Very quick little update tonight.

Yesterday was the hearing in the Judiciary Committee. The Committee voted it out to the floor by a vote of 6 to 3.

According to the General Assembly bill status website (updated infrequently,) the bill has been “Placed on Calendar Order of 2nd Reading April 15, 2010.” (Bills require 3 readings before the final vote.)

As others have written, HB 5428 has already passed the House in a very quiet and very quick fashion, holding no hearings in which bill opponents could testify against the bill. In yesterday’s Judiciary Committee hearing only one opponent was allowed to speak. The vote was taken before Committee members had time to read the submitted written testimony.

This bill is being railroaded through.

Just how quickly?

I’d urge making your calls and sending out your faxes as quickly as possible.

Marley posted the Bastard Nation testimony on HB 5428 on her Daily Bastardette site.

Her small comment sums it up pretty well:

This is one of the saddest days in adoption rights history Apparently proponents believe that something is better than nothing–and this sure is nothing. If the bill becomes law, Illinois is a dead state. Below is Bastard Nation’s submitted testimony. It’s full of facts. And we know, facts don’t count.

Which is not to say we’d stop fighting even if the damned bill does go through, just that things get much more complicated from that point.

I prefer to think of this opposition as preventative medicine.

If that fails, then we’ll have to see what we can do about a triple bypass down the line.

The double edged sword is that like in so many states over the past decade, many legislators have come to support the core concept of open records, BUT those pushing this legislation are falsely portraying it as an open records bill/adoptee rights bill.

HB 5428  is NOT an adoptee rights bill.

Rights are one size fits all, either you have them or you don’t. This bill may grant SOME adopted people born prior to an arbitrarily set date access, but it does so at the direct expense of other adopted people’s access in essence guaranteeing they will be left behind.

This degrades any access granted down to the level of mere state granted privilege, or access by the state’s permission. A mere indulgence that can be granted or taken at whim.

Nor is HB 5428 an open records bill.

Adopted people born after the magic arbitrarily designated date are tossed right back into the gaping maw of Illinois’ broken confidential intermediary machine, dealing with the registry system, only with new civil penalities starting at $10,000 for anyone in the mere possession of information that has been added to the registry. Yes, even if an adopted person never acts on any information they might have, and yes, even if they got the piece of information from an Aunt not anything leaked from the registry.

HB 5428 has search and reunion tangled in with medical information, all of which belongs in the interpersonal realm, not the realm of civil, human, and identity rights.

It includes a veto system- making access conditional upon gaining permission from what are at this point people the adoptee has never even met, a person who is a stranger to them with no legal rights to them. Again, see the BN testimony, the bill,

2. vacates, though parental disclosure veto power (see #4) 750 ILCS 50/10) (from Ch. 40, par. 1512) FINAL AND IRREVOCABLE CONSENT TO ADOPTION which states in part:
That I do hereby consent and agree to the adoption of such child. That I wish to and understand that by signing this consent I do irrevocably and permanently give up all custody and other parental rights I have to such child. That I understand such child will be placed for adoption and that I cannot under any circumstances, after signing this document, change my mind and revoke or cancel this consent or obtain or recover custody or any other rights over such child.

It also contradicts its own language:
“Surrendered person” means a person whose parents’ rights have been surrendered or terminated but who has not been adopted.” (p 11)

Rather than simply restoring the right to access adopted people’s own original unaltered birth certificates, a right they enjoyed up until 1946, instead HB 5428 seeks to build empires off the backs of adopted people and our families.

Empires of new layers of bureaucracy and a year long (potentially expensive, yet fiscally undisclosed) public awareness campaign complete with website development, PSAs, written materials, etc. all for systems that as they currently stand, fail to serve the interests of those they were designed to serve.

What we as adopted people seek is equality under law, nothing more and nothing less.

Equality to those non-adopted.

And equality to the other adoptees standing alongside us, not multi-tiered access with an intermediary fee based system standing between ourselves and our state confiscated obcs.

If Bastards are ever going to achieve equality in Illinois it won’t be under this bill.

HB 5428 ensures adopted people are diverted into a wholly seperate convoluted and dysfunctional system designed to stand in their way.

This legislation actually makes an already bad situation far worse.

NOW is the moment, oppose this bill while there’s still time.

Contact information for the Senators can be found here.

Just a short post this morning.

By way of a follow up on my post from late last month, Amici dei Bambini petition denied, Romanian adoptions to remain closed, I wanted to draw attention to this video posted in my comments.

It focuses upon the ongoing efforts by Roelie Post of Against Child Trafficking to oppose agency pressures to reopen Romanian adoptions. Roelie Post is the author of  “Romania for Export Only: The Untold Story of the Romanian Orphans” based upon her previous work with the European Commission in Romania.

As I mentioned in my comments section, it can be somewhat difficult to find resources pertaining to the adoption lobby pressuring EU countries in English to share with the American portions of my readership. While this was originally broadcast on German TV, it has been subtitled in English.

American Bastards need to understand that while the U.S. government and American adoption lobbies are important portions of the problem, there are additional forces pushing for, if not outright demanding export access far beyond American borders. The Global industry needs to be understood if one is going to tackle the issue of inter-country adoptions.

There are several potentially incredibly damaging pieces of legislation moving through multiple states right now. They would affect both adopted people and our families of origin. Illinois’ HB 5428 is but one of several, but an important one, capable of tremendous damage, running as best it can by and large under the radar.

Since I blogged about it last (here and here,) the bill has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The next hearing on the bill will be Tuesday, April 13, at 2:30 pm in Capitol 400, Springfield, IL.

73adoptee has a strong post up regarding the critical importance of defeating this atrocious piece of legislation, Why Adoptee Rights Depend On Stopping Illinois HB 5428. She has ongoing coverage.

Bastard Nation, Illinois Open, and Green Ribbons Campaign for Open Records each have action alerts out about the bill. (See BN’s here,  BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: ILLINOIS HB 5428 (SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE) and Green Ribbons here, Join the Adoption Reform Illinois coalition and help restore adult adoptee rights in Illinois!)

I take strong issue with the wording of both of them for a number of reasons, (be that touting low abortion rates in states with open records, or  mislabeling this a “birth mother rights bill,” which it most certainly is not, as but two examples. Tactically, I am no fan of change.org “petitions.”) Thus out of necessity I’ve had to cobble together this little action alert of my own.

Please bear in mind, I’m pointing at the writings of those working on the bill, but I have to reiterate, per my links policy, just because I link a page, that should not be taken as an endorsement nor my personal agreement with everything on that page.

By way of some additional resources pertaining to the bill, see:

• Illinois Open and the Illinois Open blog
• BastardGrannyAnnie‘s blog
• Mary Lynn Fuller’s Rights of Adoptees blog is also carrying a great deal of coverage.
• Bastardette of course has a lot of history written about this bill and Sara Feigenholtz, the bill’s main sponsor, and her confidential intermediary pal Melisha Mitchell as well as some history concerning the previously attempted train wreck of a bill, IL HB 4623, that ran along many of the same themes as this year’s legislation.

I’ve also blogged about HB 4623 and Illinois’ Confidential Intermediary program previously, see Legislation- IL HB 4623 and IL’s Kafka-esque Confidential Intermediary Hell and Prospect of open records makes IL Catholic Conference fearful of potential lawsuits.

Please, if you care about the human, civil, privacy, and identity rights of Bastards and our families of origin, work to kill this bill.

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While I have several objections to wording and basic concepts in the latest Bastard Nation action alert, particularly the “specific objections” portion, I’m going to quote this from the introduction:

Illinois HB 5428, the bill that is supposed to help adoptees get their obcs, but doesn’t – is on the move again. It was rushed through the House and passed on the House floor by a vote of 74 – 67. Now it’s going quickly through the Senate. It must be stopped right now in the Judiciary Committee.

The Illinois Judiciary Committee has scheduled a public hearing for HB 5428. It will be held on Tuesday, April 13, at 2:30 pm in Capitol 400, Springfield, IL. We hope that some of you will be able to attend and speak to the committee. This will be our opportunity to speak out and talk directly to these senators.

If public speaking isn’t your thing, then please consider coming anyways because we really need to have the committee members look out into the audience and see a lot of people who object to this bill. Your very presence in that room is extremely important!

We are also asking everyone to write and/or call the committee members before the hearing on the 13th. (Contact Information below)

The only way for Illinois to be a truly open state some day is to stop conditional legislation such as HB 5428 from getting a foot in the door now. We want a state where every single adoptee is free to request his obc, with no restrictions or alterations. We want a state where adoptees will be equal among themselves as well as with all other non-adopted citizens.

We need an unconditional bill to accomplish this goal. HB 5428 won’t help. It is a conditional bill (see specifics below) which will keep some adoptees locked out of the system for good.

The legislators will not revisit adoptee problems any time soon if they can get HB 5428 in the law now. History has proven this to be true.

The legislators do not care about the percentage of adoptees whose birth mothers will file a disclosure veto and keep them from getting a birth certificate. If the law makers really cared, they would change this bill right now so that 100% of Illinois adoptees could get their obcs. The legislators have absolutely no incentive to come back again another year – and they won’t.

Here is the law from Oregon. It is simple, to the point, and does the job. This is the kind of law we want but we will NEVER get it if HB 5428 passes.

“Upon receipt of a written application to the Illinois Dept. of Public Health, any adopted person 21 years of age and older born in the State of Illinois shall be issued a certified copy of his/her unaltered, original and unamended certificate of birth in the custody of the Dept. of Public Health, with procedures, filing fees, and waiting periods identical to those imposed upon non-adopted citizens of the State of Illinois.”

And the Senate Judiciary Committee member’s contact information:

CONTACT INFORMATION

We are very much aware that some of these email addresses may not be correct. It is extremely difficult to get any senate email addresses. They “don’t want them to be given out.” So please do the best you can and try and get through to as many as possible.

A short phone call to the senator’s office is an excellent alternative. FAX’s are good too.

ILLINOIS SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

REPUBLICANS

KIRK DILLARD

Phone 217-782-8148 FAX (630)-969-1007

http://dillard.senategop.org/index.php/contact-us-mainmenu-3

RANDALL M. HULTGREN

Phone 217-782-8022 FAX (217)-782-9586

senatorrandyhultgren@gmail.com.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

MATT MURPHY

Phone 217-782-4471 FAX (847) 776-1494

http://www.murphy2010.com/connect.aspx

DALE A. RIGHTER

217 – 782-6674 FAX (217)-235-6052

template on personal page

http://www.dalerighter.com/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=1&Itemid=3

DEMOCRATS

WILLIAM R. HAINE

217-782-5247 FAX (217) 782-5340

whaine@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

TERRY LINK

217-782-8181 FAX (847-735-8184)

senator@link30.org or

tlink@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

MICHAEL NOLAND

217-782-7746 FAX (217) 782-2115

mnoland@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

KWAME RAOUL

217-782-5338 FAX (773) 681-7166

raoulstaff@gmail.com or

kraoul@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

IRA SILVERSTEIN Co-Sponsor of bill

217-782-5500 FAX (217-782-5340)

isilverstein@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

DON HARMON

217-782-8176 FAX ( 708) 848-2022

dharmon@senatedem.state.ilga.gov.

A.J.WILHELMI Chief Sponsor of the bill

217-782-8800 FAX (815) 207-4446

http://ajwilhelmi.com/ajwilhelmi/?page_id=42

campaign page template or

awilhelmi@senatedem.state.ilga.gov

Representative Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chgo) is the main sponsor of the bill in the House of Representatives.

You can also read the bill’s full text and see the updated  status of the bill.

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Перевести на русский

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The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind. Obviously events are unfolding more quickly than even those who update far more often than I can keep up with, let alone my little blog.

The big news tonight is that Russia has put a freeze on all US adoptions until Russia and the US can come to an agreement on terms relating to those inter-country adoptions, (most likely adding additional follow up for Russian children, who remain Russian citizens after adoption) and sign a treaty to that effect.

To those of us who have been following the circumstances leading up to this suspension over the course of years now, none of this comes as a surprise, particularly since Russia had come right up to this brink in the last major US/Russian adoption related incident, (see my posts on Dmitry Yakolev.)

To understand the process by which things came to this critical point, one first has to understand the broader context.

Marley Greiner/Bastardette has been tracking some of the Russian adoptee murders and other forms of abuse, such as the high profile case of Masha (“Allen”) who was adopted by pedophile Matthew Mancuso on her blog “NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO/Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten. A memoriam for Russian adoptees abused and murdered by their forever families.”

Be certain to see her overview Cases: Forever Family, Forever Dead.

Scrolling back through the posts and cases provides a great deal of background to how this level of frustration and anger has built over time.

Also be sure to see her overview of the consequences (and lack thereof) to the adoptive parents, The Russian Adopted Dead: a review of killers and sentences.

I have also done a scant few posts about some of the Russian Adooptees: Masha, Dennis Uritsky here in Maryland and somewhat more in-depth coverage of essentially the last major international incident concerning American adopters of a dead Russian adoptee, the sad death of Dmitry Yakolev/ Chase Harrison.

With that as backgrounder, we then come to the events of the last 24 hours.

Start with this lengthy video segment from Russia Today,

Clearly, each and every system in place to prevent such failed one by one, falling like dominoes.

After the 11 hour flight from DC back to Moscow he was brought to the Russian Education and Science Ministry Thursday afternoon by a man who had apparently been paid $200 by the adoptive mother to meet the boy’s United Airlines flight when it arrived. He had been adopted a mere 6 months ago.

While it’s unclear what Artem had been told about the trip, we have details such as these beginning to emerge:

The online website Gazeta.ru said the child had almost completely forgotten how to speak Russian during his time in the United States, and answered questions posed to him in his native language in English. He said his adoptive grandparents were “good” but his mother was “very bad”, claimed the website. During his time in the US, he had been given a new name – Justin Hansen.

Allegedly he was told by his adoptive mother, from Shelbyville, Tennessee, that he was going on an excursion to Russia and would return home to the US in a couple of weeks. “His adoptive mother beat him and pulled him by the hair,” said Pavel Astakhov, the Russian president’s human rights ombudsman. “Reminding him of her makes him cry.”

At the orphanage in the far eastern town of Partizansk, where the child lived before he was adopted, teachers denied that he had psychological problems. “He’s a smart, clever kid,” said Svetlana Glukhovtseva. “He took in everything we taught him very well.”

Anyone with a shred of empathy can sympathize with the betrayal he must have felt upon realizing that far from some kind of “excursion,” his new “forever mommy” had decided to ship him off as if taking the boy to a returns department.

The Russian media is running with the “returned purchase” meme and I’m convinced, it’s a very valid analogy. They, like many of us Bastards, recognize the American adoptive mother is attempting to pass Artem off as nothing more than ‘defective merchandise’, and are furious at the callousness of her these actions.

There have been promises of an investigation here on the American end to see whether or not any laws were broken, I can only hope such would take into account not merely the actions of these individuals, but the entire system that enabled this human rights travesty.

Children are not objects.

They should not be treated as such.

They should not be purchased, nor purchase-able.

Artem was not treated as a family member, he was treated as little more than an allegedly ‘broken item’ shipped back to the manufacturer.

Now that he’s back in Russia, the Russian media are reporting he will likely go back into the child welfare system after first receiving physical and psychological examinations and some counseling. The language barrier alone may make him feel all the more isolated in his home country.

Bastardette blogged about Artyom Saveliev / Artem Saveliev /Artem Justin Hansen’s flight last night,  LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE: RUSSIAN ADOPTEE DUMPED ON PLANE, SENT BACK TO RUSSIA

Throughout the day today, she has posted several updates:

First an initial update that includes a variety of images relating to the case: Artem’s official adoption listing profile on the Russian government website prior to the adoption, and “after pictures” both with his “Forever Family” adoptive Mommy, Torry Ann Hansen and upon arrival back in Russia at the Domodedovo Airport. Bastardette also includes the image of the note that was sent with Artem on his journey to the ‘returns department.’

ARTEM SAVELIEV/ARTEM JUSTIN HANSEN: A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Later on, she added a second update about the Renton Washington agency that placed him, WAPAC, World Association for Children and Parents. WAPAC is Council on Accreditation (COA) accredited and a Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) and National Council for Adoption (NCFA) member. Earlier today, the Russian government suspended WAPAC’s Russian operations.

She also points out the possibility that Torry Hansen may have been elligible to adopt the boy at a greatly discounted price at the time.

As WAPAC was in Washington State (and ultimately responsible for the placement) and the Hansens live in Tennessee, there have been some questions as to who did the home study.

See Bastardette’s post:

SAVELIEV/HANSEN AGENCY IDENTIFIED: WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN

I don’t have video up at the moment, but Bastardette also appeared on Russian Today this afternoon to speak about the case. Other American adoptees are also speaking out about this case.

In this link’s video segment you get a feel for the American Home the boy was placed into.

Meanwhile on the American end, pieces such as this are appearing attempting to put forward a bit more of the adoptive Mother Torry Hansen and Adoptive Grandmother, Nancy Hansen’s perspective on the incident:

Russia threatens to suspend US adoptions after woman sends 7-year-old boy back to Moscow alone

The article also contains preposterous nonsense such as this from adoption industry lobbyists, NCFA, desperately trying to maintain Russia as a sending country:

“Child abandonment of any kind is reprehensible,” said Chuck Johnson, acting CEO of the National Council For Adoption.

NCFA associated individuals have been key to how the baby dump laws, (often call “Baby Moses Laws” or “Safe Haven” laws) legalizing child abandonment came to pass here in the United States. For this latest incarnation of NCFA to decry child abandonment is for them to deny their own organizational history!

But clearly there’s another, more pertinent reason NCFA and JCICS are issuing releases and working hard behind the scenes on this case right now, even above and beyond their desires to keep Russia a “sending country”, WAPAC is one of their own.

Neither NCFA nor JCICS mention that WAPAC is their own member agency (see here and here), as they desperately run around try to sell the it’s an “isolated incident” line, pretending that this latest outrage is not situated firmly within a vast pattern of ongoing history of cases pertaining to what Russian adoptees have suffered at the hands of their American adopters: abuse, starvation, beatings, murders, being adopted by a pedophile, left to die in hot cars in summer, and now sent back alone on an international flight.

“Isolated incident” my ass.

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Well, in yet another instance of details coming in faster than I can blog, let me add a brief postscript of sorts to my above post.

Go see this piece from CNN in which the adoptive granmother claims she was following online instructions from a lawyer:

Nancy Hansen, the Tennessee woman who put Justin Hansen on the plane in Washington, insisted she did not abandon the child, but was following instructions from a lawyer she found online.

and

When the lawyer she found online advised her the adoption could be reversed, Hansen booked the flight and paid the fee for a steward to escort Justin through the airport, she said.

She hired a driver in Moscow she found online to pick the child up from the Moscow airport, she said. She found “safe references” for the driver online, she said.

She then prepared a letter for Justin to present to Russian officials, which included a photo of the driver, whom she identified as “Arthur,” she said.

and we hear from the agency, World Association for Children and Parents for the first time:

The Seattle-based agency which Hansen said her daughter used to coordinate the adoption said it found out about Justin’s return only Friday.

“We were alerted to this situation by our branch office in Moscow, Russia, and are shocked and saddened by this turn of events,” said a spokeswoman for the World Association for Children and Parents.

In the 1 percent of the cases where the dissolution of an adoption has been needed, the agency “has always supported and worked closely with [adoptive] parents to assist the child in moving into a new adoptive family,” she said.

See this comment left over on Bastardette’s blog by an anonymous commenter for more details.

Obviously, I haven’t been blogging much as of late (or at least anywhere near as much as I would have liked to, or have material for.)

Hopefully, I’ll have some new posts up within the week.

For the moment, though, I’m going to backtrack just a bit and point readers towards an article in Indian Country Today (ICT) that was published back in mid-March,  A life filled with scars.

I’ve written before about First Nations children being placed with white adopters (particularly in the Canadian context, see Adoption as a tool of cultural genocide, the “child grabs” Canadian First Nations peoples have endured.)

On the American side of the border, we had the federal Indian Adoption Program (IAP) that lasted from 1958 until 1967. Hundreds of children were passed through it.

The ICT article focuses upon the experience of Susan Harness, an American Indian/First Nations adoptee placed into a white family by way of the IAP.

A member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes from western Montana, Harness was adopted by white parents, Eleanor and Jed Devan, at the age of 18 months. Harness recalls growing up in a home where she was wanted and regarded by her father as a kind of sociological experiment. She had all she needed but sensed that she was not the same as her peers, Harness said.

“Because of my father’s work, I’ve lived in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. I received a wonderful education that included music lessons and dance lessons.”

Her life’s experiences were channeled into a thesis work and later a book, “Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption.” Her life has been the aftermath of a decade-long adoption experiment when American Indian children were placed in homes outside of their race. The process, coined as “transracial adoption,” was an official program funded by federal money through the BIA and the U.S. Children’s Bureau, the federal adoption agency.

Later, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sprouted from the briars of the adoption project. The gateway legislation emphasized Native families as having federally protected rights, Indian family advocates said. Shannon Smith, director of the Indian Child Welfare Act Law Center in Minneapolis, Minn., said the fallout from the Indian Adoption Project left a legacy of broken families and often, broken lives.

“Certainly there were successful adoptions. The core of the issue was that somehow the old saying was true: To save them was to take the Indianness from them.”

Harness’ life was not the typical outcome of the Indian Adoption Project. Other Indian children who were also part of the socio-political program experienced depression, anger and failure. Skewed sense of identity also dogged adoptees while more visible results showed in other adoptees’ lives, like mental health deficits and substance abuse issues.

The article goes on to speak clearly to how even in Harness’s case, (considered far more “successful” by some than most of the IAP kids) the lasting effects of identity dismemberment remain with both the adoptees themselves, and in turn, their children on down the line, a feeling of never fully belonging in either world.

Two earth-shattering pieces of news today:

1.  Four girls who had been kidnapped in Guatemala and adopted by American families now living in the U.S.  have had their adoptions annulled. A judge in Arkansas ordered all four were to be returned to their mothers and family members back home who had fought for their return through the Guatemalan courts over the past 5 years.

Furthermore, the agency that had placed the girls, ‘God’s Pure Lambs Global Adoptions, Inc.’ was ordered to pay $835,000 restitution to the families, essentially bankrupting the agency. The agency director, Lyar Pansonfyre is being investigated for failure to pay federal withholding taxes on employees, a fact that came to light in the course of the Guatemalan adoption investigation.

and

2. In a shocking move, Shane Onallous, the head of the National Adoption Council on Children’s Affairs, (an industry trade lobby in Washington)  announced today she was retiring from the adoption field altogether, commenting to the media:

“I just can’t keep saying this crap with a straight face anymore.”

After NACCS’s major conference last month, supported by no less than the Adoptive Parents in Government Coalition, no one could have foreseen her stepping down. Her impassioned keynote address, “the world’s children can be yours, for a price” held no hint she was at the edge of retiring.

Alright, ALRIGHT, I can’t do this with a straight face anymore, April Fools!

The above two items are of course, April fools jokes, nothing that sane could ever take place in the real world.

Instead we’re back to more of the same, that ARE sadly all too real:

• The lastest Bastard Nation action alert on Illinois’ attrocious HB 5428, a piece of legislation that really needs to be added to the scrap heap of bad ideas, not passed. I’ve added the alert to my right hand sidebar as well.
• Meanwhile in Guatemala, far from restoring the country’s stolen children, a new CNA’s Two-year Limited Pilot Program (see bottom of page) of limited reopening has been introduced.
• And finally Bastardette’s latest very important post pertaining to Missouri’s adoption and abortion related legislative insanity. MISSOURI: TEEN SEX LIVES MAY BE INVESTIGATED BY PROSECUTORS–FOR THEIR OWN GOOD

The Missouri legislation shows the blatant hypocrisy of the state’s reproductive policy for what it is; when it comes to abortion, the state wants to stick its nose into every detail, but when it comes to adoption or babydumps, the less information the better.

Conducive Chronicle published by Conducive Magazine did an interesting an important series on Korean adoption earlier this week.

Anyone interested in inter-country adoptions and what happens as the kids grow up should take the time to read through the series.

There are a number of reasons Korea is such an important case study, from it being essentially the birthplace of where in many ways, the modern inter-country adoption movement began, to understanding the sheer scope of how many children were exported.

As those adopted as children grow up we’re seeing a snapshot of what inter-country adoption has meant to them, and to their families of origin. In reconnecting, the separately held ‘puzzle pieces’ are being brought back together and a more accurate account of what happened is finally emerging.

Despite all the marketing of adoptive families as adoptees ‘forever families’ and other such drek, the bottom line remains, once old enough to act autonomously, adoptees return to seek their families, their stories, their authentic histories, and quite often run headlong into the brick wall of agencies that when exporting babies were well staffed and thriving, but now decades later, some no longer exist, others have minimal staff at best, and now massive backlogs of reunion searches to run with no funding and almost no one to do such with.

Far from finding the happy-go-lucky mythologies of adoption, adoptees are instead finding the white envelope systematic fraud, the poverty and dire circumstances that drove many women to lose their children, the social death system, and the outright magnitude of how many children were stripmined out of Korean women and families for the adoption exports.

Rather than attempting to explain such myself, I’ll simply encourage readers to explore the series, along with other documents.

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 1 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 2 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 3 of 4

Structural Violence, Social Death, and International Adoption: Part 4 of 4

Conducive Chronicle has been running a number of other interesting adoption related pieces as of late. Readers will also likely want to take a look at this, as but one of several possible examples, Counseling Services of Adoption Agencies Experienced by Unwed Mothers

Organizationally, they may want to explore both

Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK) (TRACK also has a Facebook page)

and Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network

In a week that has been filled with plenty of legislative bad news on the adoption front domestically, I figured a brief post on this little bit of good news was in order.

Despite the petition efforts of an Italian adoption agency to reopen Romanian inter-country adoptions to a broader set of would-be-adopters, for now at least adoptions will remain closed to all but a very few family members.

On Pound Pup Legacy, user Romanian-Reporter had a piece a couple of days back pertaining to the pressure being exerted to reopen Romanian adoptions, Romania is still being pressured to export children:

In 2001 Romania placed a ban on Inter Country adoptions of its children after massive corruption was discovered within these kinds of adoptions. Ever since the ban came into place the Country has been unjustly pressurized by the leading Countries involved in Inter- Country Adoptions. France, Italy, Spain, Israel and the US and UK have all lobbied to get this ban lifted. The politicians in these Countries involved have interests in adoption agencies and in many cases adoptive parents too.

While there have been numerous changes in the Romanian system, I am fully supportive of the decision not to reopen.

I haven’t much to add to that, so instead, I’ll finish by pulling a few links and some of the important pieces out of the articles.

MEP Victor Bostinaru to declare against petition requesting new start to international adoptions

Romanian MEP Victor Bostinaru, of the Social Democratic Party, the coordinator of the European Socialists and Democrats on the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions (PETI), on Monday will declare against the petition brought forward by the Italian organization „Amici dei Bambini” requesting a new start to international adoptions.

The European deputy is to ask for an end to be put to this petition by the European Parliament’s committee, informs a press release. The above-mentioned petition (No 1120/2009) is brought forward by Marco Graffini on behalf of the organization „Amici dei Bambini” (“The Friends of Children”) and its subject is „Romania’s observing international conventions on children’s rights.”

The petition asks for a new start to international adoptions, namely Romania’s being sanctioned in keeping with Article 7 of the European Union treaty. The petition was supported by PETI chairperson Erminia Mazzoni, a member of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusoni’s party.

„Both the current legislation and the moratorium on international adoptions are a direct consequence of a special situation created in Romania: child trafficking, by kidnapping and selling these children to West European countries and the US.

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The reasons for which the Bucharest authorities in 2001 made the decision on the moratorium still exist, some strong guarantees to the contrary lacking. One must never forget the fact that, in the pre-accession period, it was the EU that asked Romania to introduce the moratorium and its being adopted was hailed both by the European Parliament and by the European Commission repeatedly,” said Victor Bostinaru.

„The Romanian legislation, as well as the moratorium actually, has not violated any international or European regulation. One further needs a sound system and putting an end to the moratorium can only be gradual and monitored. I am urging all people who want an end to this moratorium to get familiar with the situation existing before 2001,” he added.

Romanian orphans are, once again, on Brussels’ agenda

Romanian orphans are, once again, on Brussels’ agenda, Evenimentul Zilei reads. The European Parliament Petitions Commission is discussing today Italy’s petition for unblocking the international adoptions in the case of Romanian children. Romania has banned international adoptions in 2005.

Romania’s representative social-democrat Victor Bostinaru already announced that he was against the petition. He’s facing Commission’s president Italian Erminia Mazzoni, who’s supporting her co-nationals, namely the “Amici dei Bambini” (‘Friends of Children) organisation, which shows that Romania is allegedly breaking the children’s’ rights and asks for sanctions.

But the EC members encouraged Romania to oppose the right for foreign citizens to adopt Romanian children. Romania says there will be no favour for Italy because Italy is having issues with its child protection system and it breached the agreement for the repatriation of Romanian minors.

There is also the fear of going back to “business with orphans”. There have been children that disappeared after international adoptions. 11 children have been sold to the US with false documents in the ’90s and police have not managed to find the children yet, one example goes.

Judicial sources underline the issue of human traffic. Foreign families have been helped to buy birth certificates belonging to poor Romanian children and they used them to get other children out of the country, children that have been abandoned and had no papers. According to the Romanian authorities, in some cases lawyers or notaries helped out, or the adoption was made without any third party.

In the spring of 2006, several months before Romania joined the EU, 400 MEPs signed a petition requesting Romania to unblock international adoptions. Five liberal MEPs have planned this petition and two of them, Claire Gibault and Jean- Marie Cavada, went on with the lobby, paying unexpected visits to Romanian maternities and centres for child protection to raise proofs for the necessity of Romanian orphans to be adopted by foreign citizens. For the time being, the authorities are considering only the adoption of Romanian children only in the case of parents residing overseas.

Romanian Office for Adoptions: Romania entirely observes law on international adoptions

Romania entirely observes the law on international adoptions, but gives pride of place to national adoptions, Secretary of State of the Romanian Office for Adoptions Bogdan Panait told.

„Romania entirely observes the law on international adoptions. Currently the draft law on changing adoptions is with the Prime Minister for a first reading,” said the head of the Romanian Office for Adoptions. The Secretary of State added that Romania gave pride of place to national adoptions at present and mentioned that an important element of adoptions was the post-adoption monitoring.

The reaction of Secretary of State Bogdan Panait comes after the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament informed of the organization on Monday of a debate on international adoptions of children from Romania following a petition submitted by the Amici dei Bambini Association.

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The petition was declared admissible on November 23, 2009 and the European Commission was invited to supply information. On February 19, 2010 the EU Executive answered that they were acquainted with the situation described by the petitioner. Romania is a special case within the EU, as it is the only member state that de facto abolished Law 273/2004 on international adoptions, adoptions being only allowed when they are requested by the child’s grandparents living abroad. By law 49/2009 this possibility was extended to the relatives up to the third degree (aunts, uncles).

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Indeed, as early as October 2009 the Romanian Office for Adoptions sent the Government a memorandum referring to the resumption of international adoptions in cases in which the domestic adoptions failed repeatedly. The proposal was immediately turned down by Emil Boc, the then Prime Minister, reads the answer of the Commission.

And finally, one last link, Petition on international adoptions in Romania is put end to

I’ve been getting a ton of questions from fellow Bastards and the non-adopted alike about how adoptees from sealed records situations handle some of the questions on the census form, particularly those relating to, for example, what we would put down for “race?”

I have my own concerns pertaining to the very notion of  ‘race’ altogether, but for the sake of staying as close to on topic and brief as possible, I will set those aside for the moment.

The short answer for friends and curious strangers alike is that the state has set us into a catch-22; it both wants to collect basic statistical aspects about us for demographic purposes, while simultaneously systematically depriving us of the very access to the information it seeks.

For sealed records Bastards not reunited with their families of origin confronting a census form, the authentic answer comes down to the current discriminatory adoption system of sealed records prevents us from being able to answer these questions.

This goes beyond “unknown” into the realm of “state-confiscated, therefore, unanswerable.”

Some adoptees will do exactly what they do when asked questions about their family medical history, answer the questions as if one’s adopted family was biologically related to them. (Note, this approach is not in the least bit useful when trying to establish one’s chances of suffering breast cancer or heart disease. If anything, relying upon the medical histories of those one does not share genetics with can lead to missing the very details a family medical history is designed to detect!)

Yet while the census form asks whether one’s children in the household are adopted or not, our adopted status as adults remains invisible.

Because in addition to locking the information away from the very people it pertains to, the state then fails to ask the question, are you, or your partner, or partners or spouse adoptees?

Whether that is because the state has not figured out that it needs to ask, or whether the state doesn’t want an answer to that question remains just as unknown as many a Bastard’s authentic origins.

There remains no accurate assessment of how many of us there are.

American adoptions have been a vast social experiment, yet it remains one on which solid data, such as the most basic, “how many adoptees are there in the United States?” remains an unknown, or again, an unknowable, so long as it remains policy not to ask or to track.

We can look to how many adoption related visas are processed each year, and thus attempt to construct a count of at least the above board inter-country adoptions, but for the moment, we remain an often invisible and uncounted population, often hidden in plain sight.

When faced with the form then, we have two choices, to remain silent, or to make our presence known, whether asked directly or not.

The census can be viewed as an opportunity to educate. Queers, for example are standing up and insisting that we be counted, because damn it, we count!

Bastards are yet another population facing our own forms of state mandated discrimination, (I readily admit, the discrimination I face as a Queer and as a Bastard are not the same, each are distinct, except where they overlap)  but one similarity both some Queers and some Bastards share (particularly domestic adoptions, or those adopted by those of similar ‘racial’ backgrounds,) is that some of us can be invisible to the casual eye, or even the careful gaze.

We receive unequal treatment under law. Our identities, cultural, genetic, ethnic, etc have been state confiscated, and barring changes in the laws, a court order and successfully regaining access to our authentic documentation, or circumventing the system and reuniting with our families of origin, AND verifying that match via DNA testing, we are simply left with an unknown. It is knowable, but not under these current conditions.

Or more specifically, the state itself leaves us to an unknown and unknowable.

Hence Bastard Nation’s use of the question mark:

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This information hiding leads to any number of unknowns behind that question mark, such as “Are you adopted? Are you sure?”

A number of adoptees may never be told of their adoptive status.

The question mark of information hiding, and ‘as if born to’ lies of state falsified documentation enable the illusion.

The state, in essence continues to infantalize us, treating us as eternal children. Insisting that even as adults, we cannot be entrusted with our own birth certificates, or that we cannot be trusted with such information about ourselves.

The sealed records system was once predicated in some states upon the notion of the state keeping our records FOR US, in trust, as we were too young at the time of our adoptions to protect our own interests. Yet the sealing of  records was done with the underlying assumption that  once were old enough to act on our own behalf, our records would be restored to us.

Sadly under today’s interpretation, records are sealed FROM us, not FOR us. Once the state started down that slippery slope of falsifying documents and impounding the authentic history, it refused to relinquish the illegitimate power over our lives and our families it had commandeered.

In my home state of Ohio, for example, the very man who drafted the 1964 legislation to seal the records, William B. Norris (an adoptive father himself,) was amazed to find his legislation ended up sealing the records from adoptees themselves. He spent years trying to rectify what he termed his “30 Year old Well-Meaning Mistake.”

For example, this is from his testimony before the Ohio House in the 1990’s (link is down, but you can find the following excerpt via Bastardette).

In doing what I did on this 1960s legislation, I was unable to see the impact this would have on my adopted children when they became adults. Subsequent events have taught me that we went too far. …

… I now recognize that closing those birth records to adoptees whose adoptions were finalized after January 1, 1964 was a grave mistake. This has resulted in unnecessary discrimination by denying to a special group of citizens the right to have access to their original birth certificates.

It is now obvious to me that the 1964 legislation produced an absurd anomaly in Ohio, and it is painful to reflect on the fact that these changes in the law were made in the belief that they were in the best interests of the entire adoptive process. …The 1964 law has not worked out in the way it was originally intended and it should be changed by the passage of a new law such as HB 457.

By maintaining the unjust sealed records system, the state in essence tells adopted people that these most intimate details of our own lives are not merely unknown, they are details that we are forbidden to know.

The state, of course is able to maintain these documents as secret dossiers on adopted citizens, files pertaining to us and our unaltered original birth certificates held hostage or meted out in drips and drabs (if we’ve been good little boys and girls). In many states, our access to our authentic identities lie behind walls of horrendous Confidential Intermediary programs, or behind ‘fees’ to registries or even outsourced to third parties such as Catholic Charities.

In essence, the state has the ability to know more about ourselves than we do. When records are, for example, sent out for data entry as part of modernization efforts, one may find data entry clerks half a world away have had more access to the original birth certificates than the very people they pertain to.

So the census?

It’s an unusual opportunity to ‘talk back’ to the state.

This is NOT to say, the state is necessarily listening to the unsolicited data it receives from various communities trying to make their voices heard. After all, as the “adoptee” question is not on the form other than that pertaining to children in the household, no space has been made for the ‘excess’ data Bastards might try to convey.

That said, we are in a unique situation.

As a Queer, if the state doesn’t ask me about my self identification, it can at least provide data on households with multiple adults of the same gender, some number of whom will in fact be Queer, others will be housemates.

But Bastards? We are distinct in that on the front end, our identity related documentation has been taken from us by the state, and then on the back end, the state has decided not to collect any data pertaining to precisely that status.

The state wants demographic data from us? Fine, first it has to give it back to us before we can answer some of these questions.

Our authentic identities have been state confiscated, we are adoptees from a sealed records period or state, therefore, such details remain both unknown and unknowable to us.

If the state wants answers, answers to questions we simply do not have about ourselves, it needs to restore our authentic documentation to us before that can happen.

The state isn’t asking, but it’s time for us to tell.

In other words, it’s past time for a Bastard census policy of “Do ask! Do tell!”

Because Bastards lives count too!

Illinois HB 5428 is scheduled to reach the state Senate tomorrow, Tuesday March 23  where it will be awaiting committee assignment and assigned a Senate bill number.

Please contact Illinois state Senators ASAP to urge them to vote “NO” on this destructive, anti-adoptee bill.

HB 5428 is being marketed as a bill that would give all adopted adults access to their original birth certificates, sadly that is NOT what the legislation’s actual effect would be.

REAL adoptee rights legislation simply restores to us what was taken from us by the state, the right to access our  unamended original birth certificates. Nothing more, nothing less. REAL adoptee rights are grounded in equal treatment under law for adopted people.

Instead, this bill mucks up adopted people’s already gutted access yet further. Here are a few highlights of what the legislation would do:

• retain the system under which mothers are able to file affidavits of denial, in other words, the veto system that when used  leaves some number of adoptees behind. (see my post Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten” for some of my earlier writing on that.) Bastard Nation has written repeatedly about how such veto systems create an extraordinary ability, one non-adoptive parents do not have,  for some to veto the rights of their own offspring to state held documentation that pertains to them. In states where such vetos have passed, all legislation going forward has had to deal with that newly created class of adoptees, those who have been vetoed, making genuine full rights restoration nearly impossible. It grants veto powers to parents who relinquished or lost all legal rights to the adoptee as a child.
• allow the state to delete a variety of identifying information from official documents. Scrubbing documents of information already collected goes against the very spirit of restoring the information, the state once held in trust for adopted people too young to protect their own interests at the time. This alone completely invalidates HB 5428 as any form of an “adoptee rights bill.” Whiteout is never a tool of rights expansion.
• buttresses and further funds promotion of Illinois’ broken Confidential Intermediary (CI) system. Both 73adoptee (see for example, Caveat Emptor On Confidential Intermediary Programs or Case Closed! Another Adoptee Becomes A Confidential Intermediary Statistic) and BastardGrannyAnnie (see for example THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE) have written a fair amount about what the Illinois CI system has meant in practical application. (Bastardette has also been writing over the course of years now about the broader situation in Illinois pertaining to adoptee rights restoration.)
• By way of promotion of the CI system, allow me to quote from Mary Lynn Fuller’s Rights of Adoptees post “An OBC-Access Public Information Campaign Oversight Committee will be appointed for a year-long nationwide campaign to inform the public in earnest about the conditions under which an adult adopted or surrendered person may receive a non-certified copy of his or her OBC”. Let’s pause for a moment to contemplate that, the bill would provide funding for a year long national campaign advertising Illinois’ CI system, this at a time when Illinois is facing a budget crisis and cuts.

Full text of HB 5428 can be found here.

Write the state Senators and urge them to vote “NO,” against the bill as it currently stands.

Illinois needs a REAL Original Birth Certificate Access bill, one that simply restores access to the original birth certificates to all. Adoptee rights legislation should be about fairness, about restoring to adopted people equal treatment under law, not the construction of elaborate new schemes to redact our documents, grant veto abilities, or entrench and support the condescending and broken Confidential Intermediary apparatus.

HB 5428 then, in order to even begin to qualify as adoptee supportive legislation would need to be amended such that it would restore to ALL adoptees access to their original birth certificates, without restriction. Barring such changes, HB 5428 should be pulled or left to die in committee.

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Additional resources:

Illinois State Senators contact information

Illinois Open/Bastard Nation Press Release- ADOPTEE RIGHTS SQUASHED AGAIN IN NEW ILLINOIS BILL – HB 5428

Illinois Open

Illinois Open blog

Bastard Nation

Bastard Nation Action Alert blog

Rights of Adoptees, particularly see GIANT STEP BACKWARD IN ADOPTION REFORM FOR ILLINOIS

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Finally, Bastardette is asking those who tweet about the legislation to use #IILHB5428 so that we can keep track of who’s writing about it.