AdopTalk

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For the past couple of days, I have been participating in a discussion on Bastardette Blog (Monday, December 11, 2006, MOTHER MAY I? GRANNIE ANNIE NAILS IT!).

It began with Marley G. and Granny (Anita) Annie maligning the hard working activist in NJ who have been working tirelessly for TWENTY-FIVE years to get an access to records bill passed in the Garden State. Both Marley and Granny resorted to name-calling and complained that accepting a bill with any restrictions to compromise the alleged rights of birthparents was equivalent to having to ask Mommy's permission to have what is rightly theirs.

I feel their anger and frustration but believe it is misplaced. They defame the adoptee activists when it is the legislators who tack on conditional amendments. More importantly, I have a great deal of problem understanding BN's mixed messages - as likely so too does the media, the public, and legislators.

BN's official position as an organization is "Dignity and Equal Rights for Adult Adoptees" stating "Bastard Nation advocates for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children. Millions of North Americans are prohibited by law from accessing personal records that pertain to their historical, genetic and legal identities. Such records are held by their governments in secret and without accountability, due solely to the fact that they were adopted."

What about the rights of underage adoptees (and their adoptive parents)...some of whom are in medical or serious emotional need? What about the rights of those who don't know they are adopted because unless their adoptive parents tel them, they may never know?

Despite all their allegations of desiring "human rights' for SOME adoptees, they continue to ask for "open records" not equal access. Why? They accept living a lie for a minimum of 18 years and then THEY ask: "Mommy, may I please" have access to my records as an adult, now that I have been a good, obedient adoptee for 18 years.

To be truly equal with non-adopted citizens they should have full access to the names of their parents at any age...whenever they are old enough to ask for it...or whatever age anyone else can obtain a copy of their own B.C.

To be truly EQUAL with non-adoptees is to never have your B.C. falsified to begin with! Anything less is a COMPROMISE and leaves adoptees UNEQUAL with laws and restriction that apply only to them. Isn't that what BN CLAIMS to be undoing????

One can only wonder if some adoptees - the powers that be in BN and others? - really do not want equality (despite claiming to). They seem to accept being infantilized and controlled by those who adopt them and in most cases afford them "advantages" that they are ever so thankful for. Perhaps their sense of indebtedness and gratitude for being "rescued" overwhelms their need for self-determination.

OR, perhaps they fear if the records are never falsified and held in protective custody until they are adults, that they would then lose a false sense of control over choosing to make contact or not when at 18 - they and ONLY they - get to peek at their long-held secrets truth. I understand and appreciate the major control issue of many adoptees who feel their lives were manipulated without their consent (as if any of us get to choose our parents or have any control over who they are). But the way to take back control is to put a stop to the lies and the over-protective nature of maintaining secrets.

Instead, they more than willingly acquiesce to the fact that opening Pandora's Box is so potentially dangerous it might harm anyone under a specific chronological age limit. Like drinking or driving, they seem to be saying, the truth takes maturity to handle.

And so THEY set up a major RESTRICTION on the equal human rights they claim to seek and then accuse others of doing it TO them!

Ironically...while this discussion was enfolding, several adoptee email lists are today forwarding the story of kidnapped child entitled "Selling abducted babies difficult in U.S." which states:

Human trafficking and adoption professionals say that there is an adoption black market for kidnapped infants such as Bryan Dos Santos Gomes, but it is very difficult to "sell" such babies in the U.S.

"There's not really a market in the U.S., but definitely in South and Central America," said Ashley Wilson, outreach coordinator for the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking in Bonita Springs. "There are markets for babies. It's just easier to go down there and buy a baby. Sometimes these babies even have counterfeit paperwork."


Imagine that! Sometimes babies that are stolen to be sold on the black market have counterfeit paperwork! How about every child adopted legally in this country?! They too all have COUNTERFEIT governmental fraudulent FALSIFIED birth certificates! And the very people who SHOULD be up in arms outraged at being treated as if they were unwittingly placed in the witness protection program, simply accept that it is OK.

Imagine slaves accepting remaining being owned, asking only to be freed as adults? Odd? Cowardly? Misguided?

I await Marley's promised reply.