Many adopters continue to insist that China is somehow ‘the most ethical’ of the international adoption sending counties, as if a Chinese adoption is somehow some kind of “Gold Standard” in the realm of adoption ethics, (and yes, the term “Gold Standard” in relation to international adoption ethics have been used to my face.)

Never mind the reproductive coercion INHERENT to the one child policy, etc. Americans and other receiving countries adopters have slurped up any “surplus” kids that could be found, all while insisting their adoption was ‘special,’ that it was somehow far superior to other ethically ‘inferior’ forms of international adoption as have been revealed in recent years by the International scandals in places such as Guatemala or Vietnam.

Time to wake up and smell the coffee.

When China tightened its restrictions on who could adopt in 2006 many people assumed the new restrictions related to wanting a different set of adoptive parents on the other end. While that no doubt was part of the picture, those us watching the international adoption market change, began to see the new restrictions in a different light: even China was having difficulty producing enough children to keep up with international demand.

The demand for very young (and presumed healthy) children has not diminished, but it has rapidly overwhelmed supply.

The new restrictions may well have been an effort by the Chinese to reduce the number of adopters eligible, out of recognition that the sheer numbers of couples attempting to gain a child are simply inherently disproportional to the numbers of children that are, or perhaps will ever be available.

And when not enough children are available to fill even that demand?

New “orphans” must be manufactured to fill that need.

Enter, China’s “Baby Economy” scandal that made international headlines at the beginning of the month. The “Baby Economy” has been a direct byproduct of the (nearly impossible for most to pay) economic fines placed upon country dwellers who exceed their baby quota. The fines are used to extort the children from families unable to pay.

Guizhou Province

‘Illegal’ babies sold

Mr Lu and his wife, farmers in a remote county in south-west China, could not pay the steep fines imposed for having too many children. Their fifth child’s current whereabouts are unknown, according to a report by the Southern Metropolis News.

The child, who was six months old when she was taken away, is believed to be among 80 newborn girls ‘confiscated’ from parents who broke family planning laws, and then ‘sold’ for adoption overseas in the past eight years.

The girls were put in orphanages in Zhenyuan county in Guizhou province and then adopted by couples from the United States and European countries under the foreign adoption programme. Under Chinese law, abandoned babies can be registered for adoption. It is believed that the authorities forged documents stating the babies were orphans, said Chinese reports.

The adoption fee of US$3,000 (S$4,350) per baby was reportedly split between the orphanages and local officials.

The foreign adoption programme has spawned what local reports termed as ‘Baby Economy’, which earned local orphanages massive profits.

These 80, in the wake of the revelation of earlier baby selling systems, such as this-

In late 2005, police busted a baby-trafficking ring that had abducted or bought as many as 800 children in Guangdong province since 2002 and sold them to orphanages in Hunan province for 3,200 yuan to 4,300 yuan (S$679 to S$912) each. The children were put on the adoption programme.

China babies ‘sold for adoption’

An investigation by the state-owned Southern Metropolis News found that about 80 girls in one county had been sold for $3,000 (£1,800).

The fines are set at rates simply unobtainable for most families:

Parents in rural areas are allowed two children, unlike urban dwellers who are allowed one.

But if they have more than that, they face a fine of about $3,000 -several times many farmers’ annual income.

The policy is deeply unpopular among rural residents, says the BBC’s Quentin Somerville in Beijing.

The BBC attempts to lay the blame at the doorstep of “local corruption” rather than the more systemic view that the law itself creates such opportunities for extortion:

Child trafficking is widespread. A tightening of adoption rules for foreigners in 2006 has proved ineffective in the face of local corruption.

SW China: Baby girls taken and sold for adoption

Like every other father in Zhenyuan, Lu wanted a boy, who finally arrived after three daughters. His wife then gave birth to another girl, and the couple had to support five children with a yearly income of about 5,000 yuan ($732).

Shi Guangying, a local family planning official, gave them an ultimatum: Give away their little daughter or pay fines of about 20,000 yuan ($2,928).

“This is the policy”, Shi said. “You pay, or you let the government take care of the baby,” he was quoted by the newspaper on Wednesday.

But instead of being raised as promised, the girl was taken to the Zhenyuan orphanage and later adopted out to a foreign family, at a reported price of $3,000.

At least 78 girls have been handed over to foreign families in the past eight years. Two children with disabilities remain at the orphanage.

“a parent’s right of guardianship over their children:”

Zhou Ze, a lawyer and professor with China Youth College for Political Sciences, said local family planning officials and the orphanage had committed a crime because nobody had the right to exploit a parent’s right of guardianship over their children.

The fact that babies had been removed to make a profit meant it was also abduction, Zhou said.

“It is legal that they can charge fines, as the parents did violate the law by giving birth to more than one child. But that doesn’t mean they can take away the child. The fines can be paid later or reduced”, he said.

Tang Jian, an official of the Zhenyuan family planning bureau, said: “According to our investigation, it is true that babies who have parents were forced into the orphanage and then abroad”.

China Welfare Home Seizes Babies to Put Up For Adoption

The former chief of the local birth control office, Shi Guangying, claimed that they have documentation from all the families who have had babies out of line with China’s “one-child policy.” According to the local policies in this region, once a baby is born, there is a window anywhere from 20 days to 3 months, where the baby may be seized. It seems that they don’t want kids who are a few years old as they are afraid of kids running away and going back home to their families.

Between 2003 and 2005, there were almost no families in Zhenyuan County who had kids out of compliance with the Chinese policy who could afford to pay the fines, which were in the upwards of 40,000 Yuan (US $5,882). Shi said, “If they cannot pay, we will seize their children to compensate for the fines. Once the baby was taken into the welfare home by the birth control office, they remain there indefinitely or until they are adopted.”

Chinese babies sold for adoption to US and Europe, report claims

An investigation has alleged that up to 78 babies taken into care in Guizhou province, in southern China, were sold for £1,800 each, mostly to childless couples in the US but also to families from European countries, including Sweden and Spain.

In a climate of what amounts to economic and legal extortion, taking the act of abandonment or of a child being “orphaned” (which as we’ve seen time and time again, the legal defintion of “orphan” in adoption often has little or nothing to do with the popular misconception of a child being somehow rendered “parentless”) words like “genuine orphan” lose their meaning.

Some women will simply abandon their children after birth rather than have them forcibly removed when confronted with impossible economic fines. Such coercion renders terminilogy such as “genuine orphan” a status that is by definition impossible to determine.

Many of the girls were genuine orphans or had been abandoned by their parents as unwanted, however, in at least three cases it is alleged the children were removed in lieu of £2,000 fines levied for breach of China’s draconian one-child policy.

The cases relate to a three-year period between 2004-2006, when the policy was being strictly enforced by the local government of Zhenyuan county in Guizhou.

The Telegraph piece provides some of the details originally reported in the “Southern Weekly” pertaining to how these children were rebranded as having been “abandoned:”

Yang Jibin, the reporter who researched the story for the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, said he was shown a list of 80 female babies while on a visit to the Zhenyuan state orphanage, of which 78 had been adopted abroad.

He told the story of one couple, Lu and Yang, who gave up their fourth baby girl in 2003 after a visit from a birth control officer who insisted on taking the baby away, describing the girl as “abandoned baby, found and turned in by Lu” in the orphanage register.

“That was my job. I just followed the policy,” the officer was reported as saying, “They were willing to give up their baby to offset the fine” After relinquishing their child without signing any formal contracts, Lu and Yang never returned to the orphanage to visit. They added that, even if the child was now found, they would not take her back for fear of having to pay the outstanding fine.

Tang Jian, leader of Birth Control Administrative Bureau Inspection Team of Zhenyuan county apparently admitted the practice was prevalent at the time.

“It is true that some baby girls were forced be brought into the charity house and then sent abroad,” he was quoted as saying.

What can consent mean in such a climate, wherein coercion is bedrock to the very system, where words are maliable and paperwork forged?

Other parents who had their children removed fought for them before they were forever out of reach, adopted abroad:

Other parents were less compliant when asked to give up their children. A former worker at the orphanage quoted in the report recalled one local father who tried several times to take back his daughter in 2004, even offering bribes to staff to let her go.

When this failed, he came to visit his daughter more and more often until, one day, he grabbed her, stood up and ran. “Four or five nannies surrounded him immediately and took back the baby,” the worker recalled.

The story also makes a brief note of the investigation:

The local government issued a statement saying that two senior local officials had been warned and had received “executive demerits” following a local disciplinary inquiry. The statement said the government would continue to investigate the allegations. “There will be no cover up,” the statement added.

Orphanage-scandal probe starts

A JOINT work team including family planning, civil affairs personnel, police and Party disciplinary officials are investigating a scandal in which babies were taken from parents and sent overseas for adoption from southwest China’s Guizhou Province, an official told Xinhua news agency yesterday.

Yang Jiesheng, deputy secretary general of the Qiandongnan Prefecture government and deputy head of the work team, said that the public orphanage in Zhenyuan County in Guizhou is suspected of violating rules in accepting “abandoned” babies.

As we see so often in these cases, though, “punishments” rarely involve restoration of parental rights and the kids being returned to their familes, resulting in an ends justifies the means mentality whereby once the kids are out of the country, no matter what criminal actions led to their adoptions, those who got a hold of them get to keep them,

It wasn’t clear whether there would be any attempt to retrieve the children who were improperly sent out for adoption.

Also see, China Punishes Adoption Officials.

Note that the penalties only relate to 3 of the 80 cases:

Chinese authorities have punished six government officials after three baby girls whose parents were still alive were sent to an orphanage in southern China that subsequently put them up for adoption overseas, state media and an official said.

Family planning officials in impoverished Guizhou province’s Zhenyuan County sent the babies to a state-run orphanage during 2003 and 2004 without properly investigating their backgrounds, the county government said on its Web site.

All the parents were still alive but had given up their children to avoid harsh fines under the country’s controversial one-child policy. State-run orphanages are only allowed to take in children who have no parents or those whom police have certified as abandoned.

Parents living abroad legally adopted the girls in 2006 and 2007, the government said. The orphanage – which received $3,000 for every adopted baby – has been cleared of wrongdoing, Zhenyuan county government said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Friday it was not clear if any of the officials who were punished had benefited financially.

The article details the circumstances of the three cases as much as possible from the information provided,

One of the girls was the third daughter of Li Zeji, who did not want to pay the 40,000 yuan ($5,854) fine for violating the one-child policy, Xinhua said. Mr. Li sent the baby to his cousin who in turn told family planning officials the child had been abandoned, the report said.

The Zhenyuan government said other officials misled another set of parents into handing over their girl by telling them that because they were giving her up voluntarily, they could reclaim her later. The Web site did not provide details.

In the third case, the Luo family gave their second child to a sister who told town officials she had found the baby abandoned, the Zhenyuan government said.

In all three cases the officials sent the girls to the orphanage without proper investigation, the government report said.

Xinhua said six government and Communist Party officials had been punished for their role in the case, including two family planning officials who had been demoted. Wang Daohua, the former assistant head of Jiaoxi township where the babies came from was dismissed for “direct liability.”

An official surnamed Zhang from the Zhenyuan county discipline inspection committee confirmed six officials had been disciplined, but did not identify them or specify their punishments.

So, that “taken care of” I guess it’s back to business as usual.

What is business as usual? As always it comes down to the money flowing through adoption and how every link in the chain is dependent upon those would-be-adopter’s foreign dollars flowing in-

Adoption scandal sheds light on orphanages’ struggle

The orphanage involved in the scandal in Zhengyuan County of Guizhou Province was accused of taking children away from parents who could not afford fines for violating family planning rules and then sending the children overseas for adoption. The orphanage earned US$3,000 for each child placed with a foreign family, according to earlier media reports.

The money from the adoptions was worth 1.1 million yuan (US$160,992.7) and enabled the orphanage to add a new building. The local government shouldered the remaining 2.9 million yuan needed.

The new building, measuring 18,000 square meters, will house more than 80 beds, compared with the 10-plus beds in the existing home, which was built in 1991 with a total area of 20-plus square meters, according to vice director Rao Fujian.

“Without the money, the new building would have been impossible,” confirmed Wu Benhua, director of Zhengyuan County Civil Affairs Bureau.

Rao denied the orphanage made profits by giving up children for overseas adoption. All the money earned was used to improve the facility – as ruled by the country.

“We didn’t spend a penny of the money for any other purpose than improving the facilities of the orphanage,” he stressed.

Rao also denied the orphanage had conspired with family planning officials to snatch babies from their parents as abandoned children. The orphanage just accepted the children, he said. According to law, abandoned children must be sent to local orphanages, he added.

A joint investigation into the orphanage confirmed Rao’s claim. There was no economic relationship between the local family planning commission and the orphanage, Yang Jiansheng, leader of the investigation group, told the Southern Metropolis Daily.

Whether all the money actually went back into the orphanage or not is something we will probably never know.

The political will to delve deep into the intricacies of such a system is, to put it mildly, lacking, at best.

BUT even if every penny of it did go into the orphanage (highly unlikely,) part of the problem is, “improving the orphanage” particularly in an economically empoverished province, ultimately means increased capacity and over the long term potentially improved cash flow.

Moving from roughly ten to more than 80 beds means the ability to move far more ‘product’, i.e. infant girls, out of a country that requires that children available for export be part of the orphanage system.

For most of those being exported, the orphanages are temporary holding at best. The eventual international adoptees won’t be staying at the orphanage long. Many will be adopted before they turn a single year old, all but a tiny fraction being adopted before they reach age 4.

Of those that remain, some will be adopted domestically in China, others will remain long term, having disabilities and having been deemed unmarketable or undesirable.

The orphanage began taking abandoned babies from June 1995 and from May 2002, it joined the overseas adoption program.

Of the 81 abandoned babies it took, 60 were adopted by overseas families in developed countries. Eleven were adopted by Chinese families. Another 10 were cared for at the orphanage.

While the Chinese may feel they’ve dealt with the situation domestically, internationally a least one receiving country may undertake its own investigation, Justice minister investigates Chinese adoptions

Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has asked the Dutch childcare inspectorate to investigate the adoption of children from China.

His request is in response to revelations in a television programme that in one of China’s provinces the authorities force parents to give their children up for adoption.

The children are then adopted by foreigners, including Dutch couples. On their papers it is stated that the children have no parents.

Finally let me provide two last links,

Syracuse University College of Law’s Impunity Watch website, piece, Chinese Baby Girls Being Sold for $3,000 (from which some of the links in this post were gathered) and

Lorraine Dusky’s Babies “confiscated” in China and sold as orphans to the western market on Birth Mother, First Mother Forum that just hit this afternoon. The entire piece is well worth the read, but I wanted to quote a couple of important passages. She views the situation very similarly to how I do (but says it ten times better than I could.)

China, long a provider of babies for the burgeoning market in the U.S., has cracked under the pressure to keep up with the demand.

Lorraine, like myself (though coming at it from a slightly different perspective) definitely sees the larger picture:

This is not the first time child trafficking from China (or India)has been uncovered. We’ve previously written about the international trade in babies, all documented and published in magazines such as Foreign Policy and Mother Jones–from the poor nations of the world, such as Guatemala, Vietnam, India, Nepal, Russia, Kazhakstan and others. Because the baby economy is a cash cow for poor nations and demand is high, unscrupulous individuals will find a way to provide the goods–even when there are no babies available through honest means. Children are kidnapped, mothers are tricked into giving up their babies for what they think is a temporary time, papers are forged and children are stolen. Why? Because people are willing to not look deeply into where the children come from, or if they are indeed orphans.

What creates this market? People who believe that they are entitled to a child, simply because they can afford one, when nature does not provide

So back to our mythical “Gold Standard?”

The only “Gold Standard” I see at work here has to do with what the going rate for girls from China happens to be at any given point.

***

The (dripping with adoption marketing) Adoptive Families Magazine provides some recent INS Immigration Statistics on Chinese adoptions here in America:

Number of Adoptions from China:
2007: 5,453
2006: 6,493
2005: 7,906
2004: 7,044
2003: 6,859
2002: 5,053

Age/Gender of Children Adopted From China in 2006
Source: INS Immigration Statistics
91% Female
44% under 1 year of age
52% 1 – 4 years of age

These are just a few of the recent stories that have crossed my desk as of late that I wanted to draw reader’s attention to.

The development of “artificial sperm” and the UK study on European fertility tourism are both important milestones.

Bastardette’s recent pieces on the development of artificial sperm-

ARTIFICIAL SPERM ON THE MOVE

and

MORE REACTION ON LAB SPERM: I NEVER HAD SEX WITH …

Lest anyone think what Marley is discussing is dismissible, the demand at least is clearly already present-

Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby

Pacey is also concerned about raising patients’ hopes and expectations. Just 45 minutes after the announcement last week he had been e-mailed by a patient asking where he could be treated with sperm grown for him in the laboratory. Within days Pacey had received dozens of inquiries from patients asking the same question.

Up next a smattering of surrogacy and adoption related articles, particularly looking at India and Spain and the global fertility quest-

NY Times-, writing on surrogacy- No Stork Involved, but Mom and Dad Had Help includes this reductionist woman erasing drivel used by a woman who utilized a Surrogate-

Although she considers her children too young for a talk about embryos and uteruses, Ms. Lunden already has a metaphor ready for when the time comes: cupcakes. “It’s almost like we can’t cook the cupcakes in our oven because the oven is broken,” she said. “We’re going to use the neighbor’s oven.”

To her mind, the woman who acted as surrogate is little more than an inanimate object, a mere ‘neighbor’s oven.’

Needless to say, children are not “cupcakes”, and women, whether deemed to be in “working condition” or otherwise, are not “ovens.”

Conceptual metaphors, as George Lakoff has pointed out, can be used to hide information, in this case, free will, the complexities of consent, health risks undertaken, birth-giving, autonomy, and sentience itself.

And two recent stories on the surrogacy market in India-

Surrogate Mothers: Womb for rent

Want A Baby? India Beckons

Besides the health risks, there is the issue of adoption. “The many steps involved in adoption once the child is born can be a problem,” says Dr Hari. The Indian Council of Medical Research has not issued any guidelines to help deal with foreign clients using Indian surrogates. So the child has to be adopted under Indian law and all procedures outlined in the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption have to be adhered to.

Spanish couples attempting to get around Spain’s regulations turn to a US agency only to get scammed- SoCal Surrogacy Clinic Accused of Scam

Also see- Spain’s first ‘test tube baby’ is now 25

Here are just two examples of the many articles that have been published in the wake of the European Fertility Tourism study.

The evidence makes it clear, when a country bans or restricts a procedure, those with the wealth to do so simply cross borders to buy what they want in another country.

NHS restrictions prompt fertility tourism boom

Hundreds of women over the age of 40 are travelling to fertility clinics in Europe to try to get pregnant because NHS clinics in the UK will not take them, the first-ever Europe-wide study of fertility tourism shows.

The research shows considerable movement across Europe, with women seeking out procedures that are banned in their own country. Italian women are crossing the border in droves following tough legal restrictions on IVF imposed in 2004, while large numbers of gay French women bypass a ban by seeking treatment in Belgium.

Francoise Shenfield from University College hospital in London, who co-ordinated the study, said at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Amsterdam that it appeared at least 20,000 to 25,000 cross-border fertility treatments were carried out each year. While one woman might have more than one treatment, there are still many thousands seeking help to get pregnancy abroad.

Hundreds are thought to be travelling from the UK every month. The most popular destinations for UK women are the Czech Republic and Spain, the top locations for obtaining donated eggs. As women get older, their eggs are fewer, and less likely to fertilise and implant in the womb. Donated eggs can be their only chance, but they are in short supply in the UK, where the rules say donors can only be given expenses up to £250. A further disincentive has been the rule change to help a child discover the identity of the donor when he or she is 18.

(Emphasis added- BLC)

Hundreds of women risk health by ‘fertility tourism’

A recent change in the law, which removed the right to anonymity for egg donors, had also led to a fall in the number of eggs available for women needing fertility treatment in Britain, she said.

And a sampling of just a few of the domestic economic articles that speak to what happens when times get tight-

Sperm, egg donors increase during recession

Need Money? Donate Your Eggs!

Sperm and egg donations up in South Carolina

also note-

New York State Allows Payment for Egg Donations for Research

So, why has the blog remained so quiet over the last month or so?

The short answer is there has been so much going on Adoption-wise for me as of late that I haven’t had the time to devote to blogging it.

Sometimes the doing simply overtakes the writing and documenting thereof. June and the beginning of July have been just such a period for me. That said, with luck, over the next week or so I hope to have something together for my regular readers.

Thanks for your patience and encouragement.

“Jewel in Summer Stillness”

from Sybil Shane Studio

Marley/Bastardette has done a post on what can only be termed a nauseating diary and comment thread over on Daily Kos-

REVOLTING ENTITLEMENT BLATHER ON DKOS: “ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION IS NOT PERVERSE”

Bastardette, my partner Mike Doughney, and I have a number of comments on the thread, though some of the posts on the thread have been blinking in and out of “hidden” status, due to rampant abuse of the dKos troll rating system.

In any case, much as there are a number of important points brought out by the few voices of saneity on the thread, I felt this comment I scrawled off was important enough to merit being moved over to BLC, as so called “Secrecy” is a term that needs to be addressed head on. I am writing in response to another commenter (beijingbetty, whose words appear in the quote boxes.)

“Secrecy”: Far more than mere cultural habit

Brent Wojahn/ The Oregonian

Friday May 29th Kylie and Tyler Gumm were murdered by their adoptive father, James Gumm, in Oregon before he turned the gun on himself.

While there are a fair number of stories covering the deaths, there’s been very little coverage of the fact that the children were adoptees.

Here are a few links by way of general backgrounder:

Ore. father who killed kids, self was upset over divorce

HILLSBORO, Ore. — James Gumm took his two young children to the Jackson Bottom Wetland Preserve in Hillsboro on Friday morning and shot them at close range, killing them, before turning the gun on himself, police said on Saturday.

The bodies of Gumm and his two children, 7-year-old Tyler Gumm and 6-year-old Kylie Gumm, were discovered by a hiker near the Otter Marsh viewing area shortly before 1 p.m. Friday.

A medical examiner confirmed Saturday that Gumm murdered the two children and then committed suicide with a 9mm handgun. A handgun was recovered from the area on Friday that was likely used in all three deaths, police said.

The investigation led detectives to believe the children had no idea they were about to be shot. They may have thought they were going on a dayhike, police said.

How does Hillsboro heal? Entire county touched by tragic Jackson Bottom shootings

This implication gets credence from an anonymous friend of the Gumm family, who was bothered no press outlet pushed the angle that Jim Gumm lost a lucrative contract engineering job recently, the first time he’d been out of work in his adult life.

“I am not making excuses for the guy, but going through your first job loss can really screw with you,” the friend wrote in an e-mail. “All of a sudden you are radioactive to all your former co-workers. If that is all you had developed as friends, you are screwed. Add a divorce on top of that, the guy obviously cracked.

“All this is just as much a casualty of the crash in the local economy as anything. It has put some folks in a very tough place. Some have no ability to deal with the stress.”

Schools Mourn Children Shot To Death

Funeral set for kids killed by father

Classmates of slain Hillsboro girl release balloons with messages

Also see Adoptive Parents: Not a Breed Apart? on Birth Mother, First Mother Forum for a Mother’s perspective on the way adoptive parents are often viewed by those on the “supply” end of the adoption equation:

When I surrendered my newborn daughter for adoption six years earlier, I believed that adoptive parents were a breed apart–dedicated, stable, educated, la crème de la crème. After all, adoptive parents spent many years and thousands of dollars to become parents; they were screened by social service agencies and courts. I thought it was ironic that the infertile made the best parents while those of us who could conceive were–at best–only marginally fit to raise our child.

Despite the perception, no amount of vetting guarantees a kid much of anything.

The sad truth is that it is a lottery, a game of chance, as John Sayles depicts in Casa de los Babys. Adoptive parents may or may not be June and Ward Cleaver. Like other parents, they may or may not divorce, suffer from alcoholism, become unemployed, or commit murder.

The only guarantee about adoption is that the child will have a different life. If parents want to assure that their child is reared in a safe, loving, nurturing environment, they need to do it themselves.

So, per my usual question, has anyone bothered informing these children’s original parents that they were murdered by their adoptive father? (If such is even possible at this point.)

Yeah, I won’t be holding my breath on that one.

No time to blog at the moment.

Go see the Daily Bastardette for details from today’s hearing on California AB 372-.

For once, it’s a bit of what could be good news,

CALIFORNIA AB 372 SENT TO SUSPENSE FILE

as Marley said,

The committee has until May 25 to retrieve it from suspension, but because of the costs involved, the bill is likely to expire there.

and

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to keep those cards and letters comin‘ kiddies!

The CARE-tastrophe continues unabated.

Just when you thought the mess out in California couldn’t get any stupider, AB 372 now apparently is projected to come with an 8 million dollar start up cost.

Yes, you read that right $8 million, even as California is in the depths of fiscal crisis and budget hearings. (It’s really impossible to pick any one link as any form of overview of the situation in CA, if you’re not familiar with the the budgetary crisis a simple websearch will turn of more than enough articles to get you up to speed.)

AB 372 as currently proposed is simply insane, completely fiscally irresponsible, and absolutely unwarranted.

Other states have achieved genuine open records legislation without a high price tag fiscal note attached. Now CA wants to give adopted adults (over age 25, no less!) an insulting half-assed ‘faint possibilities of maybe-access sometimes sorta’ AND couple it with an $8,000,000 price tag? Positively shameful.

Tomorrow morning the bill goes before the Committee.

Go read the Bastard Nation action alert, then make your calls and send your emails. If you’re in CA and can make the hearing tomorrow morning by all means, attend in person.

CAL OPEN/BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT- CAL AB 372. ACT NOW!

The author’s office has stated there is an $8 Million start up cost estimate attached to the bill.

Otherwise,

You can watch and listen LIVE to the hearing via the internet:
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
Room Number 4202
9:00 AM (PST)
click here
(Click on Committee Room List)

You can find the full bill text, last modified May 7th, here

Also see the Bill Analysis

As well as the previous unanimous passage vote tally in the Appropriations Committee.

Rubber stamping AB 372 on through the committee vote is not an acceptable outcome.

Not acceptable to adopted people and our families, and not acceptable for California itself.

Show up, call and write to demand better.

As part of the Mother’s Day-a-palooza all over the net Sunday, Slate included a piece focusing on international adoption corruption with profiles of ten cases,

The Orphan Trade, A look at families affected by corrupt international adoptions.

As always, the article leads off with an assumption, that most couples would never willingly participate in the act of international child buying, an assumption I question deeply in some cases,

Who wants to buy a baby? Certainly not most people who are trying to adopt internationally. And yet too often—without their knowledge—that’s what happens with their dollars and euros.

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University report gets a quick mention as well.

Again, as I’ve mentioned before, the full report, “The Lie we Love” and accompanying materials are well worth spending some time with.

It also points out what many of us have been saying for years, that the industry comes into a country, does “resource extraction” pulling out as many kids as possible before a country closes down usually amidst various charges of fraud and corruption.

Then the industry moves on to the next country only to begin the cycle again. Sometimes countries that have closed down attempt “reforms” and reopen, though the corruption often continues. (Vietnam being a perfect example. This older post I did some time back covers a lot of ground and a lot of history pertaining to the “reopened” mess that led to Vietnam closing down yet again.)

Back to the Slate article,

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.)

Be sure to follow across to the slide show for the pictures and profiles,

Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.

So this is the second Mother’s Day since I began blogging about adoption.

I’ve already said pretty much everything I needed to say in last year’s,

Mothers’ Day and my day

Since I first wrote that piece, it’s been another year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’

May 10th, 2009 marks another year of still only one phone call to make.

***

Sadly, Saturday slid out from underneath me due to other obligations, but, a bit late here, I wanted to also point out my post from last year pertaining to

“Birthmother’s Day” and a Day without Adoption

It too, covers the Saturday portion of these weekends, and deserves time and attention as well.

As to why “Birthmother’s Day” is in quotes? Read the piece, it’s simply not language I prefer to utilize.

Finally, lest this post seem little more than a poignant rerun, Lorraine Dusky (herself a Mother,) has a few choice words about “Birthmother events.”

In the spirit of letting Mothers speak for themselves, and NOT speaking for them or over them, here’s a link worth the read on a day like today.

What’s Wrong with Birthmother Events on Mother’s Day? Just about EVERYTHING

The entire piece is an important read.

While Mothers (of all stripes) react each in their own way to these weekends, I find these two paragraphs of Lorraine’s strong work most deeply mirror my own thinking about such.

Not surprisingly, I am not a fan of any “birth mother celebrations,” even if they were the brainchild of first/birth mothers themselves, as apparently some of them are. The Saturday before Mother’s Day is designated as “Birthmother’s Day.” Special gatherings of first mothers are planned in several states, I read. To all this I say, gag me with a spoon. I can not think of anything more depressing that getting together with other first mothers on the day calibrated to remind us of possibly the worst day in our lives…unless we were going to the theater, a super lunch, a day at the spa, or just getting together because we are friends.

This is the first year in several that I did not get numerous reminders to attend a Spence-Chapin gala in Manhattan, which I looked upon as a mawkish reminder of all that had been lost. I know a hasty email I sent offended at least one of the birth mothers involved in the planning. But I can not see how such a “celebration” for women who have relinquished their children–sponsored by an adoption agency–is anything more than a pat on the head for good service done, as in: You gave us product for our business. Thank you. Hey, have lunch on us, light a candle together, we share your pain.

What many don’t realize is that particularly for womyn who have never revealed their hidden status as Mothers, today may be a personal form of their own annually celebrated hell. For every Mother like Lorraine, boldly writing their truths, there are also other womyn locked in silence of a decades old secret.

I’m not sure any of the readily “visible”/above the waterline members (Parents, Adopted People, or Adoptive Parents) of the adoption pentagon go through this time of year completely unscathed.

Add in the bonus round “fun” of both families dealing with miscarriage or infertility and the lives of womyn such as myself, who are intentionally Childfree (not childless, but choosing a lifetime devoid of children of our own) and it becomes readily apparent, “Mother’s Day weekend” is fraught with emotional and systemic complexity and often unstated volumes worth of the reproductive biographical realities of all our lives.

What to Hallmark is so often reduced to inks and papers, to womyn ourselves is a weekend filled with so many of the “impolite” topics and conversations that form the very fabric of our lives.

Each year, over these weekends, whether I like it or not, my thoughts turn to each of us, each in our positions, each with their own stories to tell. I find so much of the landscape spread out before me profoundly disturbing and all too often tinged with genuine sorrow.

The court-appointed monitor’s latest report on D.C. Child and Family Services Agency points out

that the number of children being adopted out of shelters and foster homes has slowed. Between 2005 and 2008, adoptions finalized in the District dropped from more than 250 a year to fewer than 100, the report said.

The Washington Post published an article yesterday, Report Faults Extended Foster-Care Stays, detailing the agency’s (now in receivership, under court oversight) inability to move more kids into permanent adoptive homes:

“Progress in reducing length of stay in foster care and ensuring a permanent home for every child has been stalled,” Meltzer wrote in the report, made public yesterday.

The article breaks it down by the numbers:

Children spend too much time in foster care, according to a newly issued report by monitor Judith W. Meltzer. Of the 2,237 children in foster care in the District, the report found that 60 percent had been in the city’s care for 24 months or more at the end of last year, and that almost 600 had been in the system for five years or more.

This, despite adoption promotion as public policy and the interconnecting webs of financial assistance, tax credits, outright grants, and various other incentive programs I’ve spoken of here before. (Also see District of Columbia, here, as but one example) many of these kids seem bounced around endlessly, left to eventually age out.

The report found kids still being kept in forms of temporary care.

Meltzer, appointed to track the child welfare agency by a federal judge, found that too many children in foster care were being placed in shelters and other non-family homes or moved from one temporary home to another while awaiting final adoptions.

DC’s “answer” to the kids’ lack of permanency? Stepping up foster parent recruitment, perhaps in hopes that some might use fostering as a stepping stone towards becoming eventual adoptive parents.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and acting CFSA Director Roque Gerald launched a month-long campaign yesterday to recruit more District-based foster parents.

Unfortunately, recruitment of more foster parents sounds like slapping on another band-aid.

(Also be sure to note some of my definitions of “special needs” or “foster care” in this piece, as such should be kept in mind when one discusses foster parent recruitment.)

A.G. Nickles has been trying to get CFSA out from under court supervision for some time now.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles defended the District’s efforts yesterday and said the agency is being more careful in reviewing cases and homes — a big reason why many children remain in foster care.

<biting sarcasm>

Gee, ya think?

Considering (to name just two cases I’ve blogged about recently) the high profile Banita Jacks case, and here in Maryland the equally high profile Renee Bowman case (the Bowman girls had been adopted out of and placed by the DC system) Yeah, I’d say carefully reviewing cases and homes and screening prosepctive adopters more stringently might not be the worst idea. D’oh!

</biting sarcasm>

Also be sure to see my earlier post, Adoption subsidies for frozen corpses, more on the Maryland nightmare, which covers both cases and goes into some detail on the ongoing situation with the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.

That said, fast-tracking adoptions for the sake of adoption promotion and clearing out backlog in order to get out of receivership (as some will push DC CFSA to do) is no answer either. (Not that there are enough prospective adopters waiting in the wings for these kids even if the District were willing to try to clear the books.) It’s readily apparent the damage just rushing through adoptions in any attempt to come off looking good can do.

Notions of ‘A Home, ANY Home’ cannot provide answers for these kids.

As the numbers show, many of these kids have been bouncing through the system over the course of years. They need stable situations with people that are at least familiar with, preferably comfortable with and well trained to handle some of the myriad of issues they’re going to be facing. The idea of ‘a family, ANY OLE foster family will do’ is just another a recipe for disaster.

At the Ethics and Accountability in Adoption conference over a year ago, conference attendees were ‘treated’ to the Ad Council’s (not the ‘good guys’ in my book to begin with) video clips from their prospective adoptors recuitment ad campaign.

The idea behind the campaign came from marketing research that showed people were hesitant to consider becoming adoptive parents due to the perception that one had to be “a perfect parent” or at minimum an extraordinary parent to consider adopting. So a series of ads marketing the concept of becoming adoptive parents were developed, each ending with the tag line

“You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. There are thousands of teens in foster care who would love to put up with you.”

Down the righthand side of this page explore some of the video and radio “campaign materials.” Some useful examples include:

• Gift
• Consoling
• Band
• Phone
• Pink Uniform
• Foodie
• Questionnaire

(Though be aware, if you’re an adoptee who’s ever had an adoptive parent who doesn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, or who ruined something that mattered to you, such as a foodball uniform, or who thought giving you gifts that were more to their tastes than yours was appropriate, you may find looking at some of these somewhere between uncomfortable and infuriating.)

The real underlying messages of course, being that you can be an incompetent boob with no special skills or clue what-so-ever, but the State will still entrust even an idiot like you with a foster kid.

That, and apparently these kids don’t need the special, the extraordinary, or the best. Hell, from the looks of the ads, the prospective adopters don’t even need to display basic competence.

The ads carry the underlying message the kids should be/will be willing to settle for whatever human dregs that can exhibit a pulse that the state can scrounge up willing to take ’em. Then be damn grateful for such every day of their lives, hideous sweaters and all.

“Couch” in particular makes it clear, the mere act of processing oxygen is apparently considered (in oversimplified government supported media portrayals anyway) enough of a demonstration of “parenting skills” to qualify one to get a hold of a kid. After all, the boy’s not white and he’s a foster kid, he should be damn happy someone bothered putting a roof over his head, right?

Wrong.

It’s pathetic. Through campaigns like this, the State makes it quite clear, it’s so desperate to get these kids off the books they’re broadcasting the (somewhat inaccurate) message any ditz or bozo can get a hold of one.

The clips of course, were designed to feed into a photolisting website. (I consider photolisting sites the Sears wishbook of adoption marketing. Or perhaps to appropriate a few lyrics, “How much is that Bas-tard in the win-dow…?” ) The underlying concept of marketing kids the way companies market other consumer goods is just another vile facet of of the ongoing commercialization of the child redistribution market.

Utilizing such tactics to market foster kids, a population already vulnerable to various other forms of marketing exploitation, merely plays on the kids own hopes and hunger for something other than being shifted around from staging area to staging area throughout the system.

For an example of a photolisting based stunt tactic see my earlier post, High speed photolistings, will the adoptions crash and burn? To quote that piece here briefly:

One of the problems with such, this notion all too often phrased as “anyone can adopt” is that that’s a phrase that very definitely comes from the perspective of the state trying to offload the kids. From the kids perspective, it can’t be a matter of just anyone, adopters need to be the ‘right’ someone. Doubly so in cases where kids come with ’special needs’ whether past abuse or health issues. These kids don’t just need a home any home, they need a home where they’re going to be ok.

Messages like ‘anyone can adopt’ are recipes for disaster. ‘Special needs’ kids don’t need to be shipped off into a new situation filled with abuse or even sexual abuse, they need a home conducive to helping them, and yes, that does often mean finding special people. That’s part of the deep problem with the foster system mess. Every kid placed, no matter where, is counted as a victory because the condition for declaring victory is numeric, quantity not quality.

I find even a brief exploration of the site’s (child) search feature akin to deciding whether one wants to shop online for a pair of red leather pumps or brown slingback sandals.

Unfortunately, as the Post article hints, Jacks and Bowman are but mere dust on the tip of what may be a massive iceberg, a situation CFSA is likely too overwhelmed to begin to handle.

The agency came under increased pressure and scrutiny last year after Banita Jacks, a Southeast Washington woman, was arrested on murder charges in the deaths of her four daughters. The girls’ bodies were found by federal marshals in January 2008; in the aftermath, the agency was flooded with hundreds of reports of abuse and neglect.

The organization that sued on behalf of the kids, (which led to the receivership in the first place) also spoke out after this latest report was issued.

Children’s Rights, the national advocacy group that filed the court case, is fighting efforts by the Fenty administration to end the court’s oversight. The child welfare system was put in receivership for five years before being placed back under the District’s management in 2000, with the court setting benchmarks for changes. A hearing in the case is set for tomorrow before U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan.

“The federal court has found time and again that D.C.’s abused and neglected children and vulnerable families are entitled to a level of care and service that the District is still simply failing to provide,” Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, said in a statement yesterday.

“The city basically said they have done all they’re going to do, and enough is enough. But that’s not what the court order requires and that’s not what these children need,” she said in an interview.

Back in February, as noted in another Washington Post article, CFSA Is ‘Not Ready,’ Judge Says, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan (who will be the Judge at today’s hearing) expressed similar sentiments.

The judge also reflected on the 20 years he has been involved in the case. He said the District made great strides and “a couple years ago, the agency was on its way out” of court supervision.

But when Banita Jacks was found living with the decaying corpses of her four daughters last year, the agency was flooded with reports of abuse and neglect. Hundreds of cases piled up, social workers were crushed by huge caseloads and almost 25 percent of the frustrated workforce walked out.

The agency “fell back to 20 years ago,” Hogan said.

As for DC’s foster kids? In theory at least, they’ll be placed with people who have to jump through at least a FEW more hoops than merely snoring on a couch.

It’s May and that means it’s National Foster Care month. The DC campaign materials can be found here. Glance through the 15 page “How Foster Parenting Works in DC” booklet available on the site. Pre-service training is 30 hours with 15 hours annually to maintain a foster license. CPR and First Aid classes are required and there’s a home study (see page 7.)

An article from two days ago about the initiative can be found here. Immediately, I noted the goals of the campaign and the hoped for numeric scope of the campaign.

Mayor Adrian Fenty says it’s the older children in the system who desperately need foster homes the most. “We want to keep brothers and sisters together while in care, open our homes to young people who have disabilities and accept kids in short notice in emergency situations.”

In the next 18 months, D.C. Child and Family Services says its goal is to place 60 young people into licensed foster homes.

While this may move a few of the kids out of temporary situations such as shelters (if indeed, such were a goal of the campaign, but hey even one kid moved out of a shelter and into a foster family is a victory for that kid) the problem of kids left to long term foster care remains central to DC’s children’s services woes.