Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Where to Put our Focus and Energies
...
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.
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.
# posted by Senior Mom @ 9:36 AM 
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You said: 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.
Of course it was and it's still that way. Discourse is only now underway through some Departmental bodies who are conducting surveys within the adoption community, primarily to adoptees, to determine the best way of overcoming the legal fraud/fiction created by amended birth certificates.
We are on the same wavelength with regard the importance of removing all semblance of fiction from the adoption construct. However in Au adoption is being replaced with permanent care orders which do not issue the child with another identiy or birth certificate, and maintain the childs connection to his family. In effect it is going back to the pre WW2 days of wardship prior to the closed adoption system being introduced Post WW2. Nowdays, only in cases where the child cannot be restored to his family is the total severing of a child from his family through adoption, enforced.
Last figures show that 73 local adoption occurred Oz wide. Adoption as we know it is pretty much over, down here.
It was pretty much over in Sweden in 1965 when the damage caused by separating a baby from its mother became widely known within the mental health profession. The rest of the world ignored the research.
Of course it was and it's still that way. Discourse is only now underway through some Departmental bodies who are conducting surveys within the adoption community, primarily to adoptees, to determine the best way of overcoming the legal fraud/fiction created by amended birth certificates.
We are on the same wavelength with regard the importance of removing all semblance of fiction from the adoption construct. However in Au adoption is being replaced with permanent care orders which do not issue the child with another identiy or birth certificate, and maintain the childs connection to his family. In effect it is going back to the pre WW2 days of wardship prior to the closed adoption system being introduced Post WW2. Nowdays, only in cases where the child cannot be restored to his family is the total severing of a child from his family through adoption, enforced.
Last figures show that 73 local adoption occurred Oz wide. Adoption as we know it is pretty much over, down here.
It was pretty much over in Sweden in 1965 when the damage caused by separating a baby from its mother became widely known within the mental health profession. The rest of the world ignored the research.
# posted by 
: 7:04 PM
: 7:04 PM
I didn't say nothing has been 'done' over the past 30 years. I suggested that nothing has been 'achieved' over that period of time, given that you yourself stated that adoption is big business nowdays.
As that is the case then I am accurate in questioning what has actually been ACHIEVED in the field of adoption reform and suggested that perhaps its time for a new approach to be made.
For starters it might be a good idea to encourage mothers to DARE to demand access to their adoption records to enable them to find the children who were so cruelly and so deviously separated from them.
Expose the myths that allows society to believe mothers willing gave away their babies by exposing the practices that hid our babies, denied us access to our babies, held up sheets and pillows during abour to prevent us from bonding with our babies, kep tus drugged with mind altering barbiturates post birth, brainwashed us into beleiving we were not good enough to rear our own babies etc, kept us imprisoned in UM homes, denied us access to temporary support provisons to allow us to get back on our feet post birth. Kill the myths by exposing the past. Demand accoutabilty for the legal wrongs committed against us under the guise of adoption practices.
That's the way you disempower the system. Thats the way you force legislators to change the laws and protect mothers rights. That's the way to put an end to unnecessary adoptions in the future. That's the way it was done in Au. The mothers stood up to be counted. We dared to expose the truth. And in so doing dispelled the myths and corrected adoption history in Oz.
The thing about adoption is that once the mothers stand up and expose the abuses they were subjected to, the system can no longer rely on their conniving lies to swindle young mothers of today out of their babies. It's over. This was our legacy to young mothers of the future in Au. The new adoption legislation now protects them to ensure that our history will never be revisited upon our collective grand children.
OUSA is in the vanguard of this new direction. Changing terminology is only the first step...well one of them.
BTW, have you been listening to the Adoption Show dedicated to ending the myths? All the past shows have been recorded and are available online. If not, this is the link:
http://www.theadoptionshow.com/home.htm
As that is the case then I am accurate in questioning what has actually been ACHIEVED in the field of adoption reform and suggested that perhaps its time for a new approach to be made.
For starters it might be a good idea to encourage mothers to DARE to demand access to their adoption records to enable them to find the children who were so cruelly and so deviously separated from them.
Expose the myths that allows society to believe mothers willing gave away their babies by exposing the practices that hid our babies, denied us access to our babies, held up sheets and pillows during abour to prevent us from bonding with our babies, kep tus drugged with mind altering barbiturates post birth, brainwashed us into beleiving we were not good enough to rear our own babies etc, kept us imprisoned in UM homes, denied us access to temporary support provisons to allow us to get back on our feet post birth. Kill the myths by exposing the past. Demand accoutabilty for the legal wrongs committed against us under the guise of adoption practices.
That's the way you disempower the system. Thats the way you force legislators to change the laws and protect mothers rights. That's the way to put an end to unnecessary adoptions in the future. That's the way it was done in Au. The mothers stood up to be counted. We dared to expose the truth. And in so doing dispelled the myths and corrected adoption history in Oz.
The thing about adoption is that once the mothers stand up and expose the abuses they were subjected to, the system can no longer rely on their conniving lies to swindle young mothers of today out of their babies. It's over. This was our legacy to young mothers of the future in Au. The new adoption legislation now protects them to ensure that our history will never be revisited upon our collective grand children.
OUSA is in the vanguard of this new direction. Changing terminology is only the first step...well one of them.
BTW, have you been listening to the Adoption Show dedicated to ending the myths? All the past shows have been recorded and are available online. If not, this is the link:
http://www.theadoptionshow.com/home.htm
# posted by : 7:58 PM
: 7:58 PM
I was under the impression that in the AU adoptees are issued a certificate stating the names of their ADOPTERS...am I confusing it with Scotland?
Yes, I am aware that adoptions have bene drastically reduced in AU - O have written about that. That's is why I have said we are light years behind you. We have along way to go...
The longest chapter in my forthcoming book is on myths.
But - AGAIN things like: "held up sheets and pillows during abour to prevent us from bonding with our babies, kep tus drugged with mind altering barbiturates post birth, brainwashed us into beleiving we were not good enough to rear our own babies etc, kept us imprisoned in UM homes" have been reported by Fessler and others and do not exist anymore.
Yes, I am aware that adoptions have bene drastically reduced in AU - O have written about that. That's is why I have said we are light years behind you. We have along way to go...
The longest chapter in my forthcoming book is on myths.
But - AGAIN things like: "held up sheets and pillows during abour to prevent us from bonding with our babies, kep tus drugged with mind altering barbiturates post birth, brainwashed us into beleiving we were not good enough to rear our own babies etc, kept us imprisoned in UM homes" have been reported by Fessler and others and do not exist anymore.
I have already inumerated what weACHIEVED:
Introducing legislation and getting laws chnaged in four states; setting up search contacts; writing and being visibale as mothers.
Those were ACIEVEMENTS.
You didn't answer me what YOU were doing during those years??? Yet you continue to criticize and belittle.
What did the Eright Bothers achive or accomplish? A very short flight - a couple of hundred FEET and a crash! That could be looked at as a total failure - or it could be looked at, as it is, as the foundation for the jet planes you take for granted very time you go somewhere.
I never hear anyone one of you say anything but a COMPLAINT or an argument. You never say, "Gee, that'sa good point" or "I agree" or "you're right" or "that's cool." ABOUT ANYTHING! Not one word can you find to agree with!
Just criticize and complain! It's really boring and pitiful. You have said nothing at all about anything tat you have done, but constantly put down what others of us have done.
Until you can tell me what you were doing the past 30 years - I really am sick of hearing from you.
I am far to busy DOING things....like writing another book.
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Introducing legislation and getting laws chnaged in four states; setting up search contacts; writing and being visibale as mothers.
Those were ACIEVEMENTS.
You didn't answer me what YOU were doing during those years??? Yet you continue to criticize and belittle.
What did the Eright Bothers achive or accomplish? A very short flight - a couple of hundred FEET and a crash! That could be looked at as a total failure - or it could be looked at, as it is, as the foundation for the jet planes you take for granted very time you go somewhere.
I never hear anyone one of you say anything but a COMPLAINT or an argument. You never say, "Gee, that'sa good point" or "I agree" or "you're right" or "that's cool." ABOUT ANYTHING! Not one word can you find to agree with!
Just criticize and complain! It's really boring and pitiful. You have said nothing at all about anything tat you have done, but constantly put down what others of us have done.
Until you can tell me what you were doing the past 30 years - I really am sick of hearing from you.
I am far to busy DOING things....like writing another book.
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