarian response spurred by the July 16 earthquakes that devastated the state.

“”If the earthquake hadn’t happened, we would never have him so soon,” said one of the waiting adoptive parents. “Thank God for earthquakes!”

Last week, Washington announced an emergency plan to expedite adoptions from Maryland that were in the pipeline before the earthquake struck. Officials had estimated that between 700 and 1,000 Maryland orphans would benefit from the so-called “Humanitarian adoption policy” announced by Department of Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano. But, “we keep finding more,” says Whitney Reitz, a senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, one of several government agencies that have gotten involved in the domestic effort.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a press release reassuring Americans that the “DHS is always prepared to step in when matters of adoption are concerned, children are our most important natural resource and among our highest priorities when it comes to foreign trade policies.”

Adoption agencies report a surge of interest. “We have had more than 1,000 families contact us to adopt in the last few days,” said Marc Andreas, marketing vice president of Bethany Christian Services of Grand Rapids, Mich.

(see Secretary Napolitano Announces Humanitarian Parole Policy for Certain Haitian Orphans Fact Sheet, Eighty Haitian Orphans Unite with Adoptive Families at Miami Hotel and U.S. Speeds Up Adoption Process, and Orphans Arrive.)

Day 8

The online outpouring of concern and support for the Maryland victims of the quake continues to grow with new facebook groups like  Support 2010 DC Earthquake Victims and I was alive for the 2010 baby earthquake in DC/Maryland.

Messages of support and the voices of those lucky enough to have survived fill the comments.

“The usual crowd this morning at Whole Foods but you could feel the tension in the air at the sushi counter. Clearly our world has changed and Flyover DC will never feel safe again.”

“The biggest concern I have is that once the media stops covering the event, the area and its victims will be forgotten and left to fend for themselves…..”

Desperately needed relief supplies are being sent from all over.

“This just in…our freinds in Bar Harbor Maine are sending lobsters….god bless them.”

And this plea, which included the now famous photograph seen around the world that has come to epitomize the shattered landscape of the Maryland suburbs.

“Please help! We are still trying to recover and rebuild from this terrible situation.”

But most of all, people’s thoughts were filled with concerns for the youngest victims.

“The children! What about the CHILDREN?!? Oh, won’t someone PLEASE think about the CHILDREN?!?!?!”

Day 9

Fortunately, some most certainly were thinking of the children, and how best to evacuate them from the danger zone.

Emergency flights brought supplies in and took children out.

Maryland residents protested, “But these kids have living relatives, they are not orphans!”

Fortunately, their cries were ignored.

But of all the people who thought of the children, one in particular stood out from the rest.

God placed it upon Laura Silsby’s heart to once again, gather her teams and make a plan to rescue Maryland’s littlest angels.

Fresh on the heels of her mission to Haiti, she quickly reassembled her missionary teams.

Within days of the quake, a team of missionaries from Texas set to work on an abandoned Howard Johnsons <yeah, I know the picture is from Dayton Ohio, it’s a work of parody, roll with it>  just over the Pennsylvania border. They set about beginning the process of retrofitting it to serve as an orphanage and retreat where would-be-adoptive parents could come and swim, eat, and relax with their Maryland orphans.

Meanwhile, Silsby herself and her reassembled team with members from Idaho, Texas and Kansas rented a church bus and crossed the border into the Maryland disaster zone.

After first attempting to collect children from various daycare centers with little to no success, the team turned to more reliable avenues.  After several hours spent collecting abandoned children from shopping carts in grocery stores,  the team turned to Rockville area “crisis pregnancy centers.” Sadly the Rockville Pregnancy Center had no fresh babies to offer, but they urged the Sislby team to get in touch with local area Catholic churches and Project Gabriel/Gabriel Network.

Saint Peter’s in Olney said they had no orphans to spare, but that the Silby team and their less than half full bus could at least spend the night in the parking lot.

(See part 1 for details on grocery cart “abanonments“, The 10 arrested Christian Scavengers had an adoption centered “mission” for the kids they were caught trying to remove illegally, the raw unvarnished audacity of of the (missionary) adoption mindset, Laura Silsby’s pipedreams of a future in the child containment industry, The 73 Haitian kids deserve genuine justice, not a premature release of the scavengers, Central Valley Baptist Church used its tax status for donations for Laura Silsby’s New Life mission, Haiti- The 33 New Life missionaries collected kids to be reunited with their families,  The 3 additional American members (on the Dominican Republic side of the border) of the 10 arrested American missionary scavengers’ team, & PersonalShopper.com CEO arrested while returning from child shopping trip to Port-au-Prince- by guest blogger Mike Doughney)

Day 10

The next morning, after collecting 16 kids from grocery carts in the Whole Foods in Bethesda, the team felt ready to return to Pennsylvania with their first full busload of orphans.

As they drove up Rockville Pike some of the children began to cry, yelling that they wanted their parents and that they wanted off the bus.

Reaching the construction zone near Randolph Rd, a police officer stopped the bus and boarded it. Many of the kids demanded to be returned to their parents.

The officer sternly reprimanded the missionaries and unloaded the kids off the bus.

(See Thwarted by a police officer in an earlier attempt 3 days before their arrests to export 40 *Other* kids- more on Silsby and the Scavengers)

Day 11

Her initial attempt having failed, Laura Silsby and her team decided to try again, this time in an area not as close to the quake epicenter, and not as prosperous.

The bus pulled into Baltimore and parked near the inner harbor. The missionary team fanned out, each with an armload of full color fliers promising kids that went with the missionaries would receive a “better life”, an education, that the kids would be able to swim in the pool and that the parents could come visit anytime they liked.

After talking to various parents  who were tourists at the National Aquarium, the Maryland Science Center, and even the carousel, they were still coming up empty.

Silsby knew that to fulfill God’s plan for the orphans of the great Maryland earthquakes, she was going to have to get creative in her approach.

One of the parents at the inner harbor witnessed her saying something to her team about “Going off to go find a grocery store in a black neighborhood, it’s not like they can afford to keep those kids. They won’t miss ’em so much. Besides, adopters will still pay full price.”

That was the last anyone is willing to admit to having seen or heard from her or her team.

(See Haiti- New Charge brought against Laura Silsby, “organization of irregular trips”)

Day 12

The next morning, the church bus was found in Broadway East, a burned out shell. No sign of Laura Silsby or the missionaries, but a single sign was left hanging on a parking meter near the bus. It read:

Bawl’mer ain’t Haiti, Bitch.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld, III placed a red pushpin into a Batlimore map at the site of the bus arson.

“It’s a terrible thing,” he said, shaking his head, and went on to cite the city’s record for the first four months of 2010 showed improvement. “Violent crime in Baltimore is on the decline for the third year in a row,” he bragged.

Meanwhile Sislby’s repair crew back in Pennsylvania packed rapidly and fled the decrepit hotel.

Day 13

Various National adoption agencies began to rethink their Maryland orphan strategy in the wake of the martyred missionaries.

In a  joint press statement from 13 adoption agencies, the crumbling situation was decried as too hazardous for adoption releif agencies to enter.  “Maryland is out of control, it has devolved into chaos and violence in the aftermath of the quake.”

The thirteen agencies have pledged to redouble their child saving efforts in other, less hazardous parts of the world.

Holt International was last seen working up a plan for Papua New Guinea, trying to get around the six month residency requirement, saying “Ethiopia is eventually going to run dry. We have to think about where international adoptions are going to come from next. We’re always keeping an eye out for places we can achieve relaxed restrictions and quick uncomplicated placements. The very existence of our industry is at stake!”

(See From Ethiopia… to your home)

</sarcasm> </parody>

Again,  I’m not genuinely comparing Maryland’s bump in the predawn hours to the ongoing catastrophe in Haiti, I’m merely making a point about the arbitrary nature of who gets declared an orphan and the absurd lengths the industry and would-be-adopters go to in the aftermath of natural disasters and how such is viewed as normative and all right, if not “baby saving”. I’m merely re-contextualizing, and pointing out other potential consequences in other situations for the sake of parody in hopes that maybe at least some people will stop to think.

Laura Silsby of course, continues on living out whatever is left of her sorry life between her debts, divorce, and Haitian ‘adventure’ unharmed.

<sarcasm> <parody>

Day 1

I am fortunate to count myself among the living after this morning’s early morning earthquakes rocked the Maryland region.

The initial 3.6 quake, followed soon thereafter by the 2.0 that devastated Germantown, Maryland, hit just after 5 this morning.

While other parts of the country may dismiss these as “small,” the 3.6 was the highest magnitude quake ever scientifically recorded in Maryland.

Never before have we as a state experienced such a catastrophic earthquake event, in scientifically recorded Maryland history.

(from http://earthquake.usgs.gov/)

It was felt across the Nation’s capital region. (President Obama, like many area residents, apparently slept through it.)

(from http://earthquake.usgs.gov/)

The devastation is all around us

(from http://famousdc.com/)

Already, spontaneous relief groups, such as Germantown Earthquake Relief have sprung up on facebook.

In light of such societal collapse in the DC burbs, now is the time to think of the children.

Day 2

Reacting swiftly to the desperate need in the Maryland burbs, other states rapidly deployed their most important disaster relief asset, adoption agencies.

Quake related abandoned children were soon sighted in Maryland grocery stores riding in grocery carts.

Adoption agencies wasted no time, stepping in and offering to help the poor abandoned children find new forever families outside the quake affected zone.

(See: this from Bastardette “…Texas Christian’s Dr. Karyn Purvis, the attachment lady who equates wheeling a kid around the store in a grocery cart with child abandonment…” I was at the conference, I saw Purvis spewing this crap with my own eyes.)

Day 3

Immediately, NCFA and JCICS swung into action, lobbying hard in DC, trying help legislators understand the scope of the natural disaster and the imperative of moving the children from the disaster zone to other parts of the country where they could have a better life.

Catholic Charities proposed a massive Baby Lift operation, ensuring that the tiniest and most fragile quake survivors are resettled in areas of safety with new adoptive families.

Other adoption agencies pleaded for adoptions to be fast tracked for the sake the of the children, saying, “It’s just a good example of how God can bring something good from such a horrible situation.”

The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute stepped in and a letter was signed demanding federal officials clear the way for the orphans of the Maryland quake be transported out of the chaos and that the federal government work with faith based relief partners.

(See: When Disaster Strikes, Adoption Is Sure to Follow, HAITI CHILD EVACUATION: A NEW OPERATION PEDRO PAN?, HAITI: OPERATION PIERRE PAN POSTPONED; POLITICIANS PANDER, SNAPSHOT: DISASTER EVANGELISM IN HAITI– GOD BRINGS “SOMETHING GOOD FROM A HORRIBLE SITUATION”, the Jan. 19th letter to Secretary of State Clinton, &  the Jan 20th letter.)

Day 4

Originally, only kids already in an adoption process were being allowed out of the Maryland suburbs.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and his wife, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, along with an emergency medical team boarded a plane in Pittsburgh flatly stating, “enough is enough, the time for sitting around and talking is over, the Earthquake orphans of Maryland must be rescued!”

After hours of waiting in the holding pattern to land at the overburdened Montgomery County Airpark, the closest airport to the disaster zone, and the only airport with a runway large enough to accommodate the Rendell’s plane.  The pilot wormed his way into the queue, pushing other relief flights out of the way by demanding the tower let them land and pointing out the dignitaries he carried, saying, “The governor of Pennsylvania is on the plane.”

Initially, the flight was only to remain on the ground long enough for Montgomery county social workers to hand over to Governor Rendell and his party the foster kids taken from their foster families, Ikea orphans,  and grocery cart orphans inside the quake affected zone, but as that hand off took longer than expected, the Governor’s private plane was forced to relinquish its place on the tarmac for other relief flights.

After hours spent waiting around Rockville City Hall on the phone with federal officials, Governor Rendell finally managed to secure a lift back home on one of the military’s relief flights.

(Rockville city hall as it appeared before the quake.)

As the plane loaded, one of the social workers noted that one of the foster kids was not with the larger group. In the rush to get the kids out, one had been left behind, back at City Hall. The Social worker heroically refused to board the flight, insisting she stay behind until all “her kids” even the child who had been left behind who was not already in an adoption process be taken to safety. Fortunately, she and the child were able to catch a later fight.

University of Maryland lawyer and activist Testudo Terrapin objected after the July 15th earthquake:

“The government has collapsed, the police have collapsed, society as we knew it has collapsed. No one knows how many policemen, municipal workers, and other  there were, how many escaped, who is injured”. Many people are still missing. Governor Rendell, you cannot just take off with a plane load of our children!”

Governor Rendell pushed aside all criticism, ignoring it.

Just before  Governor Rendell’s heroic flightthe federal government had issued a special  “Humanitarian adoption policy” such that all kids from the Maryland disaster zone could be at least temporarily relocated to would-be-adoptive families in other states.

Governor Rendell at the press conference afterwards said his flight proved once again, the ends justify any means. He said one look into the eyes of the children on the Air Force C-17 that was heading to Pittsburgh, gave him all the justification he needed.

(See: Rendell uses his clout to get orphans out of Haiti, Haiti series- “It is madness. It is insane…” Bribes, Bullies, and Traffickers extract kids- part 4, (Part 4: Kids not in an adoption process being exported, bullies and bribes & the Rendells’ Raid, Mission To Rescue Orphans Was ‘Touch & Go’, & Rendell’s political clout comes in handy)

Day 5

From the moment the Rendell’s flight landed, phone lines at nearby adoption agencies across Pennsylvania began to ring off the hook with desperate would-be-adopters jockeying for position trying to gain one of the unspoken for Maryland earthquake orphans.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett denounced the flight in the strongest possible terms. At a press conference hastily convened he spoke sternly, “You cannot simply come into Maryland and take our children, they are our future, they are tomorrow’s office workers, starbucks employees, and NIH researchers. Maryland needs her children!”

The Rendells, on the other hand, insisted their flight, despite its $5,578.29 cost to the Pennsylvania taxpayers was all worth it, while refusing to reimburse a single penny (despite Pennsylvania’s growing budget deficits.) Initially, after the flight the Governor had  bragged “This trip cost the taxpayers of Pennsylvania nothing.”

(See:  Governor Rendell lied to taxpayers about the cost of his religiously based child scavenging raid,  & Gov. Ed Rendell’s trip to rescue 54 Haitian orphans cost taxpayers after all.)

Day 6

An argry mob of quake survivors today briefly delayed the latest evacuation of orphans from the earthquake zone. The orphans were headed to the Montgomery County Airpark  when a group of 20 men blocked four women accompanying the children, shouting, “You can’t take our children!” Police briefly detained the women, and the orphans — ages 1-5 — spent three nights sleeping on the ground in one of Maryland’s many tent cities. Federal officials who had come from DC carrying the documents needed to take them out had been running late.

Fortunately, the children are now resting comfortably with their new forever families in a faith based shelter. They have been provided a meal of traditional Maryland cuisine of crabcakes, Maryland fried chicken, and beaten biscuits.

Fears of social unrest and the growing ire of Maryland residents in reaction to having their children removed have caused adoption agencies to act quickly, taking as many kids as possible as quickly as possible.

(See: 6 Haitian Orphans who had been detained land in US.)

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow, in which I’ll detail Laura Silsby’s Maryland adventure.

</sarcasm> </parody>

(No, I’m not really comparing Maryland’s bump in the predawn hours to the ongoing catastrophe in Haiti, I’m merely making a point about the arbitrary nature of who gets declared an orphan an the absurd lengths the industry and would-be-adopters go to in the aftermath of natural disasters and how such is viewed as normative and alright, if not “baby saving”. I’m merely re-contextualizing for the sake of parody in hopes that maybe at least some people will stop to think.)

Seriously, in real life?

I woke up, looked around, rolled over and went back to sleep.

All Bastards remain safe and sound in their homes in Maryland.

No mass child lift operations are underway… YET.

For those of you arriving here by way of my comment on the Huffington Post piece, or this article on RH Reality Check, my post in question can be found here:

Adoption in relation to Abortion provision, notes on clinics that embrace adoption marketing

As time allows I hope to write a response to these two pieces as well. But by way of a simple statement to chew on for the time being, allow me to point out the obvious:

There is no part of adoption that can be considered in any way “outside the culture wars.”

New Jersey

There is a significant possibility that New Jersey’s botched legislation, SCS1406  (SCS799/1399)  has been pulled for this session.

But this is no time to become complacent.

We must keep the pressure on: keep educating, keep communicating with lawmakers and the Governor, and keep working for nothing short of restored equality.

Those advocating in support for this sorry excuse for a bill intend to continue to work through the summer to push this bill and have it or similar legislation reintroduced at a later date.

Like the part in a horror movie where the “everything’s better music” kicks in, just before the monster pops back out to inflict dire harm, too many people assume once a bill has been pulled for the session they need not to worry about it anymore.

They couldn’t be more mistaken.

Those pushing this mangled bill want it to rise from the dead, to haunt the next session, (and likely the session after that, and the session after that at this rate ) as they capitulate, trading away a few rights here, a few people there… .

After all, once a bill’s advocates show a willingness to trade the human/civil/ and identity rights of subsets of people away, it then becomes merely an ongoing process of:

• Whose?
• How many?
• And what else are they willing to cede?

(Not that they were ever given the authority to trade certain people’s rights away by those directly affected, certainly not in the case of the kids who have yet to even be born!)

Legislators understand these people are willing to surrender other’s (And potentially their own) human rights, from there, it’s just a matter of what’s their price?

OR legislators can simply chose to do what they’ve done for the last 30 years, refuse to bring this process to any end, and keep stringing people along year after year after year. Each and every year people come back for it, willing to play “let’s make a deal” all over again.

Like a Vampire, they want this abomination to rise again (just when some hoped it was dead) and continue to threaten the genuine rights of adopted people, New Jersey’s abandoned and boarder babies, and their families.

Rather than pulling it entirely and coming back with a completely clean bill, one that would insist on nothing less than full equality for all those born in New Jersey, those favoring this deform legislation want to come back for more.

Much as I’m partial to a good Vampire flick, legislation this bad is a far greater horror than anything found in the movies.

It’s past time to throw some garlic on this fatally flawed bill, drive a stake through its “heart”, drag it out into the sunlight and watch it burn, and chop of its “head” just to be on the safe side.

Horrific legislation like this needs to go the way of all   “undead” Vampires come the clear light of day.

Sunlight is after all, the best disinfectant. It’s a solid cure for secrets, lies, and fake fanged beasties alike.

New Jersey’s abandoned kids, adoptees, their families all need their rights intact and their full equality, not another legislative horror that ensures some will be locked behind sealed records or vetoes for decades to come.

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Bastard Nation Action Alert

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

NEW JERSEY UPDATE: Adoptees’ Birthright Bill Reported Shelved Until Fall–But Act Now to Kill It

Unofficial word (that is, it’s not on the New Jersey Leg website yet) is that the Adoptees’ Birthright Bill has been shelved until fall. According to news distributed earlier today to various lists, rumors of Gov. Chris Christie’s possible veto are very real. (Once it appears, I’ll link the official notice of postponement here.)

The following message came from NJCare under Pam Hasegawa’s signature. It reads in part:

From: Pam Hasegawa
To: jerseyAd-vocates JerseyAd-vocates , NJadopt _network , ANS Adoption-News-Service , Adoption Umbrella

After consulting with prime sponsors and other co-sponsors we reached a consensus that it is in our best interest to avoid a veto or conditional veto by the Governor. With at least one meeting scheduled with the Governor’s staff next month, the Adoptees’ Birthright Bill was removed from the board list of bills to be considered by the Assembly this Thursday.

Actually, Thursday has become a committee meeting day and the final vote on the budget will be next Monday. Then recess until September.

We will continue through the summer reaching out to legislators who have reservations, do more research (will need help with this), and will depend on your continued letters, prayers and encouragement as we look toward conversation with the governor’s staff (and, hopefully, Governor Christie himself.

NJCare plans to work this summer to convince the Assembly and Christie to support the bill. We’ll work, too: to kill it.

Bastard Nation was just about to send out a new action alert for you to contact the Assembly. We still want you to contact the Assembly (and Gov. Christie), so see the action alert directly below this blog for talking points.

BUT, with this additional information:

Bastard Nation has acquired a copy of NJCare’s contact and head count list; that is, an indication where each Assembly member stands on the bill. Go here, print it out, and make contact.

Also, see BLC’s blog: New Jersey S1406 (A1406/S799): Action Alert and Also Update, a detailed and thoughtful analysis of this greatly flawed bill’s implications for New Jersey and the rest of the country.

The Assembly and Gov. Christie cannot hear enough from those of us who support real bastard rights and not sloppy seconds.

Say it loud and say it proud:

I’m a bastard. I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!

---

Rhode Island

The Rhode Island General Assembly has adjourned for the year thankfully, without pushing through H7877/S2759 the horribly mangled original birth certificates access, (and lack there of) bill , not surprising considering they also failed to pass the latest version of an ethics bill, among other such casualties.

This article, Senator Perry: RI adoption-records bill appears dead, from back on June 10th explains some of  the thinking behind what happened near the end of the session. “Senate leadership” was pushing the bill to become prospective only with a veto, to Senator Perry’s credit he rejected the proposal:

I should have some kind of witty or profound thing to say on the occasion of Father’s day, but I don’t.

These are just a few disjointed thoughts jotted down. (Consider these almost vignettes or morsels to chew on as part of a broader thought process.)

Whether warranted or not, Fathers are often a maligned or simply ignored component of adopted people’s lives.

Much of this is territory littered with political and feminist landmines, but for what it’s worth, here goes.

---

• “Walking sperm banks”
• “Hit and run”
• “Just a back seat Friday night impregnator”
• “Roving inseminators”
• “Drive-by-daddies”
• etc.

We’ve all heard the various dehumanizing slurs the adoption industry slings at Fathers (when they both to mention him and acknowledge his role in all this at all.)

Slurs that when their sentiments are reflected in state law tend to strip Fathers of their parental rights.

More often than not, he is simply treated as a null, a void, a silence.

Or someone to be pushed out of the picture as rapidly as possible.

Whatever it takes to sweep aside or hide his rights in relation to his own child.

---

Pregnant women must have absolute autonomy and personal sovereignty in relation to their own bodies and in making the determination whether or not to bear that pregnancy to term. That pertains to reproductive autonomy and women’s rights.

Once a child has been born, though, the child has their own set of rights and Fathers, whether the adoption industry, adopters, etc. like it or not, do have at least some rights still left to their own children. There may be attempts to curtail or thwart such by the state, the industry, Adopters, or even Mothers but their (so often unenforceable) human rights and relation to their child remain.

Decisions pertaining to who will raise said child, and maintaining or relinquishing parental rights are no longer in the realm of reproductive rights, they pertain to the realm of child rearing.

Understanding that clear demarcation between the realms of reproduction and child rearing is key to understanding the legal realities in relation to adoption, foster care, guardianship, etc.

---

It’s also important to listen to the experiences of Mothers in relation to the men who Fathered us. Some of them were simply left to deal with the pregnancies alone.

Whether overwhelmed or uninterested, a fellow who was simply seeking a “good time”, or someone genuinely unable to be there due to Military service, or for whatever reason,  women were left and were forced to make decisions or decisions were made for them.

Some women were abused. Some were raped.

Some were underage.

These situations were and are complex and listening and having both empathy and compassion for the realities for our parents positions at the time is important.

---

We’ve all heard it, more often than not at a party or other social gathering:

Either would be adopters themselves or someone who knows some all worked up about an adoption attempt that fell through.

They are infuriated that a Father dare assert his parental rights, and accusing him of “interfering” with THEIR “right” to what they perceive as “their” child.

They view fathers and their rights as mere obstacles to be overcome.

Fathers are considered “the enemy,” those who stand between “helpless orphans” and “their new parents.”

Never mind the fact that if the kid had an identified father, clearly they’re no “orphan!”

(At least in the lay sense of the word. In international adoption, there are complexities relating to how an “orphan” is legally determined. Most International “orphans” by the legal definition are not “orphans” by the lay definition of having no parents.)

---

What of adoptees ourselves, and our human right to know our own Fathers? (Yes, even those who may have walked out or even treated our Mothers poorly, or in some other form been viewed as “socially undesirable”.)

A parent may not live up to some ideal of perfection, but that lack of perfection still does nothing to negate their parenthood or the basic human rights that pertain to these complex relationships.

---

What of those men who are unaware they even are Fathers?

Considering the actual circumstances of human reproduction, there are plenty of men walking around completely unaware of their status as Fathers, let alone Fathers whose children were placed into adoptions.

---

More often than not these men are simply relegated to “the shadows.” There are few resources or studies pertaining to them.

As a Radical Feminist myself, I have been very wary of various factions in the so called “Father’s rights” and “Men’s rights” movements as oftentimes individual cases have been utilized to interfere with women’s reproductive rights, or force children to remain in abusive situations.

That said, there is a fine line to walk here. The “movement” ends of these things are often but fronts of other ends, such as a part of the broader attempt to dismantle women’s reproductive privacy.

But setting those aside for the moment, there are also individual cases of merit pertaining to Fathers’ rights in child rearing decisions and the loss or surrender of parental rights.

Fathers do have inherent human rights in relation to their children.

I readily acknowledge, understanding the differences between some individual cases and so called “movements” that seek to utilize some cases towards other goals can be tricky to parse.

It’s an ongoing process, and one I speaking as a Bastard AND a Radical Feminist, obviously have a vested stake in.

Understanding who these Fathers are and some of the discrimination they genuinely face, stripping their rights away from them and providing fodder for the adoption industry itself can be a starting point.

Materials such as “Out of the Shadows: Birthfathers’ Stories” for example, can provide at least some basis from which to begin these discussions.

Posts such as this Fathers Day 2010: Unmarried Fathers Who Fight for their Rights to be a Dad on Birth Mother, First Mother Forum also bring out some of the recent case studies.

Eric Smith’s page contains articles and a number of legal citations that are also well worth exploring.

---

Correspondingly to what I said back on Mother’s Day, somewhere out there, if he’s even still alive, I have a father.

One I’ve never known, and know absolutely nothing about, but that not knowing doesn’t negate his existence and role as a Father.

Just as I’ve written in the past about Mother’s Day, today is a day that on some level, adopted people face the prospect of making two Father’s day phone calls, yet oftentimes only being able to make one.

That silence, that null doesn’t mean our Fathers don’t exist, it simply means there’s a huge gulf between where we stand and any ability we might have to do so.

---

All that said, adopted people also often have adopted Fathers as well. That is the one phone call I did make earlier this evening.

While there’s plenty to be said about adoptive Fathers as well, this post is primarily about Fathers (“of origin,” for clarity’s sake, though I reject all the modifier terminology.)

---

I don’t really have a conclusion for this piece either. As I said, these are a series of disjointed notes and thoughts.

The real bottom lines is, though while this is all tricky territory and rife with other interests that want to utilize these cases, Fathers do have human rights in relation to their children.

Untangling the differences between reproduction and child rearing  go a long way towards making some of those rights a bit clearer and perhaps a bit less threatening to those of us trying to preserve women’s reproductive autonomy.

The below is my comment on the New York Times article, Campaigning for Common Ground in Abortion Debate.

Where to start?

The fact that women’s autonomy and freedom must not be up for “debate” perhaps?

The article itself starts off with the false notion that many clinics that offer abortion services don’t ALREADY mention adoption in the course of counseling sessions, offer referrals, or even do adoptions themselves and then goes downhill from there.

More to the point, the article never gets around to the core questions that underlie a woman (and adoptee) centered analysis of  adoption and thereafter the decision of any given clinic to incorporate adoption marketing materials (if such is still left up to the clinic, as many states mandate it at this point.)

Whether the existing adoption infrastructure (which is after all, the only adoption we have) is or is not compatible with institutions that at least on some level claim to honour women’s free agency and autonomy, speaking both reproductively and more generally *AND* does  adoption as an institution respect and uphold and the human, civil, and identity rights of those directly affected (including the rights of the eventual resultant children)?

Or is adoption incompatible with women’s autonomy and free agency, *AND* does it systemically, fundamentally cause harm to the human, civil, and identity rights of those directly affected?

If it does harm, is such fundamentally at odds with the very nature of any given clinic as an institution?

Answering those questions would go a long way towards determining whether or not clinics that are genuinely interested in women’s rights, autonomy, lifelong health and well being should or should not accommodate promotion of both adoption itself as a concept and for today’s existing adoption industry.

Some clinics are Feminist in orientation viewing themselves as part of the broader Women’s Health Movement, others view their role as a medical specialty. Some are physician owned, others are part of a broader corporate structure.

Through the years many have come out to their own stances in relation to adoption, each as unique as the clinics themselves.

(Anti-Abortion Coercive Pregnancy Indoctrination Centers, so called “crisis pregnancy centers” on the other hand, are usually little more than a front door entrance to the adoption industry. Many measure their monthly tallies in terms of  not merely how many women redirected from abortion to birthgiving, but also how many children placed for adoption per month. They ARE adoption marketing. Their track records on both rights and women’s autonomy are but a series of horror stories.)

So my comment:

There are only two reproductive decisions (sometimes) under a woman’s control: having an abortion or giving birth.

Adoption is a decision about who will do the day to day raising of any eventual child. It is not a reproductive decision but rather, a decision that cannot be carried out until after a child is born. The child has their own distinct set of human/civil/& identity rights.

Adoption is not some form of reproductive middle ground.

“Open adoptions” in many states are not legally enforceable. Promises of ongoing contact are made, sometimes just long enough to get a woman to sign a relinquishment form before the child is taken by the adoptive parents, never to be heard from again (as an agency intermediary may keep names and other details as secret as a child’s state confiscated birth certificates.)

Even “open adoptions” in sealed records states produce kids with sealed records. It is more an industry marketing tool than a genuine protection of Mother’s rights

Coercive Pregnancy Indoctrination Centers have long conflated the adoption child rearing decision (if a woman gets to decide) with the reproductive decision of whether or not to bear a pregnancy to term.

Seeing clinics that offer abortion services embrace that false conflation is tragic.

Most women seeking abortion providers have already made their decision BEFORE they reach the clinic.

Posters, required “information,” and other adoption marketing mechanisms inside clinics, whether due to the provider’s embrace of the false meme or state mandated continue the drumbeat of what women already hear outside the clinic walls:

• ‘An abortion decision is something a woman should always second guess.’
• ‘There’s still time to back out’
• ‘You don’t have to do this.’

All of which are more about stigmatizing abortion and isolating women who do go forward with their abortion decisions as well as abortion providers themselves than any concrete offer of a genuine alternative.

Falsely elevating adoption up to some supposed form of “third choice” also vastly exaggerates the number of women who turn to adoption in the perception of the woman who has come to the clinic seeking abortion care.

Only a tiny percentage of pregnant women in America opt for adoption and of those who do, most will chose family or close friends not total strangers as adoptive parents.

When women and girls do turn to adoption, what institutions they find are rarely designed to respect her autonomy and sexual decisions.

The current state of the adoption industry in this country is largely religious in nature, born of objections to abortion AND a desire to ensure its own movement growth by moving children from those it deems “unfit” parents to those the religious institutions deems “appropriate.”

For young women, the maternity homes of yesteryear are still with us, though some have updated their tactics. Religious conversion and ‘moral redemption’ via the surrender of their parental rights, remain core to many of these maternity ministries.

Placing what amounts to an intake path to ministries into the clinic setting is asking women to endure advertising from a competing view of women’s place in the world inside one of the few spaces where what she herself has decided should be respected.

It’s insulting.

Such also glosses over or denies many Mothers’ unpleasant experiences of adoption. To simply offer up such a panacea as some last minute solution, whereby a woman can avoid the medical procedure that culturally she is being taught to fear is to offer little more than an impulse shopping form of escape hatch without a full disclosure of what lies on the other side of the hatch door.

Those attacking abortion have invested in infrastructure to collect those women and utilize their pregnancies for their own ends.

I’ve spoken with abortion providers who do offer adoption “counseling.” The crux of the matter is what happens when it comes time for a adoption referral on to a next step. The answer is always the same: either religiously based aspects of the crisis pregnancy industry or the more secular alternative, an adoption lawyer.

The problem with both of these is that by funneling pregnant women into such, clinics are all too often handing pregnant women off to those who will financially benefit from the woman’s pregnancy (creating a vast conflict of interest and very real pressure on the woman to relinquish, not change her mind after birth) AND both of these are some of the key players ensuring that Adoptees’ and Mother’s records remain sealed away from them.

To genuinely respect women’s lifelong needs and rights, including the rights of adopted people, clinics need to carefully re-examine their support of the existing adoption industry, not put posters up funneling pregnant women into an industry that oftentimes cares little for them as individuals and their and their eventual kids’ lifelong needs and rights.

Women deserve better than the crisis pregnancy industry.

On Monday the New Jersey Assembly’s Human Services Committee heard testimony on A1406 (The Assembly’s version of the New Jersey Senate’s S799.) The bill has become a mangled beyond repair attempt at what was originally intended to be open records legislation. At this point the two bills have been combined and are now known as SCS1406.

This is not an adoptee rights bill.

An unknown number of adoptees will be left behind by this bill, further, it would actually SEAL the records of any child entering the New Jersey child welfare system by way of the “safe haven” baby dump system.

In short, any records this bill would open will come at the direct expense of the rights of other adoptees, abandoned children, and boarder babies (see below.)

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ACTION NEEDED-

The bill has now been released to the full Assembly.

Email contact is convoluted at best. For the moment, at least, this page has a full contact list, click on each individual  Assemblyman or Assemblywoman’s links (not the Senator links) and you’ll find phone numbers and other contact information . You can also utilize the “Contact your legislator” button to come to an email contact form for each Assemblymember. I’ll do some further digging and see if I can come up with a better means of contact.

Also see Bastard Nation’s latest action alert urging letters to the Governor-  BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: Please Write New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to Veto SCS799.1399. I will post it in full at the end of this post.

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Personal Commentary-

I submitted testimony opposing the bill, but was unable to be present at the hearing. I listened to the full audio the afternoon and early evening of the hearing.

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization also submitted testimony in opposition to the bill.

There are other opponents to the bill, a number of them ideologically opposed to women’s autonomy and free agency, but I am sadly unaware of any other adoptee rights organizations who have held the line and fought against this disastrous bill, holding out for a bill that would instead provide full equality to all adoptees and for the abandoned children and boarder babies of New Jersey.

To say that is a disappointing state of affairs is an understatement. Watching organizations and individuals actually supporting this bill that would actually seal records for a number of adoptees and other children has been disappointing to say the least.

It reveals a lack of comprehension of the importance of standing for the rights of those often most vulnerable, unable to speak on their own behalf, with no real political representation and those whose rights are all too often deemed ‘expendable.’

I approach this as I do all adoption related legislation, from the personal perspective of both one who was left behind and whose rights were deemed ‘expendable’ in the Ohio adoption ‘reform’ effort AND from the perspective of someone who was apparently a boarder baby, born in a hospital to an identified mother but who was taken into the foster system, not home with her. Which is to say, I know a thing or two from personal experience about precisely the damage that this bill in New Jersey stands to do.

Sadly, far from an actual open records bill, A1406 will by default, SEAL the records of kids entering the New Jersey child welfare system via the “safe haven” or baby dump program.

The bill’s attached statement spells it out in plain English (emphasis mine):

In the case of a child who was surrendered pursuant to the “New Jersey Safe Haven Infant Protection Act,” the State Registrar shall deem that the birth parent requested nondisclosure and shall not provide the birth parent’s name or home address, if recorded on the child’s birth certificate. The Division of Youth and Family Service (DYFS) in the Department of Children and Families is directed to notify the State Registrar when a child is surrendered pursuant to that law to enable the Registrar to identify the certificate of birth in order to deem that the birth parent requested nondisclosure.

For any child passing through the “safe haven” intake path, they will be treated from the outset as if they were vetoed from birth, by default. Their records will be sealed from them, barring a parent later being able to somehow prove they are the parent and also somehow remove the auto-veto, these kids will be screwed for their lifetimes.

As I’ve documented here on my blog before, New Jersey is one of the states counting boarder babies, those born in hospitals to identified mothers into it’s baby dump system. (See New Jersey- Boarder Babies being folded into “Safe Haven” statistics.)

As these abandoned children and boarder babies enter the child welfare system, some will be adopted, but others will enter the foster care system. Normally, a child’s records are only sealed upon adoption, but under New Jersey’s A1406, all of the kids deemed “safe haved” would have their records sealed, thus producing for the first time a NEW set of kids with sealed records, some of whom would be foster kids with sealed records. This is unprecedented nationally.

A1406 would also enshrine in New Jersey law a newly constructed state granted privilege, that of parental disclosure vetoes over adoptee’s access to our birth certificates.

It is, at it’s core, a conditional access fake “restoration of adoptee rights” bill that includes a provision for contact through intermediaries, a provision in the vetoes that “birthmothers” must sign over medical, cultural, and social histories if they want the veto, otherwise their veto is disreguarded. (This essentially extorts personal medical information out of mothers if they want to use the state constructed veto, a likely HIPAA violation.)

The bill once again creates the intentional conflation around the term “contact preference form.”

Oregon, Maine, New Hampshire, and Alabama’s “contract preference form” has no force of law behind it, they do not not bar adoptees from gaining access to their original documentation.

New Jersey’s 1406’s so called “document of contact preference” on the other hand is actually a disclosure veto cloaked in the language of “preference.” It WOULD prevent adoptees from gaining access to their original birth certificates.

This is precisely the form of “language creep” I’ve warned about in relation to these contact preference documents for years now. As I wrote in my earlier post, Adoptee Rights 101: Class Bastard and how to recognize a genuine adoptee rights bill, the first “contact preference form” was created as part of the struggle to open Oregon’s records. It was not in the ballot measure Oregon voters voted on, but was a later addition.

Section 7 also merits special attention as it too is antithetical to adopteed people, and our familys’ civil rights, our right to avail ourselves of legal remedy in the wake of wrongdoing:

7.    (New section)  a. A person, firm, partnership, corporation, association or agency that has placed a child for adoption shall not be liable in any civil or criminal action for damages resulting from information provided by the State Registrar pursuant to this act.

b.    An employee, agent or officer of the Department of Health and Senior Services who is authorized by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services to disclose information relating to the certification of birth pursuant to this act, shall not be liable for:

(1) disclosing information based on a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act; and

(2) any error or inaccuracy in the information that is disclosed after receipt of a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act, and any consequence of that error or inaccuracy.

In short, it would create a liability shield.

Without the ability to pursue our rights in a court of law, we have no hope of our rights being upheld.

This is a massive gift to the industry (as well as the government itself.) Section 7 is little more than a government bail out for erasing industry and state misdeeds in the course of handling our information.

Need a real world example of whose rights this stands to curtail?

Take my post about a story from New Jersey, Catholic Charities offers up another lifetime’s worth of lies and false “reunion”, in which the supposed “reunion” New Jersey’s Catholic Charities facilitated turned out to be just another lie once revealed by a DNA test.

The Adoptee was mismatched and the Family in question was left with no means by which to regain genuine information about where their child actually went other than pursuing the matter in the courts.

As the article my post is based upon, Three decades after adoption, DNA test reveals painful truth, points out, sometimes the courts are the only recourse left open to individuals and families who get screwed by the state and those facilitating in the “reunion industry:”

Angry, and worried about his first-born son’s fate, Ryba consulted with a private investigator. He even tried to file missing person and kidnapping reports with the New Jersey attorney general’s office. He said he was turned away.

As Ryba continues to search for answers, he recognizes that a lawsuit may be his only option. But so far, he has been unable to find an attorney willing to take his case. He also worries about the cost.

Yet New Jersey 1406 stands to close off precisely those legal options. It takes away the final avenue left open to those with no other recourse.

For the liability shield aspects alone, this bill then becomes antithetical to adoptees and our families’ rights.

Obviously, these are but a few of the many fatal flaws with the legislation.

Bastards holding out for a genuine adoptee rights bill, yes after the 30 years of pre-existing work in New Jersey which STILL have not resulted in a clean bill this year, find themselves in some weird middle.

We do not support the bill.

Other adoptees and bill supporters have co-opted so much of the terminology and the core arguments of genuine adoptee rights efforts, yet they utilize such in service to supporting a bill that will ultimately seal yet more records, those of some of New Jersey’s most vulnerable and politically voiceless kids.

The Bastard Nation action alert makes it plain:

Promoters of the bill have co-opted the language of the real adoptee rights movement and real obc access laws by equating their bill to Oregon’s law, which through ballot initiative, restored the right of all that state’s adoptees to the unrestricted right to their own original birth certificates.

Opponents of the bill fight it for their own reasons, (some of which are altogether little more than industry ass covering.)

Bastards oppose it from our own, uniquely Bastard-centric stance (as well as a stance  supportive of our parents, particularly our mother’s genuine personal medical privacy rights.)

This makes us distinct from the factions arguing  both in support and opposition who gave testimony at the hearing. We are a third thing; Bastards opposing the bill from a position of wanting to ensure equality in the eyes of the law WHILE supporting our families’ medical privacy.

Family medical information is best left to families, not newly constructed state bureaucracies, exactly as it is for non-adopted individuals.

I cannot speak for others, but for myself personally, this puts my personal position in close alignment to for example,  Senior Mothers Adoption Activist Coalition (SMAAC.) But then, being situated thusly should surprise no one who has been reading along as I self identify as both a Radical Feminist and a Bastard.

I see no inherent contradiction in supporting the genuine rights of Mothers and simultaneously supporting Bastard rights.

It is primarily the lies of the industry and surrounding culture that set adoptees and mothers against one another politically. In reality, more often than not our interests, particularly in seeing all our personal documentation restored to us tend to align more often than not.

As for the hearing itself, we certainly heard plenty of that pitting Mothers against Bastards and blathering about “balancing rights.”

It was quite possibly one of the most ensnared in non-sequiturs,  reunification-centric, conflationary and extraordinary uses of co-opted language hearings I’ve ever endured listening to in all my years of Bastard activism.

The usual false tropes were brought up:

• many on both sides arguing their stance would result in further abortion reduction/curtailment (whether one used such to support or oppose the bill, the core argument is antithetical to women’s genuine reproductive autonomy. Each individual woman who determines for herself she needs an abortion is a sample of one. When the state begins to set goals for ‘how many is too many women always pay the price.)
• false notions of presumed/alleged/expectations of “birthparent privacy” and supposed “balancing of rights” (which the courts have repeated rejected, see both the Tennessee and Oregon cases. Oregon was appealed to the supreme court, but rejected, finding that the circuit court had correctly decided the matter.)
• the intentional conflations surrounding  “contact preferences” (a contact preference form is not a disclosure veto, nor contact veto)
• the same old same old “opt in” vs “opt out” irrelevancies (both stances support legislation that still curtail Bastard access)
• alleged “needs” for counseling and intermediaries (as we are considered somehow distinct and separate from other adults deemed legally competent to conduct their own interpersonal and family affairs)
• registries and vetoes as some form of adequate substitute for adopted people’s equality (similar to my point above, though also a demand that the state construct systems to collect, maintain and dispense deeply personal information such as personal medical histories as somehow cognized as some form of adequate substitute for adopted people’s full legal equality to nonadopted people)
• opening records to provide some kind of psychological “wholeness” or “completeness (not a rights based argument, rather it reduces our human/civil/identity rights down to what would be a mere state granted-or withheld- privilege confererred almost out of pity upon poor needy and emotionally defective adoptees)
• falsely tangling in family medical histories to original birth certificate access (non-adopted people get no medical information with their OBCs, nor does the state construct systems by which to collect and pass along such deeply personal and legally protected private information for non-adopted people)
• etc.

But by the time the hearing was well underway, it was down to everything from facebook privacy settings to outright lies such as (paraphrasing now):

• nothing is really secret, anyone who really wants to find the information will
• 90% of inter-country adoptees already have their information/less than 10% could be considered confidential
• Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute outright claiming he has “no horse in this race,” when he himself is by his own admission at the hearing an adoptive father and employed by an organization in the very business of promoting the “normalcy” of adoption and adoption as a positive outcome
• Pertman also claimed that going forward those who needed to could always avail themselves of “lawsuits.” Had he actually read section 7 of the legislation, he might have noticed A1406 would specifically curtail New Jersey adoptees and their families right to utilize the courts in relation to information released via the legislation
• the repeated insistence that New Jersey’s “safe haven”/baby dump records are already sealed (then why would this legislation propose to seal them?!?)
• Treating Oregon’s “contact preference” refusals as if they were somehow the same as what New Jersey would experience when Oregon’s preference forms are not in any way legally contact prohibitive and do not bar the adoptee from receiving their original information (i.e. comparing apples and oranges)
• etc.

Put simply, the hearing was a trainwreck, with nonsense and nonsequitors flying by a mile a minute, with co-opted adoptee rights arguments being used in support of this catastrophic bill.

As for genuine Bastard activists?

We’ve been both personally trashed for daring to say anything about ‘another state’s bill’  (never mind the effect it will have on other states, the national precedents in it, the degrading of the term “contact preference” in it, and the fact that it’s actually a sealed records bill and that SOMEONE has to stand for the genuine rights of ALL of New Jersey’s adoptees, boarder babies, and abandoned children) AND simultaneously trashed for not being present at the hearing. (Never mind some of us have real lives, families, and other obligations that made being there impossible.) It’s been ugly.

I may or may not write to that further at a later date. Suffice it to say, I have much to say about what I’ve been seeing as of late out of many so self professed advocates for adoptee rights.

After a hearing the that lasted roughly 5 1/2 hours, the committee voted the bill out to the full Assembly:

Committee Voting:
AHU 6/14/2010 – r/ACS – Yes {6} No {0} Not Voting {0} Abstains {4} – Roll Call

• Vainieri Huttle, Valerie (C) – Yes
• Rodriguez, Caridad (V) – Yes
• Angelini, Mary Pat – Abstain
• Biondi, Peter J. – Abstain
• Fuentes, Angel – Yes
• McHose, Alison Littell – Abstain
• O’Scanlon, Declan J., Jr. – Abstain
• Prieto, Vincent – Yes
• Tucker, Cleopatra G. – Yes
• Wagner, Connie – Yes

An audio archive of the full hearing can be found online, just click the “listen” link next to”Monday, June 14, 2010, 2:00pm Committee Room 16.”

Postscript of sorts-

Throughout our ‘community’ particularly online (be that on mailing lists, in blog posts and comments, in newsletters or even individual’s facebook posts and comments) I’ve watched people’s assumptions are unraveling. Sides are being chosen, and yes, long term friendships have come apart over organizational or individual decisions to either support or oppose  fatally flawed legislation. I’m not merely speaking about New Jersey, but also more broadly, pertaining to Illinois, South Dakota, and other states.

This year has been brutal with roughly 15 states ‘in play’ and next to no clean bills.

New Jersey is its own particular version of Bastard hell in that adopted people and their families have been banging their heads against that particular brick wall for 30 years.

Yes, people are dying.

But as I’ve said over and over, there’s not a Bastard or a Mother, or a family member on this planet that isn’t dying. One can come out to a dead 50 year old just as easily as they can an 80 year old.

The fact that people die is no excuse to gut someone else’s human/identity/civil rights as part of a personal shortcut in HOPES of getting yours (provided of course, you end up being one of the lucky ones not vetoed if the bill passes.)

On the one hand, it’s been hard to watch and truly sad to see these coming aparts yet sadder still to see those willing to sell the rights of the person standing next to them down the river.

Watching in real time as individuals embrace the idea that other adopted people’s rights can be cast aside. The usual promises of “we’ll come back for yours later” sometimes accompany such, but more often than not, it doesn’t.

Regardless of what people say, the reality is both that after people get theirs most pack up and go home, leaving those left behind by such legislation to fend for themselves with an even smaller pool of activists, AND the real bottom line, incremental strategies have never worked, not once, not in a single state.

Don’t be fooled, what bill gets passed will be with adoptees for at least some of their lifetimes.

No state that has ever passed a fake “open records” bill has ever gone back to clean up the toxic mess left in its wake. No state has ever expanded access after a bad bill has passed.

If New Jersey is any measure, bad bills such as the “safe haven” baby dump bill are only followed by proposed tightening and even further sealing in the aftermath. New Jersey’s bill seeks to even further curtaial abandoned children’s rights and access, not expand it.

On the other hand, observing this heart wrenching and tragic process has also clarified a lot.

Today we have a much clearer picture of who stands firmly for full Adoptee equality and who is willing to settle for variations on the theme of second class citizenship. Who believes we can settle for less than being treated equally under the law, and who feels substitutes and further forms of state control, shame, and screwing over both other adoptees and in New Jersey’s case, boarder babies and abandoned children constitutes some sick version of ‘good enough’.

Bastard rights seem to have a lot of fair weather friends.

When the going is easy, there are plenty of people around. But when it comes to standing equally strong for the rights of those all too often left behind? The field clears out quite a bit.

Not that I needed the reminder, but once again, observing this process, this winnowing of who stands strong and who is willing to settle for less than full equality, has taught me in very tangible terms who understands the core concept of class Bastard, and the necessity of protecting the rights and access of the most vulnerable and all too often deemed ‘expendable.’

It has also taught me who doesn’t; who is ok with screwing over someone else to either ‘get theirs’ or ‘settle for what we can get now.’

Call it a personal decision, but my support, my time, and yes, my resources have been and will continue to be given accordingly.

Having been left behind by a deform measure, I’ve always understood, that when it comes to Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”

Disney’s fictional characters Lilo, Nani, and Stich have a very great deal to say about notions of leaving people behind. They explain it in terms so simple any child can get their arms around it:

“Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”

It’s amazing, yet sadly predictable to see some really do consider our real lives, our rights and our real real life families worthy of less.

---

Full Bastard Nation action alert–

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: WRITE NEW JERSEY GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE TODAY TO VETO SCS799/1399

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT
Please distribute freely!

Please take a minute to write short letter to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and ask him to veto SCS799/1399 if it reaches his desk. The bill passed out of the Human Services Committee on June 14. (NOTE: These are the numbers used by proponents. Two bills have been consolidated and are also known as SCS1406).

SCS799/1399, promoted as an Adoptee’s Birthright Bill, sells adoptees down the river, by creating a new, special 12-month temporary ”veto right” for “birthparents;” thus, exempting the state’s adopted adults from equal protection and treatment regarding the release of the government-generated public record of their births. Promoters of the bill have co-opted the language of the real adoptee rights movement and real obc access laws by equating their bill to Oregon’s law, which through ballot initiative, restored the right of all that state’s adoptees to the unrestricted right to their own original birth certificates.

New Jersey is a key state. If this restrictive legislation is enacted serious harm to the genuine adoptee rights movement throughout the country could occur.

Read SCS799/1399 here
Read SCS799/1399 statement here

SCS799/1399:

*includes a 12- month open enrollment period, starting after the Department of Health and Senior Services releases regs for SCS799/1399 implementation, that allows “birthparents,” to file disclosure vetoes–wrongly called a “contact preference form”– before obcs, past and future, are unsealed.

*authorizes the State Registar to replace the original birth certificate of those subjected to the contact veto/disclosure veto with a mutilated copy of the obc with all identifying information, including the address of the parent(s) at the time of birth (if they appear on the cert) deleted.

*requires “birthparents” who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to submit an intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form to activate the veto.

*requires “birthparents” who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to fill out the same intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form.

*seals by default all “safe haven” birth certificates, even though many “safe haven” babies are boarder babies, born to identified mothers and abandoned in hospitals shortly after birth. Some of these children may never be adopted and will never have a genuine birth certificate.

The fiscal note in the original bill has been removed, but the the sub bill mandates the Department of Health and Senior Services to mount an extensive media campaign to inform birthparents of their “special veto right” and other bill “initiatives.”

A typewritten letter or handwritten letter,
no longer than 250 words, is preferable.

Use Veto SCS799/1399: The Adoptee’s Birthright bill in the header and include your name and address.

Governor Chris Christie
PO Box 001
The State House
Trenton, NJ 08625-0001

If a letter is not possible, send an email through the template here.

Bastard Nation’s letter:

Dear Governor Christie:

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, opposes SCS799/1399: The Adoptee’s Birthright bill. We ask you to veto it if it comes to your desk. The bill is currently awaiting a voice in the Assembly.

SCS799/1399 will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through compromise language in this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the State Registrar by order of the birthparent(s).

Bastard Nation rejects the special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Birthparents should not have different rules.

Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to their own birth certificates: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates as a favor, not a right–a right that the non-adopted enjoy without a second thought? Please veto SCS799/1399 and tell the legislature to return with a new clean bill that restores the right of access to all the state’s adopted citizens.

Yours truly,

Marley E. Greiner

Executive Chair