AdopTalk

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Lutheran Social Services to get $1M adoption grant
PUBLISHED: September 29, 2006

Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota will get a $1 million federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services for the National Infant Adoption Awareness Program.

This money will be used to improve awareness and knowledge of infant adoption among health care workers.

Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota is part of a six-state coalition that has been providing training on infant adoption to health care providers for the past two years. The new money will support their program for another five years.

In South Dakota, nearly 1,600 children are in the foster care system.

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Someone please tell me why anyone needs to be made aware of infant adoption? Why aren't they giving grants to make people aware of older child adoption?

And why HEALTH CARE WORKERS? Could it be to encourage doctors and nurses to push adoption on single pregnant women??? Ya think???

The following is an article of mine that appears in the Bastard Qaurterly Vol 8, No 1 Spring/Summer 2006, as a POINT/COUNTERPOINT

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
-R. Buckminster Fuller

-- A Boston-area couple was awarded $409,000 after a jury found an adoption agency failed to disclose medical records of the birthmother before they adopted their now severely disabled twins.

-- Belinda Ramirez, 24, was arrested and charged with several counts of fraud for allegedly meeting parents online who were looking to adopt a baby and claiming she had one to give away.

Both of these news stories, besides being about adoption, are also about lies. Lie are so unacceptable in our culture, they often constitute a crime that is punishable by jail or fines.

Adoptees are lied to, and yet, instead of focusing on the lie and fraud committed with each falsified birth certificate, BN asks for adoption records to be “opened.” Using “open records” terminology (especially for “adults only”) is allowing your opposition to frame the argument and operating within their framework, thus accepting and condoning the position that is was right to falsify and seal birth certificates to begin with. Once you accept the language of the “other” in an argument you automatically give power to their paradigm. It is far more powerful to deny their reality and create your own, especially when yours is that you are lied to.

Adoptees’ rights are not taken away when original birth certificates “sealed.” Your right to know to know the truth of your lives is taken when the state commits fraud and issues falsified birth certificates stating that you were “born to” people you are not biologically related to. This lie that your whole life is based on, puts your very life in danger. If one’s adoptive parents choose not to tell them that they are adopted, they could live all their lives and never even know there is an original birth certificate to try to obtain! Where is the equality in that? Conversely, adoptive parents who need or want to find birthfamily are also legally prohibited from doing so.


“Open records” terminology fails to attack the issue at its root: the issuance of the falsified birth certificate. BN won’t settle for anything but a “clean bill.” Vetoes and registries and all other restrictions, compromises, and limits on your rights are rejected…yet BN materials ONLY ask for “the opening [of records] to adoptees, upon request at age of majority.” Asking to be “allowed” “permission” to “peek” at the truth as adults gives a stamp of approval that this is “adult material,” something shameful, scary, and undercover that needs “protecting.” It’s like the civil rights movement having been about drinking from water fountains and sitting toward the front of buses – instead of demanding full equality. No one, other than those who are adopted, is issued a FALSIFIED birth certificate.

George Lakoff, who teaches “framing” also teaches the power of metaphor. The very clear metaphor of “opening sealed records” is opening Pandora’s box. It evokes peering into something secretive and locked up from view; something “special” occurring just for adoptees, which is the opposite of seeking equality. The public needs to be aware what was done by constantly replacing the phrase “open records” with “falsified birth certificates” in all your writing.

In keeping the focus on your plight as a human rights issue,
bring public attention too to the fact that one of the reasons the US has not ratified the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child is because of pressure from baby brokers who profit from keeping adoptions secretive. This is shameful and should be brought to the attention of the public at every opportunity to make the clear connection that the right to the truth of your identity is not an emotional issue, as it is still seen, but rather a basic, internationally recognized, human right.

Focusing on the LIE of a falsified birth certificate, instead of a “secret” being sealed away, takes the wind out of the argument of “protecting” another’s’ “privacy” as we do not protect lies. Exposing falsified birth certificates would be a shock to most people with no connection to, or knowledge of, adoption and would garner far more support than opening up, uncovering, a “secret” that might (allegedly) hurt someone. It brings much more sympathy to you as a discriminated against class of people, and does not pit you against mothers who allegedly have a stake in maintaining a secret or “seal.”

Why should adopted people continue to wait until they are told they are adopted and then wait until they are adults to have access to something that should be theirs to start with? Why couldn’t those adopted have a birth certificate like anyone else AND an adoption decree attached to it, with access to them both at any time other people in the same state are allowed access to theirs? Nothing short of that gives you true equality, so why settle for less?

Your birth certificates were not amended, they were falsified. Amended is defined as “to change for the better, improve.” When one of my sons (who I birthed and raised) was several months old, I changed his first name. I filed all the proper paperwork. For 32 years he has lived with a birth certificate that lists the first name I first gave him, with a line through it, and the new name written above it. Neither he nor I can obtain one that does not show the original name and the change. THAT is an amended certificate.

Accepting a lie is not in keeping with BN’s mission of being “dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees.”

Mirah Riben,
BN Lifetime member and author “shedding light …The Dark Side of Adoption”

The following are excerpts of the counterpoint was written by Rev. Laine Petersen, reunited adoptee, open adoption birthmother, and co-founder of BN:


"Let me start the response ...by stating that I am essentially in agreement with your call to end the amended/fasification of adoptees' birth certificates. I too beleive that the issuing [of] a new birth certificate is a dishonest practice that only contributes to the corruption of modern adoption. ...But... this reponse is about BN decided many years ago that it was going to fight for."

[NOTE: Even the Catholic Church changes course now and again - like not eating meat on Friday! However, the co-founder of BN does not disagree, just sticks to status quo...]

Petersen goes on to say that BN is "not a search group" - not that I had ever thought or said it was. No, it's allegedly a group that is fighting for the rights of adoptees. Isn't that what I was talking about - their right to a TRUE birth certificate?

Petersen continues: "Bastard Nation was founded with the goal of obtaining the one thing its members wanted: Our own damn birth certificates.

"We were not, and are not, going to get our own birth certifictes by championing your platform of 'one birth certificate - one bastard.' Our bith certificates have already been sealed, and a new policy regarding the 'amending' of birth certificates is not going to return them to us."

[I have no idea what she means by my platform of "one certificate - one bastard." Their way is one state at a time - my suggestion is nationally disallowing states to issue false certs to begin with. As for the fact that stopping the falsification of BCs would not help retrocatively, this is true. But it does not have to be an either/or. Why can't we do BOTH?]

WHY? Read on as Petersen gets to the root of the issue:

"...not every adoptee wants his/her adopted status stated on a document that has to be seen by so many people. Not every adoptee wants his/her “birth” identity made part of public record.”

So there you have it folks! BN is vested in protecting scerecy and lies. They are vested in protecting those who feel SHAME over their adoption.

That seems an odd priority for a group that is fighting for EQUAL rights and DIGNITY! It seems a direct contradiction to their goal of wanting things the same as those who are not adopted! It's a contradiction to them NOT being a search group, if all they want is their "information" when they are adults, with no conern about living a lie until then.

It's apparently OK to live your whole life under the false belief that you were born to your adoptive parents - until, if ever - your adopters decide to tell you. And if they don't - tough luck! You've lived and died a lie with no way of knowing that you have an original certificate to try to unseal. This is more acceptable than dealing with the horror of having someone know that you are really not the biological child of those raising you? WHY IS THAT?

How can they claim they are fighting for EQUALITY with non-adopted persons and accept birth certificates that can even give a FALSE date and place of birth?

As a mother who has supported open records, I am offended and greatly disappointed! I have encouraged mothers to come out of the closet and be public and do things like sign petitons and support legislation to give adoptees back their rights that were taken away. I designed the BirthParentProject.org to dispell the myth that [birth] mothers want anonymity...and all this time, it is the adoptees who want anonymity from us! I am offended, hurt and angry at this reply.

AND...I still think they are shooting themselves in the foot by asking for open records for adults anyhow, for all the reasons stated in my original article above.

THE SOLUTION: We all have short and long form birth certificates. In Scotland, the short form for adoptees appears the smae as anyone else's - it lists the adoptive parents as the parents. The long form indicates that they are adoptive parents. At age 16, adoptees have the right to obtain their original birth certificates. Before or after that, those that feel some stigma attached to being adopted "bastards" can use their short form for any legal purpose necessary.

In any case, why not ask for BOTH - an immediate end to falsification of bcs for all FUTURE adoptins, and retrocative return of access to the original for those adopted in the past?

I end with a question for the Reverend Laine Petersen: As a birthmother in an open adoption, would you be satisifed to wait until your chld was an adult to know him/her and vice versa??? Why then did you choose open adoption? Shouldn't every adoption be that way? Totally open? Truley open? Not built on lies?

Does your child know that he/she was not born to his/her adoptive parents? Does it cause him/her shame?

.....

I never had the luxury of denial after relinquishing my daughter. I tried to numb the pain by self medicating immediately afterward but that was short-lived. As soon as I first heard of adoptees searching for their mothers, I was surprised, but sought to find out everything I could. I found my daughter when she was about ten years old, and immediately began to help others empower themselves and stop being victims. In 1980 I co-founded a national support and search group based in New Jersey. We held monthly meetings and still publish a quarterly newsletter, that at one point was sent to hundreds of mothers nationwide. We let all these women know they were not alone I and did not have to suffer in silence and secrecy.

I, and others, came out very publicly, showing the world the face of a “birthmother” – proving in a very real way that we were NOT faceless, unfeeling incubators or sluts who wanted to abandon our children or who had “forgotten and gone on with our lives.” We channeled our anger – our righteous indignation - into reforming adoption. We showed the world that we were wives, attorneys, mothers, social workers, their sisters. CUB's motto: "Birthmothers Care Forever." Every day we received phone calls from someone who saw us on TV and who said: “I thought I was the only one…” It was gratifying and empowering while still coping with out own personal loss and pain that no reunion can ever heal.

Recently, when encouraging activism on this blog, I received the following anonymous comment: "It is impossible to fight a war with wounded soldiers."

I have never suggested that everyone is immediately ready to come out of the closet running. We each heal at our own pace, and some never are ready to help others. I am saying what has worked for me and many others I know and offering it as a suggestion.

As for wounded helping wounded, however... I personally know the son of a fireman who crushed his ankle in the Twin Towers on 9/11. He got it taped up and INSISTED on going back in to rescue others! And NYC police and firefighters worked side by side - they didn't argue over whose "turf" it was or whose job duty it was!

As I said, we all heal differently. We each had different lives prior to our pregnancy and surrender. Some had horrible, abusive lives, while for others this was the first “bad” thing that ever happened to them. Some were treated far worse by family, boyfriends, and or in homes for unwed mothers than others. We each were at a different point on the continuum from being in control and making a "choice” to place our child for adoption (some as a preference rather than have their mothers raise their child, or to return or school or career) to feeling lack of any options, to being coerced and pressured and/or lied to. In addition, some of us are just stronger or meaker people and handle stress differently. There is no on-size-fits-all generic description of mothers who have surrendered and there is no cookie-cutter “treatment” pattern and certainly no cure.

I have noticed, however certain patterns of differences. There seems to be – not surprisingly - a difference between mothers who surrendered the only child or children they ever had as opposed to those who go on to parent other children. It is harder for a childless mother to understand the situation from the others’ position.

I also sense a great deal more anger from mothers who have "come out" of denial later in life. Perhaps it is just that time has helped others of us heal our wounds. There ARE stages of grief and I suppose being in denial longer changes the remainder of the stages and the process of healing.

I notice another pattern, however. It seems mothers who have come out of denial later in life have a very different mind-set and approach than others of us who were in denial for shorter time or not at all. For the majority of those I have known over the past 30 years who were out of denial since our relinquished child was a teen (or younger), our first and most pressing issue was finding our kids. THEN we focused our anger on the SYSTEM which took our kids and kept our kids second class citizens by denying them the right to their own birthrecords. Yes, we needed to heal and supported one another. I STILL have effects of PTSD to this day, even after all these years. But never until recently have I felt so much anger directed toward one another and much of it seems to be coming from mothers who were in denial longer, some of whom never thought about it at all consciously until they were found.

In the past, I felt far more of a sense of solidarity with one another. Our anger was focused on the problems of adoption. We were not without our differences. Origins was started as opposed to being a CUB branch because we saw it more as an issue that effected women/mothers than CUB and we also supported minor search which CUB did not. We formed our own group, but still worked with and supported CUB. There was conflict within CUB as to whether they should support open records legislation that did not unilaterally allow mothers access. We had many political differences, and yet there was less anger directed toward one another than there seems to be today.

Also less BLAMING or and no desire to seek apologies for what was done to US. As MOTHERS, we all, collectively and individually, put the needs of our kids before our own, no matter how much we suffered in our own pain and loss.

I personally see focusing on what was done to us in the past a waste of energy and a way of maintaining a victim status rather than feeling like one is gaining control and empowerment over one's victimization. But that's just me. We each have to heal and do what's best for us. I dictate to no one.

I also fully appreciate that others are not comfortable with the “b” word and I respect it. BUT...again, I do not see the amount of effort that is going into changing it, and certainly not the level and amount of anger expended ARGUING about it!

I gave birth to my child and UNFORTUNATLEY the fact is that my relationship with my first child was limited to my role of giving her life. Others parented her. That is a fact. A very sad fact, but a fact nonetheless. So calling myself her birthmother does not feel at all insulting to me. It describes my limited role in her life. Again, I speak only for myself personally. I am proud to have given her life and to be related to her by birth. At the same time, I am respectful of others' feelings and feel no need to argue about it.

What was done is done, it cannot be undone. Renaming ourselves or what was done changes nothing for US. To have mothers remain mothers when they are unable or unwilling to parent their child we must change adoption into a form of permanent guardianship.

I would like to see us ALL join forces and fight toward THAT end!

This is not a we/they issue - this is ALL of us! CUB is not doing that either! As I have said here, I do not represent CUB.

Today I read an interesting article in the NY TImes by RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.: “Understanding and Empathy Aren’t Enough.” He writes about patients that spend years in therapy, receiving empathy and compassion. He found these patients to be in the same place years later, still BLAMING their sorry lives on their parents or whatever circumstance in their life they chose to pinpoint as the cause of their problems, but taking no responsibility and thus never changing. As a divorced woman I have dated many divorced men who spend their lives BLAMING their ex-wives and never taking an ounce of responsibility for causing the demise of their marital relationship. Such people wallow in their self-misery and never grow, it’s always someone else’s fault. Someone “done them wrong.” It’s a great source of country lyrics but is counterproductive in creating an empowered, self-directed, independent, healthy life.

Healing and actvisism is not an either or for me. I believe that we all need to offer and receive compassion to one another and ourselves. But we also need to reach a point when licking our wounds ALONE is no longer accomplishing anything for us personally, and when we get beyond blaming and misdorecting our anger. Blame and anger are STAGES of loss and grief. They need to be worked THROUGH. That is my wish for all of us. That we work throuhg our pain and direct oru anger against adoption, not one another.

Adoption: 41,000 have sought reunion since 1985
Friday, 15 September 2006, 2:20 pm
Press Release: Word of Mouth Media

15 September 2006

41,000 have sought reunion since 1985 – NZ speaker tells world adoption conference in New York today

More than 41,000 people affected by adoption have sought to reunion since the adoption act came into law 21 years ago, a New Zealand guest speaker told the world adoption conference in New York today.

New Zealand’s Julia Cantrell was addressing the international event at Fordham University in the Bronx.

``When adoption legislation came into effect on March 1 1985, New Zealand was the first country to give rights to both adopted people over the age of twenty, and birth parents, to obtain identifying information from official records,’’ Cantrell said.

``Since the implementation of the Act, over 32,000 adopted persons and 9000 birth parents have applied to Child, Youth and Family seeking identifying information.

``The statistics reflect an initial flood of interest from those intending to seek information soon after the Act came into law and then applications have steadily tapered off.’’

Cantrell is the first New Zealand adoptee expert to be invited to a major world adoption conference in the United States.

She told the conference how New Zealand changed its laws in 1985 to allow adoptees to trace their first families.

``Adoption in New Zealand in the 1960s and 70s saw thousands of babies every year placed in stranger families. In a country of only four million, this means now we have over half of our population affected in some direct way by adoption. ‘’

She said many of the issues from the conference this weekend would be discussed at the international adoption conference in Christchurch in 2008.

``A large number of people in New Zealand who continue to live with the complexities of reunion and its aftermath day by day are drawn to these conferences.’’

Cantrell also outlined to the conference her traumatic journey of searching the UK and the USA for her birth parents.


She attended the New York conference as a representative of the Canterbury Adoption Awareness and Education Trust.

The trust was established in April 1997 to provide an umbrella organisation for an international conference at Lincoln University in 1998.

The trust has continued to pursue its aims of promoting awareness and education about adoption and reunion issues in New Zealand.

New Zealand has led the world in opening adoption records since 1985, but two decades on reunions between birth parents and their relinquished children (now themselves adults) are still characterised by complexity, intense emotions and misunderstandings.

``There is a huge need to provide support and information with a New Zealand flavour which is why we are running another international conference in Christchurch in 2008,’’ she said.

Evangelicals and Embryo Adoption – A Pro-Life Conundrum

By Stephen J. Grabill
Christian Post Contributor
Fri, Sep. 15 2006 06:14 AM ET

Infertile couples desperate to conceive children are increasingly turning to fertility specialists for help. But widespread use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has led to an unintended consequence: the creation of a large population of frozen human embryos. That reality has ignited a vigorous moral debate among scientists, politicians, theologians, and parents about what should be done with the surplus store of nascent human life.

The most common ART technique is in vitro fertilization with embryo transfer (IVF-ET), in which a woman is induced to produce multiple eggs. Four to six of the most viable eggs are retrieved and then fertilized in the laboratory, with the resulting embryos transferred to the woman’s uterus. To decrease the probability of complications associated with higher order multiple pregnancies only two to three embryos are usually transferred to the uterus in each in vitro attempt.

At the best clinics, the success rate for each in vitro attempt is between 25 and 50 percent. ART doctors typically respond to the costs and mortality rates by producing more embryos than are feasible to implant at a single time. This overproduction of embryos requires the surplus to be stored for later possible use. Currently, in the United States alone, nearly 500,000 human embryos are being cryopreserved at some 430 fertility clinics.

With this routine overproduction of embryos in IVF-ET questions arise that science alone cannot answer. Technology, it seems, has outpaced our understanding of the fundamental legal, political, theological, and moral issues in the creation and management of human embryos.

Christians and defenders of human dignity who acknowledge embryos to be preborn persons have a dual responsibility to protect the innocent and also to do no harm. One response to these responsibilities has been the practice of embryo adoption. The stakes are high because, as Ron Stoddart founder of Nightlight Christian Adoptions stresses, "An embryo is not a potential human life—it is human life with potential."

Four U.S. adoption programs facilitate embryo adoption: Nightlight Christian Adoptions, the Center for Human Reproduction, Bethany Christian Services, and the National Embryo Donation Center. The goal of each is to transfer frozen donor embryos to infertile recipients who intend to use them to procreate.

At first glance, embryo adoption appears to be a life-affirming response to the vast number of frozen embryos being stored at fertility clinics. Yet it is not without problems. In embryo adoption, as in IVF-ET, it often takes repeated attempts before a successful pregnancy is achieved with frozen donor embryos.

These realities point to a moral conundrum for Christians who support both IVF-ET and embryo adoption. Embryo adoption is, at best, a response to the embryo surplus created by IVF-ET, which itself raises fundamental moral questions that Protestant ethicists have not yet probed in sufficient depth.

Routine overproduction of embryos and high mortality rates suggest that IVF-ET degrades and instrumentalizes the very life it seeks to create. The fundamental purpose of every embryo is to realize its own life: to fulfill its divine purpose of achieving life as a rational, social, creative, spiritual, and morally free and responsible person. In assisted reproduction and cryopreservation—unlike in normal conception and gestation—the natural progression of an embryo’s life from potential to actual can be temporarily interrupted, stalled for a time, or worse, permanently thwarted from achieving its purpose.

Among Protestants in general, there is an absence of critical moral discernment on bioethical issues outside the scope of abortion debate. This stems, in part, from Protestant skepticism toward natural law (God’s will as expressed in creation, imprinted on the conscience, and known through reason). The challenge for pro-life evangelicals is to develop systematic moral reasoning that can be applied to a range of issues including embryo adoption, human embryonic stem cell research, ART, "therapeutic cloning," genetic engineering, and birth control.

Evangelicals tend to be pragmatic, wedding political activism with biblical appeals, but this has resulted in moral reflection operating on a mostly private and intuitive plane. The tragic pitfall with this style of ethical decision-making is that adverse spiritual and moral consequences often go undetected.

Aside from the issue of what to do with surplus embryos, the more fundamental question remains: How will pro-life Christian supporters of IVF-ET and embryo adoption resolve the moral Catch-22 brought to light by the vast stores of nascent human life? Protestants need to think seriously about this moral paradox and to retrieve older, more sophisticated traditions in ethics—such as natural law—to provide assistance.


Letters to the Editor should be addressed to letters@christianpost.com. Due to space considerations, only letters of less than 250 words will be considered for publication. Please provide your name and telephone number along with your letter. You will be called if your letter is being considered for publication. To write to the editorial page editor, send to editor@christianpost.com


MY LETTER:

It is morally reprehensible to use the word adoption regarding human tissue that is not viable as it is being sold by these companies. Adoption is the process of caring for children who need care because their families are nbor able to provide it for them.
There are between 150-160,000 children in foster care. Of those 134,000 can never be reunited with their families. Is it “Christian” to be playing God and “creating” life to meet the needs of those allegedly “desperate” to be parents, while these children go without families. Is that what Jesus would have wanted us to do? Is it moral, ethical, loving, caring…or just plain selfish and uncaring?
Clearly, not all seeking to adopt are capable or qualified to parent older children or sibling groups, typically the children who are in need of permanent homes. However, the astounding fact is that if just one in 500 of those seeking to adopt were willing to do so, all of the 134,000 children in foster care waiting for adoption would have permanent, loving families.

...

States lose on adoption
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/states-lose-on-adoption/2006/09/14/1157827093119.html

September 15, 2006

THE states will be stripped of prime responsibility for Australia's overseas adoption programs, with the Federal Government taking over management of the system.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's department will assume control of overseas adoptions after a federal parliamentary inquiry blamed state government neglect and hostility for driving down the number of adoptions in Australia since the early 1970s.

The House of Representatives committee, which reported last November, found a general lack of support for adoptions among state and territory governments.

Australia's per capita rate of adoptions from overseas has fallen to less than one-third the rate of most First-World countries.

Adoptions, the report said, had become the "poor relation" of child protection in Australia.

Mr Ruddock said the Commonwealth accepted the committee's recommendation that it should take prime responsibility for overseas adoptions.

"The committee's recommendations represent a blueprint for major reform of Australia's overseas adoption system," he said.

State and territory governments will retain responsibility for day-to-day processing and manage individual applications, including assessing applicants.

"The Government urges the states and territories to ensure that applications are assessed quickly and thoroughly so that aspiring parents are able to benefit from these reforms," Mr Ruddock said.

In response to the report, the Government will also ensure that children adopted from overseas have the same citizenship rights as those born in Australia.

Adoptive parents will also become eligible for the federal maternity immunisation allowance if the child arrives in Australia before the age of 16.

....

No, I am not talking the Middle east or terrorism. I'm talking about adoption reform.
I have used the phrase here, that some amongst are “shooting themselves in the foot.” I’d like to elaborate.

There is a great deal of talk and concern about “institutionalized racism” i.e. police profiling. And yet 94 percent of all blacks killed between 1976 and 1999 were killed by other blacks. (Joe R. Hicks)

People who have so many real enemies…so much to be done to end the overt and covert forces that keep them down. Yet, they turn their frustration, anger and despair toward one another in “turf wars” and kill one another for “dissing” them. Why?

Aqeela Sherrills, who grew up in Watts, and, after seeing 13 friends killed in gang wars, was inspired to bring the warring factions—the Crips and Bloods—together to hammer out a peace treaty that lasted ten years. (This is What Peace Looks Like: Watts, Los Angeles: The Satya Interview with Aqeela Sherrills.)

Aqeela says: [The Blacks in these communities] have been … marginalized. “Gang member” is a scapegoat term society created that makes them inhuman, and when they get killed, people say, “Oh well, they were gang members.” But these were somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son, crying out for help in their own way. There’s this perception that people in urban communities are hardened killers and it’s not true. They’re bright and intelligent individuals, but they’re wounded deeply and carrying that around, which is basically a trigger. [Sound familiar? There’s more…]
Most of the kids as well as the adults are also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

So how did Aqeela turn things around? First by starting with a vision. And then teaching responsibility. In this case a vision of a neighborhood kids could live in safely. They developed grassroots commissions, or neighborhood councils, basically organizing and teaching them to become the stakeholders that they are in their communities. Gangs are responsible for the community—they’ve already said “this is our territory;” and it’s about flipping their consciousness, to protecting and providing a service to the neighborhood.


Along with the vision was realism. Peace is sustained—-not without problems and challenges, he says. Peace is not this utopian idea of dashing through a field of dandelions, you know, it’s hard work. Sometimes the peacemakers lose their lives in the process. But the key is that individuals consistently come back to resolve their conflicts to take them the next few steps towards peace.

It’s about who can communicate with these individuals and touch their hearts, helping each one to find their own humanity to see that there’s a different way. It’s based upon relationships and can’t be motivated by anything except love. It’s about igniting a conversation about just, you know, life—what makes people happy or sad; what they fear; what things they can change.

In every situation, in every conflict, what we’re actually negotiating on is the simple stuff. It’s about helping them go back to that place where they were first violated, and helping them to resolve those wounds so that they don’t become a burden in their lives, and so they can operate without them.

If people in the ghettos can do it, gosh darn it, so can we…end our feuding and fighting and work together toward common goals.

We already have a shared vision: family preservation! What we need is to begin to beleive that WE have the power to make that vision a reality ... and we CAN, if we combine efforts and work toward it instead of battling one another with loaded words instead of guns.

“Love Your Children More Than You Hate Your Enemies”

...

Yesterday the country commemorated the five year anniversay of 9/11. I live close enough to NYC to have seen the buildings burnings. Friends and relatves of mine worked close enough to see people jumping. MANY people I know, knows someone who died that day, including neighbors of mine.

Now, just imagine, that while those buildings were burning and collapsing, the first survivors out quarreled amongst themselves instead of trying to aid the resucuers in directing them to other survivors. Imagine - if you can - the fire department members arguing with the Police Department over whose jurisdiction it was and who should do what while people died!

And that is exactly what I see going on every day in this so-called adoption "reform" movement. I see people wasting their time and effort cursing one another out and arguing while adoptions are being promoted more and more...and no one even cares or makes any attempt whatsoever to stop the blood from flowing. Some even have the audacity to call themselves family preservationsists and are doing NOTHING to prevent these "quick trigger adoptions" or the baby brokers. Not one letter to the editor - NOTHING! Far too busy arguing and lamenting past misdeeds.


21 states' adoption efforts rewarded, though some critical of payments
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 10, 2006

About $11.6 million has been awarded to 21 states that have increased
the number of children adopted from foster care, the federal
government said Friday.
"Families that open their hearts and home through adoption do a
world of good," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt
said.
Incentive payments were given to states that completed more
adoptions in 2005 than in their baseline year, or the year with the
highest number of adoptions between 2002 and 2004.
States receive $4,000 for each additional child adopted beyond
their best year's total, plus $4,000 for each child age 9 and older
and $2,000 for each child with special needs.
Texas led the nation, receiving more than $4 million in incentive
payments, while Arizona and Tennessee each received more than $1
million.
An estimated 51,500 children were adopted from foster care in
fiscal 2005, up from about 50,700 in fiscal 2004, according to HHS.
About 518,000 abused, neglected or abandoned children are in
foster care. Most of these children return home, but about 118,000 are
eligible for adoption, the department said.
The average age of a child waiting for adoption is 10. Each year,
about 19,000 young adults "age out" of the foster care system without
having a permanent home.
While the adoption incentive payments, created in the 1997
Adoption and Safe Families Act, have been generally well received,
there have been some complaints that children are steered into
adoptions so states can win the bonuses.
In January, two Kentucky advocacy groups issued a paper that
questioned whether the state child protection system was
"fast-tracking" children into adoptive homes. While the adoption
incentive payments may have been "a well-conceived federal idea to
discourage children from languishing in foster care, it may have had
an unintended consequence" of making the state agency "too
removal-oriented," especially regarding children from poor families,
statedthe report from Kentucky Youth Advocates and the National
Institute on Children, Youth & Families.
The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services responded by
creating a blue-ribbon panel to explore the accusations and will issue
a report next year. In addition, the agency's Office of Inspector
General is investigating accusations of improper adoptions.
According to the new HHS report on adoption bonuses, Kentucky's
award of $766,000 was fourth highest.

.......

These are weapons of mass destruction, folks! You don't need UN forces to search for them; they're right out in the open about it: Government paid incentives to increase adoptions! And this is the government you expect an apology from??? A government which can't enough kids adopted quickly enough?!

....

Someone who commented here brought to my attention an article by Carole Anderson which appeared in the September 1990 Communicator entitled “A Response to ‘A Time for Sweeping Change’.” I was on “vacation” from all adoption-related work during the 90s as I was in the midst of a protracted divorce and custody battle. I was fascinated by the fact that Carole had talked about guardianship in 1990 and eager to read the entire article written in response to one by Annette Baran and Reuben Pannor about open adoption, which Carole clearly felt did not go far enough toward family preservation.

The article was brought to my attention because in it Carole supports guardianship, stating: “Permanent guardianship would retain and acknowledge the child’s true kinship relationships while providing for permanent care. There would be no pretending that the guardians who care for and love the child are the ‘real parent.’ They are not parents. It would be understood that the child has parents but the guardians are responsible for raising the child.”

Apparently Carole did not receive support for her radical ideas and CUB decided to continue to provide support for mothers and to support open records, about which Carole states: “Whether adoptions are open from the beginning or are opened later by search,” said carole, “they still involve the separation of children from their families, with all the damaging effects that brings. In all adoptions, open or closed, the children grow up pretending to be related to unrelated people; the children’s [birth] parents pretend they’re not their children’s ‘real’ parents and they lose their parenting roles to people outside their families…”

We all know that open adoptions that give a mother pictures and letters - even visits - is not the same as preserving the family withour seperation. The same is true no matter that the other is called.

I wish cancer had not taken Carole from us. She was far ahead of her time. Carole was not a whiner – she was a doer - an action oriented person. She faults Baran and Pannor for not going far enough. Their article she says “identifies problems, but doesn’t propose concrete solutions. In the real world people are extremely unlikely to stop doing things the way they always have unless they have a very clear idea of what to replace then with.”

I am disappointed that CUB lacked the courage to follow up on Carole’s insights. I am disappointed too that those who came along and proposed an end to adoption, wiped their web pages clean of all anti-adoption references and instead are focusing on fighting over one word and an inquiry into the harm done to them in the past. Reading her article in full, it is clear that while Carole was too radical for most CUBers at the time, I do not think she would be in total agreement with the “new breed” of mothers today, either…the Exiled and OUSA mothers. She abhors the pain suffered by mothers who are separated from their children by adoption like only one who has experienced such a ripping apart of her soul can know. However, she puts the needs of the children above those of any adults.

“Every child needs both heritage and nurturing. When those who cannot come from the same place, it emphatically does nor follow that we must pretend the source of nurturing provides a heritage as well. Being forced to live a fantasy should not be the price of the nurturing every child is entitled to receive.”

We do not need to choose between helping our adopted children and ourselves. We can do both by fighting against falsified birth certificates.

Billie and Tillie were delighted when finally their long wait to adopt a baby came to an end. The adoption center called and told them they had a wonderful Russian baby boy and the couple took him without hesitation.

On the way home from the adoption center, they stopped by the local college so they each could enroll in night courses. After they filled out the form, the registration clerk inquired, "What ever possessed you to study Russian?"

The couple said proudly, "We just adopted a Russian baby and in a year or so he'll start to talk. We just want to be able to understand him!"

Also scroll down to Sept 5.

...

The following appeared in www.contracostatimes.com

Kelly Corrigan: Rewire your thinking on adoption


I DREAMED of adopting. Actually, I didn't. When I was little, adopting was still an illegitimate transaction that happened in a back alley between people in long overcoats, while a frantic, hysterical teenage girl muffled her cries nearby. The baby was handed over by an intermediary to a sorry couple whom society referred to as "barren." A new family was formed and all the notes, documents, and evidence of a child's biological heritage -- if they ever existed -- were dropped into a fireplace or pushed through the nearest sewer grate on the way home from the surrender, the "making right."

For a hundred years, maybe more, those shadows darkened the perfect solution that adoption can be.

Now, the norm is switching to open adoption, which by it's very name suggests that we can stop whispering like we're gossiping about a sexually transmitted disease or an extramarital affair. Now, there is National Adoption Day, which appropriately, falls on Nov. 19, just before the great holiday of where we give thanks for our blessings. In honor of a 4-year-old I know and love named Joseph, I want to contribute my thousand words to the paradigm shift around adoption.

Joe's mom adopted him from an overweight, inexperienced 13-year-old in the Midwest who didn't suspect she might be pregnant until well into the third trimester. Why would she be? She had only had sex once, in a back bedroom during a party. She never saw the guy again; she heard he was from out of state. Eight months later, her mom took her to the local ER, asking the nurse to check for a stomach ulcer, or maybe even a tumor.

A month away from finishing eighth grade, she was 35 weeks pregnant.

This is where shame usually lays its blanket over everything, disguising -- but not really -- the truth that friends and teachers probably suspected. This is where the story could go either way.

Well, suffice it to say, you can now find Joe in Marin County where he is living "phat" (as the kids say) with a hilarious dog who has finally given in to being ridden like a pony, a sassy, loving mom and a father who is as young at heart as his son. Joe was a cowboy for Halloween and in the days after the big night, he spent more time categorizing his candy than eating it. Chocolates, hard candies, gummies, circular items.

Joe's mom took a long time to come to adoption, as people tend to. She took a thousand shots, saw an acupuncturist, a therapist, and several fertility clinics. She was pregnant three times, through IVF, but could not make it stick. Each pregnancy ended in a D&C. When she looks back on that time, she sees waste. Wasted emotion, wasted energy, wasted savings. She could have spent those years raising kids, being the very thing she so desired: a mother.

But there is a crazy, whatever-it-takes drive to have your own biological child. I have two of my own, and I loved being pregnant and am somehow gratified when I see my eyes in my daughter's face. But when Joe's mom and I talk mommy talk, those things never come up. They just can't compete with the real stuff of parenthood -- the questions from the back seat like "What is betrayal?" "When was the first person born?" and "Who made the world?"

What Joe's mom wants you to see and feel and internalize is that adoption is a viable, even attractive, option that can put a healthy, beautiful baby in your arms without the trauma that often comes with other alternatives for the possibly infertile couple, like IVF. Adoption need not be the last resort, an option you reluctantly turn to when all other measures -- extractions, surgeries, transfers -- leave you exhausted, defeated and penniless. Adoption, even with all its hassles and headaches, can be a perfectly beautiful thing, a true miracle in a world of almosts.

So, for Joe, for his mom, and for that girl who started her senior year in high school last month, let's stop talking about adoption like a consolation prize and start considering it a gleaming gold trophy where the winner is the child.

Reach Kelly Corrigan at kelly@circusofcancer.org. Kelly is online at
www.kellycorrigan.com


But, the best place to write your response - keep it short: letters@cctimes.com

My (written) response (after my blood stopped boiling):

Kelly Corrigan needs to rewire her thinking on adoption and do some proper research before writing an article. Editors should have checked her facts as well.

Adoptions in this country were practiced openly until the 1940’s when states began sealing original birth certificates. Until the recently the majority of adoptions were handled by state and religious agencies – not in “back alleys.”

Open adoption means more than knowing the birthmother – and publicly humiliating her – albeit without giving her name. Open adoption means the mother has an ongoing relationship with her child and is treated with respect, not referred to as “that girl”. A girl too young to have decided to have “had sex” but was more likely date or statutorily raped, or talked into doing something to be “liked.” And the reason she would not know she was pregnant was not because she’s overweight, but because at 13 a woman is too young to have had regular menses long enough to recognize skipped periods.

Finally, adoption is NOT a trophy. It may bring joy to some, but every adoption begins with a tragedy. Sadly, the consolation prize is exactly what it is for a mother who is unable to raise her own child, for a woman who tried every conceivable way to carry a pregnancy, and for a child who does not get to live with his blood kin. It is also a tragedy for thousands of children in foster care who have no families to go home to.

....

If numbers of comments on a blog are a sign of "winning" some kind of competition, than Bastardette" is ahead at over 160 or some such.

If accomplishing anything is an indication of making progress, than they are loosing the battle by leaps and bounds. I see nothing constructive in cursing and calling one another "evil." I see hate just escalating with no controls on it whatsoever. All that is happening over there is a widening of the gap and each person getting more and more entrenched in their own positions. It is making schoolyard brawls sound like intelligent debates.

Interestngly, a friend just sent me a Washington Post article in regards to partisonship in politics: "How the Brain Helps Partisans Admit No Gray" By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, July 31, 2006.

Here are some relevant quotes:

"People who see the world in black and white rarely seem to take in information that could undermine their positions.
Psychological experiments in recent years have shown that people are not evenhanded when they process information, even though they believe they are. (When people are asked whether they are biased, they say no. But when asked whether they think other people are biased, they say yes.) Partisans who watch presidential debates invariably think their guy won. When talking heads provide opinions after the debate, partisans regularly feel the people with whom they agree are making careful, reasoned arguments, whereas the people they disagree with sound like they have cloth for brains."

Jonas Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, says: "in the political process, people come to decisions early on and then spend the rest of the time making themselves feel good about their decision."

"The result reflects a larger phenomenon in which people routinely discount information that threatens their preexisting beliefs," said Emory University psychologist Drew Westen.

In other words: My mind is already up, so please don't confuse me with the facts! Or, put another way, trying to change someone's preconcieved notions is about as useful as trying to teach a pig to fly - especially when it is done in anger.

The only way to approach a dispute is to approach it as a learning experience. Even if you have no expectation of ever changing your mind - say on an issue like abortion (which all of us have pretty clear opinions about). But, if you can go into a DISCUSSSION and just try to HEAR and UNDERSTAND the other's posiiton - without feeling you are trying to be convinced or feeling a need to DEFEND your posiiton...just LISTEN...then, you just might come out a bit enligtened.

All too often when listening - or even reading an email or post - we are formualting our repsonse AS we are listening or reading, and thus not really listening at all. In email it's far worse, because we IMAGINE the OTHERS "tone."

...

To those who ask, what has been achieved in the past 30 years of adoption reform, I reiterate:

- Legislation, written, sponsored and introduced in innumerable states

- Legislation introduced and successfully passed in four states

- Making the issue of adoption search and reunion a common every day event on every sitcom and talk show

- Risking arrest - and getting jailed - to establish a network of search contacts and PIs

- Writing about the issues of loss in adoption separation in books, magazines and professional journals

- Networking between and among all triad members and professionals


Now, these goals may not be the same goals that others today seek. They were our goals and we went after them. We put every ounce of our time and energy - our lives - into obtaining those goals. And just because they may not be the goals YOU want, do not make light of our efforts and our successes. What have YOU done over the past 30 years to change adoption?

Yes, mothers fought alongside adoptees - and adoptive mothers, and professional - for one common goal: open records. Why? Because every mother I have ever met - and there were hundreds if not thousands - since the late 70s...every single one of us had one common over-riding, pressing goal and that was to find our children and know they were OK.

Yes, we have our own wounds and we work on supporting one another in support groups and some of us did private therapy in addition. We have pain, we have loss. We have a limbo loss that was unrecognized by society and even within our own families. It was supposed to be ignored, not spoken of. We have shame and we have guilt...and we have anger. We have all of the same emotions that every mother from 1950 to 2006 feels when she looses a child to adoption.

But as MOTHERS - we put the needs of our children FIRST, before our own!

Legislatively, there is nothing any of us can do to get our kids back or to replace our lost years with them.

So, we put all our legislative efforts into helping our adopted children restore their lost rights. There was some debate about this. When Carol Anderson was president of CUB, she was much more radical and did not want CUB supporting any bills that did not unilaterally give access to both for mothers and adoptees. There may still be some individual CUB members who feel that way and would not write a letter in support of a bill. But CUB as an organization decided to go along with supporting bills for open records and not deny our children their rights.

The basic feeling is this. We surrendered our children because we were made to believe that they would have a "better life." That better life does not include them being denied their birth and medical records. There is no way for us to be given back what was taken form us - but there is a way for them to be given back what was taken from them. No matter how pressured we were, there is some level of responsibility ultimately that some of us take for having given in to the pressure and not fighting harder (unless you were a minor, or other very unusual circumstance). Regardless though - even if your signature was forged on the surrender papers - the fact still remains that adoptees had no power of over what was done to them as a result.

I believe it is our maternal instinct that overrode all else. We wanted what was best for our adult "children." THIS made us, more than any word ever could, feel like we were really MOTHERS – mothers who CARED about our children and their rights. And that was and still is more important to many of us than obtaining any apology or retribution for what was done to us. This is no one RIGHT way. Our way was not wrong because it was right for us. Those who want to do things differently are welcome to, but there is no need to demean all that went before, especially when it laid the way to you finding your chidlren or them finding you.

Whatever goal each group sets for itself, so be it. CUBs goal remains first and foremost support, others want an inquiry, and BN continues to focus on open records, Fine.

What I'd ideally like to see, however, is ALL of us - in addition - joining together in fighting the FALSIFICATION of birth certificates that continues TODAY! This is the root cause of all of our problems. This state committed fraud is what strips mothers of being mothers and makes them invisible nothing in regard to their children. This is what causes adoptees to go a lifetime without even knowing they are adopted.

Let this by our bi-partisan issue.

...

Anon says: "That's hardly comic satire. It's an offence (sic) to all mothers. It's an indication of what has occurred in consequences of our rightful title being tampered with by those who altered our identites."

All of those terms: Lifemother, first mother, exiled mothers, etc. are terms that were created in relatively recent years by pople like YOU. YOU are the ones TAMPERING with your own identity and your "rightful title" - no one else. If there was a coordinated move to fight against the "b" word, it might have been a good idea to get together and decide on a replacement first, without confusing everyone. Anytime you are against something, you need to present an alternative. You came out in a big rush to put down everything that came before without a clear plan of action, IMO. Thus the confusion the SATIRE correctly points out.


In regards to when and how our rightful title of mother was taken from us, it was NOT with introduction of the term "birthmother" because, as has been pointed out many times over, women - including the vast majority of us - have been exploited for our babies long before that term came into use.

Illegit is right! On the original birth certificate we are all our children's mothers. On the surrender papers we are STILL our children's mothers. It is not until after we relinquish our right to parent that we become nothing...a non-relative with no rights whatsoever. Some of us may have pressured to do so, but for the most part that was done within the law.

It is the state committed FRAUD of FALSIFICATION of the birth certificate that strips of us our rightous title of mother and gives it to someone else. I have my daughters original birth certificate and her falsified one. One says she was born to me and I am her mother; the other says that she was BORN TO a stranger who was never even in the city or hospital in which she was born!

The state commits FRAUD when they issue these FALSIFIED birth certificates. They then call it an "amended" birth certificate.

Amend means: to change for the better; improve: to amend one's ways.
to remove or correct faults in; rectify.

Get angry! Get really angry - but direct that anger were it belongs!

They call removing our names making things "better."

If mothers - and adoptees - want their dignity left intact, they need to join forces and fight the removal of their dignity. Instead, BN asks for CRUMBS, IMO...to get to see their original birth certificate when they are ADULTS! Yet they can spend all their life, well into adulthood, not even knowing they are adopted. So they don't even know there is another birth certificate or family to look for.

We need to stop seeing things from our own narrow perspective and see the bigger picture. Mothers seeing only the harm done to them and adoptees seeing only the violation of their rights. Then instead of fighting with one another - we could focus our energies on the real enemy: the state committed fraud that violated all of us.

Open adoption is not open when it begins with a falsified birth certificate, as it does.

We don't need to be called anti-adopton. All we need to do is to ask for adoption to be done HONESTLY....with the issuance of a certificate of adoption, which lists the names of the adoptive parents. To that should be attached the original certificate or cross referenced in a way that at any time the child is old enough to ask for it, he or she can get it. PERIOD.

But instead of trying to make adoption more humane, we are each hung up in getting restitution for our wounds. BN people care about themselves NOW as adults and could care less that the practice continues to do the same to others every day; and the same for mothers who are concerned only with what ahppened to them 30 years ago.

And in the meantime - we waste time and energy arguing over what we are called, as if that is going to change anything. NONSENSE. Utter nonsense. No one becomes a "birthmother" unles and until their rights are stripped from them. It's the effect - the end result - NOT THE CAUSE!

...

This post is in answer to and quotes (in itlaics) from two comments to the last post. All replies need to play by my rules or they will not be posted. The rule is simple: we stick to discussing ISSUES with no personal attacks or mean comments.

To say: "so in essence nothing has been achieved over the past thirty years?" is extremely disrespectful and shows as much of a lack of understanding of what we have been up against as some of our children's inability to understand the pressures on single mothers in the 60's.

"so in essence nothing has been achieved over the past thirty years?"

You call getting open records in FOUR states doing nothing? Have you ever introducded a bill or been on a committee that has had one written and introduced? Do you know what it takes to get a bill sponsored and introduced into state legislation? Do you know the process of committees, amendments etc. it goes through in each HOUSE? Do you know how many YEARS it can take?

If not, I suggest you do not make light of the "nothing" that has been done over the past 30 years. It might not be what you (or even I) would have done with our time and effort over those same years...but let me ask you...

Where were YOU personally in 1976? What were YOU doing regarding your own adoption situation and others?

I found my daughter and established a contact source for others in the same state to find their children. I was co-founding a support group to help mothers know they were not alone and to help them link up with other underground searchers in whatever state their child was born and relinquished in. A national network created without the use of the Internet and at great risk of any one of us being arrested as Sandy Muser was. We all committed acts of civil disobedience in a very hostle to search atmosphere. I dare say that any one of you who have found your kids or been foud by them - did so because of searchers WE established for you to do that!

Where were YOU personally in 1980? What were YOU doing to help yourself or other mothers? I was showing my face on national television along with Joe Soll and Mary Anne Cohen, Carole Anderson, and adopive mothers like Carol Gustavson -- showing a united front. Showing ourselves as mothers and telling the world we are NOT invisible and will NOT go away!

Where were you all throughout the 80's while I was organizing conferneces, marches, demonstrations, speak-outs?

What were you doing while I was writing and publishing a book. A very controversial - for the time - hard-hitting look at what was wrong with adoption at the time. And giving voice to the pain suffered by my sisters. A book that, if I dare say so myself, was very positively reviewed by experts in the field (including Joe Soll), internationally acclaimed and award winning.

And my book was far from the first or the last. Jean Paton did far from "nothing" to bring attention to the issues of adoption. Nor did Baron, Sarosky and Pannor, or more recently Ricki Solinger Ann Fessler or Carol Schaefer. Each of us contributed a piece, a different approach; each an attempt to shed light on the problems of adoption.

Lee Campbell and others have gotten our issues into professional journals and are quoted over and other on the subject of the effects of surrender such as secondary infertility. Heather Lowe and Brenda Romachik each authored booklets to be used in criris pregancy centers to help PREVENT women from making the same mistakes we did.

If you have done more or better, please let me know...



"In fact they have actively sought to avoid similar Parliamentary inquiries into those illegal procedures."

We cannot have a Parliamentary inquiry here in the US because we have no Parliament. Adoption is under state law - 50 of them. Additionally, in very few cases were actual "crimes" committed and of and when they were they need to be brought to the attention of the authorities in that state and charged and dealt with criminally. For the vast majority of us it was POLICY that was based on false beliefs then, and a lack of regulation now. All the "crimes" of adoption were committed WITHIN the letter of the law - with a few exceptions.

"Isn't it time to dispel the myths that keep mothers crushed and oppressed and disentitled?" That is what we have been doing for the past 30 years that you called doing nothing.

"Isn't it time to stop playing the oppressive adoption game?" ABSOLUTELY right again! And that is all I see OUSA and Exiled mothers doing! Saying I am so wounded that a word OFFENDS me...poor me.

I have been down this road before and I concluded back in April - if you all want to insist that your way is the best and only way, so be it. Go ahead with your inquiry and your campaign against one word as the cause of all of the problems in adoption exploitation and see what effect - if any - it has on current adoption practice. I think you are wasting time and energy, but knock your socks off! It's your groups and your absolute right to do as you choose.

Does that mean that I am saying continue the status quo? Do I agree in putting all of our collective energies in fighting for "open records." ABSOLUTELY NOT! I don't even agree with the terminology: "open records."

Do I think it's time for a totally new political approach! ABSOLUTELY!!! I think no one is focused on the real issues. Not Exiled Mothers, not OUSA, not BN or CUB or the AAC.

I firmly believe that the real issue is the falsification of birth certificates that states that our children were BORN to those who adopted them. That was never done in AU.

End the falsification of the birth certificate and you automatically are restored your rightful place as your child's mother. It is the falsified birth certificates issued in this country by every state that is state committed fraud. It is what legally makes us as mother invisible and nonexistent insofar as our children are concerned. It totally strips of all rights. It is an issue that adoptees and mothers could join together on instead of fighting with one another and getting nothing accomplished (according to you). BN HAS been accomlishing ther goal of restornign the rights of adilt adoptees...albiet while rights of adoptees and their mothers continue to be stripped away by falsfied birth certificates.

Adoptees and their mothers have survived trauma and loss. We are all wounded. In our efforts to heal our own wounds and restore our lost dignity and humanity, we seem to be ignoring the continuation of suffering going on as we seek resitution for the past.

We need to insist upon a Federal/National Regulatory Agency to oversee all adoption practice. That will help to stop the current abuses and also give us one central place to address past abuses. This needs to be in place fIRST, before any inqury can be started, othersie you you will spinning your wheels for the next hundred years battling to get an inquiry started in each of the 50 states. And so what...In 1955 Senator Estes Kefauver led a U.S. congressional investigation into black market adoption as a result of Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children’s Home Society operation where babies wewre literally STOLEN. Read up on how far that got!

Yes, indeed, we need to try something DIFFERENT! Australia is an excellent model of what we seek, but we cannot simply duplciate the same methodology of attaining it. We have 50 different state laws and a far more capitalistic society and culture here. There is an ingrained, unspoken, class system in this country that is firmly of the belief that the poor are poor because they are lazy and the rich are ENTITLED to and DESERVE anything they can BUY - including a child! AND...that the child is BETTER OFF for it! We are up against a different legal system and a very different mind-set. We need a new and different strategy.

Post Script: Don't often check, but my horoscope for today said: You can feed off of the energy within a group. What others feel as tension is excitement to you. Stay open to big changes now, for if you attempt to hold on to the safety of old habits and structures, unexpected events may shake your world. If you let go of whatever is restricting you, the transition will be much smoother.

...

I was asked in a comment: "What actually has been achieved by way of adoption reform in the past 30 years?"

I have given pieces of the answer in a couple of comment replies.

First of all, when comparing AU to the US, you need to realize that AU has had open records since 1988 in South Australia....and the had it UNILATERALLY for both adoptees and their mothers. They could THEN work on going further. We still have 46 states to go in getting open records....and don't even DARE ask for them to be open to mothers (more on this below).


Further: "After the passing of the Adoption Act 1988 in South Australia, it gradually became clear to the government that the long term impact on family members who had been separated by adoption could not be ignored and so steps were taken to provide post-adoption services. Steps were also taken to re-examine whether or not adoption was an appropriate outcome for families in difficulties. With the passing of the Children’s Protection Act 1993, the South Australian government made it clear that they were willing to put resources into family preservation and into creating alternative options for children at risk, which would be genuinely child-centred. Since that time, numbers of adoptions in South Australia have reduced steadily." Evelyn Robinson's International Conference on Child Rights
Bucharest, Romania. February 2006

All of this PRIOR to any inquirey? Is that correct? We are in the dark ages compared to that!

Besides fighting for open records here in the US...in the beginning the major focus was on search and support. We were finding one another and our kids (or mothers) in the dark without the Internet...and in a very hostile atmosphere. If you don’t know: at least one person, Sandy Muser, was actually JAILED for helping mothers search! Back then, just searching was very, very controversial and an act of civil disobedience to say the least. Today it is something most people take pretty much for granted. When I say we were pioneers, I mean it! We paved the road. We dared to appear on national TV and tell the world that we were birthmothers - look at us!

Then as now, there were controversial issues within the adoption reform movement as well. Those mothers, such as myself, who were in this from the beginning, were all mothers of MINOR children. It is one thing for BN to speak about open records for ADULTS. We were searching for and finding YOUNG KIDS! There were those within the movement that were scared stiff that we would bring so much heat to the whole search movement...and in fact minor search probably did lead to Sandy's arrest. But we were not in denial, and once that door is open you can't close it. From the minute I found out it was possible to find my daughter, nothing was going to stop me. And the more I heard of mothers finding out their kids had died in infancy or in car crashes as teens, or were in bad adoptive homes...the less ability I had to wait until she was 18! It wasn't going to be any more "legal" when she was 18 - so why wait? But that was very controversial. WE were the radical outlaws even within our own movement.

There was major controversy in CUB during Carol Anderson's tenure over whether CUB should support any open records bill that didn’t open the records mutually for mothers AND adoptees. The articles, the opinions, the disagreements on that issue! CUB came close to being disbanded and I think that was part of the reason...Carole was far more radical than other CUBers.

All of the inner conflicts then - as now - slow down real progress in groups that have very limited resources to begin with. In the end, they are all a part of any organization or grassroots movement's history and growth.

But it is important to see them as ISSUES and not take any of it personally. If someone disagrees with your opinion, it just means they see things differently. Not all Democrats agree with one another. Not all Republicans. Often legislatures vote against a bill not because they are against the issue, but because it doesn’t go far enough.

The same is true today of BN who opposes some open records legislation in some states because it doesn’t go "far enough" ...is not a "clean bill" because to may contain a veto or some such. This again causes dissention often between the AAC and BN. One may be supporting a bill the other comes out publicly and opposes. And while there are those who disagree with BN, we all UNDERSTAND their positon BECUASE they have spelled out and very clearly articualted their position with logical reasons why they have chosen that path. Ad, they are printing an article I worte in ther upcoming newsletter that disagrees with a position of theirs.

There is no ONE, TRUE or RIGHT way. There are differing opinions...between groups and between individuals within groups. AND…even within the same individual over time! Diane Turski re-wrote her famous "Birthmother as Breeder" article. I have changed opinions on issues over the years. We all do because it's part of learning and GROWTH.

Ya gotta just get used to it. It's part of the process. And it can be a very educational and informative part of the process if you can learn to listen the ISSUES and not take things personally as an insult because someone disagrees with a particular path toward adoption reform. And, discussing them among ourselves helps us to further fine-tune our arguments so we can present them to others outside the movement. When I ask questions about not using the “b” word – I am asking to learn and answering me helps a lot more than asking me why I’m asking or being defensive and seeing a question as a criticism.

A personal observation: In the past, people have walked out of groups...quit over personal/poliictal differences, etc. Groups have totally disbanded. But it seems to me that things have been more ANGRY lately. More militant, more RUDE. More demanding of "my way or the highway" attitude than I have ever experienced previosuly. BN does things that others disagree with (and sometimes really piss off people who have spent YEARS trying to get a bill inyroduced) but they have never DEMANDED that others follow their way of doing things, they just do their thing. I have never experienced the level of nastiness, sarcasm, abruptness, unwillingness to discuss issues...and just plain MEANNESS that I have seen recently. Either that, or I am going senile and have forgotten! :-)

Please don't see this last observation as reason to ARGUE with me about my observation or to take it as an atack. It's not. It is what it is...a personal observation, from my own vantage point. I named no one or no group. Your experience may be very different. Nor do I want to hear "they started it" type schoolyard arguments. Those are really just a childish waste of time and energy.

The best thing anyone readng this can do is prove me wrong by NOT being cantankerous!

And please let's remember:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard(er) battle.
Plato

...


WOMYN is the best-known one of a number of alternate spellings which some feminists promote as a way to degender the English word women and as female empowerment. Other variants include wimmin (plural), wom!n, womban and womon (singular), while femal (from female) and humyn (human) apply the principle elsewhere. All are pronounced the
same as the conventional terms.

Feminists who prefer to use these words feel that the terms "woman/women" relate to the historical and ongoing social subordination of women, since the word "man" is seen as the default for human, implying that women are a subset of men, or deviation from the norm. Those who argue in favour of the terms "womon/womyn" contend that they have the right to choose how a term referring to them is spelled, rather than be compelled to use words that evolved in a patriarchal society. Others further argue that "womyn" is based on a medieval spelling of the word, and that returning to the old model of waeman and wyfman meaning man and woman, respectively, would be more egalitarian. Under this taxonomy "man" would revert to meaning "human".

Some see the adjustments as an example of excessive political correctness. Others feel it to be anti-male gender bias.

Still others who consider themselves feminists see the issue as a distraction from what they consider more important feminist goals.

Feminists in favor of the reform argue that language is a powerful tool that shapes the way people perceive their surroundings, and even how they understand gender and gender roles. They also feel that the current form of the words do not value women. Therefore, some feminists see these changes as part of a movement to correct what they consider inherent biases in language.

The above is from Wikipedia


I do not use words that offend anyone. I am also a feminist. I actually even used the womyn spelling in an article or two in the 70's or 80's...

BUT, it's pretty obvious that changing one word, or its spelling, does absolutely nothing to change the lives of women in any way, and may have wasted some people's time and energy to focus on this instead of on the real issues of the oppression of women. I don't think, for instance, that a woman would get paid a higher salary because she spelled the word woman "womyn"...nor do I think Africans will stop cutting the clitorises of young women because American women decide to all spell woman "womin."

The word "birthmother" is very upsetting to some. We have been described collectively to have Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome similar to veterans of war. I think this is a very valid diagnosis. And I do not think that all war vets are "triggered" by the same things. Some are triggered by loud sounds, others by babies' crying. I do not think they would argue amongst one another over who's trigger is real and who has a "right" to be upset or not.

The argument is made that the "b" word reduces a mother to a "birther" or "breeder" and leads to her exploitation. Although it doesn't personally bother me, I follow that argument. It contributes to the dehumanization of mothers as handmaidens, or like paid surrogates a “rent-a-womb”, and makes it easier to make false promises of openness, lie to her and toss her aside. This is all perfectly logical.

It contributes to the exploitation of women for the babies. It does not however cause it and changing will not change the current situation.

Enemies are always dehumanized and words are PART of how that is done. It is part of creating a we/they divide. One's enemies are "savages" or "vermin" or "evil" of "Godless"...

While it is true that labeling is part of the dehumanization process, the reverse is not true. Attitudes are not changed by changing words. The Holocaust was not stopped by deciding that Jews were not vermin. Slavery was not stopped by calling Negroes Blacks or African Americans.

Adoption is racist and classist. Always has been, and is more so today than ever. Today the divide between the haves and have nots is wider than ever. Racial and social class discrimination has never been resolved by changing what people are called, or people’s attitudes toward those perceived as "other.” It has taken anti-discrimination legislation.

Only when people are faced with fines do they give up parking spaces to people with disabilities. Schools were not integrated until the law said they had to be.

It will take major changes in the way adoption is practiced – perhaps it’s total reconstruction or abolition – to change the current attitudes of poor mothers being vessels for the babies of the wealthy, who can be lied to, made false promises and too often discarded.

In guardianship, mothers are still mothers (and fathers are still fathers). Their children are no longer issued falsified birth certificates.

We need to see the big picture and join efforts and change what is wrong in adoption TODAY. If we could all focus our combined energy and anger on abolishing falsified birth certificates, it could help adoptees and al mothers.

When the state issues a falsified birth certificate, the state is legalizing our nothingness in relationship to our child. That my dear friends is the core of the issue. In order to retain our status as mothers of our children we need to get that practice to stop – not argue among ourselves over what we should be called. We ARE our children’s mothers! Not one of us, disagrees with that! So let’s stop this pettiness and in-fighting and focus on the root of the problem.

The problem is not what we are called or how we were treated in the 50’s 60’s and 70‘s – the problem is that is still being done TODAY! We already know the shame-based pressure that caused the majority of babies to be surrendered post WWII. It’s been documented by Solinger and now again by Fessler. Enough already. That was THEN!

We need to focus our anger on the LEGAL system that takes away our name: the falsified birth certificate. It’s not the word that has taken our motherhood – it is that false, fraudulent document. It makes it authentic that our kids were BORN TO their adoptive parents and we are NOTHING! Doesn’t that anger you?

...

I am very interested in the 1991 quote by Carole Anderson regarding guardianship. Could you tell me if that was in a CUB Communicator? You states what it was in response to...but where exactly does the quote appear? I have seen it attributed to a Sept. 90 Communicator. Trying to track down the entire article. It is interesting to note that at that time CUB was called anti-adoption. It would really be helpful for me to know that. I would greatly appreciate it. I am NOT being sarcastic.

I am also very seriously struggling to understand the strong very militant focus on the use of one word. I would like to note that I seriously have no idea how many people are logging in as anonymous. It could all be just one person or many. And I have no idea who any of you are or what your "positions" are. You could be head of OUSA or Exiled Mothers, or just individuals with your own opinions, or some fringe lunatics. I don't know!

It is all very confusing to try and understand fully the issue of the "b" word. I know that it is offensive to some mothers and so I don't use it. Some say they use of the word causes them trauma. I merely commented that there are lots of words that have a negative effect on many of us. Some cannot stand the word adoption. Some get upset at the use of “adoptive mother.” I personally have issues around the word loss when not used together with "lost to adoption" and especially when used as "mother of loss." I was then slammed for using the death of my daughter to divert the subject and to gain sympathy. That was very cruel and also untrue as all I was doing is saying that I understood that words can hurt and I am using kindness in not using the word that offends anyone, and was asking for some mutual kindness back. I got the opposite.

Other mothers here, I believe it was you, Illgeit (but I may be wrong because I have not gone back and re-read, nor do I keep track of, exactly who said what) say it really doesn't bother them, but that they are opposed to it, I guess more politically.

Then when I brought up that the word itself is in no way responsible for an increase of infant adoption, instead of having what I define as an intelligent debate on the issues, I was accused of putting you down and acting like I thought you didn’t know that. That I was being “pompous” or some such. Well, I have no idea who you are, let alone what you know or don’t know. I can only respond to what you write here. And quite frankly, I am trying very hard to understand and having trouble. Is the issue with the word a matter of it being personally offensive, or is it political? If it is a political issue, in what way is effecting the current practice of adoption?

I am dead serious in asking these questions. I really want to learn and understand. Again, no sarcasm. When I said that many mothers, myself included, never were able to get acopies of oru surrdner papers ... instead of saying something like: "Yes, that's one of the problems." Or, "Isn't that awful"...instead you came back with a sarcastic answer about being from OZ. WHY? Why can't we discuss things - CIVILLY?

In response to your sarcasric OZ comment, responded “follow the yellow brick road.” I was FRUSTRATED and also very hurt by comments made about my loss, and just plain. Name-calling and sarcasm gets us nowhere. When I tried to have this conversation with Karen Butterbugh via email, she focused instead on my use of capitalization for emphasis. These diversions are very frustrating to someone who is eager to LEARN and understand. I am sorry, and do not say this to start a whole other tangent, but I can well understand why BJ said she had no idea what all the fuss was over. Everyone makes a big fuss but no is able to articulate WHY. No one has ever told me what either the "b" word, or the Inquirey into past treatment of mothers in the 50s to 70 has to do with changing adoption practices of today.

I will only respond to comments -- not angry or sarcastic arguments -- regarding one thing: In what way does the use of the "b" word (or the inquirey) effect current adoption practice. That is the issue.

I am not asking to argue or to put any person or group down, but to understand. If no one here can tell me themsleves, perhsps you could direct me to a link that has an explanation. I have not found this information anywhere. I ask for my edification and also for research for my book.



In searching for an explanation, I came across this OUSA Press release:


Adoption is big business
birthmoms day giftsBirthmother's Day Celebrations and Ceremonies - Why Not?

A natural mother is a mother, she is not an incubator to be used as the source of a baby for adoption. A mother should rightfully be called a "mother" - NEVER "birthmother" ("birth thing"); Likewise a mother should be honored on Mother's Day.

A Personal Response to Birthmother's Day by Bryony Lake

Honor Women as Mothers on Mother's Day - Not as Breeders on "Birthmother's Day"

Some people say they appreciate "birthmothers". These same people will tell you they appreciate toilet paper and tampons. The toilet paper has a purpose and the "birth thing" has a purpose as well. Even a turd has a purpose. Usually the tissue and the shit are discarded and flushed away....


Is this seriously a press release?