AdopTalk

MOVING...

2007-04-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

Makin' the move...

I have decided that AdopTalk has outgrown it's name. Inasmuch as I want to talk about Family Preservation and family preservation ONLY...I thought it fitting to begin a new blog with a more appropriate name. And so...I am packing up and moving to:

FamilyPreservation.blogspot.com

This will be the official blog of www.PPFFPP.org. We will begin by creating goals, missions, definitions...

I hope you'll join me in this exciting new venture!!

See ya there...the doors ALWAYS open!

Family Preservation!

2007-04-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

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Followers of this blog and/or my writings on other blogs and lists might have noticed the following:

- The art/logo on this blog has changed several times as have my attempts to change the status quo of adoption and existing post-adoption approaches.

- I attempted to persuade BN to be more open to including and end to falsified birth certificates along with their primary goal of opening records for ADULT adoptees….

- I dialogged with OUSA and CUB about attempting to see past their differences and work together on mutual goals…

- I dialogged with CUB in an effort to get them to carry out more of their family preservation, outreach and educational mission…

I did what I could in all of these areas - and will continue to...albeit on a more limited basis. I recognize – once again – life’s biggest lesson: the only one you have any control over or can change is yourself.

There is a place for BN in its solitary pursuit of the rights of adult adoptees, and a place for CUB in its support of mothers and fathers who have lost children to adoption (as many fathers did NOT relinquish). Those are both needed and worthy goals (not that I ever thought otherwise or was suggesting either goal be stopped or even diminished, only added to.)

What has become crystal clear to me at this juncture is that:

FAMILY PRESERVATION needs its own separate group/organization to focus PRIMARY ENERGY on THAT specific goal! Those of us who do not need or want to focus our primary energies solely on support or open records of other purists but have more zeal about the PREVENTION of UNNECESSARY adoption, need our own vehicle to focus PRIMARILY on FAMILY PRESERVATION.

I would like this blog to focus on brainstorming the best way to focus efforts of the willing on family preservation!

Please stay tuned. Step One (tomorrow) will be the formation of a definition of “Family Preservation” – input WANTED!!!

It is no easy task, as...in order to define family preservation, one must first define "family"...and, in order to do that terms like mother and father need to be defined in today's technological world!

So, please put on your thinking caps and tune in again tomorrow...same time,same place! :-)

Why is there a need for FAMILY PRESERVATION?

“I feel Adoption in a larger perspective now. It goes way beyond my personal experience and I think as my knowledge of adoption has increased, my anger has increased and it’s gone way beyond the anger of a mother who’s been robbed, exploited of her child.” Laura Watkins-Lewis

“… this is not about my relationship with my lost son or even my raised children or any other mother/child in particular, but the larger, less specific issue of the lack of respect for women and children, the broader sense of entitlement that people with more wealth and power are allowed to exploit those who are weaker and less powerful for their homes, their families and their dignity. [Family Preservation] is now, for me, a Social Justice Issue.

“I still need support for my relationship with my damaged and angry lost son, but that relationship is what it is, and no amount of my wishing that I could make the past 40 years end up somehow different will make it so. But, the larger issue to me is that it happened at all. Not just to me but to the many. The larger issue to me is that [unnecessary family separations] continue to happen today, as evidenced by the Stephanie Bennett case (www.sendevelynhome.com) …. To me, infant adoption in America is Human Trafficking. Go to www.adoption.tk/situations and look at the ads there. It looks, for all the world, like a used car ad, and yet, these are living human beings. Small, powerless and fragile. You can almost sense the dealers (child recruiters) out kicking their tires and checking their low mileage! They even list the price. Some look as if they can be driven right off the lot! This is vile and repugnant to me.....I can't take on the entire world, but adoption and my own loss made me aware of the larger sense of greed and entitlement that allows these evil practices to continue. …I must make my own pain, my own misery, my own loss count for something…. “ Sandy Young

Check out: www.PPFFPP.org

AND...Bring Baby Evelyn Home!!!

Guest Blog

2007-04-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

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ED NOTE: As we continue to support Stephanie and her family in their rightful pursuit of reclaiming Evelyn...following is a great response to the lunacy of the Grahams. I encourage all of us to use the "opportunity" of both of these events - Baby Evelyn's return and the Grahams family using their personal family tragic loss as a hypocritical and conflicting platform for their agenda. Both of these are excellent opportunities to flood every newspaper in the country with a REALITY CHECK on the necessity to prevent family sanctity!

April 16, 2007

Letter to the Editor
letted@savannahnow.com

Dear Editor,

Re: "Daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham to speak at adoption fundraiser" (April 15), Ruth Graham was quoted as saying, "The tug of your heart is you want to raise that child. But I also know that when you truly love someone, you want what's best for them, even if that doesn't include you." In the next breath Graham calls these infants "unwanted" and claims that the best option for children born to single mothers is for them to be provided to adoptive parents.

I would really like to know, how is it that a child who is truly loved and selflessly surrendered to another family can at the same time be called "unwanted"? This use of language is hurtful to both the natal mother and the child who will one day read many of these comments in the media, comments which frame an unplanned or unsupported pregancy as equivalent to
an unwanted pregnancy or yet more egregious, implying that a child who was adopted, was unwanted.

Robert MacNeil, in Language in Thought and Action writes, "Hayakawa made me understand for the first time what it is in language that makes one statement a report and another a judgment; one objective, another subjective. That is the most elementary lesson of journalism, and of all disciplined writing." Making such generalizations as Graham does by using
the term unwanted is no more than subjective opinion and judgement, as she has not walked in those shoes, not even her daughter's shoes. I wonder, would she call her grandchild who was adopted out, unwanted?

Graham also leaves out the fact that most mothers, including those who are young, unmarried, or resourceless, have physiologically and emotionally bonded with their unborn child throughout the pregnancy, and that separating them at birth or afterward causes unspeakable pain -- the effects of which will ripple throughout their lives.

What makes a pregnancy a crisis? When an expectant mother is abandoned of any and all emotional and provisional support by her family and her surrounding social environment, including her church and her community.

Please note well that special interest groups are working towards shifting funds away from unsupported mothers who greatly desire to keep and raise their children, towards adoption promotion efforts whose goal is to persuade
and convince them, and the general public, that they are less than capable and should "do the right thing" by surrendering their newborn infants to adoption.

In order to accomplish this transfer of children from poor, single, young or otherwise disadvantaged mothers to those individuals or couples of higher socio-economic status, they will use inaccurate or biased language such as "unwanted pregnancy", "crisis pregnancy", and "parentless or unwanted children" to allow singles or couples to feel entitled to the infants born to these mothers.

Mary Rigotti, RN, BScN
Pediatric Nurse
and advocate for mothers and children

TRAGIC CASE OF COERCION

2007-04-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

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THE ADOPTION SHOW - VOICES ENDING THE MYTH

Sunday April 15, 2007 8:30 PM (EST)

Listen to the show at
www.theadoptionshow.com

RETURN BABY EVELYN TO HER MOTHER AND FAMILY

In September 2006, after serious threats to Stephanie and her family by her child's putative father, 17-year-old Stephanie Bennett, while afraid and in an extremely vulnerable state, was coerced and pressured into surrendering her five month old daughter, Evelyn to A Child's Waiting adoption agency in Ohio, USA.

The people who took Evelyn have stated they will not give the baby back to her mother. Since September 2006 the Bennett family has been fighting to bring Evelyn home.

Michelle talks to Judy Bennett, Stephanie's mother, Jennifer Lowry, the lawyer handling Stephanie's case, and Sandy Young, a reunited mother and director on the board of OriginsUSA www.ousa.org who, along with OriginsUSA, other organizations and individuals, have been advocating and gaining support for the Bennett family since the story was first published in December 2006.

Michelle interviewed Crissy Kolarik from A Child's Waiting agency, but at Crissy's request the interview was not recorded.

The purpose of this show is to support the Bennett family while they fight to bring Evelyn home. We also want to bring awareness to the methods used by a counsellor at Stephanie's high school and the adoption agency, which resulted in Stephanie surrendering her child for adoption.

To help the Bennett's with their legal costs for this case, please visit www.sendevelynhome.com to make a donation. This will be greatly appreciated by the Bennett family.

The petition site: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/828030483

MORE Graham "Crackers"

2007-04-15T14:55:00.000-07:00

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PLEASE NOTE: "Crackers" is used here not as racial slang, but rather as British slang denoting insanity, from "cracked." Note the progression from "He's cracked!" to "He's gone crackers!" A playful jibe equivating "nuts, crazy, silly, gone crackers, round the bend". An additional meaning of the term is "A person who boasts."

Two song dedications. One by Madonna...the other by Cher. These are dedicated to the granddaughter and great-grandchildren of the most famous Preacher Man: Billy Graham...

Seems that taking away his granddaughter's first "illegitimate" out-of-wedlock" bastard child didn't teach her a lesson. She went an' done it agin'...and kept the second one! Guess she showed them!

Now the first one gets to hear publicly from his very own birthfamily, how UNWANTED kids are better off given up for adoption, while his sib got kept and it didn't cause any great harm to any of them! And mother, Ruth, has the AUDACITY to expose her daughter as this wanton teen, and applaud her (Ruth's) decision to give her first grandchild away, while perfectly able - obviously - to have kept and helped care for a child born to a teen mother! How can she justify the first action in view of the second!?

Papa Don´t Preach

Papa I know you're going to be upset
'Cause I was always your little girl
But you should know by now
I'm not a baby

You always taught me
right from wrong
I need your help
daddy please be strong
I may be young at heart
But I know what I'm saying

The one you
warned me all about
The one you said
I could do without
We're in an awful mess
And I don't mean maybe.. please

Papa don't preach..
I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach..
I've been losing sleep
But I made up my mind..
I'm keeping my baby
I'm gonna keep my baby mmm

He says that he's going to marry me
We can raise
a little family
Maybe we'll be all right
It's a sacrifice

But my friends keep telling me
to give it up
Saying I'm too young
I ought to live it up
What I need right now is
some good advice.. please

Papa don't preach..
I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach..
I've been losing sleep
But I made up my mind..
I'm keeping my baby
I'm gonna keep my baby ooh oh

Daddy daddy if you could only see
Just how good he's been treating me
You'd give us your blessing right now
'Cause we are in love
We are in love.. so please

Papa don't preach..
I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach..
I've been losing sleep
But I made up my mind..
I'm keeping my baby
I'm gonna keep my baby

Papa don't preach..
I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach..
I've been losing sleep
Papa don't preach..
I'm in trouble deep
Papa don't preach..
I've been losing sleep

I'm gonna keep my baby
Ooh don't you stop loving me daddy
I know I'm keeping my baby

Son of a Preacher Man

The only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Yes he was, he was, mmm, yes he was

Being good isn't always easy
No matter how hard I try
When he started sweet-talkin to me
Hed come and tell me everything is all right
Hed kiss and tell me everything is all right
Can I get away again tonight?

The only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Yes he was, he was, lord knows he was

How well I remember
The look that was in his eyes
Stealin kisses from me on the sly
Takin time to make time
Tellin me that hes all mine
Learnin from each others knowing
Lookin to see how much weve grown

And the only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Yes he was, he was, oh, yes he was
He was the sweet-talking son of a preacher man
I guessed he was the son of a preacher man
Sweet-lovin son of a preacher man
Ahh, move me

Graham Crackers!

2007-04-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

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Billy Graham - the pillar of Christianity for many....has sacrificed his own grandchildDaughter of the Rev. Billy Graham to speak at adoption fundraiser

Dana Clark Felty | Saturday, April 14, 2007 at 12:30 am | (see enhanced version)

http://savannahnow.com/node/261489

Fear and uncertainty can overwhelm any family dealing with an unplanned pregnancy.

The family of legendary evangelist Billy Graham is no exception.

When Graham's daughter, Ruth Graham, learned her 16-year-old daughter had become pregnant out of wedlock, she was hurt and terrified.

"The statistics are not on the side of single parents. They're just not," Graham said in an interview. "The tug of your heart is you want to raise that child. But I also know that when you truly love someone, you want what's best for them, even if that doesn't include you."

Graham's daughter decided to give the child up for adoption.

Now Graham works to encourage other unwed women to consider the same solution as an alternative to abortion.

"I know the heartache of that. But I also know the joy of knowing my daughter did the best possible thing for that child," she said.

On Tuesday, Graham will be in Savannah to talk about her family's experience and to support the mission of Covenant Care Services Fifth Annual Fund Raising Adoptions Banquet.

The dinner takes place at The Armstrong Center, formerly the Publix Shopping Center at Abercorn and Apache streets.

Covenant Care Services Inc. is a Macon-based nonprofit agency that adopts unwanted children to two-parent Christian homes.

The agency employs five caseworkers around the state who counsel pregnant women who are considering adoption. One of those caseworkers works in Savannah and surrounding areas.

"A lot of the money that will be generated at that event will financially support us having a caseworker there," said Loren Rae Easterling, a director at Covenant Care.

Graham said she has worked in support of many programs like Covenant Care that counsel unwed pregnant women interested in adoption and provide unwanted children to prospective parents.

"I really think that's the best option, but it's an option we don't talk about a whole lot. It's really the forgotten piece," she said.

Graham is one of five children of evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham and his wife Ruth. Rev. Graham, 88, and his wife, who is bedridden, live in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Ruth Graham lives in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and tours the country speaking in support of Christian programs. She has also authored a children's Bible storybook and contributed to several articles on faith.

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A letter-writing opportunity!

letted@savannahnow.com

As one Catholic friend said: I used to respect the guy as being more sincere than the current crop of televangelists.

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Here is my letter. I hope each of you writes!

I am writing regarding Ruth Graham – and others – who work to encourage “unwed” women to consider adoption “as an alternative to abortion” as if there were no other alternative.

The term “unwed mother” is outdated and pejorative. Single parenthood is very viable option and many single women are parents by choice, even through adoption…which Graham promotes.

More importantly, adoption – the legal abandonment and permanent dissolution of the parent-child relationship, should be a last resort. UNICEF recently said: “Families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child [i.e adoption] should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable.”

What a shame Graham could not find it in her heart to support her daughter and her grandchild; to do the loving “Christian” thing and care for them, love them and provide them rather than give her grandchild away to strangers. Jesus taught caring for orphans, not creating and encouraging more!

Graham says that she knows her daughter did the right thing. I wonder if her daughter agrees? I wonder how her daughter will feel as years go by and she pines away the unresolveable, lifelong limbo loss of her child? And, most importantly, I wonder if Graham’s grandchild – the great grandchild of Billy Graham - will agree that it was the “right” or “best” thing...when surely the Grahams have the resources to raise this child and not banish the child for “sins” of the father.

Mothers in crisis pregnancies – and their families - need to reach out for support to prevent tragic separations such as this. Concerned United Birthparents www.CUBirthparents.org and Parents & Professionals for Family Preservation and Protection www.ppffpp.org are two resources.

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PS On the subject of pro-adoption radicals...word is that what the NCFA is claiming that "demonstrators" were removed by the police at Lincoln Center on April 11th. I and Jessica D. were there and saw neither any demonstrators, demonstration, or police!

BABY EVELYN

2007-04-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

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Stephanie Bennett of Canton, Ohio signed adoption surrender documents on the second meeting with a representative of "A Child's Waiting" adoption agency, when daughter was five months old. She had been introduced to an agency representative by her high school counselor on the grounds of Oak Glen High School in Canton. Stephanie, who was 17 at the time, was advised by the adoption agency representative to run away from home and sign documents in another county.

because it would be easier to sign the paperwork out of sight of her parents. She received no viable counseling. Stephanie had been introduced to an agency representative the day before by David Saltsman, a guidance Ranza and Judy Bennett, who were providing care for Evelyn while Stephanie attended school, were unaware that Evelyn had been turned over to A Child's Waiting until the deal was done. In fact, when they went missing, the Bennetts called the police. Within hours of the signing, Stephanie regretted her decision.

Stephanie Bennett's parents went to court in Stark County and were awarded temporary custody of their grandchild, Evelyn. When the couple went to the agency with a police escort to take custody, the agency refused to return the baby or even say where she was located. Stephanie and her parents brought separate suits in Stark and Summit Counties to regain custody. On February 2, 2007 the Stark County Family Court dismissed Ranza and Judy's suit saying that Stephanie had signed surrender papers "knowingly and voluntarily." Stephanie's suit in Summit County is pending.

The prospective adopters have physical custody, have spoken to Judy, Stephanie's mother, and to Stephanie's sister thinking it was Stephanie, though, and they have sent some pictures, of themselves holding Evelyn, who does not look happy or content, just confused. They told her that they were aware of all the things that the family was doing to get Baby Evelyn home, but the agency had told them to hide her for as long as they could, and that was what they planned to do.

Stephanie Bennett's parents went to court in Stark County and were awarded temporary custody of their grandchild, Evelyn. When the couple went to the agency with a police escort to take custody, the agency refused to return the baby or even say where she was located. Stephanie and her parents brought separate suits in Stark and Summit Counties to regain custody. On February 2, 2007 the Stark County Family Court dismissed Ranza and Judy's suit saying that Stephanie had signed surrender papers "knowingly and voluntarily." Stephanie's suit in Summit County is pending.

For more information go to OUSA.org. If you want to blog for Evelyn and Stephanie, contact and other information on how to do it will be there.

SHAME on the agency and shame on those holding this child HOSTAGE and away from her family who wants her and were obvious victims of coercion and deceptive unethical adoption practices!!! Know that if you continue to try to hide this child you will have to answer to HER someday! How will you tell her that you kept her from her a loving family? Do you think she'll thank you - or hate you - for that?

AND, A Child is Waiting Agency should be closed for fraudulent, coercive, exploitive practices!

SEND EVELYN HOME!

A Prescription for Morality?

2007-04-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

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Morality refers to the concept of human ethics which pertains to matters of right and wrong — also referred to as "good and evil" — used within three contexts: individual conscience; systems of principles and judgments — sometimes called moral values —shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community; and codes of behavior or conduct morality. Wikipedia

Sex and Morality: All in a Day’s News

The Washington state board of Pharmacy ruled – on Friday the 13, 2007 – that druggists could not refuse to fill morning-after pill prescriptions. Only in Bush’s America are regulations required to protect us from moral judgments overriding the sanctity of patient-physician treatment and confidentiality.

Why not have the cashier at the supermarket scan your groceries selections and pass judgment on your choices. If she feels you’re too fat for ice cream – refuse to ring it up!

How about if your gas station attended decided it was against his moral convictions to fill up your Hummer?

These are not life and death comparisons, you say? The do not affect innocent unborn children? Oh contraire - obesity contributes to diabetes, heart disease and death - AND infertility. And just ask an environmentalist what we're doing to the planet with gas guzzling cars.

Many of us believe war and the death penalty are blatantly immoral and violate the sanctity of life...yet we are not allowed to redirect our tax dollars away from killing many innocent citizens, including children. But pharmacists can prescribe morality?? Is that in the pharmaceutical code of ethics - thou shalt force your values on others?

Where is the morality in the pharmaceutical industry that pumps children full of meds to keep them "behaving"? Where is the morality in the FDA which approves medications that then subsequently are proven harmful to all who take them - including at times, their unborn children?

My druggist's job is to fill the prescriptions as prescribed by my physician and when I want a lesson in morality, that is the job of my clergy....or more to the point, between me and my personal relationship with my God or higher power, or the Universe...or none of the above!

Ironically, this Washington state story was reported the same day the federal government released the results of government-funded abstinence programs, which found that those who attended the abstinence classes reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as the control group. Of course, as with victory and democracy in Iraq, the feds ask us to give it more time, while in the meantime we can continue to refuse any meaningful help for those who will do what nature and their hormones intend for them to do.

Meanwhile... no one is guarding the morality of high tech reproductive technologies that border on sheer sci-fi! On the flip side of this bizzaro world, it was also reported the same day that the first baby conceived by frozen sperm and frozen egg was born to a single 36-year-old woman in California. No mention of who’s egg it was or if gets thawed before or after insertion….BRRRR! And, seemingly no concern about the morality of helping this single woman to conceive while not helping others who wish not to do so…nor any moral concern for the child conceived by an anonymous DNA and raised by a single mother who said she could not afford other infertility treatments.

And, as if all that wasn’t enough…the BBC reported sperm made from human bone marrow in Germany, giving a whole new meaning to man being created from a rib, eh??

It was, after all, Friday the 13th.

Polarization, Positions and Presentations

2007-04-12T08:42:00.001-07:00

In January 2006 I began blogging about a need to “Bridge the Gap” between seemingly polarized and disparate points of view within the post-adoption community.

Once we were all the adoption reform community. We aligned, albeit with differences, around the common goals of: search, reunion, support, and open records. As with any grassroots movement there have always been disagreements, mostly concerning political strategies even among those clumped under the label “adoption reformers”. Bastard Nation takes a hard line on one end of the open records debate. Some mothers’ organizations take a different hard line, only wanting legislation that opens the records to all parties of the adoption. Still others are of the belief that any open records legislation is better than none, and still others at varying points on the continuum of what they will or will not support in proposed legislation. Rather than a solid wall defining and separating positions, there is far more permeable doorway.

This is true in movements other than adoption. If you look at even the most seemingly contentious issue allegedly “dividing” our nation – pro-life vs pro-choice – you see it even there. Look beyond the rhetoric and speak to INDIVIDUALS. When I do, I find that the vast majority who define themselves as pro-choice – those who the opposition to that position would like to define as “pro abortion” – are far from being arbitrarily PRO abortion! They believe it is a right that should not be taken lightly, overused to abused. When I speak to those who identify themselves as pro-life – those whom others may define as anti-abortion – I find that there are moderates there too; those who make exceptions for special circumstances such as rape or incest.

The old familiar bell curve we all learned about in school is true for all issues. The vast majority of people are somewhere within the continuum, with far fewer at the extreme ends, and a few extremely extreme “outliers.”

It is important to remember these ‘rules’ of human opinion formation. They are flexible, flowing, changing…not hard-fast and static. Many times people have a hard time putting themselves into one category or another because the “label” – or the perceived impression that identification carries with it. This is true of political and religious positions, as well as the types of examples discussed herein.

And so, I no longer see a gap needing to be bridged, as if some of us were on one side of a great divide, and the rest on the other. When we get past the rhetoric we find that the distance between us is far more penetrable, or at least I do! I find often that rather than a polarizing opposite position, it is far more about the way the position is being PRESENTED.

Digging deeply into Jessica’s antiadoption.org for instance - if you can navigate to her FAQ page (not immediately apparent) - you find the bottom line answer to questions such as: Do you really think there should be NO adoption at all? What about orphans? Are they better off in institutions? Do you think even abusive parents should maintain custody? There, in the depths of her webpages is the answer:

“In the tragic event that no extended family members can be found to care for a truly abused child, legal guardianship is an honest option that already exists in America. The child in a guardianship arrangement is able to maintain his or her name and identity, and is not forced to live with a set of falsified birth records.”

This is becoming a far more acceptable position among some who once believed adoption could be “opened” and have became disheartened to see open adoptions become an unenforceable farce, for the most part. And so, it is not so much a polarity of POSITION, as it is in the way the position is presented; or the political strategy that separates us.

Last night, at an anti-Safe Haven event I felt the need to physically separate myself from Jessica and her adorable children, when her little girl began waving a sign high above her head that said simply “ADOPTION HURTS CHILDREN.” I am of the firm belief that you have to meet people half way and show some courtesy and, yes, even agreement with them on SOME level to have them even hear, let alone listen, to ANYTHING you have to say.

There is a great deal of truth and wisdom in the cliché ”you only get one chance to make a first impression.” Few people walk up to the man on the street corner carrying sign proclaiming “The End is Near” with any intention of having a meaningful enlightening conversation about his religious beliefs.

Perception and the words we use are very important. That is why we have the terms pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-lifers were EXTREMELY savvy when they chose not to call themselves anti-abortion! In just that simply labeling of their cause they positioned themselves to be all about saving precious, innocent “unborn” victims rather than being opposed to a woman’s right to control her body! In just one word! How cool is that! Liberals/progressives, lagging behind as usual in the “art” of using language creatively, followed suit and called their movement pro-choice, for certainly they are not anti-life!

For myself, I am no more anti-adoption than pro-choicers are anti-life. When I have the time to give a complete explanation of my positions, as I have done on this blog (Saturday, March 17, 2007 Q & A) and elsewhere...I explain that I am against adoption “as it is currently practiced in the US.” I am against secrets and lies, starting with the falsification of one’s birth certificate. And I am firmly against money in adoption. I find that many of my old “reformer” friends and cohorts are on the same page. It is a position that for me, and many of us, requires a more complex answer, not a simple yes or no/ for or against answer.

And so, while Jessica begins with her hardest hit first, and others of us would not...underneath it all, we are really not far apart at all in our BELIEFS...only in how we approach and present it.

I am of the firm belief that to be openly anti-adoption is political suicide and will continue to distance myself from those who are because I firmly believe that it closes down all further communication rather than opening it. One should not – IMHO – have to dig through page after page to discover what it means to be anti-adoption, and what is being proposed in place of it.

Family preservation, on the other hand, is not at all difficult to understand or embrace by ANYONE! I know of no one involved in post adoption who is not pro-Family Preservation, or for that matter few people in the nation or world. It is not more radical than UNICEF. Family Preservation not some newly contrived "newspeak" or code for anything other than exactly what is it: providing the support, education and resources for families to remain intact. Family preservation is a long-standing goal of many of us. It is maintaining family cohesiveness and integrity to the fullest extent possible.

I feel a collective shift taking place. Instead of trying to bridge the gap between the ideological extremes, I see the vast majority of us in the same boat. Some of us are sitting on the left side of the boat, some the center or the right. But we're on the same boat just as we always were on the same reform boat... with slight differences. The course is veering slightly to the left of it's original reform stance of merely "opening" adoption to a realization that there is far more wrong with adoption than opening records or so-called open adoption alone will ever fix. Many are becoming aware that you can no longer simply ask: are you anti-adoption? but rather where on the anti-adoption continuum do you stand? We are asking one another: Are you against ALL adoptions...what do you propose we replace it with? These are the new questions being asked and requiring each of us to formulate our own thinking and new decisions around.

As always, your thoughts welcomed.

April 11th FOLLOW UP

2007-04-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

Got to Avery Fisher later than I had intended despite leaving two hours driving time for a one hour trip. Traffic was insane for midweek, both getting into the city and once there.

I knew that it hadn't gotten any press, and that the main thing was the ad, and that was IN, so I didn’t really sweat it. I figured I do what I could...

Avery Fisher itself is a madhouse. There was, it seems more than one concert there and no way to determine who was going to which without asking..... Outside was a madhouse of people going everywhere and inside I didn’t want to be obvious and get kicked out or worse.

Saw one group of men in priestly collars – about half a dozen of them, so I asked them if they were there for the pro-life benefit. They said yes. I smiled and handed them each a flyer, and thanked them.

The I saw another group of men and women with name tags and the name TOM ATWOOD jumped off one tag! Not surprisingly, the NCFA was there in full force. There was a planned reception following the concert and they may have been speaking or presenting or being presented...thus the name tags. I approached them in the same fashion and with a big polite smile and a “thank you” gave each of them a flyer! (I later snapped a cell phone photo of the NCFA group ...but have no idea how to download it!)

Jessica of Do-Not-Adopt was there with her two ADORABLE kids. her little girl - about 3 had a sign above her head that said: “ADOPTION HURTS CHILDREN.”

We spoke briefly and then got lost from one another in the crowd again and I left shortly after that.

I met a dear friend, a reunited mother named Janet who I’ve known since the 70s and don’t get to see too often. We had fun catching up on our lives. Then we went to a cute little restaurant not far from her apt. It had an old movie theme – posters on the walls and a large screen showing old black and white movies...

We were engrossed in our conversation and paying no attention to the movie screen, when all of a sudden something caught my eye! There on the screen, was a woman walking down the street holding a baby wrapped in a blanket in her arms. It was a silent movie, so the actors are very expressive. I could just tell by the look on her face! I told my fried: LOOK! I think she’s going to abandon her baby! I couldn’t believe it! The next minute, she did just that – left the child in the back seat of a car and kissed him goodbye...then walked off...sullenly...

Turned out it was a Charlie Chaplin movie I had never seen nor heard of before – any of you? It’s called “The Kid.” Charley Chaplin finds and raises the abandoned baby – after he tried to dump it two or three times... Didn’t see the end...have to try to rent it or something... But it was SURREAL!!! Coming from an Safe Haven event and watching that film! Though we didn’t see the end, there were scenes of the mother missing her child and wanting to hold other babies...it was painstaking.

The "kid" was played by Jackie Coogan!

Many of Chaplin’s admirers regard The Kid as his most perfect and most personal film. Yet it seems to have been born out of a state of acute emotional turmoil in his private life.... In October 1918 Chaplin had compromised himself into a hasty marriage with a 17-year-old actress, Mildred Harris. ... Mildred became pregnant and gave birth to a malformed boy, who died after only three days. Chaplin evidently suffered acute trauma from this loss. But the responses of the creative mind are unpredictable. Only ten days after his own child was buried, Chaplin was auditioning babies at his studio.... The emotional element of the film reaches a peak of poignancy in the scenes where the social workers try to take the boy away to an orphanage. The anguish and ferocity of the Tramp’s fight to keep him are unquestionably inspired by memories of Chaplin’s own childhood heartbreak at being taken from his mother at seven years old and placed in a home for destitute children.

Watching it last night, I felt as if I had entered the Twighlight Zone!

The good news is the ad is in. We will get one copy of the journal mailed to us and the whole mailing list of this foundation will get there’s.

Be sure to check out: www.ppffpp.org

Goodnight...

Wed. April 11

2007-04-11T10:28:00.001-07:00

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Press releases were sent, though I got no responses so I doubt this wil make the news! :-)

Heading off to the city soon with about $100 worth of copied literature to hand out (request a copy of handouts via comments and I'll be glad to send it to you).

I also drew up a very brief - 5 question Y/N Survey that I am hoping to be able to ask those entering the event:

1. Are you pro-adoption?
2. Do you have adopted child(ren)?
3. Do you intend to adopt?
4. Do you have children?
5. Would you consider giving one of your children to a couple who desperately wanted to parent?

Watch this space tomorrow for any results!

UnSafe Havens

2007-04-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about safe havens...getting myself into "character" for tomorrow. Thought for a second or two about street theater - wearing a diaper and a big sign saying "Don't Dump Me." Scratched that idea when I checked the weather forecast for tomorrow in NYC: low 32. Brrr.

Also wondering why we don't have teen dumps. Any parent of a teen knows there are days we want to throw them out! That in turn got me thinking about spouses. Who hasn't thought about killing theirs for even just a split second?

THAT led me to this argument against Safe Havens:

Divorce is a legal option that doesn't stop crimes of passion or plotted, murderous rages, or the premeditated hiring of a hit man between those who promised to love one another..well, until death!

Funny, isn't it, that no one in a jealous rage stops to think rationally that - gee, instead of bludgeoning him to death, I could pick up the phone and call an attorney and find out how to file for divorce...or, just LEAVE!

But how could pro-lifers connect the dots between divorce and baby dumps, when they have yet to figure out that the death penalty is neither a deterrent for crime (for the very same reasons stated) nor that it is a contradiction to be pro-life and in favor of said death penalty.

On the other hand, I thought, why not have a baby dump right on every maternity dept. of every hospital. Nurses could hand you your baby and ask: breast or bottle? Keeper or a dumper? Signs could be posted about the hallways, letting all the new moms know that they don't have to wait to get their little brats home and then go looking for a convenient dumpster...there was one right down the hall, just past the nursery of all those horrible creature who never stop screaming! On the day of the mom's scheduled departure form the hospital, the nurses would again inquire: Wrap him to go, or will you just be leaving him here?

Of course, there's still be the drive-by window - open 24/7 to catch the home - and toilet - births. I picture a row of containers like the ones you place discarded clothing in. A LONG row...each one for a different race, age and gender. Male toddlers in this one; Caucasian infant girls in another. All neatly sorted. With grpahics on the front of each for non-English speaking dumpers. And a sound proof one for drug-addicted babies, to muffle their cries from neighbors in close proximity. Don't want to any of NIMBY protests.

Amusement parks might be a good location, along with school yards, of course! The mall...anywhere slutty teen girls hang out. Perhaps get stores like the Gap to offer a discount on post pregnancy pants for every baby dumped in their dumpster!

Well, I best be printing out all these ideas t hand out to those pro-life, pro-adoption, pro-safe haven folk! They need all the help they can get. They just can't find enough ways to keep up the supply. I mean, they restrict access to birth control, sex ed, abortion, day care, welfare...they create Catch-22 hoops for fathers to jump through that Houdini couldn't accomplish...and yet, still not enough babies being dumped...

I'll have to ask then why each one of them doesn't do the the "right" thing and have a baby to give to a "deserving couple"...AND/or adopt a REAL orphan from foster care! Yah, that's the ticket. I'll have to ask each of them that...for REAL!

APRIL 11th UPDATE: Anti Safe Haven DEMONSTRATION

2007-04-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

There is a growing coalition of groups and individuals who share a concern of the harm caused by Safe Havens as oppositional to family preservation.

On April 11th "The Children First Foundation: The Official Sponsor of the 'Choose Life' license plates in NY, NJ and CT" is holding their annual fund-raiser gala ($250pp) benefit concert at Avery Fisher hall, Lincoln Center, 65th and Columbus Ave., NYC at 6:30pm

Those of us who are able will be there to peacefully hand out educational literature as guests enter the event.

More about the event, including complete invitation, can be found at: http://www.fund-adoption.org/

Directions to the location: http://www.lincolncenter.org/load_screen.asp?screen=visitorinfo_hallinfo_afh

We will be meeting up at 6pm outside Avery Fisher Hall, Columbus and 65th.

EVEN IF YOU CANNOT ATTEND IN PERSON, YOU CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THIS OPPORTUNITY TO EDUCATE THOSE WHO MISGUIDEDLY BELIEVE THAT SAFE HAVENS SAVE LIVES!!!

Contributions have been pouring in to purchase an ad in the Journal/Program for event-goers!!

A full page ad - 5.5 x 8.5 = $400
Half page (the minimum for our message) $200
Quarter page - about bus card size $100

The wording of the ad is a combined effort and a work in progress, but SO FAR it will look something like this:
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Safe haven legislation, while well intentioned, has been shown to cause more harm than intended to prevent, and are contrary to ethical public policy about reproductive freedom the pro-life community has promoted for years. Such programs:
* allow anyone to abandon a baby with or without the consent or knowledge of the mother.
* do not provide waiting periods, counseling or option and resources referrals to families in crisis.
* do not require the same parental notification pro-lifers have promoted for years.
* encourage young women to forgo prenatal care resulting in dramatically higher infant and maternal mortality rates.
* discourage the creation of families and ignore the rights of
fathers.
* abandonments increasingly appear to be driven by economics
post welfare reform. (*?)

This message sponsored by: Parents and Professions for Family Preservation and Protection: A concerned consortium of concerned citizens, professionals, organizations, adoptees and mothers against legalized baby abandonment.

www.PPFFPP.org
------------------

I am planning to purchase the URL PPFFPP.org onto which will be posted a wealth of anti-safe haven facts and quotes can be uploaded- much more than we could ever put in an ad or handout.

YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE AD AND/OR WEBSITE WILL BE MONEY THAT COULD SAVE THE LIFE OF A CHILD AND MOTHER!

Contributions can be paid online at PayPal.com. Use the "Send Money" tab and designate any amount to be sent to email@AdvocatePublications.com - mark it for SH ad or SH webpage.

HOWEVER - it would be very helpful to reply to this post within 24 hours to let me know how much to expect in order to plan ad size which must be done within 24 hours.

CHECK COMMENTS FOR UPDATES!!

APRIL 11th EDUCATIONAL DEMONSTRATION

2007-04-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

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PRESS RELEASE

Adoptees and Mothers incensed about a pro-adoption, pro-Safe Haven fund raiser at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center plan to disseminate literature to those attending.

The Children First Foundations, a pro-life organization is planning a $250 per person fundraising concert and reception to promote and support adoption and so-called “Safe Havens” on Wednesday, April 11, 2007 at 6:30 PM on April 11, 2007.

A peaceful "protest demonstration" is being planned to distribute literature to educate those entering the event to the realities that “Safe Haven” which allow mothers to legally abandon babies – while well-intentioned - are immoral and create more problems than they are intended to solve.

For $100 we can buy a quarter page ad in the journal going to all attendees of this pro Safe Haven fund raiser on April 11th in NYC.

The goal of The Children First Foundations’s Gala Concert for Adoption is to raise greater public awareness and funding for pregnancy centers, maternity homes and safe havens that provide desperate women with the financial and moral support they so often need in orde to choose life and consider adoption for an unwanted pregnancy or newborn.

Organizations and institutions opposed to Safe Haven legislation include:

Adoptees Caucus for truth, Advocates for pregnant Women, American Adoption Congress, American Coalition for fathers and Children, Aridadine group, bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization, Bay Area Birthmothers, center for family Connections (MA), Child’;s best interest, Concerned United Birthparents, Ethical A Voice for Ethical Adoption, Dads Against Divorce Discrimination, Green Ribbon Campaign for Open Records, Holt International, Massachusetts Home for Little Wanderers, Mass. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, National Congress for fathers and Children, Oregon Adoption Rights Association, Origins, Origins-USA, Post Adoption Center for Education and Research, Prevent Child Abuse Virginia, project Cuddle, 2nd Chance for Life, Spence-Chapin Services to Family and children, Virginia dept. of Health, Va. League of Social Services Executives, Va Poverty Law center, Va for Adoption Reform

ROMANIA For Export Only

2007-04-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

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The untold story of the Romanian 'orphans' - Roelie Post

I have only just begun reading Roelie's book. I cannot wait to complete it to write a full review.

For now, I can say: This is a MUST READ for anyone interested in adoption or child welfare....especially anyone from one of the "importing" countries who is planning to adopt. It is "an insiders" view of the corruption and bureaucratic failures.

Those of us in the industrialized world who think adoption is a win-win way to 'save" and 'rescue" babies need to read this! Every movie star should be MADE to read it!

----

Romania needed to reform its child rights policy, as one of the conditions for its future EU Membership. Large ‘orphanages’ were closed and replaced by modern child protection alternatives.

The author kept a diary on her work for the European Commission that aimed to help Romania reform its child protection.

She soon found out that the intercountry adoption system in place was nothing short of a market for children, riddled by corruption. After international criticism this practice was halted temporarily. When redrafting laws, it became clear that in Romania’s reformed child protection there was neither place nor need for intercountry adoptions.

A ferocious lobby that wants to maintain intercountry adoptions stepped out.

The reader is taken along on an eight-year-travel, and will be shown the story of the Romanian ‘orphans’ from a different light, where global politics and private interests compete with the rights of the child.

"The Bird Man" Strikes Back

2007-04-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

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NJ man wants adoption records sealed

This is the story of a VERY DANGEROUS 60-year-old man who has custody of twin baby girls created for his sole "use" and "ownership." Not only are these girls in harms way, but so too is all of adoption law!

By Jon Murray
jon.murray@indystar.com
The attorney for a 60-year-old New Jersey man who adopted twin girls from Indiana has sought to formally seal a court case challenging that adoption.

Last month The Indianapolis Star filed a petition to open records in the Indiana Court of Appeals case, which has been unavailable to the public because of Indiana's adoption secrecy law. The Indiana Department of Child Services is challenging Stephen F. Melinger's 2005 adoptions of the girls, who now are almost 2.

Steven C. Litz, Melinger's attorney, has not yet responded to the Star's petition. But he filed a separate motion Thursday seeking a court order to seal the case separately from the restrictions imposed by the adoption law, and also to seal all future court filings such as the Star's.

The Star's petition said the public's interest would be served by making public the legal debate over whether the adoptions violated interstate laws and other restrictions.

"As this court is undoubtedly aware, the same day it filed the motion, the Star ran a front page story on the motion, again referring to confidential information that had been illegally provided to it," Melinger's motion says. "It then sought to justify opening this court's file by referring to the fact that there had been publicity about the case, publicity which it created by obtaining confidential records illegally. Such bootstrapping techniques should not be tolerated by this court..."

Karen Zaria and Kathy Zee Melinger were born nearly two years ago to a South Carolina surrogate mother. Litz's Monrovia-based company arranged the adoption in Indiana.

But the girls' adoptions by Melinger, a New Jersey teacher, ran into trouble after Marion County officials opened a child welfare investigation.

Melinger had raised concerns among Methodist Hospital staff by showing up in the neonatal intensive-care unit to visit the newborns with a live bird in the left sleeve of his suit jacket and, later, bird feces on his clothing. Nurses also were concerned that he did not seem to know how to care for the children and planned to drive them back to New Jersey by himself.

Last week, Litz testified during an Indiana House committee hearing that Melinger, a magician, had "made the disastrous decision" to enter the hospital with a pet dove. But Litz said home studies later found Melinger to be a suitable parent.

---------------

My post on Indy Star Comment board:

This dude - "The Bird Man" - is dangerous! He and ALL surrogacy should be stopped!

HOWEVER - we cannot put adoption on trial here, nor sealed adoption records. Surrogacy is NOT adoption ... it is CREATIONISM gone wild! Adoption involves finding homes for orphans...not creating designer babies as playthings for Jacko or this sicko 60-year-old nut job!

These babies need immediate court appointed guardians to protect them and their rights. The mother who SOLD them should be arrested and charged with human trafficking. All paid surrogacy should be criminalized as such. Selling an organ is illegal - how can we permit the selling of human beings? This is a very BAD sci-fi back to the future of slavery!

Now on Amazon!

2007-04-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

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The Stork Market:
America’s Multi-Billion Dollar
Unregulated Adoption Industry
by Mirah Riben with Foreword by Evelyn Robinson

Now available at Amazon.com: List Price $18.50

Available at discount directly from www.AdvocatePublications.com

Where you can also view new reviews!

Also be sure to check out SPECIAL COMBO OFFERS
additional discounts when purchasing multiple products at AdvocatePublciations.com

AND: Mention this blog or CUB when ordering from AdvocatePublications and request an autographed copy!

www.AdvocatePublications.com

Proud Sponsor of:
www.BirthParentProject.org
www.TwiceLost.org
www.AdopTalk.blogspot.com

Member of: www.CUBirthparents.org
www.Bastards.org

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. John F. Kennedy

DannieLynn - Who's Your Daddy?

2007-04-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

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Howard K. Stern - the man trying desperately to bring a new level of shame to the name Howard Stern - lost his bid to block DNA testing of Anna Nicole's baby.

He is now allegedly planning to use the "bonded" card in his bid for guardianship/custody of the baby girl caught in a three-way battle between him, Larry Birkhead, and Anna Nicole's mother. Stern has maintained custody of the now 6-month-old baby in th Bahamas.

Adoption and Morality

2007-03-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

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While some have no problem condemning homosexuality as immoral and catholic adoption agencies ban gays from adopting...and, while many of the same people also have very strong opinions about the use of embryos for stem cell research....

Theologians and ethicists - including the Catholic Church - are reportedly split over the morality of embryo adoptions through which embryos left over from in vitro fertilization are implanted into the uterus of a woman other than the biological mother.

The Catholic Church has yet to issue any authoritative teaching on embryo adoptions, said Peter J. Cataldo, an ethical consultant to the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center.

At issue is what may morally be done to the excess embryos created through in vitro fertilization and frozen for possible later use. Over the years, many have been discarded while some have been adopted [read:SOLD!]. Delaware’s General Assembly has been considering a bill that would allow their use for embryonic stem-cell research. The church opposes any such research since harvesting the stem cells would destroy the embryos.

The church teaches that in vitro fertilization is not morally acceptable because the egg and sperm are joined outside of sexual intercourse between a husband and wife. The 1987 document “On Respect for Human Life” (“Donum Vitae”) from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, noted that through in vitro fertilization, “(T)he generation of the human person is objectively deprived of its proper perfection: namely, that of being the result and fruit of a conjugal act.”

Those who believe embryo adoption to be illicit follow a similar argument.

“Pregnancy is indiscernibly related to marriage” and “must be the fruit of husband and wife,” said Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, staff ethicist for the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Since an embryo adoption involves implanting a woman with the fruit of another couple, he said, “my own opinion is that it is not moral to do this.”

BUT, if the insist on calling it "adoption" what is the difference between this and raising the child of another?

The issue they are totally missing (avoiding?) is the fact that these frozen embryos are being SOLD! If they are human beings, than that is slavery! if they are not human, than clearly it is NOT adoption. Can't have it both ways, can we???

MJ's kids NOT Debbie Rowe's?

2007-03-29T16:50:00.000-07:00

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Michael Jackson in fresh child custody battle
British woman files papers against star for a third time
11 hours ago

A woman claiming to be the biological mother of Michael Jackson's three children has filed legal papers against him for a third time.

Nona Paris Lola Jackson filed papers at Los Angeles Superior Court on March 27 to request visiting rights and child support.

The motion also contained a schedule demonstrating how easily the arrangement could work. She is making further demands to be given the singer's Neverland ranch and another of his properties, though her proposals would mean that he retains full custody over the children.

Lola Jackson is adamant she gave birth to ten-year-old Prince Michael, nine-year-old Paris and five-year-old Prince Michael II, also called 'Blanket', though Jackson's ex-wife Deborah Rowe is named on the birth certificate as the mother of both Prince Michael and Paris, while the identity of Prince Michael II's mother remains unknown.

Nona insists that the singer never consummated his marriage, claiming: "Debbie's hospital records will prove that my kids are not hers because of DNA."

The court has already dismissed two previous custody attempts from the Brit.

Los Angeles Superior Court judge Robert Schnider refused to hear her motion last month on grounds that proper notification of Lola Jackson's proposed action had not been given to the star or Lowe, and that Lola Jackson had additionally failed to submit credible evidence that she gave birth to the children.

Raymone Bain, a representative for the singer, branded her actions as "ludicrous".

Court hearings on the motion have been scheduled for May 2 and May 30, reports E! Online.

Adoption/Slavery

2007-03-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Someone Else "Gets" It!

2007-03-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

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The Stork Market: Book Review

by Kam Williams
America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry

"Adoption pits woman against woman, rich against poor, making it painfully difficult to look at and admit. Adoption is racist and classist and often exploits women and commodifies their babies.

Mothers who are resourceless and struggling to keep their family together can either be offered the help they need to stay together or be seen as a source of supply to meet a demand. Mothers and other family members in developing countries unable to feed their babies could be sent the funds they need to do so, or have their misfortune exploited for another's advantage."

Excerpted from Chapter II (p.19): Motherhood, Myths and Metaphors

In the rush to anoint icons like Madonna and Angelina Jolie for sainthood following their adoptions of babies from Africa and Asia, no one seems to be stopping to ask how widespread this practice might be or whether it's in the best interest of the children and their birth parents. But common sense ought to tell you that no mother really wants to surrender her offspring to a stranger from another culture or country, especially when the reason really has more to do with money than with maternal instincts.

Sadly, this readily identifiable and burgeoning phenomenon is not at all limited to celebrities, but a big business which is depleting the Third World in much the same way those regions have been drained of their natural resources. Fortunately, one intrepid reporter, Mirah Riben, has had the guts to investigate this shameful trafficking in infants, and she is now blowing the cover off the racist racket in The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry.

In fact, Ms. Riben has been speaking out about the need to reform, humanize, and de-commercialize American adoption practices for nearly three decades. She first started to shed some light on this complex issue back in 1988 with the publication of her previous book, The Dark Side of Adoption. With a slightly different focus, The Stork Market is a thoroughly-researched expose' which zeroes-in on every aspect of the black market baby trade.

As a staunch family advocate, the author also takes aim here at the foster parenting system, pointing out that "The same funds used to support foster care could be used to help preserve families and eliminate child removal." However, the bulk of this invaluable book covers the corruption in the adoption industry: the scams, coercion and exploitation rampant in a market based on supply and demand where prices are based such factors as age and skin color, and the cost of the "merchandise" is set as high as the often desperate consumers are willing to pay.

Highly-recommended for anyone touched by adoption in any way, whether considering it, working in the field, or if simply interested in child protection and family preservation.

To order a copy of The Stork Market, visit: www.AdvocatePublications.com

by Mirah Riben
Foreword by Evelyn Robinson
Advocate Publications
Paperback
260 pages, illustrated
ISBN: 1427608954

Another Star Adoption in Question

2007-03-27T20:34:00.000-07:00

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Angelina Jolie, who reportedly was critical of Madonna's adoption may have a contested adoption in her future.

Seems the latest addition stripe on her "rainbow" collection Pax Thien of Vietnam was relinquished for adoption by his grandparents - ONLY - apparently without the signature of allegedly drug-addicted mother. The grandparents said they did not know where their daughter was.

Pax's granddad Chien has since told Britain's News of the World newspaper: "Our daughter is a heroin addict and her life has been ruled by drugs. When she finds out a rich movie star has adopted her baby, she will go after her for money and make trouble. She may even try to take the child back."

Chien added: "We never visited Pax because we were scared we would fall in love with him and I knew we couldn't afford to keep him.

The child's aunt believes Pax mother desperate to see Pax again, saying: "My sister thinks about her baby a lot. If she could, she would try to get her son back."

This is not the first time one of her adoptions was questionable. Lauryn Galindo, who helped Jolie adopt her Cambodian son, Maddox, pleaded guilty to visa fraud and money laundering as part of a ring that paid poor Cambodian women as little as $100 or less for their children. The agency which handled hundreds of such adoptions charged fees of $10,000.

Review of "The Stork Market"

2007-03-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

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This is a useful and important book, well researched and documented, about what is wrong with domestic and international adoption in the USA today. Written in a clear, crisp journalistic style that is easy to read and follow, "Stork Market" quotes from a wide variety of diverse sources and opinions about the many abuses in our adoption system, and the injustices to all triad members these abuses engender. The root of most of these abuses is the ancient "root of all evil", the love of money. Ms.Riben makes a clear case that commercialism and lack of uniform or stringent regulation of adoption providers is the culprit. She also calls into question the belief that because one can pay, one "deserves" a child to adopt, whether that is really the best solution for the child or not.

This book provides a good overview of what is wrong with the adoption industry, from the coercion of naive pregnant women without providing real options counseling or alternatives, the attempts to take birthfathers out of the picture, to scams that promise a baby to prospective adoptive parents but take their money and give them nothing. Seeing the child as a product subject to the laws of supply and demand, and adoption as a businness rather than a sensitive child welfare issue is also exposed as a cause of corruption and suffering. The problems of sealed records, secrets and lies, amended birth certificates which state that the adoptive parents gave birth to their adopted child, and the new Safe Haven legal abandonment laws are also addressed, along with some heart-warming annectdotes of helping unwed mothers to keep their babies.
There is also a harrowing chapter on the most extreme horrors, children adopted by abusers and pedophiles because of the lack of oversight of adoption facilitators.

I was solidly impressed and enjoying this book right up until the final chapter in conclusion, where I feel the author will lose a lot of other readers as well. What troubled me was the solution proposed, to replace adoption with some form of legal guardianship, and the conviction that adoption is too flawed to be fixed, but must be "restructured" or replaced.

My experience has been that when one starts talking about abolishing adoption or changing it to legal guardianship, many people who would otherwise support reforms of the system stop listening and get defensive, because adoption HAS worked for them, or those they know, despite its many flaws and abuses, and they are not interested in getting rid of it.

Like Ms. Riben, I am also a surrendering mother with many years in adoption reform. Unlike her, I still believe in reform and flexibility in adoption; yes, I would like to see all the abuses she has pointed out reformed and changed, by better, more uniform laws, stricter regulation, better mandated ethical practice. I do not see this necessitating replacing adoption with guardianship. I wish she had ended her book after documenting the abuses, and left readers to draw their own conclusions. I feel the end conclusion weakens an otherwise powerful book as a tool to promote change and understanding.

I hope this book will be widely read and discussed by all interested in adoption reform, and serve as a platform to implement needed change.

MaryAnne Cohen, mother, poet, co-founder of Origins: An organization for women who have lost children to adoption

The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry
www.AdvocatePublications.com

April 11th - Plans Are Firming Up!

2007-03-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

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Many people have responded with enthusiasm and are planning to attend the rally on April 11th at 6PM at Avery Fisher Hall, Columbus and 65th Street.

Literature has been prepared to disperse on the dangers of Safe Havens.

We will peacefully disperse this literature to those attending the Pro-Life, Pro-Adoption, Pro-Safe haven benefit concert.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!! Let's reach anyone and everyone who can get into Manhattan the evening of April 11th!

View the flyer

A Case With ENORMOUS RAMIFICATIONS

2007-03-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

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Indiana Newspaper has filed suit to open adoption records TO THE PUBLIC!

The Indiana Department of Child Services is challenging adoptions of twin girls born to a surrogate mother with an anonymous donation and adopted cross state lines by Stephen F. Melinger in New Jersey.

The adoption is being challenged on the grounds that adoptions out of Indiana to another state are reserved only for "hard to place" children. The state contends in their suit that this case violated interstate laws.

The girls' adoptions drew the state's attention after hospital employees raised concerns about Melinger's ability to care for the girls before they were discharged from a neonatal intensive-care unit. He showed up in Methodist's neonatal unit to visit the girls with a live bird in the left sleeve of his suit jacket and, later, bird feces on his clothing.

The Indiana newspaper, The Star, argues that denial of access to records violates the Indiana Constitution and rights of access under the First Amendment.

The Star's petition argues that the benefit of openly debating the Melinger adoptions outweighs any harm from further publicizing the children's names and the circumstances surrounding their births.

The petition also questions the constitutionality of Indiana's adoption secrecy law, arguing the legislature overstepped its bounds by passing a law telling the judiciary that adoption records cannot be disclosed.

"There is a presumption of openness in the operations of our courts, and it's important to preserve that."

Hamilton County attorney Steven M. Kirsh, who helped write the state's adoption laws, said adoption records should remain out of public view, regardless of how high-profile the case is.

NOW, please note who's privacy is of concern and who is neglected and overlooked in the following argument:

Kirsh said adoptive parents' privacy would be invaded if home studies that included personal information were publicly available. In other instances, adopted children might not want birth parents to find them because those parents abused or neglected them, he said.

Courts across the country appear to allow varying degrees of public access to adoption records during appeals. Rulings by appellate courts in Indiana have always been public.

However, The Star's petition notes the state's adoption secrecy law was written so broadly it appears to prohibit the issuance of public court rulings in adoption disputes.

These rulings are published by online services such as Westlaw and Lexis and in hardbound law books so attorneys and judges can refer to them for legal guidance. A review of Indiana adoption opinions shows they sometimes refer to the parties by name, including the children. They also disclose details about what transpired in secret before the trial court and quote from closed adoption records.

Confusing anonymity and confidentiality, Katrina Carlisle, an adoption counselor with St. Elizabeth/Coleman Pregnancy & Adoption Services, said she would prefer that adoption records were public, as long as birth mothers are informed from the outset.
"The stigma of having a baby and not being married is much less today," she said. "We have many women now who are proud of their choice."

In addition, Carlisle and other advocates say, the Melinger records should be opened to shed light on steps taken to ensure the girls' welfare.

"The case has already been opened and been in the paper so much, I don't see how keeping this particular case closed is in the best interests of children," said Cynthia K. Booth, an attorney and executive director of Indianapolis-based Child Advocates.

A member of her staff regularly supervised Melinger's visits with the twins at the request of Marion County's juvenile court while they were in foster care.
Booth said she would like to know how the trial judge was able to reopen the adoption case months after issuing the initial adoption decree. She also has questions about the process used to determine the children would be safe in New Jersey.
"Sometimes the light of day is really good for cases involving children."

Indiana Star link to post comments: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703230405

Here is what I posted:

Regarding the Star's suit to open adoption records to the public in the case of the Menninger adoption.

This adoption never should have taken place. Paid surrogacy should be outlawed.

Having said that, you are treading on a most dangerous precedent with enormous consequences.

Hamilton County attorney Steven M. Kirsh raised concern about adoptive parents' privacy if home studies were made public, and also had concerns for adopted persons. Note that he indicted no concern for the privacy of mothers who relinquish children for adoption.

Katrina Carlisle, an adoption counselor with St. Elizabeth/Coleman Pregnancy & Adoption Services attempts to speak for and about the concerns of mothers.

However, all these parties - and the Star - have totally confused and ignored the difference between CONFIDENTIALITY and ANONYMITY.

Adopees and their mothers are battling state by state to have adoption records opened TO THE PARTIES of the adoption. Only four states allow adopted persons access tot heir own birth certificates. Such legislation is blocked by lobbysists for adoption providers claiming that it would violate the mothers' rights to alleged promised confidentiality.

Now, the Star want to open records to the PUBLIC that even those involved cannot obtain based on the state constitution.

How can the state of Indiana jump from blocking such records to the parties themselves, to allowing public access?

The parties of an adoption deserve the same rights and protections as anyone else. They deserve a right to access to heir own records and some semblance of privacy from the public.

This case, may in fact require an exception to such a law, but it also could set a very dangerous precedent.

Baby Buying

2007-03-23T20:21:00.000-07:00

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Texas Sen. Dan Patrick has proposed legislation to pay pregnant women $500 for choosing adoption over abortion.

My letter:

Sen. Dan Patrick’s proposal to pay women to choose adoption - while vile - is not original.

If enacted, it would put the state of Texas in the baby brokerage business right alongside the likes of Seymour Kurtz who has been under investigation since the 1960s for baby brokering here and in Mexico. Kurtz has been called “the most controversial” of adoption attorneys because of the many ways he has found to circumvent laws and regulations.

Posing as a charity for any mother (or pregnant woman) who “needs to put her life together,” Kurtz’ Golden Link Foundation www.goldenlinkfoundation.com was offering to pay up to $10,000 to mothers who surrender their babies to one of the agencies owned by Kurtz.

Sleazy, exploitive, coercive practices are just as damaging to people’s lives when cloaked in legitimacy or charity. Families in crisis need support to remain together. Children are not commodities to be bid on or bought with pay-offs.

You can write too:

http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/lettertoed.cgi

PASS THE WORD: APRIL 11 - NYC

2007-03-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

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At 6:30 PM on April 11, 2006 there will be a PRO-LIFE, PRO Adoption, PRO Safe Haven Benefit at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, Columbus & 65th Street, NYC

$250 PP!

A peaceful "protest demonstration" is being planned to distribute literature to educate those entering the event. Maureen Flatley has agreed to come down for this event.

Mark you calendar if NYC is do-able for you, and watch this blog for further details. You can also comment with your email address to be kept updated.

More about the event, including complete invitation, can be found at: http://www.fund-adoption.org/

Directions to the location: http://www.lincolncenter.org/load_screen.asp?screen=visitorinfo_hallinfo_afh

We will be meeting up at 6pm outside Avery Fisher Hall, Columbus and 65th.

** Seeking anyone with access to free or cheap copying!!**

Stork Market UPdate!

2007-03-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

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I am pleased to share with you that initial sales and praise of The Stork Market are very positive and promising. Amazon.com will be selling it and has already ordered 10 copies!

I want you to read these two notes I got yesterday and today. The first is from MaryAnne Cohen who has reviewed most every book on adoption:

"I am about half way through your book, and it is outstanding! What a beautiful job of research, editing, writing, and bringing diverse sources together into a coherent whole. Marvelous work, highly
recommended."

The second is from Roelie Post in Brussels:

"I read your book. Congratulations for the clear stand you take and for the excellent description of what is so totally wrong with adoption - and even more with intercountry adoption. Indeed a failed social experiment.

I would like to order four more copies."

Q & A

2007-03-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

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The following are some comments/arguments/questions I have heard. Some I had myself in the past.

Only lunatic, radical nuts are anti-adoption.
No, Annette Baran and many other highly well educated people have favored guardianship for decades.

To be anti-adoption is commit political suicide.
I agree that using that term is. However, while I have always been against the promotion of adoption, and for reforming it, I have come to the unequivocal conclusion that it needs far more than reform. It needs a complete overall. I do not at all support adoption as it practiced in America today. I am therefore against it and pro-family.

If you're anti-adoption and pro-family, does that mean you think every mother should keep her kid, no matter what?
No, it means that every mother deserves the right to be given all the help possible to allow her family remain intact (just as the CRC & UNICEF state). It means that expectant mothers have a right to totally non-objective counseling and dealt with totally separately from anyone seeking to adopt. No adoption decision should be made until well after the birth. And extended family should be given and opportunity to assist in any way they can before a child is sent off to strangers. AND...all children who remain unadopted in foster should have their files reviewed and their mothers and family contacted on an annual or bi-annual basis to see if their situation has changed and made it possible for them to parent. (No, I am NOT suggesting that kids stay in foster care until their parents are ready. I am saying that if they are already in foster care and have not been adopted, their parents should not be FOREVER discarded as an viable option for them instead of a life in foster care.)

No one would accept guardianship – it’s like being a permanent baby-sitter.
There is no problem with weeding out those who want a child as an accessory, the latest fad, or any other selfish reason and leaving just those who truly want to give a home to an orphaned child or a child who had no family able or willing to care for him no matter how much help they are offered to do so.

Regarding stopping falsified bc’s: Adoptees would prefer to have the same name as those who raise them. It’s unfair to stigmatize them by keeping their original name.
Many people are raised by aunts or grandparents and have different surnames names. Many husbands and wives today have different surnames. If they re-marry, some women go back to their maiden name, their children may keep their fathers name and their step father has yet another name. Happens all the time. There are families (right in my own church) that have as many as four surnames in one family. Some of these are adopted families who have chosen to honor their child’s full original name. With a 50% divorce rate and very high re-marriage rate it is more than likely that any kid going to school today will be in a class with LOTS of kids that have different surnames than their one or both parents. If a child decides later, that he’s uncomfortable with it, it can be changed legally. There is no more “stigma” in having a different name as there is in illegitimacy.

Not everyone concerned about open records is concerned about children being currently adopted and thus family preservation.
BUT – the entire purpose of adoption is finding homes for children who need them. Adoption is NOT about the needs of adults. It was never intended to be. It’s not about finding babies to meet a demand. It’s not about solving infertility. It’s about doing what is best for children when they have no family to do so. Yes, children grow up and become adults and there is also a need to restore the rights taken from those already adopted. No debate on that! There is however no way to restore what was taken from their mothers! As a mother, and not an adoptee, and therefore I put my efforts on prevention and family preservation as it will help mothers and children. It is said what’s been done to adoptees in the past, and I fully support their efforts, but it is not my issue as I am not adopted.

Some see a lot wrong but focus on doing what they can and that’s fine. Others see myopically just one thing that needs to be fixed – open records for adults – and everything else about adoption is perfectly fine, or at least that is what some adoptees project.

When you look at the bigger picture - the whole mess that adoption has become with a multitude of problems above and beyond the rights of adult adoptees and their mothers - we can each have our own main focus and yet all be working to reach the same solution: an end to adoption as we know it today in America. Working from both ends of the spectrum – the beginning and the end; mothers still being convinced to relinquish their infants to adoption and the problems they face as adult - strengthens one another’s position.

When experts and those with personal experience speak out against lies and secrets in families and people come to recognize that TRULY open adoption (enforceable relationship between the child and his mother and or father) is far healthier than keeping family secrets, or telling half-truths. When Ann Fessler and Rickie Solinger get the word about the effects of relinquishment on mothers, this is good. When books like Verrier’s Primal Wound and Kirschner’s new book are released, we can discuss the pros and cons in terms of our personal experiences - whether we agree or disagree with their theories - but they too add to the big picture of problems caused by adoption separation and they should be respected and applauded for that. Fessler, Solinger and Kirschner, after all, have no personal stake – or bias - in the cause of shedding light on adoption, as do the works of BJ Lifton and many, many others.

Instead of embracing all of these as part of the whole that helps one another, BN wants to stay as far away from any medical or emotional need to know as possible. Instead of seeing a book like Kirschner’s as being helpful…they see it as “pathologizing adoptees” when in fact Kirschner is pathologizing closed adoption, not those who have lived within the crazy-making of lies or half-truths. And we all know the censorship issue BJ faced because of other hard-liners.

It is all these knee-jerk reactions and hard line attitudes that prevent us from thinking outside the box and seeing what each of has to offer toward the whole and even to one another. Adult adoptees quest to reinstate their rights points to what adoption has taken from them, unjustly. When mother speak out about their losses it speaks to another aspect of injustice caused by the adoption industry. Looking at it from the perspective of the best interest of the child – draws it all together IMO and is far more heart wrenching and difficult to ignore or find objection to. And so they all compliment one another. A win-win!

It ALL because it all points to one thing – the current way adoption is done STINKS! It is harming the very children it is designed to help – and it harms them all of their lives. Not to mention the harm suffered by their mothers.

A Better Idea!

2007-03-14T15:09:00.001-07:00

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A tiny step better than just thinking about adults:

Calling all adoptive parents of, and/or adopted individuals who were born in, or adopted in Massachusetts!

Help us research the impact of attempts to access original birth certificates in order to affect change in the law to gain access to birth certificates for all parents of adopted children under 18 years as well as adopted young adults and adults over 18 years of age! A Civil Right!

Please fill out this survey by Sunday, March 18th and feel free to pass it on to any and all who may be interested. Your help is much appreciated.

Also be sure to let us know if you would be interested in joining a cohort of adopted people who would approach the court for access to birth certificates as a civil right"

Here is a link to the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?A=183023021E95930

Thanks for your participation,

Center For Family Connections

Please note: If you do not wish to receive further emails from us, please click the link below, and you will be automatically removed from our mailing list.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/r.asp?A=183023021E95930

Adopting a Sense of Humor! :-)

2007-03-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

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THE RULES: Each one of these links takes you off this page, so bookmark this page now or save it in your favorites, do you can return and see ALL the goodies here! ENJOY!

At the Adoption Agency: VIDEO

I Hate My American Family

Part II: Kim's Birthday Presenthttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Be Just Like Angelina and Madonna: Adopt-A-Black-Baby

Rent-A-Kid

Are Dogs Better Protected than Kids?

2007-03-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

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Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Adoption Request Denied

Their request to adopt a three-month-old Labrador retriever puppy, that is!

I cannot attest to the truth of the following story, but here it is:

Louisiana SPCA Animal Shelter's refusal was because they don't "just hand them over to every Tom, Dick, and Brad who walks through the door flashing money, a pretty wife, and a megawatt smile."

Guess they were surprised as the agencies who handled foreign adoption sure do!

They did not meet the six month residency requirement. Then under the why-do-you-want-a-pet question, they wrote, 'As a companion for our children.'

"That's not always a red flag, but two of their children are too young to behave responsibly around puppies, and we got the impression the couple wasn't through having and adopting children yet. Frankly, they came uncomfortably close to matching our 'collectors' profile

"We were also concerned about the couple's marital status, as we prefer to place puppies in more traditional intact homes."

One again, more than their kid's previous care-takers cared about.

Their lack of knowledge about the breed didn't help their cause either. She couldn't even point to Labrador on a map, then she tried to excuse her failure by saying it was obviously not a country with pressing humanitarian issues."

The shelter employee was also puzzled by Ms. Jolie's behavior toward the puppy.

"During a supervised interaction period she held the puppy in her arms the entire time. Mr. Pitt kept asking her to put the puppy in the stroller he had brought with them so he could practice taking it for walks, but she ignored him until she finally told him to shut up. I felt sorry for him. He had the look of a man who's used to taking orders."

Neither Mr. Pitt nor Ms. Jolie answered our requests for comments about the shelter worker's statements.

UNICEF Gets it RIGHT!

2007-03-10T19:33:00.000-08:00

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Adoption should always be the last resort, says UNICEF rep

UNICEF representative in Nepal, Gillian Mellsop, has called upon the participants of the International Conference on Inter-country Adoption being held in Kathmandu 11-13 March to consider seriously the rights of the child and advocate for child adoption mechanisms that are strictly in line with the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and The Hague Convention.

"Adoption should always be the last resort for the child. The CRC which guides UNICEF's work, states very clearly that every child has the right to know and to be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible,” a press statement issued by the UNICEF on the eve of the adoption conference quoted Mellsop as saying.

“UNCIEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for her or him,” she said and called upon the participants of the Inter-country Adoption Conference to advocate for mechanisms that are transparent and in line with the CRC and The Hague Convention.

The UNICEF said it was hopeful that the international conference would lead to the ratification of the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption and the adoption of national laws and mechanisms to regulate in-country and inter-country adoption.

“The Hague Convention is designed to put into action the principles regarding inter-country adoption which are contained the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which Nepal has ratified," Mellsop reminded, adding, “These principles include ensuring that adoption is authorised only by competent authorities, and that inter-country adoption does not result in improper financial gain for those involved in it."

According to the UNICEF, these provisions are meant first and foremost to protect children, and also have the positive effect of providing assurance to prospective adoptive parents that their child has not been the subject of illegal and detrimental practices.

Referring to the increasing trend of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries, Mellsop said, "Lack of education and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the unfortunate growth of an industry around adoption."

"This means that profit, rather than the best interests of the children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery, as well as trafficking to individuals whose intentions are to exploit rather than care for children," she added.

The UNICEF’s concern came amidst media reports that many agencies working for children in Nepal have been involved in illegal activities in the name of facilitating adoption, especially inter-country adoption. Source:nepalnews, peacejournalism.com.Nepal.

These are quotes we should keep and use, folks!!!

A Step Forward?

2007-03-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

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Proposed bill would increase information for adoptees

As you may have already read, Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline introduced legislation requiring full disclosure of family medical problems at the time of adoption.

A spokesman the National Council for Adoption, the nation's largest adoption advocacy group, endorsed Jacobs' proposal saying it was for the sharing of information as long as it doesn't identify the birth parents.

NCFA Claims: ""When a woman is going to have a baby, she has different choices - one of them is to have an abortion, another is to place the baby up for adoption. For many young women, if they were not guaranteed confidentiality, they would choose abortion." BOOO!! BS! Spokesperson Allen goes on: "Just as an abortion decision is confidential, so too should be adoption." DUH! Minor difference... in one case there is no one else's life and rights involved!

But a spokeswoman for Bastard Nation, one of the nation's largest adoptee's rights groups, called the measure nearly "worthless." (The group's name is derived from the word once stamped on birth certificates of children placed for adoption.)

"Maybe this bill could do a little bit of good -- but not much. This is just a way for people to feel like they are giving adoptees something when it really doesn't address what we really need - access to all of our adoption records," said Anita Walker Field, executive secretary of the organization.

Some suggest the bill go further and provide continual updates of the biological parent's health.

So "BIOLOGICAL" parents are reduced and discarded once again. We are biological matter like a sperm donor who REQUESTED anonymity. Regardless of the circumstances that might have led a mother to part with her child: poverty, social stigma. lack of familial support, abusive partner....society continues to turn their back on this BIOLOGICAL egg donor and further the myth that nurture trumps nature - except for these small details like breast cancer risk...

This proposed legislation not only ignores the issue of an adoptees right to be treated equal in every way with non-adoptees, but it reduces their progenitors to incubators and this perpetuates the exploitation of indigent women here and abroad for the babies.

This legislation is demeaning and dehumanizing to all of the parties touched by adoption. It treats adoptees like puppies in a pound that just need their pedigree to go along with them...and treats their parents like breeders.

Mothers who sacrifice their children in the hopes of them having a “better life” were never promised, nor did they ask for anonymity from their child – which is very different than an expectation of privacy and confidentiality from public scrutiny into their past.

As a mother who lovingly relinquished a child for adoption I do not want my child learning about me from the cold records of a social worker forty years ago when health issues made it impossible to parent my child. Those health issues are now totally resolved and there are new ones. More importantly, not medical records could relate to my child the love in my heart and my regret for any feelings of rejection my decision may have caused.

Adoption is not a one-time event that remains static. It is an ongoing interpersonal life-changing situation and has a tremendous ripple effect on more than just one mother and one child.

I have a subsequent child who suffers from the same medical issues that took the life of my first child at the tender age of 27. But because as a birthmother my role is negated, my darling child is now left without her siblings medical history which may provide some clues to her treatment.

You are encouraged to go to: http://www.inottawa .com/ottnews/ archives/ ottawa/display. php?id=293139 to add your comments.

The Queen Has (Mis)Spoken!

2007-03-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

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Queen Latifah, in USA Today 3/9/07 "Latifah: It's the 'right time' to be a mom" By Donna Freydkin, talks about possibly adopting.

Latifa says: "I can understand why people go outside the U.S. You can adopt someone here, and the birth parents have three years and come back and get the child. That's terrifying."

IF ONLY!!

Write and set USA Today and their readers straight: editor@usatoday.com and accuracy@usatoday.com

If you know the revocation time in your state - or have a personal story of trying to reverse an adoption, by all means share it!

I contacted Elizabeth Samuels and asked her to write. She saisd she's very busy but will try. However, she gave the folllowing suggestions of what you might want to include in a letter:

Consents to adoption quickly become irrevocable in all the states, except in cases of fraud or duress, which usually must be established within a limited period of time and in any event is virtually never established. In a majority of the states, consents to adoption become irrevocable either immediately or within days of being signed and in almost all the states they become irrevocable in less than one month.

(A simple change of mind is not grounds to revoke consent in any state that does not have a revocation period, and in those states that do have brief revocation periods, a simple change of mind is not grounds for revoking consent after the revocation period.)

My letter follows:

Queen Latifah is quoted (It's the 'right time' to be a mom 3/9/07) as saying: "I can understand why people go outside the U.S. You can adopt someone here, and the birth parents have three years and come back and get the child. That's terrifying." Indeed that would be terrifying…if it were true.

Prior to any legal adoption taking place, the original parents’ rights are permanently and irrevocably relinquished either voluntarily or involuntarily. States have varying time periods from hours to days – far less time in most other countries - during which consent to adopt can be attempted to be revoked with good cause, such as fraud. Few birthparents can afford the legal fees involved and fewer still get their cases heard.

In reviewing attempts by mothers to revoke consent to adoption, Elizabeth Samuels[1] notes that most states rule that a “change of mind is not sufficient to invalidate a relinquishment.” The majority of states, even with cause to invalidate the relinquishment, will require the mother to prove fitness, which almost never happens because that “fitness” is a contest between the mother and a married, prosperous couple who have custody and possession of the child. In 2001 a mother’s signed relinquishment was found in Texas to be “sufficient evidence on which the trial court can base a finding that termination is in the best interest of the child.”[2] “In a sense, the social and legal systems have failed [birthparents] in any case in which an infant’s mother asks a court to overturn her consent,” states Samuels.

It is therefore sad and incorrect to disseminate false fears and encourage international adoption as preferential over domestic adoption. Many international adoptions take children that are stolen or kidnapped from corrupt countries. All of these problems can be avoided by adopting a child through a reputable, recognized state agency that places only children who truly orphaned and/or have been legally relinquished for adoption.

Foreword to The Stork Market

2007-03-07T18:36:00.000-08:00

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by Eveleyn Robinson

What is wrong with adoption in the United States? According to this new book by Mirah Riben — a great deal. Mirah has exposed the horror story that is adoption policy and practice in the United States in the 21st century. It requires a strong constitution to read this book as its contents are truly shocking. I have been appalled to read about how adoption in the United States at the present time is riddled with exploitation, deceit, and denial. Greed and consumerism masquerade as altruism, as parents and children are drawn into a quicksand of legal and illegal adoption. Mirah is to be congratulated for exposing the tragic outcomes for children, who are being failed by a government which allows this situation to exist and turns a blind eye. The appalling injustices that are taking place in the field of adoption in the United States have finally been exposed.

This book has highlighted for me the ways in which adoption policy and practice in the United States differ from the system which exists in Australia. It will also, I am sure, be an eye-opener not only for many Americans but for other readers around the world. There are many changes which would improve the situation in the United States, but what is needed more than anything is a major shift in attitude. Children should not be treated as a commodity to be exchanged arbitrarily. They have rights which must be protected by law. Because children are vulnerable, the policies which provide care and protection for them must be honest, ethical, and truly child-centred. If adoption exists, it should be about finding homes for children who are unable to live with their families, after all efforts have been made to keep the family together. Adoption is an extreme form of family disruption, as it involves not only physical but also legal separation from one’s family of origin.

In Australia important changes have already taken place. Each state and territory in Australia has its own adoption legislation. However, they have all followed a similar pattern over the years.

In 1982 in Adelaide, South Australia, a conference was organised by the National Council for the Single Mother and Her Child. Many mothers who had lost children through adoption attended this conference and subsequently formed support organisations for themselves. As a result of pressure from adoption support groups, adopted people in Australia first gained access to their original birth certificates in the state of Victoria in 1984.

After this took place, adoption support groups in South Australia worked together to persuade the government to change adoption legislation there. With the passing of the Adoption Act 1988, South Australia became the first state in Australia to grant equal rights to access identifying information to adults who were adopted as children and to their mothers (and, in certain circumstances, other family members). It will be interesting to see which of the American states will be enlightened enough to be the first to introduce similar legislation. All other states and territories in Australia have since followed the example of South Australia, except Victoria, where the Adoption Act 1984 is still in effect. With the passing of the Adoption Act 1988 in South Australia, it was clear that the government acknowledged that mothers and children who had experienced adoption separation could benefit from having access to information about each other.

Steps were then taken to re-examine whether or not adoption was, in fact, 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, much progress has been made in this area and numbers of adoptions in South Australia have reduced steadily.

In 1971 in the whole of Australia (the population at that time was close to twelve million), there were approximately ten thousand adoptions. The bulk of those were adoptions of locally-born children by non-relatives, i.e. people who were previously unknown to the child. Such adoptions are now known as ‘local adoptions.’ In 2005 (by which time the population had increased to almost twenty million) there were only sixty-five local adoptions in Australia.

In the state of South Australia (population approximately 1,500,000), there were almost one thousand local adoptions in 1971. By 1993, when the Children’s Protection Act was passed, this figure had dropped to only twenty-two. In 2005 only two Australian-born children were adopted in South Australia. Those two children were adopted only after all efforts to support their mothers to raise them had failed. It is likely that in the near future there will no longer be any adoptions of Australian-born children in South Australia. This trend is evident throughout the country.

Expectant mothers in Australia, regardless of their circumstances, are generally encouraged and supported to prepare for raising their children. After the birth, a Parenting Payment is available from the Federal Government to any parent who is a permanent resident of Australia and who has custody of their child, regardless of their gender or marital status. This payment, which is means-tested, has been available since 1973 and is a recognition by the Australian government that children are the basis of a country’s future. The government, therefore, makes financial support available to parents to assist them to provide for their children.
In the United States there are two ways in which a child can be transferred from one family to another through the legal process of adoption. Children who are deemed to be unsafe living within their families may be removed under child protection legislation and may then be adopted without the consent of their parents.

Tragically these children, who may have already suffered while living with their families, are being traumatised further by having their identity legally altered through adoption. Such fabrication produces a state of insecurity and confusion in children, as it replaces the reality of who they are with the fiction of who they must pretend to be. After adoption they are no longer legally related to their siblings, grandparents, and other family members with whom they may well have already formed close relationships. Sadly these important relationships are often severed after adoption. Children in Australia who are removed from their families under child protection legislation, on the other hand, are cared for under guardianship or permanent care orders. Unlike adoption, these are not based on deceit and fabrication and do not involve a permanent legal separation of a child from his or her family. The consent of parents (usually the mother and sometimes also the father) to adoption has always been necessary in South Australia.

Readers of this book will also learn that there are an alarming number of adoptions taking place in the United States with the consent of the parents (usually the mother). I am astounded that so many American women are apparently able to be persuaded that it is in the best interests of their children to be separated from their families and raised by strangers. This is in stark contrast to what is happening in other countries, such as Australia, where such adoptions are rare.

As Mirah points out so clearly, current unethical adoption policies and practices in the United States exist to service greedy, needy adults, when what are needed instead are ethical adoption policies and practices, which will serve the needs of vulnerable children.

Mirah has suggested that the United States could learn from adoption policies and practices in Australia, where adoption is well-regulated. There are no commercially-based adoption agencies in Australia, private adoptions are illegal and all domestic adoptions are enacted by State Government departments. Legislation exists in all states and territories of Australia to ensure that vulnerable families are protected from exploitation.

Such legislation is, of course, designed to address the best interests of children. In South Australia, for example, consent to adoption cannot be given until the child is at least fourteen days old, counselling after the birth is compulsory and it must be completed at least three days prior to consent being given. At that time, the mother of the child must also be given information in writing regarding the consequences of the adoption. After the consent has been signed, there is a minimum period of twenty-five days during which the consent may be revoked.

In Australia there is no contact of any kind between expectant mothers and prospective adopters. Such contacts are considered to be intrusive, disempowering to the expectant mother and potentially exploitative. They may also serve to encourage an inappropriate sense of ‘ownership’ in the prospective adopters. Sadly such contact has become common in the United States, in spite of the fact that it is considered by many professionals to be unethical. In South Australia, it is not until the revocation period has expired that the government department involved selects adopters for the child. Prospective adopters, therefore, do not have any contact at all with the child until that time.

In 21st-century Australia, adoption is almost a thing of the past. It is being replaced by truly child-centred alternatives. The Australian community has learned that identity and heritage are important and that we are all, in a sense, 'guardians' of our children until they reach adulthood. For children who are considered to be unsafe in their families of origin, there is the possibility of a court granting permanent guardianship. This provides the security that the children involved will not be removed from the home in which they have been placed and also that their guardians will have the right to make all decisions on behalf of those children - just as they would if the children had been born to them. Because no adoption takes place, there is no new birth certificate and no attempt to destroy the child's original identity and replace it with a false one. This means that permanent guardianship is a more honest way to care for children in need than adoption.

Adoption legislation was enacted in the past in ignorance. At the time that numbers of adoptions were high, there was no reliable evidence available of the long term effects on both parents and their children of adoption separation. The legislation, which allowed these adoptions to take place, therefore, was necessarily experimental. It took many years for the long-term impact of adoption to be felt and even longer for those affected to feel comfortable speaking out. When this did occur in Australia, however, appropriate steps were taken to support family preservation and to create more child-centred outcomes for children who were unable to live safely with their families. Family preservation programmes, which encourage and assist parents to raise their children, are taking the place of adoption programmes, which create family breakdown.

Books such as this one have an important role to play in exposing to the world the horrific realities of current adoption policy and practice in the United States. It is the responsibility of government to protect its vulnerable citizens. It is clear that the United States government is failing to fulfil this responsibility. For the sake of the families who have already suffered as a result of adoption separation and in order to protect other families from enduring that pain, changes must be made. I have no doubt that eventually the final change will come about in the United States and that truly child-centred alternatives will be devised to replace adoption. This will ensure that safe, secure homes can be provided for children in need, without the deceit and pretence inherent in adoption.

This is an honest and well-researched book written with a genuine concern for the well-being of children. It will be welcomed by all who share such a concern and who wish to work towards a better future. As has been shown in Australia, those whose lives have already been affected by adoption separation, if they work together, can be a very powerful force for change.

Sadly much of the current trade in children in the United States is instigated and directed by women. As Joss Shawyer said in 1989: “Women can and must stop putting in orders for other women’s children.”

© Evelyn Robinson, MA, Dip Ed, BSW, 2006

Evelyn Robinson is a social worker, author, and presenter who has lived and worked in Australia since 1982. She is also a mother who was separated from her son by adoption in her homeland of Scotland in 1970. They were reunited in 1991 and continue to enjoy a close relationship. Since 1994 Evelyn has been speaking at conferences and presenting seminars on the topic of the long term outcomes of adoption separation. She has travelled widely since her first book, Adoption and Loss – The Hidden Grief, was published in 2000 and has met with professionals and members of the adoption community in many countries. Her second book, Adoption and Recovery – Solving the mystery of reunion, was published in 2004. Evelyn has been involved with post-adoption services since 1989 and has worked since 1999 in a professional capacity as a post-adoption counsellor with adults who have experienced adoption separation. Her work in the post-adoption field has been acknowledged internationally and earlier this year Evelyn was keynote speaker at a conference in Bucharest on The Rights of the Child, at the invitation of the Romanian government. Evelyn’s experience and expertise have also been recognised locally and she has been invited by the new government-funded Post Adoption Support Service in South Australia to provide training for their counsellors.

Visit: www.TheStorkMarket.com

More Quick Trigger Adoption

2007-03-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

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House Panel Endorses Adoption Bill
Wednesday March 07, 2007 6:54pm Reporter: Anne Pressly

Little Rock - At the state capitol Wednesday, a House panel unanimously approved a bill that would streamline the adoptions of victims of child abuse or neglect.

This gives mothers--particularly moms of newborns--the option [THE OPTION? What are the other options?] to allow their child to be adopted by another family, without the child having to go through the state department of Health and Human Services.

Under Garrett's Law, passed in 2005, children born under the influence of illegal drugs are reported to DHHS by medical personnel.

And should House bill 2237--approved Wednesday in committee--be signed into law, the infants that would normally be turned over to the state agency could be adopted through a private agency--if that's the wish of the mother.

(Rep. David Evans, (D) Searcy) "She didn't have a choice before. DHHS would take control of the baby and then it would be adopted through them. Now, under this bill, she's going to have the option to go with a private agency...to where hopefully that child would have a good home."

Hopefully, is right! Ain't it just amazin' that they are only interested in "protecting" the INFANTS!!

A Book for your Consideration

2007-03-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

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David Kirschner, psychologist and long time adoption activist, has released a new book, ADOPTION: UNCHARTED WATERS.

I have not yet read it, but cannot wait to! It looks very exciting.

While many object to the term "adopted child syndrome" as pathologizing adoptees, Kirschner seems to very correctly point out the ways in which adoptees are all too often put into a pathological situation because of closed adoptions, secrets, lies and half truths...in other words living a crazy-making life.

"Adoption," says Kirschner, "does not necessarily give rise to psychopathology; however, it must be considered a risk factor-perhaps a precipitating one-in some families who are dysfunctional in terms of key adoption issues and parent-child interactions." Dysfunction caused by lack of proper counseling, lack of having dealt with the loss of fertility, and the amount to which there is a pretense that adoption is 'the same as if" the child were born into the family, ignoring the reality of the child's first family and his loss thereof.

"The atmosphere within an adoptive family often discourages curiosity about adoption, thereby leading the child to conclude that something painful and bad-something pertaining to his or her own character-is being kept secret."

Of course not all adoptive homes fall into this category, but a good many do to one degree or another. And too, all children are born with their own unique capabilities to cope better or worse with their environmental stimuli. We are all of us - adopted or not - products of BOTH nature and nurture; heredity and environment. Clearly living in a family system based on lies and secrets has been documented to cause and/or exacerbate many emotional problems. That is why there is ACOA for children who grow up in alcoholic families, where more often the not the alcoholism - or at least the extent to which it causes familial problems - is understated, ignored or denied totally. This is referred to as living with an elephant in the middle of the room that no one talks about.

In all too many families formed by adoption, this is the case. Either it is talked about inappropriately [chosen child] too little, or not at all. In some homes it is only brought up in anger ["I ought to send you back where you came from" or "you're not my real parents, anyhow"] because it is brewing just beneath the surface.

It is important for the public to understand the dynamics and pitfalls of adoption and this book appears to one that could make great strides in that direction.

My Week in Review - an update on The Stork Market

2007-03-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

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I am pleased to announce that since the book became available on the first of March, copies have already sold to one library, several copies have been sold in Canada, Australia...one one to Brussels, Belgium!

It is very exciting to see.

As the news comes of yet another U.S. operation stealing foreign babies - this time from Somoa - it fortifies the importance of sounding an alarm and connecting the dots of these seemingly isolated incidents while many continue to praise adoption as one big win-win situation for all. Not all adoptions are bad, but certainly not all of them good either. In fact, like most of life, there are perhaps few that could be categorized as all good...

I wrote in the book about Olympian Toby Dawson's quest to find his Korean roots. It was quite interesting to hear this young man's quotes recently after competing his search and reunion. Here is someone for whom adoption would appear to have been a God-send. He was taken from a Korean orphanage and given the best opportunities a child have - and reached great success. And yet he speaks of feeling "lost" and "confused" because of his mis-match with his parents. he speaks of not knowing in what world he belongs.

I think that many internationally and inter-racially adopted people feel this to a greater extent - and/or are more able to vocalize it.

This aspect of adoption, as expressed by Dawson, is the one that needs to be heard, and understood. Adoption is not some magic cure-all for infertility or for a child's feeling lost and alone in an orphanage. And no matter how good, caring and loving adoptive parents are they cannot erase the facts, the truth and the past of a child that is filled with pain and loss.

Dawson understand this and want to start a foundation to help Koreans keep their children in Korea.

This week I also had the opportunity to see a documentary about Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy in South Africa...and then read that Angelina Jolie is planning yet another adoption. One wonders why someone with so much wealth to give would choose to help individual children rather than build a school or send medical supplies to help a whole village? How do you walk into a impoverished two and choose just ONE child to save and leave the others behind?

And what will her children say years from now...will they and Madonna's son ans so many others not feel the same as Toby Dawson...still lost and confused and wanting to prevent others from being "saved" as he was?

A Poignantly Happy Ending...and New beginning!

2007-03-03T10:46:00.000-08:00

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US Olympic medalist Dawson reunites with biological father

By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer
February 28, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Far from the mountain where he skied to Olympic
fame, Toby Dawson found his family.

More than two decades after he was lost in a South Korean market and
eventually adopted in the United States, Dawson was reunited with his father
Wednesday.

They embraced, and Dawson said a Korean phrase he had learned for the
meeting -- "I've been waiting a long time, father."

Hugging his son at a hotel, Kim Jae-su teared up.

"I am glad to meet my son and see that he has grown up so wonderfully," Kim
said. "I am thankful that he has come to look for me even after such a long
time."

The reunion, which included a brother, was made possible by the bronze
freestyle skiing medal Dawson won at the Turin Olympics last year. The
victory earned him wide attention in the country of his birth.

Following the Olympics, dozens of would-be parents came forward to claim
Dawson was their child, including Kim. But after years of dashed hopes, the
28-year-old Dawson put off an earlier planned trip to Korea and waited for
confirmation from genetic tests before traveling here this week.

Dawson was 3 when he was lost in a market by his mother in the southern port
city of Busan, Kim said. A truck driver at the time, Kim said it was too
late when he got home to start searching for his missing child, whose
original Korean name was Bong-seok. Over the next few days, he said he
scoured local orphanages but was unable to find his son.

"I went to many orphanage houses only to hear that they didn't have anyone
like him. They wouldn't let me come inside and look for him," the
53-year-old Kim said, adding he would search orphanages whenever he had time
but eventually gave up.

"I'm not here to beat him up for what happened," Dawson said, adding that he
had a fortunate life growing up with his adoptive parents, who were ski
instructors in Vail, Colo.

At the start of a news conference, Dawson gave his biological father a
Norwegian skiing sweater that he said signified his upbringing in the sport,
which Kim immediately put on.

Dawson said he plans to use a new foundation he is starting in his name to
help work to avoid cases like his in the future.

"Being caught in limbo between two different countries and not looking like
your family is going to be tough," he said. "We need to try to keep our
children and work a little bit harder to keep these circumstances from
happening."

Dawson noted how he shared his healthy sideburns with his father, who during
the news conference reached over several times to touch Dawson's face while
they also held hands.

"My life until now has been confused," Dawson said. "I looked at my parents
and I didn't look like them. Then I also felt if I went to Korea I didn't
belong there.

"I felt like I was still lost, stuck between two different worlds," he said.

Dawson said he hoped to eventually stage a reunion with all his parents. He
also mentioned again his desire to become a professional golfer within five
years, after retiring in September from professional skiing.

Kim declined to talk publicly about Dawson's biological mother.

Also at the reunion was Dawson's younger brother, 24-year-old Kim
Hyun-cheol, who was wearing an earring in his left ear similar to those
Dawson has in both ears. All three men wrapped their arms around each other
before heading to a family lunch.

Stolen Somian Babies

2007-03-02T10:05:00.001-08:00

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Utah adoption agency hit by fraud allegations
Agency is suspected of swindling Samoans out of their children
By Pamela Manson
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 03/02/2007 01:04:16 AM MST

Operators of a private adoption agency in Utah are accused of duping parents in Samoa into giving them their children and then falsely describing the youngsters as orphans to prospective adoptive parents in the United States.
More than 80 children were illegally taken from their families by conspirators working through the Wellsville office of Focus on Children (FOC), according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday. The agency allegedly charged the adoptive parents a fee of $13,000 to facilitate the adoption and immigration of a Samoan child.
Both sides of the adoption process had acted in good faith, authorities said. The alleged fraud leaves the status of the children and their placement in U.S. homes, including some in Utah and Wyoming, uncertain.
"For the birth parents in Samoa, who believed they were only temporarily releasing their children, the pain in palpable," Thomas Depenbrock, of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, said at a Thursday news conference in Salt Lake City. "For the adoptive parents accepting children they were told were uncared for and in need of good homes, the deceit is shocking."
The indictment alleges the conspiracy began no later than March 2002 and continued through June 2005. The children ranged from infants to 12-year-olds.
U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said authorities are working to put the birth parents and adoptive parents in touch to discuss a resolution. If no agreement is reached, courts in either or both countries might become involved in determining on a case-by-case basis who gets legal custody of the adoptees.
"It is impossible to articulate how deep the pain is," Tolman said.
The indictment charges FOC and seven individuals with a total of 135 counts: Two of conspiracy, 37 of bringing in illegal aliens to the United States; 37 of encouraging or inducing illegal aliens to come to, enter or reside in the United States; 34 of fraud and misuse of visas; 19 of laundering of monetary instruments; and six of monetary transactions in property derived from unlawful activity.

Defense attorney Rebecca Hyde, who represents FOC and Karen Banks, told The Associated Press that "Focus on Children and Karen Banks have been cooperating with the federal government for many, many months. They have always endeavored to maintain the highest ethical standards they could.''

[Con artists and baby brokers always know the safest breeding grounds for their corrupt schemes:]

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Samoa. It will petition the Samoan government to deliver the other three defendants to the U.S. jurisdiction.
Adoption in Samoa does not involve any legal proceeding or a formal severance of parental rights. Samoan citizens routinely consent to the "adoption" of their children for a variety of reasons to relatives living in other parts of the country or abroad.
After the placement, the birth parents typically communicate and visit with the child, with the expectation that he or she will return to them as an adult to care for them as they age.

The indictment alleges that FOC employed recruiters in Samoa to persuade birth parents to place their children in an international adoption. It says these recruiters targeted Samoan children for adoption by surveilling marketplaces for mothers, approaching pregnant women and even conducting presentations to groups of parents about the FOC "program."
These parents allegedly were persuaded to participate in the program through lies that included:
* The adoption program was created by the U.S. government or by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to assist families in Samoa that were struggling financially or desired that their children be educated abroad. Neither the government nor the church were involved with FOC.
* The children would be "adopted" by a family in the United States and remain there until age 18, then return to Samoa. [That is what Madonna's baby's father believed as well]
* The birth family would receive letters and photos from the adoptive family. [Sound familiar?]
* The birth family might receive money either from FOC or the adoptive family until the children returned and could help take care of them.
* The adoptive family would occasionally bring the children back for visits.
* Siblings placed in the program would be adopted by the same family in the United States.
Some birth families considering placing their child in the program were given what conspirators called "humanitarian assistance," such as nominal amounts of money or bags of rice, the indictment alleges. The assistance allegedly stopped when the child was delivered to the adoptive parents.
After taking custody of the children, the recruiters would place them in a "nanny home" - the Samoan equivalent of a foster home - until the "adoption" proceedings were completed, according to the indictment.
Conditions at the nanny home operated by FOC allegedly were so poor that many children were malnourished and dehydrated. Older children reported being beaten with a broomstick when they asked for more food.
The birth parents of one little girl were so concerned about how her health had deteriorated since moving to the nanny house that they took her to a hospital, where she died two days later, the indictment says.
The defendants allegedly discouraged the adoptive parents from traveling to Samoa to pick up their newly adopted children and the ones who did go overseas were forbidden from seeing the nanny home.
FOC also employed people in Utah and Wyoming to refer children to a new family, even when the youngsters still were living with their parents in Samoa, the indictment claims. It says the defendants frequently fabricated statements about the birth family to convince prospective adoptive parents that the children were living in dire circumstances.
The case is being investigated by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
pmanson@sltrib.com

Not a Word About The Real Cause: Secret Adoptions

2007-03-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

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Wednesday February 28, 2007
The Guardian

In public, at least, they seem remarkably unfazed by what they have done. And in some senses, of course, they needn't be. They are a loving couple, who have been together for seven years and want to be with no one else. They have had four children. Beyond these details, however, the story gets more troubling. Patrick and Susan Stübing, who live in Zwenkau, near Leipzig, are brother and sister. Two of their four children have developmental problems, and all four have been taken into care. Patrick, 30, has served more than two years of a prison sentence for incest. Asked if she felt guilty about this breach of one of the last taboos, Susan, 22, simply shook her head and said: "No, I just want us to be able to live together."

Article continues
Their case is raising much prurient speculation in Germany, not least because their reaction to the threat of further imprisonment for him has not been apology and shame, but defiance - an attempt to overturn paragraph 173 of the German legal code, which forbids sex with a close relative.

What has been discussed less, is that the Stübings seem to be a textbook example of a phenomenon called genetic sexual attraction (GSA). It occurs between blood relatives who have been separated for most of their lives, and meet in adulthood; it has been known to happen in all sorts of permutations - father/daughter, birth mother/son, siblings - even, occasionally, same-sex relationships between people who would not otherwise identify themselves as homosexual.

Patrick had already been put in a children's home in East Germany when his sister was born, the third of eight children, five of whom died. (Asked in an interview what the others died of, Susan simply shrugged her shoulders.) After a lifetime spent in and out of care homes and foster families, he finally found his mother in 2000, but she died of a heart attack six months later. Brother and sister - neither of whom had known of the other's existence before this - had only each other for comfort.

But it would probably be fair to say that there would have been more to it than grief. Those who experience GSA speak of what they feel in terms we all recognise as romantic ideals of perfect love.

"As we looked at each other over lunch it was as if a light was turned on. Something had happened which was difficult to control," Tony Smedley told the Daily Mail in 2003, a week after he was found guilty at York Crown Court of having an incestuous relationship with his half sister, Janet Paveling. "It was terrifying," Paveling said. They spoke of feeling like mirror-images of each other: "Watching her was like watching myself," said Smedley. "We have the same colouring, the same skin and even the same distinctive triangle of dark-coloured freckles near the thumb on our right hands. Whatever was happening seemed awesomely powerful. When we made love it was very moving. Very intimate. Nothing could stop us. I know it's disturbing but it felt right." Janet added: "Each day we fight the impulse to be together. It has been like an obsession. We feel complete only when we are together."

"They are strangers, they can very easily be attracted to one another," says Gwen Richardson, who runs Searchline, a company dedicated to helping people to find lost relatives. She knows that sexual relationships have sometimes then developed. "You get a worrying phone call' - about a mother and a son, for example - "the mother, obviously, was married, and the marriage broke up." Or a half-brother and sister. "They were living together and one of the neighbours found out, and they had to split up because they would have been prosecuted. It's a subject that comes up as a by-product of what we do. We don't set out to get a mother and a son together, other than, you know, as mother and son."

There is more going on than simple attraction between strangers. "It was something to do with recognition. It was like kinship, the proof you're finding each other. It was just mutual, unspoken," said a respondent in one of the only scientific studies conducted of the phenomenon, by Dr Maurice Greenberg and Professor Roland Littlewood of University College London, in The British Journal of Medical Psychology in 1995. They were surprised to find that more than 50% of people who sought post-adoption counselling "experienced strong sexual feelings in reunions".

These days people are often warned this might be a possible reaction before they meet blood relatives - yet, except for the occasional memoir - such as Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss which is an account of the author's incestuous relationship with her own father - it is rarely talked about in public.

Harrison wrote in spare present tense, of the sexual affair she had with her father when she was 20 and he had just come back into her life. "My father looks at me, then, as no one has ever looked at me before." And elsewhere: "In years to come, I'll think of the [first] kiss as a kind of transforming sting, like that of a scorpion: a narcotic that spreads from my mouth to my brain. The kiss is the point at which I begin, slowly, inexorably, to fall asleep, to surrender volition, to become paralysed. It's the drug my father administers in order that he might consume me. That I might desire to be consumed."

The term "genetical sexual attraction" seems to have been coined by a woman called Barbara Gonyo, who was taken aback by the lust she felt when she was reunited with a 26-year-old son she had given up as a baby. The relationship was never consummated, because he did not reciprocate, and the feelings faded when he married. But she wrote a book about it in which she suggests, wrote Alix Kirsta in this paper three years ago, "that romantic love and erotic arousal may be the delayed by-product of 'missed bonding' that would have normally taken place between a mother and her newborn infant, or between siblings had they not been separated by adoption. Many such people, as adults, need to go through that early missed closeness. It may become sexual, or it may not."

There is certainly something childlike in the way the Stübings relate to each other. A reporter who recently organised a clandestine meeting with the couple found them sitting side by side on a bed in a motorway hotel. Much of the meeting was characterised by the couple's shoulder-shrugging, Susan Stübing's obsessive nail biting and anxious glances towards their media adviser. When questions were not directed at her, Susan, who dropped out of school at 15 with no qualifications, turned her pink pumps in circles like a child. At one point, the adviser told her: "Take that chewing gum out of your mouth." It is clear, say those who have met them, that the couple need looking after, which is one reason why, according to youth workers, their children have been taken away.

They are also far from being media-savvy. Their lawyer, Endrik Wilhelm, says they have been "overwhelmed" by the interest in their story. Many of their statements, such as "we just want to get rid of paragraph 173" sound rehearsed, and it is unclear just how much they understand about the situation in which they find themselves. When Susan became bored with the newspaper interview, she poked her brother on the back of his feet with her toes. He took her hand tenderly, as if comforting a child, and the interview was brought to a swift close.

When relationships such as this do become sexual, they tend greatly to complicate knee-jerk assumptions about abuse and incest: "There is no force, coercion, usually no betrayal of trust," Greenberg told Kirsta. "And no victim. If sex occurs, it involves consenting adults." So far as we know, this seems to have been the case with the Stübings, though Susan was very young - 16 - when they met, one reason why she has not yet been prosecuted. (Described as "slow" by her carers, she became pregnant for a fifth time when Patrick was imprisoned, by a 49-year-old man who described himself as her boyfriend. Their child, Safira, born in 2006, now lives with her father.) Many sufferers - if that is the right word - of GSA do not see it as incest at all, while at the same time they might be horrified by any suggestion of a sexual relationship with a member of their adopted family.

The Stübings' lawyer insists that the main scientific arguments behind Germany's existing law banning incest no longer hold. "Sociologically speaking, incest is not the cause of difficult problems in families, rather the consequence of them," he says.

"The risks of inheriting defects are as high as the chance of inheriting positive things," he claims, pointing out that people with inheritable conditions are not forbidden sexual intercourse. He believes that, in a modern society, laws should be used only to punish "socially damaging behaviour".

What is unusual about the Stübings is the number of children involved. They may argue, through their lawyer, that they aren't hurting anyone - "everyone should be able to do what he wants as long as it doesn't harm others" - but it could be said that they have already harmed their children. Quite apart from two of them having developmental difficulties (it is not certain whether this is because they were premature, or because they share so much genetic material), the fact that they have been taken into care, as Patrick was, means that it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the whole cycle could begin again.

In the meantime, Patrick has been voluntarily sterilised, in the hope of avoiding further prosecution. "It wouldn't be easy," says their lawyer, "but it would only have to be proved that they had slept together." All the Stübings want, he says, is to be left alone. "They want to be a family - to have that which was impossible to have in their own childhoods".

The Future is Here

2007-03-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

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India is fast cornering what is forecast as a £3 billion-a-year market in “reproductive tourism”. It has highly trained, English-speaking doctors and medical procedures that cost a third of the price charged in Europe for 'embryo adoption".

The report says couples are lining up because it is cheaper than through infertility in Europe and highlights one couple's joy in having the embryos transplanted saying: "It is a lot like adoption but you have the feeling of a natural pregnancy.”

While social workers in India fear that poor women are being exploited for “rent-a-womb” services such as surrogacy, banned for commercial gain in countries such as Australia and China...there is one major thing missing in all of these reports...

Not one word of thought or concern for the "embryo" as it grows into a human being! There is no mention who fathers these children or if one or both of the original parents remain totally anonymous "donors."

Ladies - this is how much we as birthmothers are though of in the adoption equation! We are geese that lay golden eggs - PERIOD! At best we are pitied.

Infant adoption is in no way any more altruistic than any other way of obtaining what is sought - a baby! It is simply just one of many options to "cure" infertility.

We are but handmaids.

No Falsified Birth Certificates!

2007-02-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

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The purpose of this post is to clarify my position in answer to queries I have received.

Am I anti-adoption? Not in the sense that some define that term. I recognize that there will always be children who have absolutely no family who can to raise them no matter how much help they are afforded. These children need and deserve permanent, stable families to love and care for them. They should not linger in or bounce from one foster home to another.

HOWEVER…I am totally against adoption as it practiced in this country, with lies andsecrets, or semi- one-side controlled openness, and as means of filling empty arms. I am opposed to practices which encourage the importation children from their country of origins, while there are thousands of children here needing homes.

I oppose any practice which offers adoption to an expectant mother without first fully exploring all other options and offering all necessary resources for her family to remain together.

And, I oppose all lies and secrecy in adoption – first and foremost of which is the falsification of birth certificates - for the following reasons:

1. It maintains a discriminatory status for those who are adopted treating them differently in regard to their own birth records as compared to non-adopted children and adults.

2. It is unnecessary. Why does a child need to have his/her name changed in order to be cared for? The answer is there is nothing inherent in the name change that benefits the child’s best interest. The “stigma” of illegitimacy that might have faced children in the past bearing a different surname than their parents, no longer exists in a society with a 50% divorce rate and an acceptance of same sex marriage.

3. Rather than serving the best interest of the adopted child, it serves only those who adopt. It creates encourages the proliferation of lies and secrets that meet the needs of those who adopt in order to fill their need to have a family that is the “same as if” it were biologically connected instead of helping to recognize the reality that adoptees already have a mother and father. There is no need to encourage the infant adoption – the demand for which drives a money-driven exploitive and coercive market.

It has been suggested that true open adoption could be met by providing adoptees with their original birth certificate and a certificate of adoption to be used as identification. But why? What purpose does it serve to maintain special laws that apply only to adoptees and no others? Equality is equality.

Those adopting have only one reason to re-name a child who already bears a name given to him/her by his first/original parent(s)…and that is “ownership.”

For the adoptee, especially the foreign born adoptee, it creates only confusion and identity confusion and dysphoria, not unlike what is expressed by men and women going through body image or gender dysphoria.

In any school room today half of the kids have different surnames than those they live with. If a child feels uncomfortable bearing a different surname than those raising him...at the age of 12 (the age a child can have a say in his custodial parent in cases of divorce) he or she, with the agreement of his caretakers, may legally change his name to theirs. As an adult, anyone can legally change their name with no one’s consent or agreement.

The falsified birth certificate is the foundation of the lies and secrecy upon which adoption is built. Adoption cannot be “reformed” into a truly open and honest system while remaining built on this false foundation. It needs to be torn down to its base and rebuilt from the ground up.

Psychologists have for decades said that is it necessary for adopters to recognize that adoption is NOT the same as if the child were born to you but that he has parents. Legally obliterating those parents and certifying that the child was “born to” his adopters is in direct opposition to this goal. It satisfied the needs and desires of those adopting whose demand for infants has created and perpetuates the commodification of children and the exploitation of their mothers as breeders. It needs to be nipped in the bud.

Falsified birth certificates are a flailed social engineering experiment that began in the 1940’s. We got along fine without them prior to that and can again. These draconian laws serve no purpose, are in fact harmful to those they purport to “protect” and serve, and need to be repealed!

As always, I open the flood gates for comments and differing points of view. If anyone can tell me how a falsified birth certificate is in the best interest of an adopted child or adult...please do so.

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The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry is now available from:

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Special Guardianship: A MODEL TO FOLLOW?

2007-02-26T14:27:00.000-08:00

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David Bedingfield analyses the impact on adoption proceedings of the Court of Appeal's recent decisions in Re S, Re AJ and Re M-J.

Adoption or Special Guardianship? The Impact of Re S, Re AJ and Re M-J

David Bedingfield, 4 Paper Buildings

The historical background to adoption
The concept of adoption, or the irrevocable ending of a child's legal relationship with his birth parents and the beginning of a new legal relationship with the child's adopters, has a troubled history in every legal system that has sought to provide for it.(1) Civil law inherited the Roman concepts of adoptio and adrogatio, and succession rights for descendents became inextricably a part of the legal cultures of those countries. Certain relatives under the civil law are entitled to a legitima portio, or a share of a deceased person's property, a legal concept that does not square with the irrevocable termination of parental rights. It became a part of Roman law that adoption was only permitted in order to provide an heir to the childless. Adopters under Roman law were required to be past child-bearing age and the adoptee was required to be an adult.(2) Islamic law as well does not provide for a complete termination of parent/child ties. Instead, the concept of Kafalah has been developed to provide a legal basis in Islamic law for a substitute family to provide primary care for a child.(3)

The concept of adoption under the common law has a no less controversial and confused history. The modern practice of adoption can perhaps be said to have begun in Massachusetts, in the USA, which enacted an adoption act in 1851. The concept did not gain immediate popularity in other states, however, and in fact adoption was rarely used in Massachusetts for the next half-century. The first adoption act in England and Wales, enacted in 1926, came only after five previous attempts at passing an adoption act had failed. The Hopkinson Report of 1921 set out the dilemma faced by lawmakers: the common law did not provide an appropriate legal solution for children who lived with substitute families. Informal arrangements had become more and more prevalent as a rural society transformed itself into an urban, more diffuse culture and the industrial revolution inevitably transformed intergenerational relationships. The Adoption of Children Act 1926 provided that courts might make adoption orders without parental consent, though as Professor Stephen Cretney has pointed out, the power to dispense with consent was interpreted very narrowly.(4) The Act did not ensure the child's full integration into the adoptive family. Only in 1949 were adoptive children given inheritance rights.

Professor Cretney and others have shown that during the next half century after the Adoption of Children Act 1926 adoption changed from a private or amateur activity to a professional service offered by adoption agencies staffed by trained social workers. The protection of children became the paramount consideration, rather than simply providing a service for childless couples. The Adoption of Children Act 1949 provided that placement of children for adoption would thenceforth be supervised by local authorities.

The changing face of adoption
The last quarter of the 20th century saw a radical change in this country in the nature and character of adoption. Single mothers no longer faced an overwhelmingly negative social stigma; welfare benefits for one-parent families meant that it was economically viable (if just barely) for an unmarried mother to keep her child; and, finally, the legalisation of abortion meant that many if not most unwanted pregnancies were terminated. All of this meant that by the 1990's very few infants in England and Wales were available for placement for adoption.

But from 1949, and the beginning of an adoption system that is driven by social workers and an effort to protect children, an increasing number of older children were removed from the care of abusive parents and made available for adoption. The legal concept of adoption began to be seen as a blunt tool that often did not fit the needs of individual children. A middle ground was sought for children who needed substitute families but who also would benefit from continued contact with their birth families.

The Houghton Committee, appointed in 1972 to consider the increasingly confused law of adoption, recommended that an alternative legal institution ("custodianship") be created to provide legal security for those providing long-term family care for a child.(5) The Children Act 1975 introduced custodianship as a legal concept, but sadly the provision was only brought into force in 1988 and promptly fell into legal obscurity.

The advent of the Special Guardianship Order
Two studies by two different governments — one in 1992, the other in the White Paper of December 2000 — both recommended there be a middle ground created between the absolute termination of parental/child ties and the maintaining of parental rights. The 2000 White Paper introduced the concept of Special Guardianship. The authors of the White Paper anticipated that the order would "give the carer clear responsibility for all aspects of caring for the child or young person, and for making the decisions to do with their upbringing. The child or young person will no longer be looked after by the council." The new order would "provide a firm foundation on which to build a lifelong permanent relationship between the carer and the child or young person," while at the same time "preserving the legal link between the child or young person and their birth family." It was also anticipated that the new order would "be accompanied by proper access to a full range of support services, including, where appropriate, financial support."

The Adoption and Children Act 2002 brought into being the new concept of a Special Guardianship Order. The Act's provisions were brought into effect on 31 December 2005. Some 14 months later we now have from the Court of Appeal the first appellate consideration of special guardianship orders, as well as detailed commentary from the Court regarding whether the new provisions successfully transform the recommendations of the White Paper into a viable legal structure. According to the Court, the results are somewhat mixed.

The Court of Appeal judgments
The Court of Appeal on 6 February 2007 handed down three separate judgments, not connected save for presenting similar issues (primarily, the difference between an adoption order and a special guardianship order)(6). In the case of Re S (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 54 (CA), Lord Justice Wall explained the Court's decision to hand down the judgments together. Wall LJ stated that each of the three appeals was heard by a different bench and on different dates. Only one member of the court (Wall LJ) sat on each constitution. Because this was the first time that the question of adoption vs. special guardianship has reached the Court of Appeal, all five members of the court involved in the three appeals took the view that the cases presented an excellent opportunity for the court to consider the underlying principles to be applied in considering SGO's, and to give guidance to courts of first instance on the proper approach in these cases.(7) All three judgments are therefore to be considered judgments by the Court of Appeal. Re S, in particular, requires close reading by all advocates.

Wall LJ sets out in Re S in detail the provisions of the White Paper and the resultant provisions of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. Wall LJ identified four specific issues present in the three cases before the Court:

1) whether SGO's should be confined to existing family relationships;
2) the need, under a Special Guardianship Order, for leave of court before a parents seeks to apply for a section 8 order;
3) the dispensing with parental consent to adoption;
4) whether it is ever appropriate for a court to impose a Special Guardianship Order on a party who states that this order is not in the child's or carer's best interest.

Wall LJ notes that the White Paper gives helpful illustrations of some circumstances in which SGO's would be useful:

1) The case of older children who do not wish to be legally separated from their birth families;
2) the situation where a child is being cared for on a permanent basis of members of the child's wider family;
3) the case of a child from a particular ethnic or religious community where cultural difficulties with adoption make adoption orders less likely to be honoured;
4) the situation where an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child needs a secure, permanent home, but maintains strong attachments to a family abroad.

Wall LJ notes that "the statutory provisions draw strong and clear distinctions between the status of children who are adopted, and those who are subject to lesser orders, including special guardianship."(8) Section 1 of the 2002 requires the court to address the question of the child's welfare throughout the child's life. In Wall LJ's view, the consequences of this are significant.

Section 14C(1) was inserted into the Children Act 1989 by virtue of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The provision gives to special guardians exclusive parental authority, but the entitlement is subject to a number of limitations. The fundamental differences between the status and powers of adopters and special guardians, according to Wall LJ, must be borne in mind when the court is applying the welfare checklist under both section 1(3) of the 1989 Act and section 1 of the 2002 Act.

Wall LJ made three other crucial points here:

1) the carefully constructed regime for SGO's, including the requirement of notice, the role of the court, and the report from the local authority, demonstrates the care required before a court makes a special guardianship order;
2) nothing in the statutory provisions limits the making of SGO's to a given set of circumstances, and courts must decide each case on its particular facts (making the normal common law comparison of fact situations in appeals particularly useless);
3) the key question the court must answer will be whether an adoption order or special guardianship order better serves the welfare of the child whose future is at issue.

Wall LJ then set out requirements for courts considering these issues:

1) a court must give full reasons for making one order rather than the other;
2) trial judges must be given a broad discretion to exercise their judgment regarding which order is appropriate, and therefore appeals will be discouraged;
3) in most cases the issue will not be the placement of the child, but the nature of the order required; therefore there is little need to go through the exercise of considering the no order principle;
4) for the same reason (the child will have already been placed), the delay principle is not as important as in other cases where placement remains at issue.

Wall LJ notes that the SGO regime's primary distinction is that it is "less intrusive" than adoption. It involves a "less fundamental interference with existing legal relationships." This analysis of course also fits well with the exercise required of all courts after enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998. The court must consider, in cases where the Article 8 right to family life is at issue, whether the interference with family life is a proportionate response to the harm the child faces. Wall LJ notes that in choosing between adoption and special guardianship, Article 8, ". . . is unlikely to add anything to the considerations contained in the respective welfare checklists. . . However, in some cases, the fact that the welfare objective can be achieved with less disruption of existing family relationships can properly be regarded as helping tip the balance." (9)

Wall LJ discussed the "skewing or distorting" of family relationships inevitably caused by adoption in a situations where there are pre-existing family relationships. A birth parent after an adoption retains no legal rights. The birth parent cannot apply to a court for any order regarding the child under the Children Act 1989 without leave of court. Under a special guardianship order, however, leave is only required by a birth parent if that parent seeks to apply for a residence order or a discharge of the special guardianship order. An application for further contact, or an application for a specific issue order regarding the exercise of parental responsibility, does not require leave. Wall LJ notes that of course courts might utilise s 91(14) of the Children Act 1989 to impose a leave requirement, but this provision is rarely used and there is a low burden imposed on the applicant, who must only show "an arguable case with some chance of success." (10)

Wall LJ notes the seeming anomaly of a statutory regime that is supposed to provide security but allows a birth parent untrammelled access to the courts with applications that may interfere with the exercise of PR by the special guardian. As Wall LJ states, "the need to invoke section 91(14) to protect special guardians and children from the anxiety imposed by the prospect of future litigation is a possible weakness in the scheme."

Nevertheless, as Wall LJ states, ". . . it must be accepted that special guardianship does not always provide the same permanency of protection as adoption. In our judgment, this is a factor, which in a finely balanced case, could well tip the scales in favour of adoption." (11)

Wall LJ and the court were clear that the new provisions brought into effect do give the court power to make a special guardianship order of its own motion, where no party has actively sought to apply for the order. The court must first, however, order and then consider carefully a report by the local authority. The requirement for the report is mandatory; it is unlawful for the court to make a special guardianship order without first considering the report made by the local authority. The contents of the report must follow the guidance set out in the relevant statutory instrument. (12)

But the consequences of the imposition of the order on an unwilling party must be given close and careful considering by the trial judge. As Wall LJ put it, "The jurisdictional position is very clear: the court has the power to impose a special guardianship order on an unwilling party to the proceedings. Whether or not it should do so will depend upon the facts of the individual case, including the nature of the refuser's case and its inter-relationship with the welfare of the particular child."

The facts of the three cases before the court are perhaps not as important as the Court of Appeal's approach to the cases and Wall LJ's analysis of the new Act's provisions. As Wall LJ notes, most cases require the court to make two decisions: With whom should the child live? What order should govern the outcome?

S (A Child)
In S (A Child), what impressed the trial judge was the close relationship between the proposed carer of the child and the child's birth mother.(The two were unrelated.) The mother was not deemed able to care permanently for the child, who required "more than good enough parenting." The experts agreed that the foster carer (who sought adoption) could provide this care; the mother could not.

The question presented was whether adoption or special guardianship should now govern the placement. The trial judge (HHJ Kushner QC) first determined that on the facts of the case, the child's welfare did not require adoption. Therefore there was no need to go forward under the 1976 Act to determine whether the mother was withholding her consent unreasonably. The trial judge carefully considered the factual circumstances of the case, noting the close relationship between mother and foster carer, the special difficulties posed by this child and her requirements for "more than good enough parenting," and the need to provide some security to the foster carer while not completely terminating parental ties. HHJ Kushner opted for making a special guardianship order, coupled with a section 91(14) order restricting the mother's right to make an application for contact or for specific issue orders.

On appeal, the focus was whether it was right in principle to impose a special guardianship order on a carer whose application is for adoption. The argument was also made that SGO's should be limited to those situations identified in the White Paper — that is, "wider family" placements, or placements of older children, or placements within a religious or ethnic culture that frowns on adoption, or the placement of asylum-seeking children with strong ties to families abroad. HHJ Kushner rejected that submission, as did the Court of Appeal. There are no limitations placed on judges considering whether to make the special guardianship. Instead, as always, the best interests of the child will be the paramount consideration by the judge, who should of course consider carefully the welfare checklist under s.1(3) of the Children Act 1989.

The Court in particular noted that HHJ Kushner had been entitled, on the facts, to consider that the child's welfare was best served by the making of a special guardianship order. Therefore no analysis of the reasonableness of the mother withholding her consent for adoption would be required.

The Court did hold, however, that a trial judge must order the local authority to prepare a report before making a special guardianship order, and must consider that report before the order is made.

Re AJ (A Child)
In the case of Re AJ (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 55, the trial judge made the child AJ subject to an adoption order in favour of his paternal aunt and uncle. The case was heard under the provisions of the Adoption Act 1976. The issue on appeal was whether the court should have made a special guardianship order rather than an adoption order.

The child at issue had been placed with his paternal aunt and uncle shortly after birth. AJ's parents were involved in numerous criminal offences, and the father had been violent to the child's mother. Those problems remained apparent to all at the time of final hearing. Placement with the aunt and uncle, in other words, was not really at issue. A final care order had been made in September, 2002, with the care plan including permanent placement with aunt and uncle. The plan was for long-term fostering, with regular contact to mother and father. The parents were not consistently attending contact, and in 2004 the local authority sought to change its care plan to adoption. The aunt and uncle issued an adoption for adoption in August, 2005 (before the effective date of the 2002 Act).

The trial judge focused in his judgment on the fact that the aunt and uncle knew that the parents had a right under the provisions of a special guardianship order to make applications to court for further contact, or for specific issue orders. When the parents' consent would be necessary, the aunt in particular feared there would be little cooperation. For this reasons, the aunt stated in evidence that she would prefer the child remain under a care order than be made subject to a special guardianship order. In the former case, at least the local authority could both finance any litigation and act as a buffer to keep the parents at bay.

For those reasons, in particular, the trial judge was convinced that an adoption order would be preferable. The Court of Appeal did not disturb the judge's findings or the resultant order.

M-J (A Child)
The case of M-J (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 56 involved a child born in June, 2003. The child's mother accepted she could not care for the child. The child was placed with the mother's half-sister. In November, 2006, an order for adoption was made in favour of the aunt by the Newport (Gwent) County Court. The child's mother sought appeal, arguing that a special guardianship order should have been made.

In this case, just as in AJ, the placement of the child was not really at issue. The mother had a long history of abusing narcotics. She accepted she could not care for her child. The local authority had sought rehabilitation of the child with the mother, but in 2005 the mother again began using narcotics and the plan was abandoned. Shortly thereafter, the mother's half sister, supported by the local authority, sought an order for adoption.

This application was made under the 2002 Act. The recorder who heard the matter regarded it important that the aunt had long offered the child a permanent home, and had insisted throughout that the placement be governed by adoption rather than a less intrusive order. The relationship of the mother with the child's aunt had become fraught, in part because of the mother's relapse, in part because the mother changed her mind regarding whether an adoption order should be made. The recorder found that in fact the mother really never accepted that adoption was in the child's best interest. The recorder noted that the mother was "a highly intelligent and highly impulsive woman who displayed little insight in her evidence until the very end of the consequences of removal of M-J from [the aunt's'] care. . . It was clear in her evidence that this mother sees herself very much as a victim, and much of her evidence focused on her own feelings of rejection and isolation from her family."

The mother argued that the court should make a special guardianship orders, and should make a s 91(14) order to give to the aunt the security that she desired. The recorder refused to do that, and instead made an adoption order. The recorder reasoned as follows: ". . . the fact remains that those orders do not give total security or extinguish permanently the parental responsibility of the mother." The recorder was concerned that in fact the mother really harboured a desire to reclaim the child at some point in the future. This in the recorder's view tipped the balance in favour of adoption.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the mother's appeal. Wall LJ, for the court, noted that the recorder had considered carefully the mother's submissions regarding the "skewing of family relationships" that would be caused by the making of the adoption order, and had reached the conclusion that the need for security and permanence outweighed those considerations. On the facts, and given the wide measure of discretion that must be given a trial judge, the court of appeal could not say the trial judge was wrong.

Matters arising from the cases
Several matters are made clear by the three cases:

1) Appeal in a finely balanced case where the trial judge has considered carefully the arguments for and against a special guardianship order, and considered carefully the welfare of the child, will almost inevitably fail;
2) There are no legal presumptions regarding when it is appropriate to make a special guardianship order; instead, the welfare checklist must be analysed and the court should make the order that is in the best interests of the child;
3) The local authority report is a crucial and central part of the statutory scheme, and a report is required in every case where a court is considering whether to make a special guardianship order;
4) The relationship between the carer and the birth parent will often play a determinative role in the court's considerations, in particular with regard to whether the further security afforded the carer by adoption is necessary.
5) A court making a special guardianship order should at least consider whether it is also necessary to make an order under s 91(14) of the Children Act 1989.

With regard to the section 91(14) order, it is of course NOT a legal presumption that the court must make the limiting order. But it will likely be argued that where legal security can be given to the carer by the making of a section 91(14) order, the trial judge must at least set out the reasons why the judge rejected these submissions and instead made an adoption order.

The Court of Appeal also specifically refused to give guidance in these three cases regarding the consideration by trial judges of the birth parents' refusal to give consent to adoption under the 2002 Act. Further consideration of this issue must await a case where the issue was crucial to the outcome.

NOTES
(1) See, generally, Barbara Tizard, Adoption: A Second Chance (Open Books 1977).
(2) Women could not be adrogated populi auctoritate, because they could not take part in the proceedings of the comitia. Adrogation was intended to keep a Roman family alive by providing for its continuance in the male line of descent. See R.W. Lee, The Elements of Roman Law (4th Ed) (Sweet & Maxwell 1956), p. 71. See Tizard, pp 3-8. Until recently, most European countries required adoptive parents to be childless and more than 50 years of age.
(3) See Pearl and Menski, Muslim Family Law (3rd Ed 1998), p 410. See Cretney, Masson and Bailey-Harris, Principles of Family Law (7th Ed 2002), p 792.
(4) See Cretney, Family Law in the 20th Century (2003).
(5) See Cretney, op cit, pp 705-706
(6) See Re S (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 54; Re AJ (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 55; Re: MJ (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 56.
(7) See Re S(A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 54, at 55, Wall LJ.
(8) See Wall LJ's judgement, para 44.
(9) See Wall LJ's judgment, para 49.
(10) See re P [2000] Fam 15, at 38, Butler Sloss LJ
(11) See Wall LJ's judgment at para 68.
(12) See Special Guardianship Regulations 2005, SI 2005 No. 1109, in particular Regulation 21, which sets out the matters to be dealt with in all reports for the court.

Adoption Tax Credit

2007-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

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Adopters may be able to take a tax credit of up to $10,960 in 2006 for qualifying expenses paid to adopt an eligible child. The adoption credit is an amount that you subtract from your tax liability. Qualifying adoption expenses are reasonable and necessary adoption fees, court costs, attorney fees, traveling expenses (including amounts spent for meals and lodging) while away from home, and other expenses directly related to, and whose principal purpose is for, the legal adoption of an eligible child. You can't claim expenses that violate state or federal law, or expenses that are for the adoption of your spouse's child or a surrogate parenting arrangement. Your adoption agency expenses would be qualifying expenses.

If the child is a U.S. resident or citizen, you can claim the credit on the expenditures whether or not the adoption becomes final. You only receive a credit for a foreign child in the year the adoption becomes final. For the American child the credit should be claimed in the year following the expenditure if the adoption is not finalized and the final-year adoption expenses in that year as well.

The amount of your adoption credit or exclusion is limited to $10,960 for each effort to adopt an eligible child. For this purpose, an attempt that leads to the successful adoption of a child and any unsuccessful attempt to adopt a different child are treated as one effort.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/tax_adviser/20070223_adoption_credit_a1.asp

THE STORK MARKET: NOW AVAILABLE!!!

2007-02-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

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Stork mar·ket. (stôrk märkt) n.

1. exposé of the corruption in the adoption industry; the fine line between black and gray market adoption; scams, coercion and exploitation. 2. an in-depth report on the domestic and international markets where children are the commodity and prices are based on quality (i.e. color, age, health). 3. an examination of myths that put the needs of adults, and those who profit from their desperation, before the needs of children who need homes. 4. an extensively researched and documented book that asks if adoption can be fixed—the money aspect removed—or abolished in favor of permanent guardianship, or informal adoption sans the issuance of falsified birth certificates. 5. goes further than Riben’s groundbreaking award-winning “shedding light on...The Dark Side of Adoption” (1988). 6. reveals, for the first time in print, Riben’s role in the notorious Joel Steinberg murder case.
______________________________________________________________________________________

“Riben has done it again. Once again, as in Dark Side, she has pulled back the covers and exposed the unpleasant truths and problems that need to be addressed in American adoption practices. While difficult, when we remove the rose-colored glasses many view adoption through, the conclusions that Riben comes to are inarguable. Most impressive on every count….well researched and thought out.” Annette Baran, M.S.W.,L.C.S.W., co-author The Adoption Triangle

“Mirah Riben writes that she refuses to give up. This book — a wonderful and well-integrated mix of approaches—part analysis, part case studies from the front lines, part handbook, part up-to-date law and policy review — is a testament to Riben's powerful and enduring commitment to the rights and needs of vulnerable women and their children. Riben's book is a clear, bright blueprint for change.”
Rickie Solinger, historian and author of Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America.

“Combines the historical and legal perspective with really hard hitting journalism.” Maureen Flatley, political consultant and media adviser specializing in child welfare and adoption.

AVAILABLE AT: www.AdvocatePublications.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006939682

Advocate Publications is the proud sponsor of: www.BirthParentProject.org
www.TwiceLost.org

WISCONSIN ALERT

2007-02-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

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A disgruntled found adoptee is trying to get a bill passed authorizing $5000 penalties for contact between adoptees and first parents. Although the bill number is from 2006, the woman who is pushing this is working on a draft bill for 2007 that is even worse.

If you have contacts in Wisconsin, now is the time to activate them: adoptees, first parents, searchers, genealogists, whoever.

Copy and forward widely! Get the word out on all adoption blogs and lists.

Details at: http://tinyurl.com/2mzmnh

FAQs

2007-02-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

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MaryAnne Cohen has asked numerous questions and raised every conceivable argument AGAINST what I am suggesting. I have decided rather than answer her in the comments section to begin a new post so that others who might share her concerns could have their questions answered as well.

MAC “A lauadable [sic] goal, but one that many of us have already been working on for many years from several different groups and points of view.”

To my knowledge, no one has ever tried to do anything federally, and no one has tried to ban falsified BCs. Again, I bow to you as being far more knowledgeable about the history of adoption reform than I.

MAC “You keep saying you support open records but want recipropal [sic]support for your proposals, even when the intent of what you are proposing, as far as I can see, is very different and more in the realm of the anti-adoption, replace it with guardianship view.”

Yes. Exactly. As my last post stated I think we can work from both ends at the same time and only help one another by garnering additional public support and sympathy. The perfect analogy is doctos who TREAT cancer patients and try their best to forestall death, and researchers who at the same time, work on a cure to prevent further suffering. Neither one is morally right without the other.

MAC “When you gather these people, will it be to try to pass a federal law or even a constitutional amendment outlawing amended birth certificates as you state is your goal?”

Yes. As I have said, I am THINKING right now in terms of using the ERA as a model. But of course attorneys and others with more experience may suggest another approach. Experts in these fields have done studies, research and written book ad nauseam to “educate” the public and law makers. Where has it gotten us? Not too far. It’s time for a radically new approach!

MAC “And how will that take the money out of adoption??” That would undoubtedly require separate, additional legislation, to outlaw the virtual sale of human beings as human trafficking. That could, however, also be worked on simultaneously. Cancer and AIDS researchers work on many different theories at once.

You yourself said: “I doubt that even those adoptive parents who want this information would support legislation that said adoptees had to go through life with name on their original birth certificate, first and last.” Very true. If adoption were totally open – truly enforceably open, with no false BC, similar to guardianship it is LIKELY to reduce the numbers of people wanting to adopt to those who are more concerned in truly helping a child. This combined with a great deal more effort placed on family preservation and this far less need for adoption to begin with.

MAC “I find it inconsistent that on the one hand you state that laws can be passed in small increments, "baby steps" and you take to task those who criticize this in the realm of open records, yet you are asking for support for legislation that has not got the chance of a snowball in hell to ever pass, citing a string of "dream the impossible dream" type quotes.”

Yes, it seems a daunting challenge – like climbing Mt. Everest blindfolded. It is! What I propose in terms the ERA model is perfectly consistent with taking “baby steps.” Look at how omen’s rights have improved – especially in the workplace despite it never formally “passing” federally. I think taking the tobacco industry is another fine example of grass roots teaming up with professionals to incrementally, and in a variety of different ways, greatly reduce their power and influence on future smokers while also helping past smokers.

Who is to say it hasn’t a snowball’s in hell? How do you know until you try! For myself, success it not always in reaching the exact ideal goal. Success comes from DOING instead of sitting around wringing my hands, but knowing I gave it my all. Thirty years ago you and I were 30 years younger. Twenty years from now we will be twenty years older. We can chose to either be octogenarians bemoaning the fact that all that happened in those last two decades was perhaps one more state opened their records to adults, or I can look back at the end of my days and believe that I started a ball rolling in a new direction. Did Jean Paton complete her goal in her lifetime? Was it a pipe dream? Did he follow her dream? Did it start a revolution! Yes, I am a dreamer! And proud of it. Without dreamers and visionaries nothing would ever get accomplished! What if Martin Luther King thought that integration was impossible and gave up without even trying? The list of so-called impossible things have happened just in our lifetimes is exhausting!

Here’s another quote: “Hope has two beautiful daughters, their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are.
Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” ~St. Augustine

I am ANGRY at the status quo. I see wrong and I cannot simply turn my back to it and walk away and let go on and on and on. My anger fuels my courage and resolve. I KNOW there is a better way.

MAC “in the real world there would be very little support for federal legislation such as you propose.”

Perhaps in YOUR “real” word reality that is so. It is not in mine! I dare say that only you and Karen B. of OUSA are the only two people I have heard from who are not “onboard” with this.

MAC “This is not a matter of law but of agency policy and the prevalence of open adoption today.”

The falsification of someone’s most basic identifying legal document is very much a matter of law.

MAC “And contrary to what you have stated, it would make a difference that many adult adoptees would not support this kind of legislation, because who else could legislators ask what its effect might be?”

Your sarcasm about children voting aside,…please try to understand that seeking open records for those adopted a generation ago who are now adults is in column A and seeking to stop the continuation of children waiting from birth to adulthood is in column B. Perhaps BB Church can explain this better to you than I. They are different and yet do not in any way contradict one another. It is just that we cannot go back and retroactively not falsify certificates that have already been done that way, so for those people they can be given the truth as they reach whatever age the state they are in sees fit to give anyone their birth certificates. But there is no conceivable reason on earth to continue to make adoption the secret mess it has made into since the 1940’s which hassled to it’s corruption by baby brokers. I am seeking REPEAL of these outdated laws. Does that make sense to you? Or so you think it a child is better off living a life of lies, or half lies. Knowing that he is adopted and knowing nothing more???

For me, it is a simple question. Is adoption, as it is being practiced in the US today optimal? Can it be better? Does making it better require more than simply returning access to adoptees when they are adults or is there more we can do to improve it? It IS BROKE, so let's roll up our sleeves and fix it!

I hope have addressed all of MaryAnne's questions and given a fuller understanding of my goals (which BTW, are still fermenting and forming as I write - FAR FROM not cut in stone.)

As always, I open the discussion ot more questions and comments...

The Sometimes Sharp Edges of the Adoption Triangle

2007-02-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

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“Adopted person’s civil rights invariably become subordinated in those groups and organizations that combine the disparate goals of adopted persons, (birth)parents, and adoptive parents. Repeat: Adopted person’s civil rights invariably become subordinated in those groups and organizations that combine the disparate goals of adopted persons, (birth)parents, and adoptive parents.” Joann Wolf Small, The Adoption Mystique

So important did Small believe this message to be, that she not only put it italics, she found it necessary to repeat it! It is true that adoptees’ civil rights are subordinated by some adoption reform groups. But this is not, however, dependent upon whether the group is made up of and/or designed to serve (birth)parents, adoptees, adoptive parents, or all members of the triad.

Organizations such as Bastard Nation, on the other hand, has a stated goal of a legislative change to provide more equal rights for adult adoptees. They are strictly legislative in nature, with humor and support being an aside.

Other groups and organizations, such as Concerned United Birthparents, by the nature of their mission statement have as their primary goal, support for triad members in search and ongoing reunion, or lack thereof. This is especially true of many of the newer online email lists, forums and chats. All such groups that I am aware of support open records legislation for adoptees’ rights and encourage members to write letters to the editor and to legislators, while remaining primarily supportive in nature and goal. In this sense the civil rights aspect is subordinate to support as indicated in the mission or goals of such groups.

Small’s statement is true of these groups, not because they primarily serve parents who have relinquished, but because they choose to put support first. Support groups may be triad or singular as each type of support serves a different purpose. In individual support groups, people are able to be freer about their anger while many feel that they learn a great deal of understanding and compassion for their counterpart in triad groups.

There, is a need for both support and legislative groups as they serve different purposes without in any way negating the importance of the others’ role. There is likewise a need for both joint and separate support groups.

What about politically?

Is it just the press that pits us against one another, or are the goals of adoptive parents, adoptess and (birth)parents totally disparate? Are we natural “enemies” in the “war” to humanize adoption and restore adoptee rights? Do adoptees “need” (birth)parents and/or adoptive parents to win their battle for civil right? Are (birth) and adoptive parents a help or a hindrance toward that end?
Small seems to imply that (birth)parent groups intentionally or not, trump their issues over the rights of adoptees, or have divergent issues that place adoptee’s issue in less focus. She sees their desire to find their children as disparate with the goals of adoptee civil rights.

Different, yes, but in opposition to or harming one another, I think not. Clearly there is overlap. Birthmothers support open records because it is the right thing to do and also because it will help our children find us, even if we have no right to find them. Parents who have relinquished have never spoken out against a pending bill because it does not give them the right to access of records on an equal footing with adoptees, as BN speaks out publicly opposing bills that do not go far enough to suit them.

The Nuances

There are nuances of differences between triad activists members as to the best and most expedient strategy to restore adoptee rights. This again, is across the board—not (birth)parent v. adoptee. Some are, understandably very hard line in their position and will openly denounce any legislation that starts out or becomes mired in “compromises” to their rights (vetoes, intermediaries, age restrictions, etc.). Others, adoptees who have worked in the trenches for decades and feel they have a firm grasp on the politics within their own state, are reluctantly willing to accept something, rather than nothing. The purists argue that once they get a so-called “compromise” bill they will “never” get more. Yet, if we believe that once a law is passed it can never be changed, why would any of us fight to reverse sealed records in the first place? Laws do change. Prohibition came and went in just 13 years.
Small uses civil rights and separate but equal education as an example of legislation, which while it took over sixty years, was reversed. There are, however, examples of laws affecting the rights of one group of people being enacted in increments. A prime example are the anti-smoking laws which began by requiring restaurants to provide smoking and non-smoking areas, then required that the entire restaurant be smoke-free, and are now seeking—in many states—to rid bars and even gambling casinos of smokers to protect employees.

Inasmuch as any legislation we seek and hope to see enacted – whether pure or with dreaded restrictions – only applies to those adopted between the time records were sealed and who are now adults…it seems that all of it is but a first step. No proposed legislation, no matter how “pure,” addresses the continuing injustice faced by younger adoptees or those being born right now who will still be facing the exact same challenges of living in a genealogical and medical void until they reach some magical chronologic age when they are thought to be mature enough to handle their dirty little secret – if in fact they live that long. This seems analogous to civil rights activists having asked only to integrate colleges, allowing black and white children to continue with separate but equal education until then. After all, as some argue about adoptees, they all become adults eventually.

A widening gap?

Perhaps the fastest widening and least addressed gap between activists concerns a very basic belief in the institution of adoption. Those who focus only on the wrongs done in the past – to adoptees and/or to mothers – are perhaps unaware that their message subtly supports the status quo. By requesting rights be restored to adoptees only when they reach adulthood, such groups intentionally or not, are sanctioning the practice of keeping the records sealed for adolescents and young adults and for the parents of younger children who might need such access. They are subtly endorsing and condoning the claim that the truth is potentially dangerous and is “adult only” material. The ignore the fact that every adopted person is at the mercy of his/her adoptive parents to even know that they are in fact adopted, while objecting to be infantilized and jumping through hoops such as having to pass a psychological evaluation to gain access to their records.

Small discuses at length the dysfunction inherent in adoptive families because of the pretense of being the “same as” if they were biologically connected. This pretense begins with a certified government document that states that the adoptee was in fact born to his/her adoptive parents, by nature of it being a certificate of “birth” nor adoption. Yet advocating for openness only for adults ignores the fact that adoptees’ rights are broached, not as adults, but at the time their records are falsified.
Adoptee and (birth)parent activists have survived the grief of loss and the shame we have had to live with have come out stronger for it. But we each see the situation from opposite ends, not unlike the three blind men feeling an elephant.
Many adoptees are angry about their lack of equality with non-adoptees in terms of their birth records, but otherwise are neutral to, or positive about, adoption in general.

Many (birth)parent activists, on the other hand, see the pain our children have suffered, feeling abandoned, and do not wish that on others. We see too many unnecessary adoptions and do not see adoption as something to be “promoted”–especially not in its current form. (Birth)parent activists tend to openly support open adoption (if enforceable) while adoptees are more silent on this issue. Some mothers want adoption done away with and replaced with permanent guardianship. Some adoptees agree with this but have not as of yet become organized.

In some sense, Small is right on the money. There is no one position that identifies all parents who have relinquished – not even what they call themselves – or all adoptees or adoptive parents. There is for some of us, perhaps a growing number of us, a realization that civil rights of adult adoptees is one of many things wrong with current American adoption practices.

I am not adopted. I am the mother of a child who was. I am a mother who made the greatest sacrifice a mother can make - to give her own firstborn child to others to raise because I was brainwashed into believing that I was totally incapable of being a mother alone. I was led to believe that in making such a painful choice for myself I was doing the “right” thing and offering my child a “better” life. I was never told that adoptees appear in disproportionate number sin all types of mental health facilities, and have a disproportionately higher rate of suicide.

Adoptees, such as Small and those in BN, very much dislike being pathologized when in fact they are simply reacting to a crazy-making system of lies and pretense. They therefore, made a very conscious decision several decades ago to keep “psychological need to know” out of the argument for open records and to fight for them strictly as a violation of their civil rights. This is fine for those who want the records only for adults.

As a mother, however, from day one, all through my search for my daughter, and now 39 years after the fact...what I want is support for family preservation and as few as possible unnecessary family separations. What I want is for any child who truly must be separated from his/her parents and raised by others...for it to be done in that child's best interest! For it to be done humanely and in the least harmful way.
I cannot condone under the best interests of the child, any practice that torments a child by telling him that he has other parents and then denying further knowledge of them – even such a right is granted to them as adults. I see such a practice as cruel and unusual punishment for having committed no crime. It is totally contrary to the best interests of the child.

This does not mean that I do not also support open records for adults. I would NEVER oppose such a bill and would advocate my support in terms of letter-writing and testifying for ANYONE's right to the truth!

I long for the day that those who were adopted during this secret shame-based period cans stand tall. Gay men and women were also pathologized. They have been seen as immoral, maladjusted, even perverted. For centuries they lived in secret shame knowing that "coming out" could cuase them great loss of respect, jobs, and love of family. Yet the day came when the pain of shame was greater than the fear of the truth. Adoptees are not maladjusted - the system is!

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

Quick Trigger Adoptions

2007-02-16T17:09:00.001-08:00

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Adoption and Safe Families Act tearing families apart

The Adoption and Safe Families Act is a federal law that was implemented in 1997 to help child welfare agencies in providing homes for children in their care. Under this law, the process adoption is accomplished quickly due to limitations placed on the biological parents of children. These limitations are actually time constraints within which the parents are required to achieve reunification with their children. “The act mandates that states file termination of parental rights petitions if a child has been out of the home for 15 of the most recent 22 months.”

The time constraints have caused the act to have a tremendous affect on incarcerated parents and their children. Incarcerated parents can easily lose their parental rights. “The AFSA simply exacerbated the difficulty of reuniting families, both by providing little guidance and little time to realistically address family problems. The law signaled to states that whatever minimal efforts they chose to make to reunify families were fine with Congress, so long as they ended on time, either through family reunification or, more likely, family severance.” The Agency is not required to facilitate a visit between child and incarcerated parent. They are only required to make “reasonable efforts”, which is left to the interpretation of state agencies. Caregivers may not even want child to have contact with incarcerated parent. Drug relapses and financial struggles will also impede child-parent contact. The courts do not encourage contact with incarcerated parents. The whole legal system seems built to isolate children from incarcerated parents.

The Agency is also not obligated to make “reasonable efforts” if the child was put under state’s care due to aggravated circumstances such as abandonment, sexual abuse, torture, chronic mental injury, or chronic physical harm. Another circumstance is that of an “enumerated felony”, such as “murder of another child of the parent, voluntary manslaughter, aiding, abetting, and conspiring to commit such murder or voluntary manslaughter, felony assault”. Agency will also overlook reasonable efforts if parental rights were terminated before prior to the current incident. The problem with this is that anyone who falls in these categories is viewed as undeserving of having a child. Their rights are automatically, mostly involuntarily, terminated. “Lastly, involuntary termination is unconstitutional. Involuntary termination generally punishes a parent who refuses to consent to sever his or her rights and who exercises his or her constitutional right to trial and is unsuccessful”.

Read the following for more information:

Lu, Lynn D., & Allard, Patricia E. (2006). Rebuilding Families, Reclaiming Lives. APA Monitor 31(1). Retrieved September 07, 2006

from http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/cj/FamilyRightsReports.pdf

Brainstorming Equal Rights for Adoptees

2007-02-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

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As the title of this posts suggest, I am opening up a discussion into ideas for obtaining Equal Rights for Adoptees. I would like us to think outside the box of what has been tried since Jean Paton first spoke pout on behalf of adoptees being denied their rights.

I would like us to think outside the box that says that this is a state issue.

I would like us to think outside the box that limits asking for rights only for adults, as this is NOT true equality with non-adopted persons.

I would like us to brainstorm a means of WORKING TOWARDS the end of falsified birth certificates. Working Towards may mean never reaching that goal but simply bringing public awareness to it. Working towards
may mean it taking a very long, long time...but long is better than NEVER, if we do NOTHING!

This is best exemplified by the Equal Rights Amendment for women's rights which was first proposed in 1923. While it is still not part of the U.S. Constitution, the ERA has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states. When three more states vote yes, the ERA might become the 28th Amendment. AND, no one can deny the public awareness and change in status of women's lives in the twentieth century.

Earlier this month I put out a plea for attorneys who would help us with a class action suit. I learned through a triad attorney who contacted me privately that this really was not a good idea. BUT...

What about an equal rights amendment for adoptees??? ERAAP - Equal Rights Amendment for Adopted Persons. OR: Equal Access Amendment: EAE??

Here is my FIRST ROUGH brainstorming idea on this:

WHEREAS, all individuals have a unique identity that is legally required;
WHEREAS, one's certificate of birth is most often the basis of all other forms of identity;
WHEREAS, it is one's certificate of birth that not only names an individual but also names his parents of birth;
WHEREAS, theft of such identity is a crime;
THEREFORE, be it unlawful for any person or entity to destroy, withhold, or change said identifying information from the person whom it identifies, without their clear and willing consent to do so.

OR: WE could follow more closely the ERA which states: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex" and simply change the last word to "birth status or adoption."

I put this out as food for very serious thought. Let's kick it around and see how it flies. I KNOW it will not be easy. I KNOW it will take decades. I KNOW it will take money. I am not asking for naysayers. I am asking for those who are will to TRY!

AND...let me clear: I am not asking anyone to do this INSTEAD of any other things they are currently committed to, i.e. open records for adults, search and support, inquiries, etc..
I think we can all contribute some of our time and effort to more than one cause simultaneously. This is not an either or. It is not a put-down of any other goal. It is an ADDITIONAL goal and strategy I am suggesting.

Every fight starts with a first step!

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do." William Faulkner

"You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water." ~ R. Tagore

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." ~ Edward Everett Hale

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." ~Henry David Thoreau

"No one knows what he can do till he tries." ~ Publilius Syrus

"There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo

"Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic." ~ Dave Barry

"Change starts when someone sees the next step." ~William Drayton

"The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit. "~ Wade Davis

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly." ~ Einstein

Do ya' need more motivation??? I've got more! :-)

Who's on Top? And, Who's NOT!!

2007-02-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

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CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE

1. Netherlands
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Finland
5. Spain
6. Switzerland
7. Norway
8. Italy
9. Republic of Ireland
10. Belgium
11. Germany
12. Canada
13. Greece
14. Poland
15. Czech Republic
16. France
17. Portugal
18. Austria
19. Hungary
20. United States
21. United Kingdom
Source: Unicef

The UK and United States are in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six categories covered. The six categories are material well-being, family and peer relationships, health and safety, behaviour and risks, and children's own sense of well-being (educational and subjective).

GEE, you'd think with adoption making life so much better for kids in the US (and UK) they'd rank higher!

Could it be that the countries that do not make adoption a secret are have healthier kids??

Bizarrer and More Bizarre!

2007-02-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

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I knew the adoptive parent study (see previous post) would be picked up the media far and wide...but, I was not prepared for this!

RUSH LIMBAUGH has said the following weird convoluted things about this study:

"So what they're saying is essentially that, "Hey, you know, same-sex marriage and gay adoptive parents, why, yeah, they're much better than even normal parents, much better than natural parents. Because they really want kids, and they'll go all the way and they'll fight all the taboos and so forth. They'll really, really be much better parents." This is standing everything on its head. This is what liberalism has to do. In order for liberalism to succeed -- and make no mistake, that's what this is.

This is just another arm of liberalism. This has nothing to do with true child rearing, what's better or not. What has to happen for liberalism to succeed is that the cultural norms that have been in place for thousands, gazillions of years, have to be overturned. Liberalism is a direct contradiction to the natural, to the normal, in many ways, and this is just glaring, glaring proof of it."

In addition to his totally bizarre connection to liberalism, he totally misses the meaning of "The only category in which adoptive parents fared worse was the frequency of talking with parents of other children." WE know this means they ISOLATE and do not feel "normal" and like they fit it and want to avoid difficult questions like: "How was your labor?"

Illogical Argument

2007-02-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

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You might want to write to your local newspaper and point out a major inconsistency in the analyzation of a new survey that claims: "Adoptive parents invest more time and financial resources in their children than biological parents, according to a new national study challenging arguments that have been used to oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoption."

In particular, the researchers said, adoptive parents had a pronounced edge over single-parent and stepparent families.

The researchers noted that adoptive couples, in general, were older and wealthier than biological parents, but said the adoptive parents still had an advantage — albeit smaller — when the data was reanalyzed to account for income inequality.

The researchers said their findings call into question the long-standing argument that children are best off with their biological parents. Such arguments were included in state Supreme Court rulings last year in New York and Washington that upheld laws against same-sex marriage.

THE PROBLEM with this odd cause and effect argument is in comparing apples and oranges. The first statement says that (two) adoptive COUPLE parents have an "edge" over single (and step) parents. Well two would have an advantage over one! DUH! The second sentence refers to biological prents (TWO)! Not a single parent.

NOTE: Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, welcomed the study’s findings, but cautioned against possibly exaggerated interpretations of it.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the American Educational Research Association. Powell’s co-authors were Laura Hamilton, a doctoral student at Indiana University, and Simon Cheng, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut.

Dannielynn's Life, So Far...

2007-02-11T18:05:00.001-08:00

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Her half brother died days after she was born and her mother five months later. Now this tiny baby, who stands to inherit a fortune, is living with her mother's most recent boyfriend and the man named as father, in a mansion in Nassau Bahamas, that Smith said was given to her by U.S. developer and former boyfriend G. Ben Thompson.

Thompson, however, said he had only lent it to her — and on Friday his lawyer had the locks changed. But boyfirned Howard K. Stern changed the locks and moved in with baby Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern.

Smith, in a lawsuit, had asked a court to recognize her as the owner and reject Thompson's claim on the house in the exclusive neighborhood.

The island chain's Supreme Court has scheduled a Feb. 26 hearing on the matter.

In addition to three men claiming to be the father of this child, The New York Daily News also reported Saturday that a manuscript it obtained by Smith's half-sister, Donna Hogan, says Smith froze the sperm of her late 90-year-old husband, Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, before his death and may have used it to become pregnant.

!!!

Dannielynn: Everybody's and Nobody's

2007-02-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

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While nothing to do with adoption,I was moved to comment about 5-month-old Danielynn, the infant daughter of Anna Nicole Smith. This child's life began bu being born to a well-known sex-symbol. Just days after her birth, Dannielynn's half brother Danny, for whom she is named, died of a drug overdose in their mother's hospital room, leaving Smith in a deep depression.

To cheer herself up, she had a televised commitment ceremony on a yacht in the Bahamas with her boyfriend, attorney Howard K. Stern, who is named Danielynn's father on her birth certificate. However, smith's ex-boyfriend photographer Larry Birkhead is waging a legal challenge, saying he is the father.

Now, as a cause for Smith's sudden collapse and death in a Florida Hard Rock hotel is sought a third claim for paternity has appeared. Prince Frederick von Anhalt, 59, the husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, 90, for some twenty years, said Friday that he had a decade-long affair with Anna Nicole Smith and may be her infant daughter's father.

All three men await DNA testing.

Meanwhile - where is little Daniella while all of this drama is going on? It seems Mommy went to NY leaving her infant in the care of in the Bahamas by the mother of Shane Gibson, the Bahamian immigration minister who is a close friend of Smith's.

Danielynn stands to inherit whatever Smith's case against her deceased husband's estate finally settles for.

!!!

NEW MOVIE

2007-02-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

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Interesting New Film

Six-year-old ragamuffin Vanya (Kolya Spiridinov) must choose between letting himself be adopted by an affluent Italian family, or running away from the children’s home run by a corrupt headmaster (Yuri Itskov) with the help of greedy adoption broker Madam (Maria Kuznetsova), to find the mother who abandoned him. Seeing that the older children must resort to stealing or prostitution in order to survive, plucky little Vanya decides to teach himself to read in order to steal his records and his birth mother’s address. Once he finds the address, Vanya sneaks out of the orphanage and boards a commuter train headed for the city. Fearing that Vanya will make them lose a very lucrative adoption deal, the orphanage master joins forces with Madam to find the runaway child by any means necessary.

Adoption as a PLEA BARGAIN!!

2007-02-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

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Deadly breast milk gets mother 9 months in jail
Her 5-month-old daughter died after being fed cocaine-tainted milk

Updated: 5:56 p.m. ET Feb 7, 2007

WEST BRANCH, Mich. - A woman accused of causing her infant daughter’s death by feeding her breast milk tainted with cocaine was sentenced Wednesday to nine months behind bars on a reduced charge.

Sara Shelby pleaded guilty last month to a charge of attempted manslaughter in the Aug. 21, 2005, death of 5-month-old Karie Lee Bowman.

She originally was charged with involuntary manslaughter, a felony that could have meant 15 years in prison, but she agreed to a plea deal in which she would terminate her parental rights to her other child, a 5-year-old girl.

Police said Shelby, 24, of West Branch, told them she had used cocaine two or three times the day before her daughter’s death.

A medical examiner ruled that the girl died of cocaine intoxication.

While children need protection, this sets a dangerous precedent for all nursing mothers. What about those who drink or smoke while breastfeeding?

AND...why should the infant suffer PERMANENT separation from her mother when rehab has not yet even been tried???

Coercion? This is adoption by extortion. Give up your child or sit in jail for 15 years! Attempted manslaughter?

"The law generally differentiates between levels of criminal culpability based on the mens rea, or state of mind. This is particularly true within the law of homicide, where murder requires either the intent to kill, or a state of mind called malice, or malice aforethought, which may involve an unintentional killing but with a willful disregard for life. The less serious offense of manslaughter, on the other hand, is the taking of human life but in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. Manslaughter is usually broken down into two distinct categories: voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter....involuntary manslaughter [as opposed to voluntary] sometimes called criminally negligent homicide in the United States or culpable homicide in Scotland, occurs where there is no intention to kill or cause serious injury but death is due to recklessness or criminal negligence." Wikipedia

A Doctor's Obligations

2007-02-07T19:11:00.000-08:00

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A disturbing number of doctors do not feel obligated to tell patients about medical options they oppose morally, such as abortion and teen birth control, and believe they have no duty to refer people elsewhere for such treatments, researchers say.

The survey conducted by University of Chicago, of 1,144 doctors around the country is the first major look at how physicians' religious or moral beliefs might affect patients' care. According to an American Medical Association policy statement, doctors can decline to give a treatment sought by an individual that is "incompatible with the physician's personal, religious or moral beliefs." But the physician should try to ensure the patient has "access to adequate health care."

And one can only wonder how many of these docs find it well within their "obligation" to suggest and arrange adoptions!

2007-02-06T09:22:00.001-08:00

The Exploitation of Mothers for Their Babies

2007-02-05T16:04:00.000-08:00

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DISGUTINGLY BLATANT EXPLOITATION OF THE POOR

American couples head to India for cheaper fertility serhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifvices

MUMBAI, India - Jyoti Dave is pregnant, but when the 30-year-old gives birth in March the baby will not be taken home to bond with her other child, but will instead be handed over to an American couple unable to conceive.

For her trouble, the Indian surrogate mother will be paid. She won’t say how much, but she says it’s money she desperately needs to feed her poor family after an industrial accident left the family’s only breadwinnner unable to work.

“My husband lost his limbs working in the factory,” Dave told Reuters. “We could not manage even a meal a day. That is when I decided to rent out my womb.”

Surrogate motherhood is among the latest in a long list of roles being outsourced to India, where rent-a-womb services are far cheaper than in the West.

“In the U.S. a childless couple would have to spend anything up to $50,000,” Gautam Allahbadia, a fertility specialist who helped a Singaporean couple obtain a child through an Indian surrogate last year, told Reuters.

“In India, it’s done for $10,000-$12,000.”

Fertility clinics usually charge $2,000-$3,000 for the procedure while a surrogate is paid anything between $3,000 and $6,000, a fortune in a country with an annual per capita income of around $500.

But the practice is not without its critics in India with some calling it the “commoditization of motherhood” and an exploitation of the poor by the rich.

“It’s true I’m doing this for money, but is it also not true that a childless couple is benefiting?” said Rituja, a surrogate mother in Mumbai, who declined to give her full name.

Money meets convenience
For the surrogates — usually lower middleclass housewives — money is the primary motivator.

For their clients it’s infertility or — some claim — educated working women turning to hired wombs to avoid a pregnancy affecting careers.

But there is also a social dimension to their service, an empathy with the childless in a society that views reproduction as a sacred obligation, and believes good deeds performed in this life are rewarded in the next one, experts say.

“Surrogate mothers are giving their (the eventual parents’) lives a new meaning. For them the money they pay is just a token gesture that by no way substitutes their gratefulness,” said Deepak Kabir, a Mumbai-based gynecologist.

While there are no official figures it’s estimated between 100-150 surrogate babies are born each year in India, though the number of failed attempts is likely to be far higher.

Yashodhara Mhatre, a fertility consultant at Mumbai’s Center for Human Reproduction, says that while there are no comprehensive figures available perhaps 500-600 surrogate babies are born each year throughout the world.

WANTED: Lawyers, Law Students, Legal Assistants...

2007-02-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

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"IDENTITY FRAUD - also known as document fraud, is the manufacturing, counterfeiting, alteration, sale and/or use of identity documents and other fraudulent documents to circumvent immigration laws or for other criminal activity. Identity fraud does not itself confer lawful status upon the perpetrator. Identity fraud often underlies or supports the crime of benefit fraud. Identity fraud in some cases also involves identity theft, a crime in which an imposter takes on the identity of a real person (living or deceased) for some illegal purpose."

Is it not illegal in any state to manufacture or use a false driver's license or other form of official ID? If it's illegal for an individual to manufacture false ID, what about the state that issues false birth certificates?

WANTED: anyone with a legal background or the know-how to find laws pertaining to state-issued fraudulent documents.

Once we have found the exact law that is in violation...we need an adoptee in each state to challenge the state in a class-action suit on behalf of all adoptees in that state who have been issued false birth certificates.

If we lose in any state, we take it to the U.S. Supreme Court and force a decision - with public support - that the federal government make it illegal from this point forward for any state to issue a certificate of birth with people named as parents who did not conceive and birth the child. People are not born into their adoptive families. It requires a legal action which should be duly noted.

Since this would affect only adoption moving forward from this point, it would not detract from the quest of those adopted in the past seeking open records. It could only help as it will generate a great deal of public understanding, sympathy and support to an issue that is very much misunderstood. It takes the issue totally away from "birthmother versus adoptee."

Some claim that a class-action suit was tried and failed, referring the ALMA's suit in NY. However, this is totally different. ALMA's suit was to gain access to records for those already adopted.

SHOW YOUR SUPPORT!

2007-02-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

SUPPORT Adoptee EQUALITY!

SUPPORT Aoptee EQUAL RIGHTS!

Get your Red, White and Blue OVAL

CAR MAGNET

ONLY at:

www.AdvocatePublications.com

Two Tragedies

2007-02-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

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Two babies that no Safe Haven could have saved:

Newborn baby found dead in Brooklyn
Teenage mother allegedly thrown the baby
WABC By Jim Dolan

(Brooklyn - WABC, February 3, 2007) - In Brooklyn tonight, a teenage girl is accused of giving birth in her parent's apartment, killing her newborn son and then trying to hide it.
The tragic events played out in the Crown Heights and that's where Eyewitness News reporter Jim Dolan has more.

There is nothing about this story that won't break your heart. The 14-year-old girl who gave birth to the baby and the newborn baby itself, it's numbing in its sadness.

Medical examiner was brought to the scene Saturday to claim the body of the new born baby.

A 14-year-old girl had the baby last night apparently by herself in her bedroom. Her parents claim they had no idea their 14-year-old daughter was pregnant.

Alone and truly frightened, police say, she threw the baby out the window and in to the courtyard in the back of the building.

The girl was sick after the delivery and went to the hospital where they realized right away she had delivered a baby.

They called the police and the baby was found dead in the courtyard where the 14-year-old mother had allegedly thrown him.

"I was stunned," one of neighbors said. "I'm not thinking this would happen in my neighborhood."

"She was unable to talk to her family. If she was unable to, she should go to the church," the other neighbor said.

Police Find Family Heirloom Is Mummified Baby
Investigators To Study Mummified Baby Kept By N.H. Family

UPDATED: 11:38 am EDT April 24, 2006

CONCORD, N.H. -- A family heirloom is not going over well with police.

The mummified body of a baby kept by a Concord, N.H., family has drawn attention from investigators. (Click here to see an image of the mummified baby. Warning: The image is graphic.)

The current keeper of the baby, Charles Peavey, said the tiny mummy has been passed down in his family for many years. Concord police recently got word of the remains and they took them in for testing. A forensic anthropologist will examine the tiny corpse.

Peavey said the mummy belonged to his great-great uncle, who was born in Ashland in 1850. The family estimated that the mummy is 90 years old.

It was discovered among the uncle's possessions in 1947 in Manchester, N.H.

Police said the testing on the corpse could take a month or more.

The medical examiner is conducting an autopsy to find out if the baby died from the fall or from the frigid temperatures or something else all together.

The 14-year-old mother has not yet been charged but is in custody.

Russian Orphans

2007-01-31T20:26:00.001-08:00

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Russia probe into 'gagged' babies
By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Moscow

Russian prosecutors are investigating allegations that hospital staff in Yekaterinburg gagged babies because they did not want to hear them crying.

The case only came to light because a patient at the hospital happened to hear the muffled cries of the children, who are all orphans.

She used her mobile phone to film the babies lying in their cots with their mouths covered with tape.

The case has caused widespread shock in Russia with widespread media coverage.

The patient says she approached the nurse in the ward and was initially told to mind her own business but eventually succeeded in getting the gags removed.

The nurse no longer works at the hospital and prosecutors have opened a criminal case.

It is alleged the babies were silenced because there were too few staff to deal with them.

Russians are used to scandals in the hospital here but this case has touched a raw nerve.

FrankenOrphans

2007-01-29T12:28:00.000-08:00

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What is the definition of an orphan? No, it's not a trick question.

An orphan is the child of deceased parents.

Why then would someone INTENTIONALLY want to bring an innocent life inot thre world whose father is dead, and mother is "anonymous?"

According to a news article several people! grandparents with a need to have their "name carried on" and a grandchild to replace their deceased sons. Talk about a heavy load to place on a child...not to mention the creepiness and the confusion.

Try, learning that you were conceived from sperm extracted from you daddy AFTER he was DEAD!

Do people who do these garish things - and the courts that allow them to - give any concern to the best interest of these creations?
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Besides, the potential mess surrogacy often creates when the mother she decides she cannot let go so easily, after all.

-------

Court grants parents the right to impregnate stranger with son's sperm

JERUSALEM - In a precedent-setting decision, an Israeli court has ruled that a dead soldier’s family can use his sperm to impregnate a woman he never met.

Keivan Cohen, 20, was shot dead in 2002 by a Palestinian sniper in the Gaza Strip. He was single and left no will. But at the urging of his parents, a sample of his sperm was taken two hours after his death and has been stored in a hospital since.

When the family tried to gain access to the sperm, however, the hospital refused, on the ground that only a spouse could make such a request. Arguing that their son yearned to raise a family, his parents challenged that decision in court. And on Jan. 15, after a four-year legal battle, a Tel Aviv court granted the family’s wish and ruled that the sperm could be injected into a woman selected by Cohen’s family.

Rosenbaum said she knew of more than 100 cases of Israeli soldiers who, before last summer’s war with Lebanese guerillas, asked to have their sperm saved if they were killed. American soldiers have also begun donating sperm before heading to Iraq, she said.

“I think it is a human revolution,” Rosenblum said. “Ten years ago, who would believe that a human being can continue after he has died. I think it is great for humanity.”

Rosenblum said the woman who is to act as surrogate mother has requested to remain anonymous.

“She’s like family to us,” Rachel Cohen told the Tribune. “Cruel and good fate brought us together.”

WHERE HAVE HEARD THAT BEFORE??!! She's "family" until she lays the golden egg...and Heaven forbid she decides she wants to really be a mother!

Sex, Lies, POLITICS and Adoption

2007-01-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

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It is people like Gov. Crist - who refused to take a DNA to confirm or deny that a child of an affair is his...THIS is why records are sealed! THIS is who they are protecting. More often men, than mothers!

Crist won't comment on speculation he's child's dad
BY MARY ELLEN KLAS
meklas@MiamiHerald.com

NO COMMENT: Gov. Charlie Crist would not comment on a request by the family of an adopted girl to confirm whether or not he is her father. Rebecca O'Dell Townsend, right, is the mother.

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist said today he would ''not dignify with a comment'' a request from the parents of a girl adopted 17 years ago to confirm whether or not he is the child's biological father.

The couple, Marshall and Cecilia Tucker of St. Petersburg, told the St. Petersburg Times in today's editions that they have documentation indicating that the biological mother is Rebecca O'Dell Townsend, who has claimed that the governor is the father of the child. But the adoptive family said they have not officially asked Crist to take a DNA test to determine if he is the biological father.

The couple told The Times they want nothing from the governor but are primarily concerned that their daughter, now in college, could be embroiled in a political controversy because of the persistent unanswered questions surrounding Crist's involvement with the child's mother.

Crist has denied Townsend's paternity allegations since they surfaced before the 2006 election primary. At that time, documents were distributed to reporters that showed that in May 1989, he signed a paper waiving parental rights, which allowed Townsend to go forward with adoption proceedings.

''Parenthood by myself is not possible as I never consummated the act necessary for parenthood,'' Crist wrote in the 1989 affidavit. Crist also signed papers consenting to the girl's adoption in June 1989, stating: ''I deny paternity of this child and claim no parental rights in relation to the child.'' The child was born on June 23, 1989.

The Tuckers have made repeated attempts through friends and relatives of the governor to speak with him, but none of their calls or requests have been answered.

The Tuckers' daughter was not identified by The Times but, in an interview, she said: ``It's not that I want anything from him, but if he is my birth father, I think my curiosity is justified.''

The governor was asked by reporters today if he planned to end the matter and consent to a DNA test now that the child in question has come forward.

''There's nothing to it, and I'm not going to dignify it with any further comment,'' Crist said.

The Tuckers could not be reached for comment.

State adoption records made public

2007-01-25T15:14:00.000-08:00

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Database glitch reveals private info

MILWAUKEE (AP) - A teacher on issues related to computer security and ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater says he stumbled across a piece of his son's adoption record while searching a state-run court records Internet database looking for his parking citation.

"I was stunned," David Munro told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I knew some sealed records, including ours, had been partially revealed. I had no idea what the scope was."

Pieces of adoption records involving about 200 families were publicly exposed on the state system for about four months, authorities said.

But Jean M. Bousquet, chief information officer for the Wisconsin Consolidated Court Automation Programs, said no specific case information on the families was revealed. She characterized the situation as an anomaly and said she was unaware of it ever happening in the past.

The database Munro used is commonly referred to as CCAP, which stands for Consolidated Court Automation Programs, and it was implemented in 1999 to hold court records statewide.

There are more than 17.5 million cases stored on the CCAP system, of which 1.26 million are coded as confidential and not available for public viewing, records show. The latter include adoptions, juvenile records, mental health commitments, search warrants and terminations of parental rights.

Munro said he was checking CCAP to see what his students would be able to find out about him after he assigned them to use the database to look up information on themselves.

"Students get very bored if you start talking about ethics without any context," he said. "I'll say, 'Do any of you have a drinking conviction that your parents don't know about?' "

Munro said he came across a record that listed both him and his wife with the letter "P" after their case number, and it was cross-referenced with the case of a person they had never heard of who had "A" after his case number.

He said he searched the Internet for the name cross-referenced to his entry, and he came up with six listings in Wisconsin. He figured any one of them could be his son's biological family, but he didn't contact them.

"Our son, Matthew, has known he was adopted since he's talked, so I didn't see it personally as that big a deal," Munro said. "I was more alarmed for other adopted families. What if someone in my class checks CCAP and finds out they have a half brother or half sister they didn't even know about? It could be devastating for a family. These records are sealed for a reason."

Bousquet said counties are responsible for coding cases properly so the CCAP system can decipher whether the cases should be displayed on public access or not.

Victims of Child Welfare Memorial Day

2007-01-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

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-Victims of Child Welfare Memorial Day-

Government agencies, Social workers, judges they all make decisions -- and often GROSS MISTAKES! -- on what is in the BEST Interest of Children ... decisions which often determine their destiny.

Sadly, when the wrong decisions are made - Children are murdered!
They are beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered.

Who is responsible ?
The One making the decisions!
WE are asking for justice ... for Help!

Help never came for Angellika Nicole Arndt , Isaac Lethbridge,Daniel Jack Matthews, Ricky Holland, Christopher Michael, Sirita Sotelo, Nicholas Contreras, Sarah Angelina Chavez, Martin Lee Anderson,Ebony Smith,Kayla Allen,Candice Raynor...... and sadly many, many more but perhaps one day justice will come for them all. For these children, it's too late to turn back the hands of time. May the spirits of those lost rest in peace and may we never forget or ignore what happened to them. http://suncanaa.com/in_memory_

In The Name of Those Children
We are asking For:
-Victims of Child Welfare Memorial Day-
to remember those who have died as a result of Child Welfare in their lives. -

Take Action Send Citizen Request To: The White House
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/986173347

"When will justice come? When those who are not injured become as indignant as those who are." -Leon Tolstoy

Viat the memorial site at: http://protected-to-death-by-cps.memory-of.com/

VICTORY for Anna ae

2007-01-24T08:39:00.000-08:00

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The Tennessee Supreme Court recently ruled that it was clear that the parents of a little girl, Mr and Mrs Hes, gave up Anna Mae "as a temporary measure to provide health insurance" for her, "with the full intent that custody would be returned." The Bakers, however refused to return her and the case dragged on for seven years, leaving the press to drag out it's standard retort that the child was now "seprated from the only parents she has ever known."

Why did we not hear such a refrain when Shawn Hornbeck was returned after 4 years with his captor? Even when children are kidnapped as infants, with no prior connection to their rightful family, you would never hear such a "complaint."

When will they start to charge people who defy court orders to return a child with kidnapping? Why is it that once there is any assumption of "adoption" it turns a kidnapping - a hostage taking - an abduction - into something much less devious and sympathy turns to the wrong-doers? Even Joel Steinberg - the monster - was never charged with kidnapping. Instead it was called an "illegal adoption." That's an oxymoron. An adoption is a legal arrangement, nothing more. If not done legally then it is not an adoption - it's a kidnapping.

Why is it that in MANY cases, even when it is determined that the adoption WAS illegal, i.e. fraud was committed, those who "illegally adopted' get tot keep the spoils of their crime?

Clearly the Bakers knew what the court knew. They have other children. Why couldn't they simply return the child as they had originally agreed to? Isn't not returning her the same as stealing her? Why are these cases allowed to drag on for so long making this child's transfer back to her parents a terrible situation?

I hope that this case gets lots of publicity and helps continue the downturn in international adoptions. Maybe this will make people think twice about the 'safety" and protection from natural parents that adopting internationally allegedly brings.

Strangers Get Child Who Has Family

2007-01-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

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Family questions DHS decision to allow adoption of murdered woman's daughter
By DEB NICKLAY, Courier Lee News Service

CHARLES CITY --- The image shows a dark-eyed girl, grinning, her arms wrapped around the neck of little girl's grandfather.

Lori Kuykendall is afraid photographs, like that one, are the only reminders her family will have of her grandniece, Destiney Martinez Fisher.

The Iowa Department of Human Services and Floyd County courts allowed the 7-year-old to be adopted outside her biological family even though blood relatives wanted the girl.

"The state's motto is that 'Iowa works to keep children in the family home.' Not in our case," said Kuykendall, 43.

Kuykendall and her husband, Mike, the parents of two grown children, believe the state should have placed Destiney with them. The girl is the daughter of the late Rachel Fisher, who was murdered. Lori is the sister of Destiney's maternal grandfather, Dale Fisher.

Court records show denial of Lori Kuykendall's petition to adopt Destiney was based primarily on her husband Mike Kuykendall's three drunken driving convictions. Lori Kuykendall said the last conviction was more than 10 years ago.

"Anyone that knows me knows I was the best candidate to raise and love this child," Lori Kuykendall said.

DHS rarely comments on specific cases, but in an unusual departure spokesman Roger Munns said the Kuykendall family had ample time to make its case for adoption. The state ultimately concluded living with another family is best for Destiney.

"The short explanation is, independent observers and decision-makers all agree that a nurturing, stable family has been found and that the alternatives proposed by the family would not have been in the child's best interest," Munns said.

Court records are available regarding Lori Kuykendall's application for a judicial review of the case. The information shows those charged with determining Destiney's fate --- Marilyn Dettmer, then county attorney in Floyd County; social workers; Destiney's court-appointed special advocate and her foster parents --- could not ignore Mike Kuykendall's past alcohol-related driving arrests.

Lori Kuykendall's application was denied in June 2006 following Destiney's adoption. The decision marked the family's second loss.

Destiney's mother, Rachel Fisher, 22, died in October 2003. She lived near New Hampton but was shot to death by her boyfriend, Rick DeVries. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Rachel Fisher led a troubled life, according to her family, and she was facing felony burglary charges before her death.

Authorities removed Destiney from Fisher's home before the murder, according to court records. The information indicates the child was being exposed to substance abuse. A judge terminated the parental rights of Destiney's father, Gonzolo Martinez, in 2005.

The court placed Destiney with her maternal grandmother. The girl entered the foster care system a few months before Rachel Fisher was murdered.

Lori Kuykendall hired three successive lawyers in an attempt to stay in contact with Destiney. Her efforts were hobbled, she says, by an insensitive court system and social workers. One, she claims, refused to bring Destiney to Rachel Fisher's funeral.

Officials maintain their interest is only in providing what is best for Destiney.

Iowa Department of Corrections records show three OWI convictions for Mike Kuykendall. The last was in 1995. Mike Kuykendall entered counseling at Prairie Ridge Addiction Treatment Services in 1998, according to court records.

Mike Kuykendall was also charged with domestic abuse in 1993, though reports said he only damaged items in a house where no one else was present.

Lori Kuykendall says all of that information is old news.

" ... People make mistakes and learn from them," she said.

"He enjoys having a few drinks at night. Nothing wrong with that after a hard day's work."

She added the couple raised two daughters who attended college and got full-time jobs.

Lori Kuykendall alleges DHS officials were "against us from the get-go."

"They never worked to keep Destiney in our family home," she said.

Lori Kuykendall said the state pushed adoption and dissuaded the family from having contact with Destiney. She said she was allowed only four supervised visits with the girl following Rachel Fisher's murder.

On an appeal from a family therapist working for Lutheran Services in Iowa, Dettmer, the former county attorney, said the visits should be discontinued. Lutheran Services is licensed to conduct home studies of people planning to adopt children and is a subcontractor for the state.

In a letter in 2004 to Judge Gerald Magee in Floyd County, a social worker repeatedly characterized Destiney, then 5, as refusing to interact with Lori Kuykendall.

Lori Kuykendall kept extensive documentation and her version of events is different.

"You have to remember her mom was murdered in October 2003 and it was almost a year after that before I got visitations for short periods of time outside of her foster home," she said.

Munns said the state is required to check backgrounds, do home studies and conduct interviews.

"The applications for adoption were denied for a variety of reasons, such as unstable living situations," Munns said. "One denial was appealed twice (by the Kuykendalls), with an administrative law judge upholding the decisions both times."

Lori Kuykendall still questions the outcome and its effect on Destiney.

"I wonder what goes through her little head since we were never able to tell her that we were fighting for her. She just has to feel like she was not wanted by her family."

And she blames authorities.

"To me, they wanted me out of the picture of seeing Destiney."

Contact Deb Nicklay at (641) 421-0531 or deb.nicklay@globegazette.com.

BOO!

2007-01-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

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State ordered to offer pro-adoption license plates

CHICAGO - A federal judge ordered state officials Monday to offer license plates with the pro-adoption motto "Choose Life," brushing aside claims that the slogan is really a thinly disguised anti-abortion message.

Judge David H. Coar acknowledged concerns that the motto "Choose Life" could be considered an anti-abortion slogan - a worry that has doomed several years of efforts to get state legislative approval of the plates.

Coar said in his 20-page opinion he assumed that the request for a "Choose Life" license plate was prompted by a sincere interest in promoting adoption. He said the state must issue the plate as long as sponsors of the idea can meet certain numerical and design requirements.

State law initially required 10,000 people willing to buy such plates before they could be issued but that number now has been reduced to 850.

The secretary of state's office already issues 60 different kinds of specialty license plates to Illinois motorists. Groups with special plates dedicated to their interests range from pet lovers to environmentalists.

A group called Choose Life Illinois Inc., made up largely of adoption advocates, has been trying for several years to get legislative approval.

The group's president, Jim Finnegan, was not reached immediately for comment Monday night. A message was left on his answering machine.

Some legislators have said they distrust putting the slogan on Illinois license plates, believing it sounds an anti-abortion message.

State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, reached Monday night, said he believed the message was designed to campaign for a ban on abortions, saying both the adoption and anti-abortion causes have a number of the same sponsors.

"The anti-choice folks will look for any edge they can find to push their agenda," Lang said.

State Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, a sponsor of the measure, hailed Coar's decision. He scoffed at the notion that the "Choose Life" campaign was a way of getting an anti-abortion message onto state highways.

"It's a pro-life message, for children, not necessarily abortion," he said. He acknowledged that the measure had been killed in committee at the legislature by critics who saw the message in terms of the abortion issue.

Former state Sen. Patrick O'Malley, R-Palos Park, another sponsor, said in a telephone interview Monday night that it made no difference even if "Choose Life" did represent an anti-abortion slogan.

"Does that make it bad?" O'Malley said. "Whether it is or it isn't you should still be allowed to express yourself."

Among those who were critical of the legislation when it was introduced was U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., then a state senator.

"If we're going to promote one side, the other side has to be promoted as well," Obama said at the time.

Coar said in his opinion that it was "undisputed that the reason for not approving the plate was because of the politically controversial nature of the message."

But he said the message would not be relevant in any case.

"The First Amendment protects unpopular, even some hateful speech," he said. "The message conveyed by the proposed license plate is subject to First Amendment protection."

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White's office opposed the suit, saying it believes that there must be legislative approval before it can issue any kind of specialty license plates.

A spokesman, David Druker, said that the secretary of state's office plans to appeal Coar's decision to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We have no opinion on the message," Druker said.

Backwards Logic

2007-01-21T20:11:00.000-08:00

As we know, women have been paid to provide eggs for the infertile for many years now.

Now, in questions is asking women to donate eggs for stem cell research. The debate is over such donors would be paid over and above reasonable expenses, such as those paid to volunteers in a drug study. Donating eggs requires spending 40 to 56 hours in medical offices, being interviewed, counseled and subjected to a surgical procedure, under sedation, that retrieves eggs from her body. Before that procedure, she takes hormone injections daily for more than a week to stimulate egg development.

I was recently contacted, for instance, and asked if I would participate in a study testing an arthritis drugs' effects on stomach ulcers. It involved screening and then a series of three endoscopies. The pay was $30 for the first visit, $100 for each endoscopy, and cab fare.

Yet egg "donors" for use to impregnate someone are paid $5-$10,0000 and more.

Feminists are reportedly divided on the issue of compensatory payment for egg donations.

One center has no position on paying women to provide eggs for fertility clinics, but holds that if women give eggs for stem cell research, they should only be reimbursed for expenses, including lost wages.

Isn't this ass backwards?

The "logic" is that is it more likely to produce a baby by using the eggs for that purpose than to find a cure through stem cell research. More likely...that's the only criteria??? Makes no sense to me.

AND, some feminists argue that poor women might be exploited! Gee whiz, ya' think? And yet far too few feminists are concerned about the exploitation of poor mothers for their live babies!

It seems a lot more noble to possibly help cure millions of people than to help one selfish woman have a child instead of adopting a child.

So what's so altruistic about creating babies...like the twins created by gay man in the previous story!

Could it Get any Messier??

2007-01-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

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State appeals twin girls' adoption by N.J. man
At issue is whether infants born to surrogate were 'hard to place'

Get out your score core and a couple of colored pencils to keep track of this disaster!

By Kevin Corcoran
kevin.corcoran@indystar.com
Months after a Hamilton County judge decided in closed court to allow an unmarried New Jersey man to adopt twin girls over the objection of child welfare officials, the state is appealing the decision.

The state's notice to the Indiana Court of Appeals indicates officials will challenge whether the blond, blue-eyed girls, born six weeks early to a surrogate mother at Methodist Hospital in April 2005, had special needs making them hard to place.
That's a requirement before residents of other states can adopt in Indiana.
Attorneys for the Indiana Department of Child Services say the adoptions also violated interstate laws meant to ensure that children adopted across state lines end up in safe homes, according to the court filings, which the appeals court clerk has refused to publicly release.
James W. Payne, Indiana's top child-welfare official, acknowledged he authorized appealing the adoptions by Stephen F. Melinger, 60, Union City, N.J.
"We think there are issues that are significant to the business of child welfare and child safety," Payne said.
Payne declined to answer any specific questions, citing warnings from Hamilton Superior Court Judge William J. Hughes to the parties involved not to discuss the adoptions. Payne said he was worried about being found in contempt if he says too much.
Melinger's attorney, Steven C. Litz, filed an emergency motion in Hamilton County last week seeking a hearing on whether parties in the case should be held in contempt for violating confidentiality orders.
Litz's motion also asked for an emergency restraining order against The Indianapolis Star prohibiting it "from publishing further articles relating to this matter, including the filing of this motion." Hughes denied that motion Thursday.
Litz, whose company, Monrovia-based Surrogate Mothers Inc., advertises for clients, surrogates and egg donors on the Internet, declined comment.
Melinger did not return a phone call to his New Jersey home this past week. After taking a leave of absence to adopt the girls in Indiana, he is back at Roosevelt Elementary School in Union City as an instructor, according to the school's Web site.
Neighbors interviewed Friday said that more than six months ago Melinger moved out of a tiny apartment carved out of a turn-of-the-century wood-frame house, saying he needed more room for the twins to satisfy the adoption court.
Before the move, neighbor Edwin Estrada said, Melinger, who lived alone, often would leave the children in the care of his landlord, Miriam Mantilla. William Alvarez, owner of Willy's Grocery, a bodega across the street, described Melinger as a polite customer who mostly kept to himself; he said he has not seen Melinger since the move.
Hughes, the Hamilton County judge who gave Melinger custody of the now 21-month-old twins, Karen Zaria and Kathy Zee, declined comment.

Questions led to probe
As reported first in The Star in July 2005, court records show Melinger hired a 23-year-old woman, Zaria N. Huffman, then of Laurel Bay, S.C., through Litz's Surrogate Mothers firm to carry the babies.
Huffman flew to Indianapolis to give birth. Melinger drove from New Jersey to pick up the girls. Litz traveled nearly 50 miles from Morgan County to have Hughes approve the adoption paperwork in Noblesville. No one associated with the case has any connection with Hamilton County, where Hughes' court is located.
But the adoptions, approved in 21 days, ran into trouble after Marion County officials opened a child welfare investigation.
Melinger had raised concerns among hospital staff by showing up in Methodist's neonatal intensive-care unit to visit the newborns with a live bird in the left sleeve of his suit jacket and, later, bird feces on his clothing.
Nurses also were concerned that he did not seem to know how to care for the children and planned to drive them back to New Jersey by himself.
Marion County officials also uncovered inconsistencies in the adoption paperwork. For instance, Huffman, who is black, was identified as the girls' biological mother. The girls are white.
Melinger was identified as the biological father in a home study, while other adoption paperwork stated Melinger's sperm had been mixed with that of an anonymous donor. Litz later told The Star that Melinger was not the father, which was why Melinger had to adopt.
Litz acknowledged it was possible an egg donor had been used. If that were the case, adoption releases should have been filed with Hughes' court by the egg donor and the other sperm donor; none was filed.
Court records also show the adoptions were approved in April 2005 despite the absence of a legally required study of Melinger's New Jersey home or a period of preadoption supervision by an Indiana-licensed agency.
Marion Superior Court Judge Marilyn A. Moores, who was then overseeing Melinger's child welfare case, voiced concerns about the adoption to the U.S. attorney's office. She also made public the Melinger child welfare case file, citing public policy questions raised by the adoptions.
The FBI and Indiana State Police opened preliminary inquiries into Litz and his company that did not result in criminal investigations, spokesmen for both agencies said.
Within days of the initial report in 2005 by The Star on the Melinger adoptions, Hughes reopened the adoption case and appointed a court employee, Shelley Hiles Haymaker, as guardian for the Melinger children.
Haymaker and her Westfield attorney, Timothy Stoesz, immediately sought to close the Marion County case, saying the ensuing publicity could harm the children later in life.
It's unusual for judges to appoint directors of taxpayer-financed temporary guardianship programs who work directly for them, such as Haymaker, to represent children in cases before their courts, a state court official said.
"I won't say it doesn't happen, but it wouldn't be preferred," said Leslie Dunn, state director of Indiana's guardian ad litem and court-appointed special advocate programs for children. "It creates the appearance of being less than objective."
Stoesz, the attorney representing Haymaker, said he and his client would not discuss the case with The Star.
Hughes was granted sole jurisdiction over the Melinger adoption and child welfare cases in late 2005. He ended the involvement of competing guardians appointed by Marion County's juvenile court. After a series of closed hearings, Hughes issued a new adoption decree awarding the twins to Melinger last year.

The state's case
State court officials have refused The Star's requests to make public filings in the state's appeal, citing confidentiality laws governing adoption records.
But someone who has seen the records said child welfare authorities have asserted that the twins were adopted without it being shown that they had special care needs that would make them eligible for placement out of state. Children with disabilities or special health-care needs typically qualify.
Melinger's attorney has provided conflicting information on that issue. A home study in the adoption that Litz filed stated the girls were "not considered 'hard to place' " as defined by Indiana law. That flawed study involved a visit to Melinger's temporary Indianapolis apartment and not his home in New Jersey.
Litz's position seemed to change in the August 2005 interview with The Star. Litz said then that he thought the girls were biracial and would qualify as hard to place. He acknowledged that would not be the case if it turned out Huffman were not the biological mother.
Later, Indiana child welfare officials asked New Jersey officials to conduct their own study of Melinger's home. It's not clear what that state's findings were or whether New Jersey was aware the Melinger children had moved there. New Jersey child welfare spokeswoman Kate Bernyk said she couldn't comment on the Melinger adoptions.
One of the temporary guardians appointed by Marion County said she was pleased to hear the state is appealing the adoptions.
Cynthia K. Booth, executive director of Indianapolis-based Child Advocates Inc., said a member of her staff regularly observed Melinger's visits with the children for the Marion County juvenile court until the child welfare case was transferred to Hughes' court.
"I'm glad that it was appealed," Booth said. "I think there are some things that need to be reviewed with those adoptions."

Carbon copy?
State officials have said the Melinger case was a "carbon copy" of eight other adoptions Litz filed in Hamilton County arising from surrogate births.
Those adoptions also failed to abide by the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, a contract among the states requiring child welfare officials in sending and receiving states to sign off on adoptions that cross state lines, Payne said in a 2005 interview.
Payne confirmed recently that Indiana had notified child welfare authorities in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah and Virginia of those adoptions so they could take additional action, if warranted.
Preadoption home studies involving the prospective parents in those eight cases were conducted in temporary Indiana homes or apartments and not in the states where the children were headed, Payne said in 2005.
The home studies were conducted by a woman hired by Litz, the same woman who handled the Melinger home study in Indianapolis.
Litz and Hughes are acquainted through more than 15 years of court cases and their work for a pro bono legal services nonprofit. In an interview with The Star on June 30, 2005, in his Noblesville judicial chambers, Hughes said Litz had filed "maybe three, four, five" adoptions in his court -- "no more than maybe 10 a year."
Hughes said then that he wasn't sure why Litz drives from his law office in Morgan County southwest of Indianapolis to appear before him in Hamilton County.
Indiana adoption law does not limit jurisdiction, allowing lawyers to file adoption petitions before judges of their choosing.
"I wouldn't dream of trying to guesstimate or estimate what Steve's motivation may be in where he chooses to file a case," Hughes said.
During that interview, Hughes also declined to comment specifically on Melinger's adoptions, except to suggest that he might not have had all of the facts before him the first time he approved the adoptions.
"Lots of folks assume judges have more information than we have, but we only have the information that is given to us," Hughes said in the interview, which was taped at his request.
Hughes did not cite examples, but the initial petition for adoption that Litz filed on behalf of Melinger stated that Melinger was born in Indiana and lived in Indianapolis.
However, a home study Litz filed as part of the adoption case stated Melinger was born in the Bronx, N.Y., and planned to return to New Jersey -- an account supported by New Jersey records.
After the initial Melinger case, Hughes said he tightened procedures for handling adoptions in his Hamilton County courtroom. Hughes would not confirm that the changes were related to the Melinger case.
"We're not starting to review papers we didn't before," Hughes said during the nearly two-hour interview in June 2005. "We're adding an additional level of review. Two sets of eyes are always better than one."
Call Star reporter Kevin Corcoran at (317) 444-2750.

Reporter Kevin Penton of the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved

PROMISING NEWS!!

2007-01-21T16:25:00.000-08:00

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Panel proposes adoption rules

Raleigh | State law allows children adopted in North Carolina to stay in touch with birth relatives, but a study panel proposed creating legislation Friday that would set out enforceable rules for those agreements.

The Legislative Study Commission on Children and Youth approved a draft of a bill to create guidelines under which biological parents or other blood relatives could stay in touch with children after adoption.

Existing state law decrees that all relations between a child and biological relatives are severed when someone else adopts the child.

OH MY GAWD!

2007-01-20T18:24:00.001-08:00

http://www.ipt- forensics. com/journal/ volume10/ j10_10_18. htm

Why Children Aren't Adopted

Few know the child welfare system as intimately as does George Miller, former Chairman of the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families of the Committee on Ways and Means. And nowhere is the bureaucratic imperative for expansion and survival more evident than in his own home state of California. As Miller explained: "In California, we are finding overloading of the system with children never intended for foster care, for the single purpose of reducing state costs by qualifying otherwise ineligible children for Federal reimbursements" (Committee on Ways and Means, 1987).

A recent lawsuit filed in Contra Costa County, Laurie Q. v. Shalala, illustrates the extent of this problem. The complaint alleges that the county has maintained adoptable children in foster care-some with foster parents who have actively sought to adopt them-for the sole purpose of misappropriating their Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) into the county treasury. In one case mentioned as representative in the suit, a child was found to have been assigned six social security numbers by the county, not one of which was her own. Another plaintiff charged that, when she called the county to inquire as to the availability of SSI for her disabled foster child, she was told by a county employee that she would not be seeing any as it "all goes into a pot." As a result, her foster child went without a needed wheelchair. These and other such practices are alleged to have continued for years. Among the highly detailed allegations set forth in the civil complaint:

The County routinely ignores state-mandated timelines concerning permanency planning for disabled children in foster care, thereby keeping adoptable children in foster care much longer than necessary. The County engages in a custom it terms "red dotting" which involves deliberate shelving for indeterminate amounts of time and/or refusal to allow adoption by labeling children with documented medical and/or behavioral disabilities as "unadoptable. " By intentionally delaying the adoption of disabled children in county custody, the County is able to remain the representative- payee for the children's SSI benefits and is able to continue its practice of misappropriation and unlawful self-reimbursement.

Conna Craig and Derek Herbert of the Institute for Children identify as the most troublesome obstacles to foster-child adoption, (a) a federal funding scheme that compensates states for keeping children in care, (b) the failure of states, including the court system, to expedite adoptive placements, (c) overuse of the "special needs" categorization, and, (d) a lack of public awareness about the number of children in foster care who are legally free for adoption but not in preadoptive homes. Insofar as the special needs categorization of children is concerned, Conna Craig points out that in her own home state of Massachusetts, child welfare agencies are known to defer requests for termination of parental rights until children reach the age of seven, as at that age children are deemed to have "special needs" for which child welfare agencies may claim additional federal reimbursements (Mack, 1997).

The reasons for this become clearer on examination of the regulations guiding the recovery of allowable administrative costs under the Adoption Assistance Program Under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act. Among the allowable costs chargeable to the program are the determination and redetermination of eligibility, fair hearings and appeals, rate setting, other costs directly related only to the administration of the program, the costs associated with grievance, negotiation and review of adoption agreements, post-placement management of subsidy payments, recruitment of adoptive homes, placement of the child in the adoptive home, case reviews conducted during a specific preadoptive placement for children who are legally free for adoption, case management and supervision prior to an interlocutory of final decree of adoption, a proportionate share of related agency overhead, referral to services, development of the case plan, home studies, and a proportionate share of the development and use of adoption exchanges. Three conditions must be met in order to trigger these funds. The state must determine that 1) an eligible child cannot or should not be returned to the home of his parents, 2) that the goal for the child is adoption, and, 3) that the child has been determined by the state or local agency to be a "child with special needs" (Administration for Children, Youth and Families, 1983). Once a child is adopted, most or all of these funding streams stop flowing.

As an obvious consequence of the lack of accountability in the child welfare and adoption systems, in 1974 less than 4% of the 30,000 children in the New York city foster care program were referred to adoption, while 29% of all foster children in New York had retained this status throughout their entire lives. "There was recognized to be a definite profit incentive for keeping the child [in foster care]," New York State Representative Mario Biaggi explained to a Congressional subcommittee. "Once the child left the facility," he explained, "the payment to the agency was stopped." Little has changed since. Today, more than 18,000 New York City foster children have a permanency goal of adoption, many of whom are legally free for adoption. Yet the agency completes only approximately 2,400 adoptions each year (Marisol v. Guiliani).

Renny Golden (1997) notes that, without an effective long-term plan, "children don't stand a chance of being adopted." Golden notes that less than 3% of adoptable children were actually adopted in Illinois in 1994, and that of 5,000 children in foster care in Milwaukee County in 1993, only 50 were adopted. Ludicrous case records play a role, according to Pia Menon, formerly an attorney with the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian. "I know for a fact why adoptions fail," she says. "It is because of lousy record keeping and useless evaluations of children. You can't give a caregiver a good assessment of what's wrong with a child without a good case history. People adopt children assuming everything is OK, and then the problems start coming out and they can't deal with them" (Golden, 1997, p. 178).

Indeed, Theodore Stein (1987) points out that information maintained by child welfare agencies is often incomplete and poorly documented. Child-specific data, such as custody date and type of permanent plan, may be missing from a computerized information system. Case plans may exist as a document which reports a planning goal, such as return home, while containing no information about how the goal is to be accomplished. Stein notes that workers "often fail to document the basis for decisions made and tend to record inferences without providing descriptive support." Staff may fail to log chronologically worker-client or parent-child contacts or to monitor service provision.

News of the many wrongful adoption suits filed against child welfare agencies and service providers may also deter many prospective adoptive parents. Almost invariably, child welfare agencies and their service providers raise public policy concerns in their defense against claims of fraud, concealment, and deliberate misrepresentation. In M. H. v. Caritas Family Services, for example, service providers Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Children's Home Society of Minnesota joined the defendant as amicus curiae, arguing that the deliberate withholding of information about an adoptive child's background makes for sound public policy. In Roe v. Catholic Charities, the defendant argued that disclosure of the requested information to the adoptive parents would have violated public policy evidenced by Illinois statutes. In Meracle v. Children's Service Society, a Wisconsin case, the defense argued that public policy precluded an action against an adoption agency for negligent misrepresentation. Similar arguments were raised in Michael J. v. Los Angeles County and in Mohr v. Commonwealth, a Massachusetts case in which Special Assistant Attorney General Owen Gallagher advanced the argument on behalf of the Commonwealth, and John T. Landry, III, Special Assistant Attorney General, argued the case on behalf of the social worker who was charged with misrepresentation and fraudulent concealment.

The cited cases constitute but a small representative sampling of many such cases in my possession, the common elements of which would be willful and deliberate misrepresentations of material facts, fraud, and concealment. While it would be improvident to suggest that the adoption end of the child welfare industry is deliberately designed in such a manner as to deter prospective adoptive parents, it can fairly be argued that if a system were to be designed with this objective in mind, one would need hardly improve on the model currently in place. As Children's Rights attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry (Committee on Ways and Means, 1988) explains:
Access to adoption is a cruel hoax. It does not exist for most of these kids. It takes such a long time to decide whether or not to free a child for adoption that by the time a child gets on an adoption track, the child is both so old and so damaged by his experiences in foster care that he becomes truly unadoptable. Then the States say, look, the only kids we have are kids that nobody wants. The State has put them into that situation and the State has delayed getting these kids into a situation where people would know that they were available for adoption.

The problems underlying the failure of the child welfare system to achieve permanence and stability for foster children are attributable to structural deficiencies which "are both numerous and complex," notes the Pacific Research Institute (Matlick, 1997). "Inefficiencies, failures, and misdirected motives exist at every level, from the individual caseworker to the judges that preside over reunification hearings, to the adoption system that is supposed to provide efficient exit." In the final analysis, however, the researchers note that there is one unifying factor underlying all of these deficiencies: While each level can and should be examined individually, it must be recognized that every problem can be traced to the fact that, structurally, the system fails to promote its own goals. Administrators and caregivers are neither given incentives to promote permanency nor held accountable when they do not.

They are instead rewarded for the very impermanence that they are employed to prevent (Matlick, 1997).

Copyright © 1989-2006 by the Institute for Psychological Therapies.
This page last revised on May 25, 2006.

No Wonder...

2007-01-19T12:03:00.000-08:00

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No wonder some adoptees express feeling that they were "hatched"....

"The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born." ~Pearl S. Buck

How can an adopted person feel this sense of connection when he is cut off from all of his kin and his birthline?

Israel Considers Privitzing Adoption

2007-01-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

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http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Kentucky's adoption system rife with problems

2007-01-18T09:58:00.000-08:00

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Biological parents: Kentucky's adoption system rife with problems

Jan 17, 2007 05:13 PM

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) -- Dakota Greyhawk lost custody of his son last summer after state child welfare workers accused him of neglect and placed the boy in foster care.

The Louisville landscaper thought he would be able to clear the matter up and get 5-year-old Dakota Seth back home. Instead, Greyhawk said he has hit legal roadblocks at every turn, and he fears the state may put his son up for adoption.

"I feel like the system is nothing but a legalized black market for kids," Greyhawk said. "I want my kid back."

Greyhawk was among about 75 people who gathered in Frankfort on Wednesday for a public hearing that was intended to gather suggestions for improving the state's welfare system. Most of those who attended were biological parents or grandparents, who told horror stories about children being "snatched" away by state workers.

The public hearing came just a week after the inspector general in the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services released a report detailing numerous problems in the state's foster care program in the Elizabethtown area.

Investigators planned to turn some evidence over to prosecutors to possible criminal conduct.

The report said some regional managers for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services abused their power in removing children from their biological parents, failed to follow standard operating procedures, and retaliated against staffers who complained about the problems.

The Steinberg Monster

2007-01-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

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Girl’s Killer Tries to Reduce Judgment, but Is Dealt Only Rebuke

Article Tools Sponsored By
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: January 17, 2007

An appeals court refused yesterday to reduce the $15 million award that Joel B. Steinberg owes to the mother of Lisa Steinberg, the 6-year-old child killed nearly two decades ago by Mr. Steinberg in one of New York City’s most notorious child abuse cases.

Mr. Steinberg, who had illegally adopted the girl, asked the court to reduce the award to Lisa’s mother, Michele Launders, because the child’s death was preceded by “at most eight hours of pain and suffering.”

Mr. Steinberg, who was once a lawyer, acted as his own lawyer in his appeal to the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The court majority rejected his argument in strong moral terms.

For Mr. Steinberg to diminish eight hours of pain and suffering by a child “demonstrates that he is as devoid of any empathy or human emotion now as he was almost 20 years ago when he stood trial for Lisa’s homicide,” the majority said, in a decision written by Justice James M. Catterson.

Two of the five judges dissented, saying the award did not fall within the boundaries set by case law. But those in the majority said that they felt free to evaluate the award subjectively because they did not know of any other case like it.

Mr. Steinberg fatally injured Lisa, a first grader, by knocking her down with a blow to her head about 6 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1987, and leaving her without medical attention “while he enjoyed dinner and freebased cocaine,” the decision said. His companion, Hedda Nussbaum, put Lisa on the bathroom floor of their Greenwich Village apartment and tried to revive her, the court said, before joining Mr. Steinberg to freebase cocaine.

Lisa was 3 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 43 pounds, and medical evidence showed many bruises from previous abuse, the decision said. She may have been conscious at first, doctors said, and her brain had been swelling for 6 to 12 hours before she received medical treatment. She died in a hospital on Nov 4, 1987.

Mr. Steinberg was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. He was released from prison in 2004, after serving 16 years.

Quoting phrases from the testimony in Mr. Steinberg’s trial, the judges said: “For Lisa, lying on a bathroom floor, her body aching from bruises of ‘varying ages,’ her brain swelling from her father’s ‘staggering blow,’ those 8 to 10 hours so cavalierly dismissed by Steinberg must have seemed like eternity as she waited and wondered when someone would come to comfort her and help make the pain go away.”
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NOTE: It's a paper victory only, as it is highly unlikely that Michelle Launders, Lisa's mother, will ever see a penny from this dead beat who is literally un-hirable for any job.

Social Engineering

2007-01-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

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It's been reported that China will have 30-million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting from a tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported.

Wouldn't Americans have just gone berserk if someone told them how many kids they can or cannot have? And just imagine the reaction if we learned that nation - in Sot=uth America, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa or wherever - enacted a policy of taking every child from women under the age of 20 and gave them to women over the age of 30. or, if they demanded that every child of a person or couple earning less than the equivalent of $20,000 a year must be immediately removed for the protection of the child and placed with a family earning in excess of $60,000.

Americans would see this as equally as bizarre as China's restrictions on childbirth. How totally opposed to the "freedom" we hold so dear in the USA.

And yet, while not laws...they certainly are social standards. Once it was single versus marrieds in terms of who was deemed "ready" and able to make good parents. But money and age have definitely taken over as the most important criteria. If you are single, as long as you are "mature" and can "afford" to raise a child (read afford day care or a nanny) it is socially acceptable and you will receive not a word of pressure to relinquish your child. You will not be told how many deserving couple s there are and how a child needs a mother and father. In fact, single women of means can - and do - avail themselves of reproductive technologies and adoption, without any questions asked! If you can afford, you deserve it...that's the American way!

If you are young and have no income of your own, or older and poor - even if married - watch out! The hawks and vultures will be circling to obtain any child you bring into the world. You will be scorned and told how selfish you are.

Brave New World has met The Handmaids! Social engineering while not directly legislated, aided by laws and polices. Reduce welfare to single mother; deny them abortions and any means of day care; offer tax breaks for adopters and strangers who foster but not to family members. Offer federal incentives to state to speed adoptions taken from mothers for the "crime" of not having a baby sitter one day while she goes to work, cause she has no sick time on her minimum wage job. Tighten the rope. Squeeze them till the hand over the golden egg.

The Face of Adoption TODAY!

2007-01-12T10:39:00.000-08:00

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Two mothers have been in touch with me. There cases are NOT on the front pages like Allison Quets, but their plight to retrieve children taken under duress and fraud is just as poignant.

The first mother "C" writes:

"We filed suit in December and the timeline at this point gives the adoptive parents until January 15 or 20 (depends on mailing times) to respond. The suit is is currently not public record (which is good, especially at this point). I have an extremely strong case now. The adoptive parents did not file the post-adoption contact agreement with the Court when they finalized the adoption, which likely makes the adoption itself invalid (essentially, they lied to the Court about it being an open adoption). Also, they actually admitted in writing (in response to our demand letter to them before we filed suit) that they *never* planned to file it--so we have an admission of intent. I have the strong support of the adoption counselor who handled the adoption; she now believes it was intentional fraud from the very start of our interactions with the adoptive parents. Overall, it's looking very good (though I'm still being very careful in how we handle things)."

The other is fresher still. "H" writes:

" I am 33 years old my son, C.L., was born on August 20, 2006. He is 4 and a half months old. I am in NY but my baby is now in NJ because I was conned into signing a interstate compact form. The date of my relinquishment was November 24, 2006. The father did not relinquish his rights to my knowledge. The attorney I had representing me during the adoption process did not want me to inform the father, who is my ex boyfriend "R". She advised me not to, and said that it would make things messy and that I would regret it. I found out that I signed a paper that I had never seen before which contains a bunch of lies that there was no father, no one who acknowledged the pregnancy ect. This is all untrue. My ex boyfriend, R, knew about the pregnancy full well, we were together the entire time and he did pay for some things. He was with me on the day I gave birth and he visited his son at the Medical center Hospital in NY. Please help me, I am beyond distraught without my son here with me. I need my baby boy back, I'm willing to do whatever it takes, fight as long and hard as I have to and I'm willing to comply fully with any and all that is asked of me. Please help me

A mother in desperation"

I referred "H: to a NJ attorney and told her that she seemed to have a good case of fraud, however, a fight would be lengthy and very expensive.

The face of adoption has changed. The mothers are no longer teenagers. some are married. The promises are different. Shame and secrecy are no longer prized openness is. But the coercion, the pressure, the lies, the fraud, the exploitation of a mother in distress are all still there. Every day.

Every day countless women are being pressured in this manner.

When will it stop? WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP IT???

Does anyone really believe that talking or writing about our pain - especially the pain of living with secrecy - will change the face of private adoption with baby brokers making millions of dollars with promises of openness to lure women???

Any of us who are able to must stop liking our own scared over old wounds and get back by making a real change! Mothers are changing much more major things in this world! Cindy Sheehan lost her son. he is DEAD - the ULTIMATE loss! yet instead of crying over her son and all the others who died...she is trying to STOP THE ONGOING CARNAGE!! The mothers who started MADD; the mother who got Megan's Law passed so we all now have notification of a sexual predator in our midst did that on behalf of her lost daughter; and the Amber alert was likewise cerated by one single courageous mother who did not let her child's loss be in vain but worked to prevent others from losing their children. These are just a tiny tip of the iceberg of outraged mothers who have made a difference for the FUTURE...for those who come after them...to spare other mothers and their children the same pain and suffering they have felt.

This is OUTRAGE and PAIN turned into real constructive POWER.

We have a huge fight. We have to fight a multi-billion dollar INDUSTRY. It will take many of us fighting together - focused on stopping the MACHINE that is stealing our children! Every journey begins with a single step. You cannot not refuse to TRY just because it seems a daunting task. it IS daunting, but is NOT impossible. The cigarette industry was taken down. We CAN do this!!!

This is the thesis of my soon to be released book, "The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry." But as I said, writing about it is NOT ENOUGH! The book is a CALL TO ARMS!! I hope you hear the call and ACT. "C" and "H" and mothers and fathers EVERY DAY are counting on YOU! We need to say NEVER AGAIN and stop merely providing an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Mirah

Vote for Your Favorite!

2007-01-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

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SCALE: STYLE #1

LADY: STYLE #2

Which would you like to see as a MAGNETIC Bumper Sticker?

Truth and Honesty in Adoption

2007-01-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

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Adoption reform has always been about Truth, Honesty and Opennes, and an end to lies and secrets. This applies to all aspects of adoption reform.

Expectant mothers and prospective adopters should be treated with dignity and respect and given HONEST, unbiased option counseling, telling them the pros and cons of what to expect from any choice they make. No one deserves to be lied to, coerced, pressured or swindled, scammed or conned for considering adoption.

When adoption is chosen the same respect must continue throughout the process. Promises made need to be kept. Pressure - even the subtlest - needs to be censored.

There is no one in the adoption reform community who would disagree with any of these simple tenants. We not only stand for Truth and Honesty - we fight dishonesty wherever it is used in the adoption process.

Adoptees and mothers who have relinquished are appalled when untruths about mothers wanting and asking for anonymity are used to protect the secrets of adoption. We speak out and do all we can to dispel these myths, lies and exaggerations that are used as smoke screens.

Now let us explore what happens once an adoption is finalized: The Ultimate Lie occurs and is government produced and sanctioned! Not only is a false birth certificate issued, but it is called an "amended" certificate. If that is what amending is - our constitution would look a lot different than it does!

We do not condone or accept any other lies of adoption - why would anyone wanting to reform adoption continue to support such a BLATANT LIE?

This is THE LIE that all adoption is based on. This is the motherload.

Adoption today is about filling empty arms and doing it in such a way that the paying customers are totally happy. It is allowing them to feel that they are sole owners of the property they have purchased and are protected from anyone taking it from them or sharing it with them. (Even "open adoption" gives adopters all power and control.) And, they want it to be in every way possible "the same as if" that child were born to them! What better way to aid them in their game of pretend than to issue a certified government document stating that it is exactly the same as if they had given birth to the child they are raising. A birth certificate witht heir name on it - just like a Cabbage Patch Doll!

This gives them total ownership and control rights. If they chose to never tell their child he's adopted, that is their prerogative and he could live all his life and never know that he is giving false medical information, and never know to fight for so-called "open records." Or, they could do as is currently advised of those adopting today and tell the child he's adopted at the earliest possible time and let him live all his life knowing that hes adopted and nothing more (until, as an adult, IF he is lucky enough to have been born in one of four states, he is allowed to peek at records containing the names of people who may well be dead by then). Just leave him to WONDER who he looks like, what ethnicity he is, where was he really born, and WHY was he abandoned. if he needs an organ transpplant or bone marrow - he can take his chances witht he courts which have not been very helpful. If he has a sevre emotional need to know - S.O.L.! We'll just ignore the higher rates of all psycholgical problems and suicide among adolescent adoptees.

Is this the adoption that reformers support? I don't think so!

Why then are all the bills proposed asking for "open records" for ADULT adoptees and not just asking for EQUALITY with non-adoptees - access to your birth records at any time anyone else in that state can get them? And why do we use terms like "open records" and amended certificates when what we need to DEMAND is an end to the government sancioned FALSIFICATION of birth certificates!

As of today no adoption reofrm group is addressing these issues. Instead we accept adopted persons living lives of lies and asking to see their records when thy are adults. this is not equality! This is NOT the "better life" I relinquished MY daughter for! What about you???

Conversely, if adoptees who petition the courts ask only for the records to adults - which continues to treat them as separate and different and lesser than non-adopted persons and also plays into the hands of those who say opening the records is dangerous and they need protection....if that is what they want, then the records should be opened unilaterally to both the adoptee and the original parents when the the adoptee reaches adulthood.

Every relinquishment agreement I have read - and I have read many from varying states and times - states that the mother (and father) are relinquishing their right to PARENT the minor child, or infant child. Once a person is an adult, what protection do they need from another adult??? The relinquishment is non-binding upon adulthood.

Adopting: Good Deed or Self Aggrandizing?

2007-01-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

Adoption as a fashion statement

Not so many years ago, in Ireland, when an illegitimate baby was adopted, villagers would cluster around his new home praying for the soul of the poor little bastard stained with sin. In the West generally, adoption has widely been considered a last resort for couples unable to conceive, often after expensive attempts at IVF.

But this year, an adopted baby became the family accessory du jour: not the old kind of adoption, but elective adoption as a political and ideological fashion statement. Not only Madonna — whose swoop on a Malawi orphanage caused such a furore — but other high-profile celebrities have been busy adopting from across the world: Angelina Jolie from Cambodia and Ethiopia, Ewan McGregor from Mongolia, and Meg Ryan from China. Sharon Stone, Calista Flockhart, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman have all adopted within America.

US overseas adoption rates skyrocketed after Angelina Jolie adopted her two, and last month she was rated “best celebrity mum in the world” in an American TV poll. Praised for bringing up her kids as “global citizens”, Jolie has said she would like both to have more babies and adopt more, thus producing, as one wry observer put it, “An achingly cool rainbow family perfect for a Benetton ad.”

As we know, motherhood is the new black, and Africa is very now — a focus for celebrity activism from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Aids ads to Bono’s debt-reduction campaign — so what better way to attract the world’s attention than for Madonna to rescue little David Banda from an assuredly bleak future?

Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds, according to Socrates, and cynics note that adopting a poor black baby neatly proclaims a celebrity’s maternal, compassionate and cosmopolitan credentials in one poignant little package. Then when they get home there are staff. They make adoption seem easy when really it is fraught with expense, bureaucracy and potential disaster, those sweet babies turning into troubled teenagers who feel they don’t quite belong anywhere.

Still, an image of Brad Pitt with little Ethiopian Zahara in his arms is a far more potent symbol than cautionary tales about the pitfalls of inter-country adoption. Hats off, then, to Emma Thompson who three years ago quietly adopted Tindy, a 16-year-old refugee from Rwanda. He was alone and friendless in London and she invited him for Christmas; he slowly became part of the family. Tindy is now 20 and studying politics. “He calls me mum,” says Thompson. “I am so proud of him.”

©The Times

How about Mia Farrow who did it way before it was trendy?

Better still, how about Oprah Winfrey who does charitable work without taking home trophies?

In Jewish law there are eight levels of doing good:

1. The highest level of charity is for one to make it possible for an indigent not to need the help of others.

2. The second level of charity is where the benefactor does not know the identity of the recipient and the beneficiary does not know who the benefactor is.

3. The third level of charity is where the benefactor knows who is receiving the money, but the beneficiary of the money does not know the identity of the benefactor.

4. The fourth level of giving charity is when the benefactor does not know who the recipient is, yet the indigent knows the benefactor's identity.

5. The fifth level is where one gives to an indigent prior to his asking for help, this being less embarrassing.

6. The sixth level is where one gives the indigent what he needs only after he has requested help.

7. The seventh level is where one gives an indigent some of what he needs, yet he gives it with a happy countenance, making the poor person feel good.

8. The eighth level is where one gives money to the poor, yet does so with a heavy heart. Nevertheless, it is still considered charity since the poor are unaware of the donor's negative attitude. (One who dispenses charity but openly demonstrates his displeasure in giving, loses the merit of the goo deed.)

Where does adoption fit as an act of charity?

Falsified Birth Certificates

2007-01-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

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For more on the issue of BN and falsified birth certificates, see Bastard Granny Annie, Saturday, January 06, 2007 "BASTARDS DON'T LIE" for Anita's post "refuting" statements I allegedly made here... and be sure to check the comments.

Doin' it Right!

2007-01-06T19:24:00.001-08:00

DiCaprio jumps on the African adoption bandwagon

Washington, Jan 06: Leonardo DiCaprio is the next one to follow the African adoption trend set by Angelina Jolie and Madonna.

During the filming of `Blood Diamond`, the actor met a little girl in South Africa, and fascinated by her, decided to adopt, according to the New York Post.

However, unlike his predecessors, the Titanic actor will not be bringing the girl home, but will be funding her expenses and making telephone calls to check her well being.

During his stay in Africa, Leo spent time with the SOS Children`s Village Charity, which provides a home environment for children who are orphaned.

On the other hand, Jennifer Anniston, 37, is considering adopting a boy.

Material Girl at it Again..or Still...

2007-01-06T19:21:00.001-08:00

Madonna bankrolls man from Malawian adoption ministry

06.01.07

Madonna agreed to pay for Willard Manjolo's living expenses and tuition fees, thought to be about £20,000

Meet Willard from Malawi. Madonna's paying £20,000 for his education in Britain. Oh, and he works for the adoption ministry.

The row over Madonna's adopted African baby has erupted again after it became clear that a civil servant working for the ministry which handled the case is studying in Britain at her expense.

The Mail on Sunday has learned the singer agreed to pay for Willard Manjolo's living expenses and tuition fees, thought to be about £20,000, four months before she was granted temporary custody of the child.

Leading Malawian lawyer Justin Dzodzi says her sponsorship of Mr Manjolo 'could be construed as payment for the adoption'. Mr Dzodzi, who is campaigning for a legal challenge against the adoption, said: "The entire circumstances surrounding the case need to be re-examined and this latest disclosure is something we would wish to bring before the courts."

Mr Manjolo, 40, who is married with four children and has one grandchild, began a bachelor of science social work degree at Swansea University in September - a month before Madonna left Malawi with 13-month-old David Banda. Malawian government officials said they would have been unable to fund him.

Adrina Mchiela, principal secretary at the country's Ministry for Gender and Child Welfare, said: "Madonna is paying for everything and we are extremely grateful.

"We had talks with her in June about adopting a child. She asked us whether we had any problems and we saw a chance. We told her the ministry lacked trained personnel and asked if she could help. We told her about Manjolo, who is a social welfare officer, and she immediately responded.

"Madonna indicated a willingness to sponsor more officers. We just have to inform her of our need."

The Mail on Sunday found Mr Manjolo enjoying a breakfast of chicken and rice at his halls of residence. He said he was grateful to Madonna and planned to thank her in the forward of a dissertation he is writing.

"But I don't much like her music - it is for a younger audience,' he confessed. "I prefer music by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac."

Mr Manjolo said he was not involved in the adoption process and had never met the singer, adding: "It is unfortunate if people use their wealth to manipulate events, but I don't think it happened in this case. Her application was considered on merit.

"If it is in the best interests of the child, people should not argue about it. This child is being given an opportunity. But you must adhere to the professional requirements to avoid child trafficking."

Mr Manjolo has settled in well in Swansea. As part of his induction, he was given a lecture on the city's most famous son, Dylan Thomas. He spends his spare time watching football and enjoying the scenic Gower Peninsula.

"I like the area very much,' he added, 'although the weather is cold and I am missing my wife Taonga. She is a computer programmer and mother.

"I wanted to come on this course in 1984 but funding was a problem and has remained a problem for 22 years.

"I was appointed as the national co-ordinator of a programme to help vulnerable children in 1999, but I thought there would be no chance of completing this course because of a lack of government cash. It was only last August that I was told money had finally been sourced."

Mr Manjolo will remain at Swansea University until November.

Unlike most student digs, he keeps his 12ft by 10ft room in pristine condition with a pile of neatly folded clothes in one corner and a list of seven sins according to Mahatma Gandhi pinned to his noticeboard.

He said Madonna's cash would allow him to train social workers to encourage Malawians to adopt Malawians.

Ironically, that would make it more difficult for wealthy Westerners to use their fortunes to acquire African orphans. Mr Manjolo added: "Over a million children in Malawi are orphans and half of these either lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. Fewer than 100 social workers are struggling to cope with this human tragedy.

"Until now, adoption has always been a foreign practice in Malawi, but the intention is to encourage Malawians to adopt Malawians.

"My completing this course will help my department to develop this policy."

Madonna's spokeswoman was unavailable for comment. Last year the singer defended herself against allegations that she broke Malawi's adoption laws, claiming it had none 'so we made them up as we went along'.

But David Banda's father Yohane said recently that he never wanted the adoption to go ahead.

Clarification and UPDATE A judge this afternoon granted a bail release to Allison Quets, 49, who was arrested at a home in downtown Ottawa lasRe Quets

2007-01-04T11:16:00.000-08:00

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From The OriginsUSA Board of Directors
January 1, 2007

OriginsUSA does not hold an official position on the flight to Canada of
Allison Quets with her twins. Individual members of OUSA may or may not
support Ms. Quets as is their right as individuals. Implications of this
case, however, are beyond the mission statement of OUSA.

OUSA does believe that the entire situation could have been avoided if there
were adequate legal protections from predatory adoption practices in place
for pregnant American women.

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As of this moment it is unclear what Origins Canada official position is on this, but they are NOT planning a demonstration at the Ottawa courthouse.

It appears that I reported inaccurately, based on mis-information that they had dropped their support of Quets based on her manner of conception.

The official statement above makes good sense as an organizational statement due to the line crossed of possible illegality in the alleged kidnapping. However, inasmuch as the adoption was never finalized - despite the press insisting on using the surname of the perspective adopters for the children - and in view of the fact that it was contested within 12 hours...the courts will have to decide if in fact a mother can kidnap her own children. It is because of the questionable state of the unfinalized adoption that Quets had unsupervised visitation. And she reason to fear that once it was finalized the adpters would not only stop her visitation, but would also move.

The one who got this story totally right, IMO is the Ottawa Sun: "Adoption under the microscope: The fate of Allison Quets and the twins she birthed has raised questions about the fairness of procedures"

They get to the heart of the issue reporting:

"After conceiving Holly and Tyler Needham through in vitro fertilization, Quets signed adoption papers for the twins six weeks after their birth but changed her mind 12 hours after her fateful decision. In Ontario, birth mothers have a total of 28 days to revoke consent on an adoption, including an initial seven-day waiting period immediately after the birth. For decades, lawmakers have debated the most appropriate length of time birth mothers should have to reconsider the adoption of their baby."

This is what it's all about! It's not about kidnapping or her method of conception: It's about coercing mothers out of their babies! What happened to Allison Quets - prior to her resorting to taking the law into her own hands - is in direct conflict with good, decent, moral, ethical adoption practices! THIS is what needs to be focused on!

A judge this afternoon granted a bail release to Allison Quets. She was ordered to reside until Monday with former Renfrew police chief Robert Thompson, who posted a $5,000 bond. On Monday, Quets is expected to surrender to Ottawa police and then be returned to the U.S.

An FBI warrant was issued for Quetts’ arrest after she failed to return the 17-month-old twins to their adoptive parents in North Carolina on Christmas Eve.

The Quets Debate

2007-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:00

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Allison Quets has become a controversial figure embroiled in an extremely complicated custody battle. Some first mother groups have dropped their support of her because fo the nature of her conception.

I ask: What difference doe sit make how they were conceived...she was COERCED and her desire to revoke the adoption - stated within HOURS was ignored!!

Who are we to JUDGE when we were judged so cruelly? What difference does conception make" Some babies are conceived in love, some in lust or passion and others as a result of rape or coerced sex. Some are conceived to appease a boyfriend or husband, some are conceived as a result of incest. Some women have no idea when or by whom thye became impregnated. Some don't even know thay are pregnant until they deliver. What difference doe sit make?

If we start to judge people on how they conceived instead of on the facts of the ADOPTION case...where do we stop?

A very vocal birth mother has often made a huge point of saying that reproductive technologies are a separate issue and have nothing to do with adoption because they occur before there is a child to be adopted. I believe this is true.

Allsion Quest is a mother. Every mother has a right to not be pressured or coerced into adoption and every mother has a right to have her wish to revoke such a choice within a reasonable amount of time honored! Not just the "classic" stereotypical mothers who were young, and stayed in maternity home, and loved their boyfriend, and it was the first time they had sex...but ALL MOTHERS! Married and single, young and old, conceived intentionally or not.

I am shocked and saddened to learn that OUSA's has withdrawn support for Allison, because she may be BIOLOGICALLY connected to her twins. And these are the people that hate being called BIOLOGICAL mothers! is it the biology that makes us mothers, or is it feeling life inside our womb and wanting to raise those lives? I have heard some say that if the eggs were donated as well as the sperm, that makes her equivalent to an adoptive mother! No it does not! Adoptive mothers do not carry their children inside them, risking thei very life to bring them into the world. Whoever donated or sold the egg was DISCARDING it. They didn't care who it went to. they didn't try to revoke the sale or donation as Allison has tried to revoke the adoption of her living children.

Those Lyin' Bastards!

2007-01-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

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Some of you may have seen the BN Quarterly Spring/Summer 2006 which printed my article entitled “Dear Bastards: Demand Equality!” published as a point/counterpoint. In it I asked BN why they do not focus on the real issue: the falsification of birth certificates. If you missed it – I posted it here on Wednesday, September 27, 2006, “Dear Bastards: Demand Equality!” with their very lame counterpoint.

Monday, December 11, 2006 the daily Bastardette blog posted:
“MOTHER MAY I? GRANNIE ANNIE NAILS IT!” regarding what they saw wrong with the NJ legislation (and the adoptee activists who worked on it for more than 25 years!). It was the third or fourth post on their complaints about this and other bills that are not “pure” -- with no compromise. I wrote several comments and asked why, if they are so against compromise, are they willing to ACCEPT a life of lies if only they can get a peek at the truth when they are adults.

Marley Greiner states: “Half-measures are not acceptable. New Jersey’s adoptees deserve more. Why are they settling for less?” and “The keystone of adoptee rights has always been access and identity for all adopted persons who want it--without prejudice-- a right, not a favor.”

If the keystone is access for ALL ADOPTED PERSONS, why does BN limit it to only adult adoptees? This is not an acceptance of a modification added to a bill they introduced…it's a limitation THEY put on themselves -- only request right for adults!

Regarding a Mass bill, they write: “Please veto SB 2690 and let Massachusetts adoptees and those who stand with them return to the Great Court and pass a genuine records access bill that makes all adoptees equal to each other and the non-adopted” and “Please veto SB 2690 so that in the next session adopted adults and legislators can work together to fashion a bill that will treat all adoptees equally.” In regards to the Jersey bill Marley asks: “Don't all adoptees count?”

They rant and rave, claiming to want ALL adoptees to be treated equally, but they really mean only all ADULT adoptees! What about adopted children who need a life-saving transplant, or are suicidal? What about the teens on drugs and depressed, feeling abandoned? I have bene contacted MANY TIMES over the years by desperate adoptive parents wanting to open a closed adoption.

What about those who are adopted and don’t know they are adopted, so even as adults they don’t know there is an “original” certificate to ask for? Instead, they go on into adult-hood giving false medical information. What of these adoptees? How does BN help them?

I wrote comment after comment, trying to get a reply from Marley – or anyone in BN as to why they self-impose a limitation on the rights of adopted persons and yet get bent out of shape when bills are passed that limit their rights. No reply. I wrote and wrote and asked over and over why they do not even use the phrase “equal access” instead of “open records” which implies they are opening Pandora’s Box…and why they accept living a life of lies until they are adults? No reply.

And then, it finally hit me! Suddenly the answer was perfectly clear. And I presented it: They don’t mess with the falsification of their birth ccertificates because they want to have their cake and eat it to. They love having been adopted into a higher socio-economic strata. And they don't dare rock the boat or bite the hand that feeds them and has educated many of them very well indeed!

And, more importantly, IT IS ALL ABOUT C-O-N-T-R-O-L!

They prefer to live their lives, pretending to be born to their adoptive parents, and have the control to choose where, when and what they do with their true information once they are adults. Maybe stalk us and see if we are “worthy” of them. See exactly what kind of blue collar trash we are before deciding. Maybe contact us once, get some medical information, and then toss us away.

If their birth certificates are never falsified to begin with they loose that control! Why, WE, their blood-related mothers and fathers might actually take the initiative to contact THEM! Horror of horrors! We might actually make ourselves available to their adoptive parents while they are still young, so that we could help in touch and offer the TRUTH and updated medial information – open their closed adoption! Don't they realize we are still persons non gratis - we have no rights. We are but strangers to the, in the eyes of the law. We could take no control form them or their adoptive parents.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand fully why anyone, and adoptees especially, want to have full control of their lives. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is talking out of both sides of your mouth at once. Don’t claim that you want equality for ALL adoptees when you want adult adoptees to have special privileges you wish to keep minor adoptees deprived of.

In opposing the Mass legislation they write: “tiered rights systems such as codified by SB 2690 are open to legal challenge. SB 2690 creates a class system in which adopted persons are segregated and treated different from everyone else (the non-adopted)…. it treats some adoptees better than others. Why, do adoptees, because of the date of their birth deserve “special rights”--or “special disabilities“--as the case may be? What makes a person born on July 18, 1974 less worthy of rights than someone born on July 17, 1974 or January 1, 2008?”

How totally IRONIC and HYPOCRITICAL for a group that supports the rights of some adoptees based on their date of birth!

I put forth this theory of control, and on or about December 16 or 17, Marley Greiner finally replied. The 40th comment on Monday, December 11, 2006 to the daily Bastardette blog post: “MOTHER MAY I? GRANNIE ANNIE NAILS IT!” And this is what she said:

"I intend to answer your comments separately in the next couple days when I have more time. Maybe I'll even blog them.” More than two weeks – and nine posts later – I am still patiently awaiting Greiner’s reply.

I wait and I wonder: Will adoptees ever grow the BALLS to ACT like adults and really DEMAND their true rights instead of accepting a life of lies (and blaming everyone else for limiting their rights). It's damn pitiful!

Free and Reunite the Quets Family!

2007-01-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

Sign the petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?aislin&1

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T22:05:00.000-08:00

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The new year is here. It has begun on a hopeful note for Rashad Head fighting to regain custody of his daughter, and on a not so happy note for Allison Quets and her twins.

While those cases are the headline-making ones, there are other issues that concern me as we say goodbye to '06 and begin '07: divisiveness.

Once upon a time, we were a triad movement - adoptive parents, adoptees and birth parents all working together for open records and to humanize adoption practices.

Now, even birthmothers are pigeonholing and dividing themselves into pre-set labeled roles. Like Christians who draw a line and mark dates as BC and AD, some mothers seem to need to divide themselves into time-defined factions based: BR and AR...before and after Roe, as if one's feelings about motherhood change over time. As if mothers at the turn of the century did not feel as maternal as mothers in the new millennium or vice versa. As if mothers who didn't even mark their days with calendars wouldn't miss a child that was born to them and never seen again...and modern mothers can do it with ease on their blackberries.

The problems that arise from using terms like "mothers of the Baby Snatch Era" is that it pits us against one another as to whose pain is worse.

It is akin to Compassionate Friends - an organization for mothers whose children have died - to sit around and argue over whether it is worse to loose an newborn infant or a teen or young adult? Is it worse to loose a loved one who has been ill, or one who dies suddenly in a car crash? Whose pain is greater? Who sug=ffers more?

Each person's pain is greatest to them. Each of us thinks, no one else could have suffered or known the pain we have known. And there is truth to that - each of our suffering is as unique and different as are snowflakes. It is DIFFERENT to lose an infant than it is to loose an older child; and it is different to have had a cesarian birth as oppose dto a vaginal delivery; and it different to have bene very young reather than older; and it is different to have bene in love with your babies father than to not have been; and it is different to have been in a maternity home or not to have been.

All of these, and many other factors, make each of oru experiences different...but none amongst us can judge whose experience was worse and more worthy of having been "wronged" and in need of some grand apology. All focusing on the differences doe sis alienate some of your sisters in pain. It makes some feel negated.

It is hard for those of us wo felt we had no choice and were pressured by mores of the 'times' and family etc to understand the DIFFERENT pressures that exist today.

When we fall into that trap, we are buying into and supporting the negative public view that "that was then" and everything is wonderful today because women get to CHOOSE adoption and choose the parents for their child, as if that makes it all better. As if that wouldn't give one yet more guilt id the parents they choose deceive them and/or turn out to be far less than the perfect parents they pretended to be.

We may no understand others' "choices" but we need to respect them and focus on the mutual pain of loss we have all experienced.

In using Roe as a dividing line, we further play into the notion that we would all have chosen abortion had we had the opportunity. Some of us may have, but clearly not all of us. It is very unhealthy for adoptees to feel that they all would have aborted had we had the opportunity and plays into the hands of right-to-lifers who seek to promote adoption and keep it sealed.

But mostly it is simply a means of maximizing victim status for a select group of mothers based on an arbitrary date and a time when more adoptions took place. By maximizing one time period, all others who lost children since are minimalized. It is equivalent to honoring the innocent victims of the Holocaust, while ignoring the innocent victims of the Irish Potatoe Famine and Darfur and Rawanda. Yes, the Holocaust was one of the largest genocides at the time, but it does not make others' deaths any less painful for their loved ones, or their torture any less painful for them.

Some look at Allsion Quets and see a sister struggling to keep her children. Others look at her and see an "older" woman who foolishly tied to conceive through artificial means. Some have liekned her to an adoptive aprents, others to a freak show. And yet, inside Allison is the same heart as inside you and I. And the breath she breathes and the tears she sheds and, yes, the ambiguity and confusion she feels as she goes back and forth over her "decision" is not unlike ours. Allsion's bonding during her pregnancy was marred by her illness. Yet, when oen adopts and bonding does not as expected and they experiences post-adoption stress disorder, no one is there pushing papers in front o them, telling them to give their child to another.

Whether you agree to embrace Allison with your support or not, we cannot afford to divide ourselves and dilute our strength, or to feed into the sterotypes that already exist. there is enough dislike for us as it is without our creating more with feelings of superiority for some of us because of a time period that gave us DIFFERENT, and SEEMINGLY less choice. No one wakes up one morning and decides "I am going to get pregnant and gibve my baby away for adoption." Today's mothers of open adoption were just as deceived as we were...differently, but every bit as much!

From the 40's to the 70's the sales pitch was maintaining a secret - no one had to know...save face (your family's more than yours).

It wasn't Roe that changed things all that much. It was feminism and The Pill! the second wave of feminism allowed girls to continue in school pregnant and began to slowly accept single-parenthood. As we moved into the 80's and 90's and the babies placed for adoption continued to dwindle the new sales pitch became the offer of "openness" - as if being allowed to chose your child;s parents was going to alleviate all of the pain and suffering past mothers who relinquished experienced.

By focusing on how much pain was suffered int he past - we fortify this misconception - "that was then" - things are different today! yes, they are different, BUT NO BETTER!! Women are still LIED to, to get them to sign!

It doesn't matter if the lie was the promise of a new life and that we'd forget - or the promise is you'll see your kid and won't feel pain. A lie is a lie, pressure is pressure and loosing your kid is loosing your kid. It hurts every bit as much today as it did in 1960's!!! Just ask Allison if she is happy with her "choice"!

The Year Ends Sadly...

2006-12-30T21:31:00.000-08:00

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Babies Recovered, Mom Arrested
Acting on a tip, authorities have recovered missing North Carolina twins. The babies-- Holly and Tyler Needham-- were found safe in Ottawa, Canada late Friday, December 29, 2006. FBI agents say that the twins are currently in protective custody and their biological mother, who allegedly took the children, is also in custody. Allison Quets is waiting to find out if she will face international kidnapping charges.

Cops: Mom Regretted Adoption
Authorities say that Quets had regretted giving her 17-month-old twins up for adoption. When she went for a brief holiday visit with them, Durham police say she never returned. Now, Quets will be on her way back to the states in police custody.

What will the adoptive parents of these twins tell them some day? We fought your mother's attempts to get you back AND had her arrested? Will they charge her with kidnapping and send her to jail, too?!

Ellen Goodman Nails It!

2006-12-30T09:47:00.000-08:00

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Who's your daddy? That's a good question
Ellen Goodman
The Boston Globe

BOSTON â€” By now, Mary Cheney must have inspired an entirely new chapter in What to Expect When You're Expecting. Expect your pregnancy to provoke a national controversy.
It's been years since the Vice President's Openly Gay Daughter first created a stir on the right for her sexual preference and a stir on the left for her political preference. Now her "bump," as all celebrity pregnancies are described, is fodder for the sort of uncontrolled food fight that she'll find all too familiar in another year or so.

Her opponents criticize her as a single mommy and one of two mommies. Her pregnancy has been labeled "unconscionable, " "selfish" and "cruel." She and partner Heather Poe have been especially lambasted for bringing a child into the world "without a father." As Robert Knight of the Media Research Center moaned, "I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father."

It should be noted that 37 percent of all American children are now born to unmarried mothers. More to the point, Mary's baby does have a father, at least a genetic father. But have you noticed how little attention or criticism has been directed at the DNA dad?

There are, in essence, two kinds of fathers: known and unknown. The continuum of unknown fathers runs the gamut from the casualness of a one-night stand to the deliberateness of a sperm bank.
I am willing to guess that Mary and Heather chose a sperm bank as their matchmaker since these banks offer their customers â€” and I do mean customers â€” a screened set of genes from a diverse portfolio of men. The sperm donors range in height and ethnicity, athletic prowess and SAT scores. Some donors even provide an essay, sort of like a college admissions application.

It's fair to say that the sperm banks overtly promote the importance of the male gene in the creation of a child. And covertly promote the unimportance of the male presence in the raising of a child.

In the beginning, artificial insemination was a treatment for married couples with an infertile husband. Sperm donors â€” or sperm vendors, as bioethicist George Annas calls the men who sell their genetic material â€” were often medical students who treated this as casually as a blood donation. The world and the child were expected to regard the husband as the biological father.

Today, about 30,000 babies a year are born from sperm donors. The customers are now likely to be single women who have given up looking for Mr. Right in favor of Donor Right, and lesbians. But the donors are pretty much the same.

"Most of them are young guys trying to make some money and not thinking about the consequences, " says David Plotz, author of The Genius Factory, a book about a famous sperm bank. "They make a donation, it's kept in quarantine, released to someone they don't know, and then a child is created with whom they have no connection."

This makes a perfect market solution: female customers who want children and male manufacturers ready to sell their genetic material without strings or custody suits attached. But sooner or later, the "consequences" grow up and may have a very different opinion.

One person's DNA is another person's "dad." Some children of sperm donors are beginning to search for their biological parents the way that adopted children do. They're using information from sperm bank profiles, from DNA collection sites and donor sibling registries.

There is a growing belief that a child's right to know trumps the parents' right to keep a secret. Britain and the Netherlands have banned anonymous donors. In America, there are now two-tracked sperm banks â€” one for men who want to be anonymous, one for men willing to be contacted when the children become adults.

We can't ban sperm donation any more than we can ban the fertile one-night stand. We have no reason to keep single women, gay or straight, from the new technology. They can always go back to basics â€” or turkey basters.

But children, adopted or created, should have the right to find their biological parents â€” at least when they grow up. It's time to end anonymity. If this gives men second thoughts about creating a child, well, we want men to have second â€” and third â€” thoughts. If it puts a damper on the genetic father market, who said that families were markets?

American society is in the midst of a great cultural change.

Increasingly, we expect men to be involved fathers. We want fatherhood to be a commitment and not a donation. Let's stop the food fight over two mommies long enough to ask the question that their child may ponder. Little Cheney-Poe: "Who's your daddy?"

Ellen Goodman writes for The Boston Globe. ellengoodman@ globe.com