73adoptee: perspectives on adoption

The Adoptee Perspective On SOPA And Internet Censorship

2012-01-18T14:34:00.013-06:00

I've posted an article over on my Tech Tips blog about why I've decided not to go dark for the SOPA blackout. It's because I prefer to meet censorship with information. I strongly oppose SOPA/PIPA and encourage you to do the same.

You see, I run a blog that's not so popular... this blog. It's been censored before (read this and this) and doubtless is blacklisted in plenty of web content filters. But I'll be damned if I allow my voice or anyone else's to be silenced.

If SOPA or bills like it pass, how quickly do you think it will go from "we need to censor these sites to protect the intellectual property of these companies" to "we need to censor the blogs of these adoptees and first mothers to protect the reputation of the adoption industry?"

See Tech Tips for more information on the SOPA/PIPA debate, including links to the latest news and resources you can use to contact your legislators:

Tech Tips: What You Need To Know About SOPA And Internet Censorship

The Killjoy Responds To Complaints About Why I’m Not Happy For Illinois Adoptees

2012-01-14T08:56:00.034-06:00

I’m sure you’ve heard that Illinois adoptees are throwing off their shackles as fast as Sara Feigenholtz can round up cameras to film their joyful receipt of their birth certificates. Everybody knows I’m the killjoy at the party, and people have started to complain. Apparently my inability to shut the fuck up is interfering with others’ ability to bask in the moment.

The following is from a conversation on a public Facebook page. I’m not going to identify the people and I’m only going to paraphrase the conversation, because my intention here is not to point fingers at any one person. This is not the first time someone’s said something like this to me. On the contrary, I hear it every day, usually from fellow Illinois adoptees who happened to luck out under the new rules.

I posted the following on my wall:

“Quit supporting conditional adoptee rights legislation! Study the bills and understand the difference between true adoptee rights (Maine) and conditional bills that leave some adoptees behind (Illinois). Don't just throw your weight behind a bill because it has the word "adoptee" in it.”

This was reposted to the page by its owner. I responded with “thanks for the repost.” The page owner commented asking why there had been so many likes and few shares, reiterating the importance of equal rights for ALL adoptees.

Someone else answered: "I am 64 and one of those Illinois adoptees who is waiting for her OBC. Please don't deny some of us our happiness."

The page owner said: “A favor is not a right and can be withdrawn on whim.” (And a big THANK YOU for that.)

The other person answered: “whatever. you depressed me today, thanks.”

Let me get this straight. This person is getting her OBC via legislation that blocks me from getting mine... and she’s upset with me because I’m not happy about it?!

What. The. Fuck.

Adoptees face discrimination. Left-behind adoptees face discrimination from their peers as well as from everyone else. Now, let me ask you this...

What makes one person more deserving of identity than another?

What are the criteria? Is it when they were born? Where they were born? Whether they were an agency or private adoption? Should we have different rules for interstate adoptions? International adoptions? Transracial adoptions? Situations involving rape? Who gets to choose these criteria? Who enforces them? What options remain for those left behind?

I will answer.

The rules are arbitrarily enforced.
They are chosen by the adoption industry.
There are no options for those left behind.

Because they don’t know! And they don’t care. Adoptees are a repressed and silent population. No one notices when we complain because the adoption industry has taken great pains to make sure that adoptees who question are considered mentally dysfunctional. Left-behinds who complain are even more mentally dysfunctional.

Shall I tell you what makes me mentally dysfunctional? Bullshit like that.

And bullshit like this. Also in the news this week, the duo of Feigenholtz and Mitchell (sort of like Simon and Garfunkel without the musical talent) is having a par-tay for those Illinois adoptees who now have access. (None of the left-behinds I know were invited, go figure.) Jean Strauss is going to be there filming what I can only assume is going to end up one hell of a one-sided viewpoint on Illinois adoptee access, if there are no left-behind adoptees in it. Without that it’s just more propaganda.

(And, to answer another complaint people have made about me: that was not a plug trying to get myself in the film. I really don’t care who’s in it as long as the left-behind viewpoint is given a fair shake. Truth be told, I hate telling my story in public and especially hate being on camera. Yes, I tell my story in public all the time - because it sucks so bad that I don’t want it to happen to other adoptees, not because I like the limelight. And I know certain people aren’t going to believe that no matter how many times I say it.)

In the Doctor Who episode The Happiness Patrol, the planet Terra Alpha is run by people who insist that everyone must be happy all the time. Dark colors are forbidden and only cheerful music is allowed. As a result there is an underground of people who believe in expressing their sadness and despair, called the Killjoys. The Happiness Patrol exists to kill the Killjoys and thus keep them from making the rest of the population unhappy. As the Seventh Doctor points out, “There are no other colors without the blues.”

We left-behinds are so inconvenient. Here we are, living proof that Illinois’ new law is flawed and discriminatory. Better make sure no one hears about it.

So yes, I’m a fucking killjoy. I’m dressed in dark colors playing blues on the harmonica while everybody else is eating their cotton candy and listening to elevator music. Lucky, lucky bastards.... haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? Don’t you know that nothing in this universe is picture-perfect? Don’t you know that this so-called “access” is going to come back and bite someone in the ass? I guess it doesn’t matter if your ass isn’t the one bitten. But it could be. And how would that make you feel?

How does it make you feel to know that the law that restores your access denies other people theirs?

While some people are getting their OBCs, other Illinois adoptees remain in the dark. (Not to mention the first mothers who aren't even on the agenda.) We still have to struggle with our searches, relegated to tidbits and hearsay and the leavings off the plates of the more fortunate. Don’t patronize us by saying you’re coming back for us. Not only does the new legislation continue to deny us, it makes it infinitely harder to restore our rights.

The message is clear: Access for some now is preferable to access for everyone later, even if a few end up permanently denied. And you knew that from the beginning, yet you still supported the bill.

I am stunned that you can look yourselves in the mirror. Shame on every single one of you.

I am not going to shut up, as some would prefer. I am going to continue to speak out for those left behind in Illinois and in other states that have enacted discriminatory compromise legislation.

And I encourage the rest of you to become killjoys too, for the sake of those who remain without access and who continue to be discriminated against by people who, a short time ago, were in the exact same boat.

How fast do the oppressed become the oppressors?

Dreading Birthdays III: Descent Into Despair, Restarting The Search

2012-01-03T11:36:00.030-06:00

It’s that time of year again... my own personal descent into despair. I’ve written before about adoption depression and birthdays:

From Dreading Birthdays: Thoughts On Adoption Depression

I didn't really start dreading birthdays until I started asking questions about my adoption, questions that were misdirected or answered with (as I later discovered) outright lies. Before that I just had this vague unease that got worse as the calendar crept toward January. I wonder if my birth mother suffers like I do, from what the shrinkwrappers call "seasonal affected disorder" but I believe is simply part of the human experience. One of the most shocking moments during my brief contact with my birth mother was her revelation that depression runs in our family, in fact one of my uncles suffers severely from it. Don't ask me what that means because it's all I've got. To be given that tidbit and then left in the dark makes me feel like spring will never come. Maybe depression was imprinted on me in the womb. It's in my blood, an unknown poison.

From Dreading Birthdays II: Celebrating Adoption Loss

I don't tell casual acquaintances about my birthday. People always want to know, put it in their calendar, send you an e-card or invite you to a little office celebration with stale cake. But adoptee birthdays invoke too many well-intentioned questions that are conversational for others and heartbreaking for us, like"Where were you born?" (some of us don't know) and "Are you celebrating with your family?" (which one?) In short, birthdays are stark reminders of what may be our most traumatic experience: losing our mothers, our blood relatives, our cultures, our heritage. I don't mind sharing with people who know my adopted status and understand that trauma. What I don't like is the automatic dismissal of the uninitiated: "Oh, you're adopted! You must feel so lucky." And I'll admit, I'm no fun. When people ask me straight out I give them a straight out answer: that I'm adopted, that my birthday is traumatic, that it brings up a lot of feelings of loss and I don't really like talking about it. Talk about putting a damper on the party.

I didn’t even write a birthday entry last year, I was so fed up with it. This year feels... different. Still depressed. Still descending into despair, and I’m not going to say there’s hope at the bottom. It’s more of an icy determination.

I’m starting up the search again, trying to find not only my origins but the details of my adoption. So many lies and misdirections, so many half-truths and hunches, I don’t even know what’s real anymore. So I’m laying it all out, trying to discern fact from fiction. By Illinois law I am forbidden from contacting my mother - a total joke, as I have next to nothing about her yet she has my complete contact information due to the Illinois CI program’s screw-up. But I’ll be damned if anybody tries to tell me I’m not allowed to piece together my own past within the confines of the strictures placed upon me.

The holidays were harder for me this year than January is now, which is odd. Maybe it’s the weather. There’s been very little snow and with temps in the 30s it feels more like November. I can handle November. My pansies are still blooming and there’s lettuce in the cold frames in the veggie garden. But there’s always that awful feeling in the back of my mind that the hammer will fall, that November will become December will become January and the world will lock into ice and cold and loneliness.

Among the adoption paperwork (that is, the paperwork my adoptive father deemed acceptable for me to see, as opposed to the papers he lied about/destroyed/concealed) is a yellow sheet of legal paper. It’s a transcript my adoptive father (aka the lawyer who sealed my file) took of a phone call he had with his old college pal (aka the delivery doctor). I feel sick just looking at it. I decided to post this because it’s a little piece of BSE (Baby Scoop Era) history.

(Sorry if Blogger is sucky about embiggen. You can find it full-size here.)

Words jump out at me. “Nov Dec Jan,” reflecting the personal countdown to hell I still experience every year. “Girl very reasonable.” Of course she was, she had no resources or support! “How could it be done in Illinois?” That is the man I once called Father, concealing my origins.

Note carefully what is going on in this transcript (which has been edited by me for my own privacy). My adoptive father was told they had to go with a private adoption, presumably because they’d been rejected by all the agencies they approached. Private adoption was legal in Illinois, but that they couldn’t adopt me there because it was limited to Illinois residents. So they found a loophole by finalizing the adoption in Ohio, their state of residence. My adoptive father was an attorney licensed to practice in Ohio and arranged matters there himself. Because of this, he ended up controlling the process of my adoption as well as the contents of my adoption file, including my original Illinois birth certificate. I am told this would never be allowed today due to conflict of interest. Later, he became the person to whom I had to apply for non-identifying information, according to revised Ohio state law regarding private adoptions. You can imagine how well that went.

The sickest line, to me, is this: ““Have to arrange to have mother take child w/her & physically turn child over to us & take to Ohio.” To my understanding, my mother was forced to walk me out of the hospital (to fulfill laws saying only she could do so) and turn me over to the delivery doctor, who kept me for the first week of my life then turned me over to my adoptive parents. Elsewhere there is a notation about having to hold off on finalizing the adoption because of the waiting period for my mother to change her mind. It’s all so reprehensible: the careful application of law contrary to its supposedly intended purpose of giving a mother the chance to make an informed choice.

My adoption is gray market, legal as far as I know. But no one could look at the above scenario and consider it objective or ethical. This is the heart of the Baby Scoop Era: legal and illegal separation of children and parents. Except it never ended, because the same tactics continue to be employed today. They get you coming and going, both when the child is first adopted and later when the now-adult adoptee attempts to reclaim his or her birthright.

Icy determination and anger; that, to me, will always be January. This year I’m depressed but I’m also refocused. Adoption will not stop me. Depression will not stop me. Discrimination and stereotypes of adoptees will not stop me. Deformer laws, apathetic reporters and disdainful politicians will not stop me.

All adoptees deserve the same equal, unfettered access to their original birth certficates as the non-adopted. Nothing less is acceptable. Nor is our society’s prejudicial treatment of adoptees acceptable. I have had it with people speaking for adult adoptees and first mothers, putting words in our mouths, refusing to listen to our voices even though we are STANDING RIGHT HERE, blogging and tweeting and making ourselves heard.

Steve Jobs And Offensive Adoptee Stereotypes

2011-12-28T04:22:00.041-06:00

Steve Jobs was one of my personal heroes. I probably wouldn't have gotten into IT or started my own business without his influence. But my grief at his passing was marred by the constant references to his adoption. And the adoptee stereotypes I've encountered made my jaw hit the floor with the speed of the Tevatron. (Not the LHC, because I live near Fermi so I'll give some love to the home team.)

What scares me is that I didn't even notice myself at first, and trust me, my adoption-BS meter is finely tuned. We all saw what the news coverage was like. Steve Jobs, gone! Such a visionary! Such a genius! And did you hear he was adopted?

Even adoptees mentioned it, talking about Jobs as "one of us." I started to do the same thing. I was proud of Steve for being adopted, for showing the rest of the world we're worth something.

And then I realized, holy shit, what we're really saying is, "Steve Jobs succeeded even though he was a bastard." We're praising him, not because he succeeded, but because he Succeeded While Adopted (SWA).

Bastards have to work harder. We're never good enough. Not even Steve Jobs was good enough.

It's even more obvious in the Walter Isaacson biography, which has more adoptee stereotypes than an NCFA convention. The first chapter is the incendiary "Abandoned And Chosen," loaded words which epitomize the primary adoption stereotypes: that birth mothers abandon and that adoptees are "chosen" for "a better life". Notably, a biography of an adoptee begins with the lives of his adoptive parents. The adoptee is always a secondary character in his own story.

Steve's first mother found out he hadn't been adopted by college graduates as she stipulated, and refused to sign the papers. "The standoff lasted weeks," Isaacson writes, and describes that Jobs' mother eventually "relented" (read: gave up after constant pressure and coercion) but made the a-parents "sign a pledge" that they'd send him to college. Yeah, about as enforceable as any of today's supposedly "open" adoptions. Then Isaacson goes on to interview Steve's friends about his feelings about being "abandoned" (even though his mother obviously fought for him). Like many adoptees, myself included, Steve internalized abandonment because everyone in his universe told him he was abandoned. The rest of the chapter is equally repugnant. Steve Jobs lived the adoptee stereotype and, in death, he's become the epitome of it.

This is a best-selling book! What the hell kind of message is this for adoptees, especially young ones, that a wildly popular book about a wildly popular person is riddled with stereotypes? I'm not talking about a stray remark here or there. I'm talking screaming misogynistic anti-adoptee lunacy. If anybody brought us to the 21st Century it was Steve Jobs, yet his authorized biography reads like a 19th Century handbook on social work. Go read even just the first few pages and you'll be as appalled as I am.

In the vernacular, OMG. *deep breath*

Another underlying message I heard in the buzz surrounding Steve's death was that adoption redeemed him: that if he had been raised by his birth mother he wouldn't have succeeded. We don't know that. Maybe he would have been an even greater success. Adoption is trying to take credit, when the credit is due to Steve for fighting the societal restrains of being a bastard.

Steve Jobs succeeded despite adoption, not because of it.

Many of the less-desirable personality quirks attributed to Steve, in particular his control issues, are traced back to his adoption. As adoptees our lives have been controlled for us. Is it any wonder we want to take that control back? Why is that seen as a bad thing? Is it because allowing us to do so might acknowledge our humanity, and the inherent problems in adoption?

Words are powerful. If you say something it is likely to become true. (Or, as Wang Chung said: "The words we use are strong; they make reality." Profound advice from 1980s pop.) I thought we were making some progress on adoptee stereotypes but now I'm realizing we've only scratched the surface. It's so ingrained we can barely get people to acknowledge it much less treat us with some level of respect.

Jaw still on floor, gathering neutrinos.

My New Adventure, My New Blog, And Some Snarky Adoption Remarks

2011-12-09T08:19:00.013-06:00

Most of you 73adoptee readers know of my passion for fantasy and science fiction, and I mentioned in my previous post that I’d taken a sabbatical and decided to focus on writing full-time.

Now I have a brand-new blog where you can follow my (mis)adventures in writing and fandom. Find out more at www.trionaguidry.com/blog.

And yeah, there’s gonna be adoption stuff. Of course there is. You can’t be adopted without adoption stuff oozing over everything like toxic waste. Maybe I should make it a game. You guys can have fun giggling over all the subtle and not-so-subtle adoption subtexts on my other blogs. I’m sure there are some there I’m not aware of myself. Like the old Internet drinking games... one sip for snarky remarks only an adoption insider would get, two for deliberate jabs at the adoption industry, whole drink for full-blown rants about corruption and failed reform. Substitute your favorite beverage if you don’t drink, fun for the whole adoption community!

Case in point: The other day I was halfway through a short story I’m working on, when I suddenly realized that the ENTIRE plot was a veiled potshot at adoption. Maybe veiled with transparent wrap, because it was dead obvious when I re-read it. Is it just me or do other people find themselves inadvertently incorporating their anger/angst/frustration at adoption into other aspects of their lives?

As the 7th Doctor’s companion Ace said in Survival (as she was transforming into one of the Cheetah People): “I don’t even realize it! I don’t even feel myself go.”

Anyway. Come read my new blog. I'm going to be unabashedly nerdy over there, and hopefully I can keep the snarky adoption remarks here where they won't unnerve the uninitiated.

73adoptee Returns! But No One's Coming Back For Left-Behind Illinois Adoptees

2011-11-14T17:27:00.048-06:00

I've been gone a while. Sometimes real life intrudes, and sometimes it's a welcome intrusion. I discovered the hard way that it's all too easy to let adoption and adoption reform take over your life. When you're adopted it's adoption 24/7 anyway without concentrating on it.

So I took a break, from a lot of things. I even took a sabbatical from work, which turned into a radical change in my career. Which is good, because it gives me more time to pursue my dream of writing fiction. But I also had to decide if it was going to give me more time to dedicate to adoption reform. And that got me thinking about what I've learned in the past few years about reform: what works, what doesn't work, and what part I want to play in it.

Because, let's face it, the current situation sucks like an industrial fan. Depending on where and when you're born you either have full access, no access, or some kind of convoluted pseudo-access that no one understands, least of all the people creating and implementing the legislation that supports it.

And then there's Illinois. Yeah, I've been quiet because of Illinois. If I hear one more person cheering November 15, 2011 as some kind of liberation day for adoptees of the great State of Illinois, I will go stark raving John-Crichton-on-Farscape crazy. Search my blog on keyword Illinois or read this about the new law for just some of the reasons why.

Illinois is not open. Illinois is sort-of open to adoptees who unwittingly end up playing roulette with their own rights. Some will win. Some will inevitably lose.

I'm on the losing team, so I know how it feels. Everybody's celebrating and they've forgotten you. Or, if they remember, it's to slap you on the back and say, "better luck next time" before they go off to congratulate the winners. But adoption isn't football. There's only one game, the Adoption Game, and if you make a mistake you don't get a do-over. I remain disgruntled with pretty much everybody across the adoption spectrum: the bureaucrats who pat me on the head; the politicians who care more about their own power than their responsibility to help others; the deformers who think compromise is victory.

Because no one is coming back for the left-behinds. Not when the legislators, the news media, and the general public all think that adoptees already have access. We don't, not all of us, but that message has been lost amidst the celebrations.

* * *

Over the past few years I've learned some important lessons about adoption reform. Here's what works: sharing our voices, speaking out, contacting our legislators, educating the general public. Here's what doesn't: indolence, infighting, lethargy, backstabbing. Yes, it's harder to convince The Powers That Be to grant access for all. But it's the right thing to do.

I debated long and hard as to whether or not I wanted to continue adoption reform at all. It's not what you'd call "fun." It involves public speaking, private introspection, misjudgments from all sides, stress, and lack of personal life. You become an involuntary spokesperson for all of adopteekind (and, if you're a transracial adoptee, often for your entire race as well). Everything is difficult because not only are you trying to write letters and convince lawmakers and wrap your head around legislation, you're reminded EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of your own adoption baggage because it's why you're doing this in the first place.

Here's what I've decided. I've revamped 73adoptee (come check out the redesign) and I'll be posting here on an infrequent basis, plus more often on Twitter as @73adoptee. There's also a new way to subscribe via RSS by clicking here, or subscribe via email by clicking here (or you can enter your email address in the box in the right sidebar). I'm continuing to advocate for adoptee rights: access for ALL adult adoptees, equal to that of the non-adopted: e.g. original birth certificate access with no strings attached.

But here's what I'm not doing.

Spending all my time on adoption. I have other things to do with my life, and I am heartily sick of focusing on adoption. I can't even stand the word anymore. It's ridiculous that I have to spend this much energy and effort for access to my own identity.
Posting frequently to 73adoptee. See above. I'm around but I'm probably not going to post very often simply because I am busy.
Arguing over semantics. Don't come to me with any more partial pseudo-access schemes. I will not support them and I really don't want to discuss them. It's a waste of time and effort better spent toward the goal of truly equal rights.
Helping with searches. I just don't have time. There are plenty of resources available with a simple Web search. Just don't jump right into schemes like confidential intermediaries without knowing what you may be in for. Trust me on that one.
Participating in reform organizations. Some work, some don't, but I need to strike out on my own, for many of the same reasons that I quit working in Corporate America to become a freelancer. I'm just too GDI (god damn independent), and volunteerism can become a total time-suck as I'm sure many of you know. I may choose to support bills but ONLY if they are clean and ONLY if they will be yanked if they are butchered in session. But any support will be personal and not affiliated with any organizations.
Analyzing reform legislation. I'm not going to write reviews of which bills are good or not, there are other bloggers doing that (and kudos to them because it's incredibly time-consuming). Doubtless I'll comment as the desire (read: irritation level) arises but you shouldn't consider 73adoptee a clearinghouse for info on all reform efforts everywhere.

Basically, 73adoptee is a place for me to rant about the things in adoption that piss me off. (Yeah, it's a long list.) I'm not particularly concerned that my opinions are unpopular in some circles. You see, when you are at the very bottom there's nowhere to go but up. Attempting to reduce adult adoptees to second-class citizens results in people like me, who have nothing else left to lose. What are you going to do, take away my birth certificate or convince my first mother to deny contact? Oops, sorry, already done.

I may have taken a break but I'm not finished with you, adoption. You've still got my identity and I want it back.

Setting Adoptive Parents' Expectations

2011-03-23T21:59:00.024-05:00

(Where have I been? I think I got adoption burnout. There is so much crap going on out there that frankly it's depressing. That, combined with my birthday, which as most of you know I detest as a reminder of my own adoption baggage, made me want to take a serious vacation from adoption. But I'm back now and hoping to blog at least a little more frequently.)

The papers are full of the baby Vanessa case, in which a prospective adopter "won" against a birth father who was never informed of his child nor his rights. I say "won" in parentheses because the only "winners" in this case are the permanent guardian (dubbed adoptive mother), the lawyers, and the adoption agency. You can read the highly subjective LA Times article about the case here.

First of all, I was offended by the LA Times reporter's coverage of this matter. The print edition of the Chicago Tribune (same parent company as the LA Times) headlined the article as "Baby Vanessa stays at home," an implicit bias that the adoptive family is "home" and the biological family is not. I also didn't like the repeated emphasis on "the only parent she knows." Vanessa knew her mother; perhaps she is unaware to express it verbally, but all children, even (especially!) newborns, are well aware of the existence of and need for their biological mothers. In yet another example of serious media bias about adoption, this article the reporter did her best to make the putative adopter a saint and the biological parents the villains.

As I remarked on Facebook:

I think the process of adoption leads many adoptive parents to think that way [that adoptees are objects to be possessed rather than human beings with feelings]. They are encouraged to pick the "best" products (eg children with less of a possibility of birth parent "interference"), the mythical tabula rasa they can shape as desired and which will make up for not being able to biologically procreate. Just look at the amended birth certificate, which shows adoptees "as if" born to the adoptive parents. Our society is already consumer-driven and the agencies and private facilitators play on that. It sets impossible expectations for the adoptee because no one can ever live up to those perfect standards.

Which makes it clear that the adoption agencies and facilitators are really all about the money and don't care what happens to people or families after they get paid. Because if they did care they would make sure to set appropriate expectations on the part of the adoptive parents, since this scenario inevitably leads to family disfunction and perhaps even dissolution (whether via the "adoption returns department" or the adoptee deciding as an adult to dissolve the relationship as I did). I think most adoptive parents are reasonable people that get sucked into the adoption industry mindset. You'll always have some crazies who have to have a child no matter what but I don't think it would be the rule rather than the exception if it weren't for the fact that the adoption industry grooms them into believing that they MUST have a child at all costs, and that if they pay enough money they can erase their infertility and re-establish their status in our parent-centric society.

What Jane said over at FirstMotherForum also got me thinking:

Doss seems to have overlooked the real villain in this case: AdoptHelp, which neglected to check the Ohio Putative Father’s Registry, allowing Doss to believe she would be able to adopt Vanessa without Mills' consent. Doss claims to have spent $400,000 on attorney fees (which seems excessive) and has made public pleas for contributions to help her pay these costs.

So then the question becomes: Why don't people go after adoption agencies when they falsely set prospective adopters' expectations? Why do they go after the biological family instead? Answer: Because vilifying the biological parents ensures continued supply (children for adoption). It's hard to fight a profitable industry with lots of lawyers and lobbyists to give it teeth, but it's easy to fight a resource-poor individual, especially when the media and the court of public opinion is likely to side in your favor.

Doss wants to enact legislation that would, as Jane puts it,

give prospective adoptive parents a sort of squatter’s rights to children although they couch it in terms of preventing “reactive attachment disorders,” promoting bonding, or whatever psychological lingo carries the day.

Lorraine, Jane's co-blogger at FMF, points out:

Doss is not adopting Vanessa; she will be her permanent guardian at this point, not her ADOPTIVE mother.

Speaking from an adoptee perspective, adoptees are neither objects to be owned nor fodder for touchy-feely newspaper articles written about them when they are too young to claim the ownership and privacy of their own origin stories. How would you feel to find out that the public knew about the intimate details of your life before you were able to understand them yourself? Many of us have also wondered how Vanessa is going to feel when she is old enough to understand that her "adoptive mother" (permanent guardian) deliberately prevented her biological father from claiming custody. Will Doss lie about it, in which case Vanessa will find out the truth through casual research? Will Doss bias Vanessa toward her own biological origins in order to preserve adoption attachment? I can tell you that either scenario is likely to result in Vanessa recoiling from the woman she has been groomed to call "mother" and struggling to discern her own identity sans the foundation of origin she should have had, except for a profit-hungry adoption agency and a prospective adopter whose expectations were falsely set.

But back to the question of prospective adopter expectations. What should those expectations be? I think we should treat prospective adopters in the same way Douglas Adams fictionally treated the President of the Universe: anyone who wanted the job was automatically disqualified. Again, from comments I made on Facebook:

There really needs to be better setting of the expectations of prospective adopters. Too often it's all about them obtaining a child as a status symbol as opposed to actually wanting to reach out to a child in need (because if the latter was the case, why aren't they taking in the foster kids who actually need help as opposed to taking children from families who lack resources to raise them). Every time I think about how the tens of thousands people pay for one adoption could go to helping a family stay together, it infuriates me.

Prospective adopters would do well to understand that any information they get from adoption agencies or facilitators about adoption is, in itself, biased. You don't ask the person selling cars whether the brand his dealership sells is better than the brand across the street. You go out and ask people who have actually bought the car you're considering. Some of them will tell you they like it, others will tell you they don't, and you base your decision on a synthesis of the two. In this case, prospective adopters need to get out there and ask advice from biological parents and adult adoptees who have no ties to agencies or adoption profits. That's the only way you're going to find out the truth about adoption, and unfortunately a lot of it isn't as pretty as the glossy brochures or biased media articles would have you believe.

Ad For New Illinois Law: Adoptees Pay To Pray… That They Get Their Info

2011-01-12T20:36:00.032-06:00

Here it is, folks. The oft-promised, much-ballyhooed ad for the new Illinois adult adoptee pseudo-rights law (click image to enlarge). It's being included with driver's license renewal forms, and I was "lucky" enough to receive one with mine. Those who read my blog know that I fought against this bill because it divides adoptees into haves and have-nots, and further entrenches the expensive, ineffective, inaccessible, and thoroughly unnecessary Confidential Intermediary (CI) program. You can read about my experience fighting this law here as well as the reasons why I strongly disagree with any legislation that does not provide equal, unconditional access to adult adoptees and the shenanigans that occurred surrounding passage of this bill.

It's clear to those of us who have taken the time to comprehend adoptee rights and the concept of Class Bastard that CIs are merely another way to make money off original birth certificate (OBC) access while paying lip service to our civil rights. This ad, like the law itself and the majority of the media coverage that went with it, fails to acknowledge the reality of this law. Far from "opening" adoptee birth certificates as claimed by sponsor Rep. Sara "Token Adoptee" Feigenholtz, this law continues to dehumanize adoptees. It also continues to conflate contact with access.

Contact is a matter to be decided between the parties involved. Access to one's identity, on the other hand, is a basic right that should not be denied.

Although Feigenholtz says that Illinois' law is equivalent to Maine's, the truth is that in Maine, adoptees can access their OBCs using the same process and paying the same modest fees as everyone else. Thus, Maine's law puts adoptees on equal footing with non-adoptees. But in Illinois and other states where conditional laws have been enacted, we adoptees must subject ourselves to humiliating processes which may or may not result in OBC access. We may be subjected to to disclosure vetoes that bar us from that documentation, or information may be redacted from our OBCs. Now, if Illinois had enacted a law that was truly the equivalent of Maine's, in that adoptees could go to the courthouse and request their OBCs using the same process and paying the same fees as "normal" citizens, the state could actually be MAKING money from OBC access.

But no, in Illinois it's pay-to-play, or in the case of adoptees, pay-to-pray… that you get your information. In other words, deformers' reassurances aside, Illinois bastards are still bastards.

Not only did I receive this notice with my driver's license renewal, I actually received several of them. Extra copies to give out to my bastard buddies, perhaps? What a waste! Considering the state can't even pay its own bills and is contemplating a major tax increase just to make ends meet, the whole thing -- the law, the ads, the spiffy new web site -- is reprehensible.

This program is being advertised when they don't even know how to implement the new law. For example, they have no idea how to handle adoptees who have already gone through the Illinois registry and intermediary program and been denied access via disclosure veto. They say we can have access when a birth parent dies... but, if you don't know the names of your birth parents, how are you supposed to know when they die or obtain a death certificate? We don't even know how many adoptees have been rejected from the CI program, or why; the state keeps no statistics on that, nor do they fully disclose to participants the risks inherent in participating in a CI program.

At bare minimum, the amount of money being spent on this ad campaign and everything else related to the implementation of this new law needs to be revealed.

What no one is acknowledging is the real intention of this law and the Illinois registry (IARMIE): to funnel unwitting applicants into the state's CI program, which is maintained by a sole-source, no-bid organization run by Feigenholtz's pals. For an explanation of all the reasons why CI programs are wrong, read this (and my own personal experience with the CI program here). The Advisory Council for the implementation of this law is long on adoption agencies and "professionals," and short on actual adult adoptees. (One of the organizations included in the council and claiming to represent adult adoptees is the American Adoption Congress; don't forget the brouhaha over Feigenholtz crony Melisha Mitchell's assertion at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last spring that she represented AAC, when she had actually been ousted as their Illinois rep prior to the hearing. According to AAC's web site, as of today the position of Illinois rep is still vacant, so I'm not sure what use having them on this council is. The above link will also tell you about how Feigenholtz or one of her staffers showed true colors when referring to adult adoptees as "ungrateful bastards.")

I talked about the problems inherent in this new Illinois law when it was still a bill. Now, we're stuck with it. Illinois lawmakers consider adoptee rights in this state a done deal. Good luck trying to pass REAL adoptee rights legislation like Maine's in this state anytime soon. This is the danger of deform.

There are many questions that have yet to be answered, but the advertising campaign continues, at the expense of the Illinois taxpayer and the adoptees left behind.

Action Alert New Jersey: Vote NO on A1406/S799 Leave-Some-Adoptees-Behind Bill

2011-01-05T13:25:00.026-06:00

Working on a couple new blog posts, but in the meantime, please contact New Jersey legislators TODAY and ask them not to support this legislation. The following is an Action Alert from Bastard Nation on the subject. And, to my friends in the adoption community who support this bill... please, no flaming. We may have to agree to disagree, but I cannot support any bill that includes disclosure vetoes, further entrenches confidential intermediary programs, or redacts original birth certificates. I know people have fought long and hard for this but once such legislation is enacted it is nearly impossible to get rid of it. That is exactly what happened in Illinois. Some may think it's okay to leave some adoptees behind if others are granted pseudo “access,” but the picture looks a whole lot different when you're one of the left-behind. See here for my thoughts on this. -- tg

(Originally posted on the Bastard Nation Action Alert blog, here.)

Monday, January 03, 2011

Bastard Nation Action Alert: Write NJ Legislators Today; Vote NO on A1406/S799!

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BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT!

STOP DISCLOSURE VETO/WHITE OUT LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY!!!

ASK THE NEW JERSEY ASSEMBLY: VOTE NO ON A1406/S799

Read full text of A1406 here.
Read full text of S799 here

A1406 (companion to S799 already passed in the NJ Senate) is scheduled for a floor vote sometime in the next few weeks. Proponents of this bad bill hoped to have it on the schedule for a January 6, 2011 vote, but it’s not on the list.

Please contact Assembly members immediately and urge them to VOTE NO ON A1406/S799. (Contact information below.) If you are from or in New Jersey or have a New Jersey connection, mention it in your communication.

Be sure to put: “Vote No On Adoptee Birthright Bill “in the header

Bastard Nation’s letter to the Assembly is here.

A1406/S799 is: restrictive, discriminatory, creates a new, special and temporary ”right” for “birthparents,” and exempts the state’s adopted adults from equal protection and treatment regarding the release of the government-generated public record of their births.

THE BILL

*includes a 12- month open enrollment period, starting after the Department of Health releases regs for A1406/S799 implementation, that allows “birthparents,” to file disclosure vetoes (DV) before obcs, past and future, are unsealed

*authorizes the state to replace the original birth certificat, of those subjected to the DV with a mutilated copy of the obc with all identifying information, including the address of the parent(s) at the time of birth (if it appears on the cert) deleted.

*requires “birthparents” who file a disclosure veto to submit a family history and a possibly illegal intrusive medical form to activate the veto.

*requires “birthparents” who file a “contact preference form,” which, in fact, acts as a disclosure veto, to fill out the same family history and possibly illegal intrusive medical history form to activiate the veto.

*seals by default all “safe haven” birth certificates, even though most “safe haven” babies are born in hospitals to identified mothers.

*requires adoption agencies and adoption lawyers to receive a written veto status report from the state before they can release identifying information to adoptees

*requires the state to mount an “information” campaign to inform “birthparents” of their “protection” options

A1406/S799 IS NOT AN OBC ACCESS BILL.
A1406/S799 IS NOT ABOUT RIGHTS.
A1406/S799 IS ABOUT PRIVILEGE

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization opposes legislation that denies any adult adoptee access to his or her own original birth records on par with all other citizens. Please let the Assembly know that this issue is not about relationships between adoptees and their “birthparents.” It is about basic human and civil rights.

Passage of bad legislation is New Jersey could easily undermine efforts of dedicated reformers who are holding the line for adoptee rights in other states.

New Jersey’s A1406/S799 is an abomination in light of the restoration of the right of original birth certificate access to all persons adopted in Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire, and Maine. Adult adoptees and all who support adoptee rights should stand united for unrestricted access laws and not sell out just to get a bill passed! Disclosure veto legislation is unethical and unjust!

Please e-mail the New Jersey Assembly today and urge members to VOTE NO ON A1406/S799.

CONTACT INFORMATION
(write one letter, cut and paste for all)

AsmAlbano@njleg.org, AsmMilam@njleg.org, ASmDeAngelo@njleg.org, AsmGusciora@njleg.org, AsmChivukula@njleg.org, AsmEgan@njleg.org, AsmBarnes@njleg.org, AsmDiegnan@njleg.org, AsmCoughlin@njleg.org, AsmWisniewski@njleg.org, AsmCryan@njleg.org, AsmGreen@njleg.org, AsmMcKeon@njleg.org, AsmCaputo@njleg.org, AsmCoutinho@njleg.org, AsmBurzichelli@njleg.org, AsmMainor@njleg.org, AsmODonnell@njleg.org, AsmPrieto@njleg.org, AsmRamos@njleg.org, AsmGiblin@njleg.org,
AsmSchaer@njleg.org, AsmJohnson@njleg.org, AsmMoriarty@njleg.org, AsmWilson@njleg.org,AsmGreenwald@njleg.org, AsmConaway@njleg.org, ASmConners@njleg.org, AsmHolzapfel@njleg.org, AsmWolfe@njleg.org, AsmRible@njleg.org,AsmOScanlon@njleg.org, AsmThompson@njleg.org, AsmBiondi@njleg.org, AsmAmodeo@njleg.org, AsmPolistina@njleg.org, asmbramnick@njleg.org, AsmDiMaio@njleg.org, AsmPeterson@njleg.org, AsmChiusano@njleg.org, AsmBucco@njleg.org, AsmCarroll@njleg.org, AsmDeCroce@njleg.org, AsmWebber@njleg.org, AsmDancer@njleg.org, AsmMalone@njleg.org, AsmSchroeder@njleg.org, AsmRumana@njleg.org, AsmRusso@njleg.org, AsmDelany@njleg.org, AsmRudder@njleg.org, AsmRumpf@njleg.org,
AsmFuentes@njleg.org, AsmDiCicco@njleg.org, AswWatsonColeman@njleg.org,
AswQuijano@njleg.org, AswStender@njleg.org, AswJasey@njleg.org, AswTucker@njleg.org, AswSpencer@njleg.org, AswRiley@njleg.org, AswQuigley@njleg.org, AswRodriguez@njleg.org, AswOliver@njleg.org, AswEvans@njleg.org,AswPou@njleg.org, AswVainieriHuttle@njleg.org,
AswVoss@njleg.org, AswWagner@njleg.org, AswLampitt@njleg.org,
AswAngelini@njleg.org, AswCasagrande@njleg.org , AswHandlin@njleg.org,
AswCoyle@njleg.org, AswMunoz@njleg.org, AswMcHose@njleg.org, AswVandervalk@njleg.org,
AswGove@njleg.org

ALSO WRITE TO GOVERNOR CHRISTIE
Drop a line to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie now and ask him to veto A1406/S799 if it hits his desk. Letters should be no more than 250 words. Use this template : http://www.state.nj.us/governor/contact/

or contact him at:

Office of the Governor
PO Box 001
Trenton, NJ 08625
609-292-6000

Bastard Nation’s letter to Governor Christie is here.

Adoptees As Parents: Alone On A Raft In The Ocean

2010-11-15T17:00:00.005-06:00

There is no shortage of assistance available for adoptive parents. Books, Web sites, parenting classes... you name it, the amount of information is staggering. But when adult adoptees (or first mothers and fathers) look for help, there is precious little information, if any.

Take, for example, the dilemma I faced this past week. My first-grade daughter came home with, yes, the dreaded family tree assignment. I knew this would come up eventually but I wasn't prepared for it for another few years at least. The assignment was given Monday and due Friday, leaving me scant time to figure out what to do. Because, while my daughter isn't adopted, I am. And the same sealed records laws that prevent me from obtaining my own heritage also keep my children in the dark.

By most accounts, the family tree assignment is obsolete. It assumes all families follow the stereotypical 1950s-era "nuclear family" pattern. In this age of divorce, remarriage, adoption, donor conception, etc. there are any number of ways in which such an assignment is a major FAIL. But that didn't give me any answers for my daughter. This situation strikes me as yet another example of the fact that no one thinks about what happens when adoptees grow up. For us there are no books, Web sites, or helpful classes. When was the last time you saw a class at an adoption agency such as "Adult Adoptees 101: What To Put On Medical Forms" or "Explaining To The Non-Adopted Why Being Called An 'Adopted Child' Is Insulting." The obvious answer, of course, is to restore access to our original birth certificates and start treating us like "normal" people instead of second-class citizens. (Oh, and get rid of the family tree assignment, while we're at it). But in reality we are left on our own to muddle through it as best we can.

I reached out to my friends, within the adoption community and outside it, for help with my daughter's assignment. Fortunately my adoptee friends came to the rescue, explaining how they'd handled similar situations and offering advice and resources. (Thank you, everyone!) But most of the available resources are written by and for adoptive parents. That may help parents and educators be more sensitive to families with adopted children, but how to increase sensitivity toward families that include ADULT adoptees?

My friends not connected to adoption generally fell into two categories: "What's the big deal?" and "Just write down your adoptive family." To answer the first, of course it's a big deal. In fact, it's the biggest deal there is. Heritage and origins is basic to our very being. People who have this information take it so for granted that they can't fathom not having it. As I've mentioned before, it's beyond difficult explaining to the general public that no, adoptees can't just walk into the courthouse to get our information and yes, we should have the same access to our origins as everyone else. Now my children are facing the consequences of a decision that was taken out of their hands, and mine, before any of us were even born. They are not adopted. They should not have to deal with adoption... and yet they do, and so will their children.

As for the second part, "just write down your adoptive family," that's fraught with problems too. Even if I had a fantastic relationship with my adoptive family, doing so feels to me like perpetuating the same lie that is on my amended birth certificate. I was NOT born to the people listed there. I was born to my first mother and my unknown father. The fact that my first mother wants no contact doesn't change that. The fact that my father apparently doesn't know I exist doesn't change it either. They are the genetic forebears of myself and my children. As it happens I do not have a good relationship with my adoptive family. (The fact that some people think that automatically disqualifies anything negative I happen to say about adoption is a whole 'nother matter.) To put my adoptive family's names on my daughter's family tree, to perpetuate the lies, advances the illusion that adoptees can simply be dumped anywhere with no consequences. But adoption does have consequences, and those consequences last for generations.

I've written before about the difficulties adoptees have becoming parents themselves, especially parents by biology. Imagine the first blood relative you've ever known and it's your own child. That is too messed up for words. As my children grow older I find such difficulties only increase. Sometimes I feel like we are floating alone on a raft in the ocean. There are no maps to where we need to go, no rescue boats coming along to help us. We have to face each wave, each challenge, on our own. (With big TV choppers circling us, displaying banners that say "Why aren't you grateful to be adopted?" and "Stop making waves!")

As for the family tree assignment, here are the best resources I could find, especially the first link (a PDF).

Again, these are specific to adopted children in the classroom, but can be extrapolated to children with parents who were adopted. At least, I think they can be, but I'm too close to adoption to see it the same way the general public does. I'm not sure my daughter's teacher really understood my concerns, or the problem. She was sympathetic, but the vibe I got was that she found the whole situation confusing.

And that really sums it up, doesn't it? We adult adoptees are so invisible to society, people have no idea how to react to our concerns or issues.

In the end, my daughter put down "unknown" for her maternal grandparents, and I had flashbacks to all those times in doctors' offices, writing down "unknown--adopted" on medical forms. She is confused as to why I can't give her this information, although she's familiar with the fact that I'm adopted and that her maternal grandmother chooses not to have contact with us. But, explain adoption politics to a first grader. She doesn't understand why the law prevents us from knowing. She tells me that makes no sense, and I agree with her.

It's so basic even a first grader can understand. Why can't other people?

The Critical Difference Between Foster And Infant Adoption

2010-11-06T11:04:00.019-05:00

It's National Adoption Awareness Month, and many of us in the adoption community are writing about adoption--not the feel-good articles you'll see in the press, but writing that gets to the truth of what adoption actually is. And some of it, perhaps even most of it, isn't very pretty.

A number of folks have pointed out that NAAM, which started as a way to promote adoption of kids already in foster care, has turned into a gigantic singalong in favor of infant adoption. So I thought I'd explain the difference between infant adoption and foster adoption.

Foster adoption is adoption of kids who have already been separated from their families, and are living in foster care.
Infant adoption is adoption of children, often newborns but sometimes slightly older, whose mothers are unable (either by choice or, more often, through clever coersion and familial/societal pressure) to care for them.

Do you see the critical difference? In foster adoption, family separation occurs BEFORE adoption. In infant adoption, separation occurs FOR adoption.

Foster kids are desperately in need of homes. But they're older and may have suffered abuse or other situations that deem them, in the eyes of some prospective adopters, less than "ideal." They often come with inconvenient birth families and awareness of their own origins. There is also a stigma attached to adoption from foster care, as if adopting a foster kid means taking on "damaged goods." An infant, on the other hand, is considered a tabula rasa. In fact, healthy white or pass-for-white infants are such a prize commodity that they go for tens of thousands of dollars. While there is also stigma attached to infant adoption (indeed, adoption of any sort), it's more likely that neighbors and friends are going to congratulate you on adopting an infant than adopting an eight-year-old out of foster care with, say, medical issues and birth family members still in the picture. That might take *gasp* reordering of one's life on a massive scale. It's "not what we signed up for." (Never mind that life is full of things we "didn't sign up for.") Infants are cute and cuddly and, above all, malleable. As I've said before, why rent when you can own?

NAAM should be about finding homes for foster kids, the ones who truly need it. Instead it's become about infant adoption: how to encourage it, how to advertise it, and how to convince as many expectant mothers as possible to surrender their top-quality tabula-rasa infants, because that's what the market wants.

That's not to say that there aren't infants in foster care who need homes. And that's not to say that there aren't adoptive parents who open their hearts to children who are actually in need, infants or otherwise. But there is also the side of National Adoption Awareness Month that most people won't see or don't want to see--the adopters with entitlement mentalities, who think they deserve a child simply because they want one, and who turn that want into an obsession that drives them to go to any extreme to fulfill it. (Try the Vaughns for one despicable example.) These are the people who drive the market for infant adoption.

Infant adoption is rarely needed, certainly not the number of infants who become available for adoption. Think of all the time and money that is spent on infant adoption. Now, imagine that time and money being used to get as many kids out of foster care and into loving homes as possible. Also imagine that time and money being used to help expectant mothers who find themselves without resources. Oh, but then they might decide to raise their own children, meaning less available product and therefore less money made by adoption agencies. Infant adoption, not foster adoption, is where the real money is. And adoption agencies, despite their "charitable" reputations, are in it for the money. Anyone who tells you otherwise is, ahem, selling something.

Next, think about the efforts made to recruit infants from other countries, to the extent of lying and outright stealing children. Imagine if, instead, the resources spent on these expensive and unnecesary adoptions were spent instead to provide safe, effective, affordable care within such countries, to promote extended family adoptions when parents are truly unable to support children, to promote in-country adoption to preserve the children's heritage, leaving international adoption as a very last and rare resort.

In the current atmosphere, this would never happen. There'd be an outcry from agencies, prospective adopters, and the general public, ostensibly on behalf of the poor "orphans." What is not known to most people is that a lot of those kids have parents and/or families, and are designated "orphans" for the sole purpose of making them more adoptable/profitable. Again, that's not to say there aren't true orphans in need of help, but there's also a whole industry that has been built on marketing children from other countries to Westerners. Which is why so many adoptees, upon expressing discontent with adoption as it is practiced today, are scolded with, "Would you rather have been raised in an orphanage?" or "Would you rather have been aborted?" as if the logical choice--being raised in one's original family--was never an option. The adoption industry needs the perception that there are more orphans languishing out there than there actually are, in order to keep the profits coming. And, let's be honest, there are some prospective adopters who get off on the idea of being the "rescuers" of "orphans."

The unfortunate fact is, not everyone who wants to be a parent is going to get that opportunity. There are other ways to matter to children besides obtaining a child by any means necessary. Is it really that important to own? Has our society become so materialistic that we can't put aside avarice for altruism? Why can't we help children stay in their families of origin instead of wasting all those resources on unnecessary adoptions? The way adoption is currently practiced only encourages unethical and illicit behavior.

This is one reason that adoption agencies, private "facilitators" and some adoptive parents try to diminish the voices of adult adoptees, first mothers and fathers, and those scant few adoptive parents who dare to speak out against corruption in adoption. First mothers (and fathers!) can speak to their experience of being coerced into giving up their children. Adult adoptees like me (I was adopted as a newborn) can speak to the fact that no infant is a tabula rasa. Adoptive parents can speak to the corruption that they have personally witnessed.

No, the adoption agencies and those adopters who consider themselves "entitled" would be much happier if we keep National Adoption Awareness Month as squeaky-clean as possible. Let's put these myths to rest. Foster adoption is about finding homes for children who need them. Infant adoption is about selling children to people who want them.

The Details Of An Adoptee's Life Are Sacrosanct

2010-10-24T19:09:00.011-05:00

... or, they should be.

I can't get this post from Cricket's Adoption Blog Of Shame out of my mind. These adoptive parents took it upon themselves to change this child's birthday. Yes, it's possible, even likely, that his original birthday was just a guess, but that doesn't matter. Changing his birthday because it fits better with the school schedule, or because it'll make him fit on the growth chart? As an adoptee, that absolutely galls me. Adoptees lose so much. They should not lose the few details they may actually have.

As others pointed out on Cricket's blog, there may be clues to his original birthday in the date he was given from Ethiopia. The point is, that information is HIS. The details of an adoptee's life belong to the adoptee, and adoptive parents have no business taking it upon themselves to alter them. Even if they later tell him the truth, think about how he will feel knowing that his very birthday was "not good enough." The same principles apply to the adoption story. That story belongs to the adoptee, not the adoptive parents. Changing it, making stuff up or lying (either directly or by omission) is unethical, no matter how well-meaning the intent.

Most of you know that my adoptive parents didn't tell me the truth about what they knew about my adoption. All my life, I was told they knew only that I was born in Chicago. I didn't find out until my mid-20s that my adoptive father was the attorney who sealed my file. He therefore knew everything, from the contents of my original birth certificate to all of the details in my super-secret adoption file. This is a prime example of adoptive parents who had WAY too much control over the situation. A couple years ago I wrote about how too many adoptive parents hold the keys to an adoptee's information. Some of them use that as a form of control. Mine certainly did. Behave yourself, be the Good Adoptee, and we might dole out tidbits of your background as we see fit. Disobey, refuse to cooperate, and we will hold your information hostage... or even destroy it. Which is exactly what my adoptive father did with his copy of my original birth certificate when I got too close to the truth.

But one of the things I managed to discover was my time of birth. To anyone who has their background it's an insignificant detail. To me it was a revelation. A new piece of information about myself! And an accurate one, too, because it was taken directly from my original birth certificate. My time of birth is one of the few things I know for sure about my origins. No one has the right to tell me it's insignificant, whatever their opinion might be. That information belongs to ME.

People who keep an adoptee's information from them, or deliberately conceal or falsify it, have no business adopting. And control of this information should be taken out of the hands of adoptive parents by making it available to the adoptee at age of majority. By corollary, that means there should be no third parties between the adoptee and that information--no confidential intermediaries, no hoops to jump, just the same access to the same information that non-adopted people take for granted.

Vote by Oct 30 for Demons Of Adoption Awards 2010

2010-10-23T07:16:00.009-05:00

Don't forget to cast your vote for Pound Pup Legacy's 4th annual Demons Of Adoption Awards. Votes are due by October 30. You can cast your vote here, and (if you have a strong stomach) read more about the nominees here.

From the web site:

Each year Pound Pup Legacy presents the Demons of Adoption Award to raise a voice against adoption propaganda and the self congratulatory practices of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute's annual Angels in Adoption AwardsTM

Until October 30 you will have the opportunity to vote for the recipient of this year's award.

The nominees are:

* LDS Family Services: for being the most secretive of all adoption agencies, using coercive tactics in obtaining infants for adoption and having no respect for father's rights;
* Gladney center for adoption: for being one of the most profit-centered agencies around and blocking open record efforts in Texas;
* Christian World Adoption: for their involvement in "harvesting" practices in Ethiopia and their blind ambition to "save" each and every "orphan" in this world;
* Larry S. Jenkins: for his involvement in nearly every case where father's rights were violated;
* Joint Council on International Children's Services: for promoting the interest of adoption agencies at the expense of children, and pushing agency friendly legislation in Congress;
* Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute for giving their seal of approval to persons and organizations that promote the interests of the adoption industry and pushing agency friendly legislation in Congress;
* Council on Accreditation: for their lack of research done on inter-country adoption agency histories prior to giving out Hague accreditation;
* American Adoption Congress: For failing to remove state reps who were openly working against open access for adult adoptees;
* American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey: for opposing open records for adoptees and "protecting" closet moms, based on a "stack of anonymous letters" claimed to be from "birthmothers".
* Christian Alliance for Orphans: for promoting the business interests of adoption agencies through churches.
* Southern Baptist Convention: for passing resolution no. 2 , pushing the business interests of adoption agencies to the members of their church;
* Adoption.com for systematically banning voices that oppose current adoption practices and their continuous pro-adoption propaganda;
* Scott Simon: for his vomit-inducing book “Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other” and his grotesque crying and blubbering about his purchasing of another human being;
* WE tv: for their hideously exploitative series ‘Adoption Diaries,’ turning what is a highly emotive and complex topic into ‘reality’ show fodder.

Adoption Discrimination: CBS Calls Adoptees "Used Babies"

2010-10-08T17:15:00.018-05:00

There has been widespread discussion in the adoption community about an offhand remark from a recent episode of "Rules Of Engagement" on CBS. You can watch the clip here.

One character said, in response to the news that there would be no food at an adoption fair he was planning to attend with his wife:

"A lot of nerve calling it a fair when they're not offering some sort of meat on a stick."

His wife says: "...If we get serious about adoption we need these people to like us."

His response: "If they can't like me for who I am then I'm not going to buy one of their used babies." (cue canned laughter)

And that's just the commercial. I can only imagine how the rest of this adoption-related plot is going to work out.

Okay, yes, this is a comedy. But discrimination against a particular group of people should not be fodder for the laugh track. This is why adoptees and first mothers face discrimination: because people make light of our situations. Losing your family is not funny. Surrendering a child is not funny. (Neither is infertility, for that matter.) There is also something to be said for comedy that isn't afraid to make a point when a point needs to be made. M*A*S*H comes to mind -- comedy combined with serious assessments of the impact of war.

I know a number of adoptive parents who are open-minded, honest, and willing to accept adult adoptee and first mother viewpoints even if those viewpoints make them uncomfortable. In my opinion, these folks totally rock and I wish more adoptive parents were like them. Unfortunately, far too frequently I encounter the other end of the pendulum: adopters with an entitlement mentality, who believe they "deserve" to be parents at all costs, who stick to the stereotypes because anything else interferes with their mental image of themselves as "rescuers." (Go check out Cricket's Blog Of Shame list for some nauseating examples.)

To me, this dialogue smacks of that: "Of course we should be fed, if we're going to an adoption fair! Of course we should be wined and dined and pampered; we're the paying customers! We expect top-notch service and prime quality merchandise -- which we'll return if it doesn't match our expectations." To such people, first mothers are mechanical wombs and adoptees are malleable Barbie dolls who never grow up. Note also the currying of adoption agency favors: Hide your true self, suck up to the agency and maybe you'll be rewarded with a kid. Sadly accurate.

I don't care that the dialogue is supposed to reflect the abrasive personality of the particular character who said it. The fact remains, people who don't have direct connections to adoption (and even some that do) get their ideas about it from TV, movies, and books. Which means that if writers are going to use adoption as a plot point (I'm talking to YOU, Diablo Cody) then they better get their facts straight and realize what an impact their words will have on people for whom adoption is more than just a sitcom.

We also have to consider the impact upon young adoptees, who are at the forefront of adoption discrimination. Many are already ostracized, especially those who are of a different race than their adoptive families. I can tell you how such a remark on a television program would have felt to me when I was a child. In the era of "Diff'rent Strokes," all adoptees were assumed to be poor kids who were damn lucky to be raised by wealthy whites. I hated the show, hated the assumptions, yet it was the only portrayal of adoptees I knew so I absorbed the stereotypes even as I struggled to find my own identity. Adoptees deserve better, and we as a society know better, thanks to the voices of the many people who write, blog, and otherwise share their viewpoints on this polarizing subject. Yet Hollywood is still stuck repeating the same damn stereotypes with a 21st century facelift. Instead of wealthy white men, we get adoption fairs. Instead of adorable black kids, we get international adoptees, donor conceptions, and donated embryos. Same crap, different era.

The dangers of discrimination arise from stereotypes and assumptions. Adoption agencies are to blame for setting unreasonable expectations in the minds of many prospective adopters. The mass media is also to blame for continuing adoption stereotypes: that adopting is "the same" as giving birth, that adopting a child negates the traumas of infertility, that "good" adoptees don't ask questions, that "bad" adoptees search, that all first mothers are "whores" who didn't deserve their children... the list goes on. People still believe this nonsense precisely because it is perpetuated.

What we need is open, honest discussion about adoption: what the stereotypes are, what makes them stereotypes, and how those stereotypes hurt people. Just as we shouldn't accept discrimination based on race, gender, or sexuality, neither should we accept it based on adoption.

If you want to contact CBS, here is the contact information. It wouldn't hurt to contact your local CBS affiliate, too.

Nina.Tassler@cbs.com

Ms. Nina Tassler

President, CBS Entertainment

CBS Entertainment

7800 Beverly Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90039-2112

Saying Goodbye To Mom

2010-09-21T10:33:00.006-05:00

Sorry for the hiatus. It's been a difficult summer, and just when I thought things were getting better, my husband's mom died unexpectedly at the age of 77.

She was a hell of a woman. She was known for her fancy hats, her no-nonsense attitude, and her nonstop chatting in a Louisiana drawl. Picture a lady in a broad-brimmed hat, driving a hundred miles an hour down the highway in a gold Lexus with a pair of pet chickens in a cage on the seat next to her. Her local politicians quaked at her approach because if they were up to no good, she gave them no quarter. They'd try to shut her up, and she'd keep coming back. You just can't argue with a Southern lady in a hat, especially when she's right.

My mother-in-law was not adopted; she knew her heritage backwards and forwards. But she was a forthright champion of adoptee rights. She read my blog avidly and often called me or sent me an email to comment. She read the articles and links I sent, commiserated with me over my struggles to obtain my identity, and gave me advice on how to deal with politicians. Because she really, truly understood why we adoptees fight for our rights.

She told me of her experience with Hurricane Camille in 1969, a Category 5 storm that decimated the Louisiana coast. Her father perished in the storm, along with the relics of her past: not just the house where she grew up, not just the neighborhood, but the entire parish (county) and a great deal of the surrounding area. She struggled to regain that past, documenting her family tree and going to the older folks in her family to ask them to identify people in the few photos she was able to recover. But, as she explained to me, at least she still knew where she came from.

Adoptees, she said, never had the chance to know, and she found that the most devastating of all. She thought if more people understood that loss, if they didn't take their own heritage for granted, they would be more understanding of adoptees' plight. She also felt for mothers who were coerced by the adoption industry into surrendering their children, having gone through a divorce in the 1970s in a state so misogynistic that she had to fight the bank to put the mortgage in her name instead of her husband's.

I called my mother-in-law Mom, and that is not a title I give out lightly. Having had a rough relationship with my adoptive mother, and a rocky reunion with my first (birth) mother, she was the only mother I ever truly knew. She was the one who was there for me, who actually gave a damn if I was upset or having a hard time, who spoiled my kids rotten and taught me that you gotta stand on your own two feet and grab what you want out of life. At the end of her last visit, she gave me some money and told me to go get that DNA testing I'd been talking about, if it was going to help me find out even a little bit more about my origins.

This is a woman who had as much connection to adoption as your average person--namely, she knew some people who were adopted and that was about it. But, unlike most people, she took it upon herself to learn what adoption means to the people who have no choice but to live it, day in and day out. When I first met her, she made the same assumptions and believed the same stereotypes as everyone else. She had no idea that adoptees can't just go to the courthouse and get their information. She didn't realize that there is an original birth certificate and an amended birth certificate. She assumed that media coverage and Hollywood depictions of adoption were accurate. She didn't think about the fact that most public portrayal of adoption is solely from the viewpoints of adoptive parents and the people who make money facilitating adoptions. She was unaware (but, upon learning of it, not surprised) that infant adoption preys upon mothers without resources, and that legislators and their cronies have turned birth certificate access into political capital. The point is, she MADE THE EFFORT, and that is one reason I loved her.

From her legacy, take this: If you do not have direct experience with adoption, learn what it really means, both the good and the bad. If you are an adoptive parent or prospective adopter, talk to first (birth) mothers and adult adoptees before assuming that your viewpoint is the only one. If you're a journalist or novelist writing about adoption, make sure you know what the stereotypes are before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Question everything you think you know. Don't dismiss others' experiences just because they don't jibe with your assumptions, or because the speaker sounds "angry" or "ungrateful" or "anti-adoption."

Put yourself in their shoes.

Make the effort.

Adoptee Rights Pennsylvania Action Alert: Support HB 1978, Oppose HB 1968

2010-08-09T12:25:00.008-05:00

Please help Pennsylvania adoptees fight for their rights. Remember: HB 1968 is the BAD bill. HB 1978 is the GOOD bill, the one we want to move forward. Even if you don't have a Pennsylvania connection, what happens in one state affects others.

Below are two messages from the folks at PAR, Pennsylvania Adoptee Rights. The most recent is first and is a call to action for today, Monday, August 9th.

Dear Advocates,

As you may have read in our previous email, HB 1968 stands to make
adoption law in Pennsylvania even worse, as well as threatens the
ability of HB 1978 (the good bill) to move forward.

We cannot let this happen.

Monday, August 9th, is Contact Representative Sonney Day.
Representative Sonney is the Primary Sponsor of this bill. Send him
your letters, emails, phone calls and faxes on Monday and tell him to
withdraw this bill!

Hearing all of our voices at once cannot go ignored.

Hon. Curtis G. Sonney
149B East Wing
PO Box 202004
Harrisburg, PA 17120-2004
Phone: (717) 783-9087
Fax: (717) 787-2005

csonney@pahousegop.com

For more help discussing the issues with Rep. Sonney, here are some
resources:

Our education page:
http://www.adopteerightspa.org/legislation.html

PAR's Position Statement on HB 1968:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1oZfRZL_PbCBs4Xpks2dVoNMESMbVXTjHazfdRtYjqi0

PAR's call-to-action on HB 1978:
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dg72m5fw_47hjncmdg6

A Guide Letter for drafting letters and emails:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1c9IzqeaE4WPtRmIwwdBFVJ8bIfGceUD--ncx0lgm2z4

If you decide to call, it is likely that one of his staff members will
answer. Tell them you would like to make a position on a bill. They
will ask you the bill number and then ask your position. They may ask
you to give a short reason as to why you oppose the bill. Should they
ask you a question you can't answer, refer them to our website or give
them our email: adopteerightspa@gmail.com

Thank you!

PAR Board

Dear Advocates,

As you may have known, there were two bills in the Health and Human
Services Committee that seek to change the portion of adoption law
that governs an Adult Adoptee's access to identifying information.

HB 1968 is the BAD bill. HB 1978 is the GOOD, equal rights, bill.

Unfortunately, despite all of our outpouring of support for HB 1978,
it is still sitting in the HHS Committee. HB 1968, on the other hand,
has made its way out of committee and is now before the PA House of
Representatives for consideration.

It is of utmost importance that HB 1968 be defeated. HB 1968 not only
does not change the current law much at all; it actually makes it
worse. Worse even yet, should HB 1968 pass, we worry that legislators
(1) will believe that the law is improved when it isn't and (2) won't
want to re-address this issue and portion of law, and will leave HB
1978 to die in committee.

We cannot let the law get worse with HB 1968. We cannot let HB 1978
die.

We have created a call-to-action made available at this link:
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dg72m5fw_47hjncmdg6

In the call-to-action you will find:
(1) the text to the bill
(2) bill sponsors to contact
(3) a guide letter to assist those who are new to contacting
legislators in drafting letters and emails.
(4) ways to help PAR and defeat HB 1968
(5) our Position Statement of Opposition to HB 1968 to give you an
overview on the bill and why we oppose it.
(6) information on how to find and contact your representative

If you need help with any of these things. Please do not hesitate to
contact us adopteerightspa@gmail.com If the above link to the call-to-
action does not work when you copy and paste it into your browswer,
please visit our website www.adopteerightspa.org.

Thank you

PAR Board

Good Vs. Bad Adoptees: Dismissing Our Experiences And Criticism As "Anger"

2010-06-21T12:00:00.060-05:00

Lately we've had a rash of really bad bills that dangle the carrot of potential birth certificate access for some, while smiting others with the stick of disclosure veto. Regular readers know of our efforts here in Illinois against HB 5428. Some are celebrating the bill's passage. I am not. New Jersey is about to go the same route, with a bill on the governor's desk that seriously jeopardizes adoption reform. I know many of the people who support the NJ bill, just as I know many of the people who supported Illinois. But I cannot in good conscience support legislation that leaves some adoptees behind. I'm not going to rehash why I disagree with compromise legislation; you can read it here, here and here.

Instead, I want to talk about how these recent events got me thinking. There has been a discussion on the KAD Nexus blog concerning adoptive father and author John Seabrook's NPR segment. Both the post and the comments that follow (including rebuttals from Seabrook) are a must-read. In response to Seabrook's segment, adult adoptees discuss how their criticisms of adoption and racism are often dismissed as "angry," "bitter," or every adoptee's favorite, "ungrateful." I strongly encourage you to read it for context before returning to this post.

In my experience, the same can be said of adoptees who insist upon equal rights for all adoptees. If we refuse to compromise, to sacrifice others or ourselves in the name of a few butchered rights for some, then it must be because we are "angry." We must have "had a bad experience" or "hate our adoptive families." And woe betide those of us who may actually have had a bad experience. Then we are simply disgruntled and souring the milk for others. Our opinions and experiences are instantly negated, regardless of any validity they may contain.

Taking away the rights of a subclass is easier when the subclass is dismissed as "angry." Anger implies irrationality, lack of forethought, selfishness. The weapon-word "angry" is especially effective against adoptees. For fear of being branded as such, many adoptees learn to dismiss their own feelings--for to be angry is to be the Bad Adoptee (as termed by BJ Lifton), the one who refuses to cooperate with the Adoption Game. Some adoptees, in turn, use the same word "angry" to ostracize fellow adoptees who refuse to play the game. It becomes a vicious cycle: society bastardizes adoptees, who bastardize their own kind so they themselves can "fit in" more successfully. Nothing says Good Adoptee like spotlighting another adoptee who's not toeing the line.

This use of "angry" as a weapon has never been more clear to me than in the struggle against compromise legislation like Illinois HB 5428. I've analyzed the media coverage of the bill's passage as an illustration of how adoptee voices are dismissed in discussion of matters that have a vital impact upon our rights. Yet, who better to discuss the pros and cons of the adoption process than those who have experienced it firsthand? I have also included my personal experience about being interviewed for several of these articles.

For my analysis I read all of the articles and press releases about the passage of Illinois HB 5428 I could find, with a mind to the following: Whose opinions were expressed (sponsors, adoptive parents and/or prospective adopters, adoption professionals, birth relatives, adult adoptees, others)? Was the widespread opposition to the bill by the adoption community mentioned? What about the downsides of the legislation--the fact that some adoptees will be blacklisted? IMO, the coverage ranged from fairly well-balanced to outright sponsor propaganda, leaning heavily toward the latter. Some of my thoughts as I read through it:

Almost every single article spouted sponsor opinion that this bill "opens adoption records." That is inaccurate. What this new legislation does is grants a few rights for some, while consigning others to a permanent black hole of no access. And it's Russian roulette: you won't know which way it will turn out for you until you go through the process. The sponsors have co-opted adoption rights terminology, claiming that this bill is about "rights of adoptees." (Case in point: this self-aggrandizing propaganda from sponsor Rep. Sara Feigenholtz.) But a bill cannot be about the rights of adoptees unless it applies to ALL adoptees.
"Contact preference" is another co-opted term. What Illinois has is a disclosure veto that has been termed a "preference." But if it's binding on the adoptee, it's a veto.
Adoptee opinions were for the most part excluded. This is exemplified by the repeated use of the phrase "adopted children" when referring to adopted adults.
When adult adoptee opinions were included, they were often the parroted opinions of the sponsors. In other words, the viewpoints of token adoptees presumably summoned by the sponsors and/or the media to make it appear that this is what all adult adoptees want. An example is Howard Griffith, adoptee and former Denver Bronco, who attended the signing of the bill.
Those whose voices were heard are primarily those who make money from adoption (more below).

Other gems:

From the Chicago Sun-Times article "Adoptees cheer birth certificate law" (no longer online; PDF in my possession):

I learned early on what an emotional and tricky area of the law this is," said state Senate President John Cullerton, who teased Feigenholtz that the reason he signed on to her crusade was that, "She said if I can pass this bill out of the Senate, she'll vote for any bill I tell her to vote for for the rest of my life. It's like I have my own vote over in the House. We're going to start with that next week.

This is no joke, this is straight-up fact. HB 5428 was about political cronyism and jockeying for power. Sara Feigenholtz gets off on being "champion of adoptee rights" while calling us "ungrateful bastards" behind our backs. With her self-described "mentor" John Cullerton president of the Senate, she was in a position to reinforce her Confidential Intermediary Program and even get state money to advertise it.

Again from the same Sun-Times article:

Feigenholtz said the law was modeled after similar laws in Maine and New Hampshire to balance the rights of adoptive children and parents.

Modeled after Maine? Are you kidding? In Maine any adoptee who is of age can walk in and get his or her original birth certificate, for the same fee as non-adoptees. In Illinois it depends on when you were born, whether you are accepted and whether you can afford to pay fees that only apply to adoptees.

This press release lists the organizations that supported the bill, but (in an example of bias) NOT the organizations that opposed it.

A number of medical and child advocacy groups supported the legislation, including: Illinois Psychiatric Society; American Adoption Congress; Agudath Israel of America; Child Care Association of Illinois; Chicago Bar Association; Voices for Children; National Association of Social Workers of Illinois; Lutheran Social Services of Illinois; UCAN; Illinois Department of Public Health; Department of Children and Family Services; Jewish Child and Family Services; Illinois State Bar Association; The Cradle Adoption Agency; Adoption Advocates of America; Adoptive Families Today; Chicago Area Families for Adoption; Midwest Adoption Center; Search and Genealogy Services; Murphysboro, IL, Stars of David Adoption; and The Baby Fold, Bloomington, IL.

Except...

The AAC never expressed a position on the bill. Melisha Mitchell f alsely claimed she was the AAC rep for Illinois at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when she had actually been dismissed from her AAC post prior to that hearing. Why has there been no mention of this in the press? And, because AAC is the only group listed here who represents adult adoptees or birth parents, that means everyone who supported this is either an adoption professional or adoptive parent; in other words, the people who benefit from adoption.
Similarly, why has there been no mention of Sara Feigenholtz's foot-in-mouth bastard bashing?
The majority of these groups either make money facilitating adoptions (LSSI, The Cradle) or are professional organizations representing people who do so (Chicago Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association).
The Midwest Adoption Center is the sole-source no-bid contractor who provides Confidential Intermediary services in Illinois (e.g. makes money from records access).

As I mentioned, I was interviewed for five of the articles (the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, the Daily Herald, the St. Louis Dispatch and the Associated Press), as spokesperson for the Adoption Reform Illinois coalition. Here's a summary of my experience talking with each reporter, and how those interviews translated to the printed page.

Law gives adoptees access to birth certificates

Monique Garcia and Bonnie Rubin, Chicago Tribune

Ms. Rubin was consummately professional. She took the time to listen to our opposing viewpoint, asked intelligent questions and even called back to clarify one or two things. So I was disappointed when there wasn't a single mention of opposition viewpoint in the article she co-authored with Monique Garcia.

Law Widens Access To Adoption Info

Staff, Daily Herald

Like Ms. Rubin, Barbara (the reporter who interviewed me) was professional and polite, and also called back for a clarification. I was disappointed there wasn't more explanation about why we oppose the bill. A later article on their blog used phrasing that suggested opposition was not legitimate (no pun intended):

On the other hand, a group going by the name Adoption Reform Illinois [emphasis mine] criticized the new law as not going far enough, saying any adult should be able to obtain unredacted birth records. "Any proposed change that does not recognize adult adoptees as having the same rights and responsibilities of every other Illinois resident is unacceptable," the group says in its opposition message.

Quinn signs major change to Illinois adoption law in Chicago

Kathleen Foody, St. Louis Dispatch

I had been talking to Ms. Foody for quite some time about this bill as it progressed. To her credit she attempted to understand our opposition viewpoint and express that to her readers. I could wish she had made it more clear that this is about adoptee identity and the implications of that, but otherwise this is a far less biased article than most.

Quinn OKs greater access to adoption info

Deanna Bellandi, Associated Press

Ms. Bellandi was by far the most aggressive reporter who contacted me. She seemed as if she had already made up her mind what she wanted her story to say, and made numerous attempts to put words in my mouth rather than taking the time to listen and understand the opposition viewpoint. I was mistakenly identified in the article as "Triennia Guider," and while I could care less if they get my name right, it points to sloppy fact-checking and makes me wonder what else they got wrong. This is a prime example of biased adoption reporting: when reporters have already made up their minds what they want the article to say, and when presented with information that doesn't match, try to sledgehammer it in so they don't have to change their minds or their stories.

"Adoptees cheer birth certificate law" (no longer online; PDF in my possession)

Abdon Pallasch, Chicago Sun-Times

Mr. Pallasch was somewhere in between the other reporters. He was aggressive, although not nearly as much so as Ms. Bellandi. However, this article is the one that really got me thinking about the comments on KAD Nexus, and how adoptees are dismissed as "angry." This article failed to mention that I was speaking on behalf of Adoption Reform Illinois, a coalition of people who disagree with the bill, nor did it mention that other organizations were similarly opposed. It did, however, mention my own personal inability to access my OBC, in such a way that makes it appear that I am simply one of those "angry" adoptees who opposes the bill purely because it doesn't help me personally:

"It does not actually open adoption records," said Triona Guidry, whose birth mother will not let Guidry get a copy of her birth certificate. Even under the new law, the best Guidry will get is a birth certificate with her mother's name redacted. "Equal rights apply to everyone. Everyone should have the right to go into that courthouse, pay their $15 and get their birth certificate."

The conclusion of my admittedly non-scientific analysis? Even when opposition to this bill was mentioned, it was overshadowed by the propaganda claiming that this bill is a "win" for adoptee rights. The headlines alone illustrate this. For those of us who have followed this bill, it's clear to see that the much of the media have drunk the same Kool-Aid that was served to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and other legislators. Anyone reading casually, without background on the bill, would assume the opposition was merely a bunch of angry adoptees and that there were no birth mothers who opposed the bill as not going far enough for adoptee rights (not true; ARI submitted twenty pages of testimony including letters from at least half a dozen mothers). Because that way, our legitimate concerns about this legislation are quelled and everybody can party in the streets like Ferris Bueller because woo-hoo, Illinois adoptees have access now! Except we don't. And under this new law, some of us never will. That's not anger talking, it's determination. Equal rights should never be diluted, and we will continue fighting until the rights of everyone involved in adoption are restored.

Since we're stuck with this legislation, what about those (like me -- here's the "angry adoptee" again) who have already gone through the CI process and been denied? Is legislation like HB 5428 punishment for those who insist upon their rights? Are those who go quietly away when they are told "no," or do not make waves, rewarded with the possibility of access while those who are "angry" -- who do not accept the denial of their civil rights even when vetoed -- are consigned to exile? The lesson: Be quiet and wait your turn, and you might win the Russian roulette of records access. But speak up, express your opinion, and you might lose that chance forever.

That's the adoption industry pitting Good Adoptees vs. Bad Adoptees. Play the Adoption Game, or suffer the consequences.

So-Called "Champion Of Adoptees" Illinois Rep Sara Feigenholtz Says We're "Ungrateful Bastards"

2010-04-28T20:48:00.083-05:00

Please read Bastardette's recent post, Sara Speaks: Sara Feigenholtz Tells Us What She Really Thinks Of Us. It details an email exchange between an adoptee concerned about Illinois HB 5428 and the bill's sponsor, Token Adoptee Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (or someone in her office). This is the reply from Sara Feigenholtz (or her staffer) with the original message below, as posted on Bastardette's blog.

Below is Feigenholtz's response to Jeske's email, followed by Jeske's original email, reposted with Jeske's permission.

---- Original Message -----
From: Sara (staterep12@aol.com)
To: Lori Jeske
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: HB 5428

Lori:

Thank you so much for your kind remarks about HB 5428.

We will pay for your travel and housing expenses if you will come here and start working on a new bill that completes the effort so that all adoptees get their obc. Are you ready to move to Illinois and sacrifice your life to work for adoption reform for the next fifteen years in the frigid winter tundra of Illinois?

Would you consider giving Representative Feigenholtz the key to your (delusional) Eutopian world where all ungrateful bastards think it's easy to pass a bill that makes everyone happy AND CAN ACTUALLY PASS ? Pass a law? what a concept !!

Many Illinois born 65+ year old adoptees will get their birth certificates BEFORE THEY DIE--- very soon.

We will tell them that you would prefer to throw good under the bus while waiting for perfect and that you think they should wait a little longer.

Good luck in Washington state with your efforts. We can hear the unsealing now.......

NOT.

YOu sound so positive and committed to opening all records
that I wish you could give me the key to your adoption

The bill and your efforts to pass this bill are inhuman. This bill will prove to a huge population of citizens that Democrats should not longer govern the State of Illinois. It is with deep regret, as a Democrat, to see this bill and your inability to stand up for ALL citizens in the State of Illinois.
Lori Jeske
Spokane, WA

I find Feigenholtz's response (or that of her staff person--regardless, an act done in her name) appalling. Whatever one's opinion on adoptee rights, there is no call for an elected official to treat anyone in this manner. It's unprofessional and rude, but it says a lot about what Rep. Feigenholtz truly thinks of her fellow adoptees when the cameras aren't rolling.

In public Feigenholtz plays up her role as "champion of adoptee rights" as she was termed in the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on HB 5428. In that hearing she said (taken from my personal transcript of the proceedings):

I feel it is my responsibility... I wear my heart on my sleeve. It's hard having to beg for human rights. I have been called a traitor to the adoption rights movement because I try to stay balanced, to be the voice of the minority but restore human rights to the majority.

State Senator A. J. Wilhelmi (Senate sponsor of the bill) said Feigenholtz is on "the side of the angels." Senator Kirk Dillard said it was "an honor to work with Sara Feigenholtz" on this issue. Although the governor has yet to make a decision about HB 5428 (keep those letters and calls coming to ask him to veto!), Feigenholtz is already including it as a feather in her cap, as she said in the following message to her newsletter subscribers this week:

Rep. Feigenholtz knows that there are plenty of people in Illinois who have been trying to get clean legislation passed. But that is not what she wants, as evidenced by the complete curtailing of public commentary on HB 5428. If she truly believed in adoptee rights, she would be trying to pass legislation like Maine's that restores adult adoptee rights without condition or exception. In Maine, adoptees simply go to the courthouse and order their original birth certificates. In Illinois adoptees are forced through a Byzantine and expensive process that may or may not result in birth certificate access, and could even permanently deny them that access.

Many of Rep. Feigenholtz's constituents support her because of her stance on humanitarian causes: the rights of women, gays, etc. This response makes one wonder if she is also dissing those people behind their backs. Anyone who supports Sara Feigenholtz should be seriously questioning that support.

On another note, Baby Love Child, in her blog on this subject, raises an important point concerning HB 5428.

So now we’re left with a critically important question:
Does the American Adoption Congress actually support this bill that will do incredible damage to Illinois adoptee’s rights, *OR* was the bill’s passage built upon Melisha Mitchell lying and claiming to represent the AAC when in fact she had been dropped by the AAC as its one time Illinois state representative prior to the Judiciary Committee hearing?
Currently, the AAC website lists no state representative for Illinois and until recently made no mention of the bill it’s supposedly a proponent of in its legislative section. As the website stands tonight, a section on the bill has since been added, but makes no mention of any AAC support for it, nor any mention of AAC participation in the oversight committee HB 5428 would create.

I agree, this is a critically important question. Anyone who believes HB 5428 is a fair compromise should consider that the propaganda supporting this bill comes from people who have a vested financial and/or political interest in the bill's passage.

These incidents make it clear that the people who profess to speak on behalf of adoptees in Illinois do not speak for all adoptees, nor for the adoption community at large. I hope others will come to understand that no one can speak for adoptees except adoptees themselves, and that it's long past time our voices were heard.

Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: Adoptee Voices Negated In Discussion Of Illinois HB 5428

2010-04-21T15:31:00.029-05:00

From Adoption Reform Illinois:

HB 5428 has passed the House and Senate. Our goal now turns to stopping it at the Governor's desk. Please contact Illinois Governor Pat Quinn NOW and ask him not to sign this bill into law. This bill has been touted as restoring the rights of adult adoptees--but equality should be for ALL adoptees.

Time is of the essence so calls are best, but anything you can do will help.

Talking points when contacting the Governor:

* Identity is identity, whether you are adopted or not.
* ALL adoptees, all people, deserve equal treatment under the law.
* The state of Illinois cannot afford to waste money on this expensive and ineffective bill.

Office of the Governor
Pat Quinn
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-0244
TTY: 888-261-3336

There is also a web form:

http://www.illinois.gov/gov/contactthegovernor.cfm

HB 5428 has been slipped through the Illinois legislative process faster than bran muffins through your digestive tract. As of today the bill has passed the Senate and is on its way to the Governor's desk. Please see contact info above and ask Gov. Quinn to veto this bill.

This bill has been portrayed as a "victory" for adoptee rights. If that is so, why were adoptee voices so completely negated in its discussion? Why the secrecy surrounding the bill? Why grease it through the process?

The answer is because this bill is a wolf in sheep's clothing. HB 5428 grants some adoptees access at the expense of others. Sponsor Rep. Sara Feigenholtz and her BFF Melisha Mitchell (paid searcher and presumed author of the bill) say that only a very few people will be denied access under this bill. But, as I said before regarding my first-hand experience at the Senate Judiciary Commitee hearing:

What's ironic is that she [Sara Feigenholtz] was all about the rights of adoptees. The good news is, the legislators are starting to understand why adoptee rights are important. Feigenholtz's testimony was full of the message we want to get across: why adoptees deserve the same rights as everyone else, why lack of access is discriminatory, etc. The bad news is that HB 5428, like everything else Feigenholtz has introduced, fails to fulfill that. If everyone deserves equal rights, then EVERYONE deserves equal rights, bar none. But Feigenholtz is very good at convincing people that it's okay for the lizards to eat a few humans if the rest get to survive.

The voices of adoptees, first mothers, and other interested parties have not been heard:

The bill was introduced under cover of secrecy. No one knew it existed except those of us on the lookout. Only one tiny article was original posted about it and that in a St. Louis newspaper. If this is really about adoptee rights why didn't Feigenholtz have a great big press conference when she introduced her bill? Because she knew that would only invite public discussion and opposition. She wanted it passed under the radar.
Important dates concerning the bill have been fudged or conveniently not posted until the last minute. On Sunday, March 21st, as I was updating the Adoption Reform Illinois web site, I checked the status of the bill. It said it had received second reading in the House on 3/18/10 and was up for third reading on 3/23/10. The very next morning I received a news item saying the bill had passed the House. When I checked the status again, it had been retroactively changed to say the bill had passed the House on 3/18/10 and arrived in the Senate that same day. Mention of a third reading in the House on 3/23/10 was eliminated. This is not a mistake or merely failure to include all relevant information. You don't say a bill is up for another reading on 3/23/10 if it's already passed on 3/18/10.
Adoptees were shut out of testifying at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 4/13/10. The bill's Senate sponsor, Sen. A. J. Wilhelmi, was allowed to pick who got to testify. While three people testified for the bill, only one adoptee was permitted to testify against and her testimony was misconstrued as supporting the bill instead of opposing it.
The bill was voted upon without the Senate Judiciary Committee taking the time to read the submitted written testimony, which included many letters from adoptees, first mothers and others opposing this bill.
The bill was then whiplashed through the Senate. Committee hearing 4/13/10, second reading 4/20/10, third reading 4/21/10 and vote that same day.

Again, why silence the voices of opposition? Because all the major adoption reform organizations are against this bill. Sara Feigenholtz and her fellow wolves knew that if the sheep found out what was really going on they would band together and successfully oppose, as we did against HB 4623 in 2008. The only way to pass her bastardizing legislation was to shroud it in secrecy.

News media, like our legislators, has accepted Token Adoptee Feigenholtz's word that this legislation is a "victory" for adoptees. The coverage of opposition (for example here, here and here) has been largely ignored. The St. Louis Dispatch didn't even mention their own article concerning opposition in their coverage of the bill's Senate passage.

I ask our legislators and the media: If this bill really is about adoptee rights, why are so many adoptees against it? If it's true, as Sara Feigenholtz testified at the Judiciary Committee hearing, that access to one's original birth certificate is "a human right," that "the laws that protected [us] from society inadvertently protected [us] from each other," then why do we need 80 pages to restore rights that Maine did in two pages and Oregon did in a single paragraph?

Answer: Because HB 5428 is not about adoptee rights. Please understand this. You have been deceived by the wolf in sheep's clothing. Look under the skin at what is really going on here.

This is the testimony I submitted on behalf of Adoption Reform Illinois. Please contact Gov. Quinn TODAY and ask him to oppose HB 5428.

As representative of Adoption Reform Illinois, and as an adult adoptee who has used the Confidential Intermediary program, I come to attest that fiscally and morally, we must oppose HB 5428.

To single out people for different treatment is to create an unconstitutional minority. There's a difference between the right to identity and search or reunion. Mothers can say no to contact without signing a binding veto that prevents adoptees from obtaining their original birth certificates.

This bill criminalizes adoptees for what non-adopted people call “genealogy.” Meanwhile, it holds the state harmless for mistakes and mandates a slap on the wrist for intermediaries who break the rules.

Some adoptees cannot afford the CI program, or are not accepted into it. The sole entity contracted to provide these services has pre-approval over petitions before the judge sees them. Worse, there is no oversight nor accountability. The advisory group proposed in this bill is stacked with entities that benefit financially from adoption. The bill enshrines mutual consent registries in law even though they have been shown not to work.

My experience is a case study in how the process can fail. My application was initially rejected because I was adopted out of state. After hiring an attorney and gaining admission, I found the program fatally flawed. The CI program refuses to disclose its procedures, so there is no way to determine what is being done on one's behalf. When my identifying information was disclosed without my consent, I had no higher authority to which I could appeal.

The Child Welfare League supports the rights of adult adoptees. Research from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute shows that restoration of adoptee rights “is a matter of legal equality, ethical practice and, on a human level, basic fairness.”

Regardless of one's opinion on adoptee rights, Illinois cannot afford to spend unnecessary funds. On that basis alone, HB 5428 should be opposed. Restoring adult adoptee access results in no spending increase. The state could actually make money by allowing adult adoptees to use the same procedures as everyone else.

We hope you will work with us to restore equality for all Illinois citizens regardless of adoptive status. Thank you again for your time.

Leaving Adoptees Behind: My Experience At The Illinois HB 5428 Hearing

2010-04-15T10:46:00.032-05:00

From Adoption Reform Illinois:

Illinois HB 5428 has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It will be heard in the Senate today, Thursday April 15, 2010. Please contact the Illinois Senate NOW and ask them to oppose. This bill has been touted as restoring the rights of adult adoptees--but equality should be for ALL adoptees. HB 5428 divides adoptees into haves and have-nots leaving some behind. This is discriminatory and unjust.

Talking points when contacting legislators:

* Identity is identity, whether you are adopted or not.
* ALL adoptees, all people, deserve equal treatment under the law.
* The state of Illinois cannot afford to waste money on this expensive and ineffective bill.

Contact info for senators available on our web site:
http://www.adoptionreformillinois.org

or the ILGA web site:
http://www.ilga.gov/senate/default.asp

As many of you know, I went to Springfield this week to testify against Illinois HB 5428, a bill that claims to support adoptee rights while doing the exact opposite. If you still think compromise legislation is the answer -- if you think it's okay to leave some adoptees behind -- please take something away from my experience.

Going to Springfield was not an easy decision. I have two small children, a business to run, and limited finances, but I felt obligated to go not only for myself but on behalf of those unable to make it. So on a gorgeous spring morning I packed up a cooler of caffiene, downloaded my Weird Al Yankovic collection to my iPod, and headed out. (Nothing like Weird Al to keep you entertained on the flat, soporific stretch between Chicago and Bloomington-Normal.)

I brought with me the testimony of many birth mothers, adoptees, and others who, like me, believe that any legislation that leaves some adoptees behind is bad for everyone. A big thank you to those who sent letters, wished me luck, or otherwise supported me personally and the Adoption Reform Illinois coalition I went to represent.

First thing I learned: Parking in Springfield SUCKS.

Second thing: The staff at the Capitol are super-nice. From the security guards who pointed me in the right direction to the elderly gentleman manning the door of the room in which the meeting was held, they helped make my trip just a little smoother.

That's where the niceties end. Once the meeting started I began to get that sinking feeling you get when you're watching the original V and the spaceships show up. You want to scream: "They're lizards in human skins!" but everyone wants to believe that the kindly Visitors are here to help. Except they're not, and you're on the menu.

HB 5428 was the first bill heard, because there were "so many people from out of town and out of state." Senator A.J. Wilhelmi, Judiciary Committee Chairperson and Senate sponsor of HB 5428, yielded the chair to Senator Don Harmon so he could sit in the hot seat with Sara Feigenholtz and Rep. Terrence Martin of Alaska, who was brought in by the Feigenholtz team as a proponent of the bill.

When you arrive you sign a little slip that says who you are, who you represent, whether you're pro or con and if you want to submit oral and/or written testimony. Harmon read off the list of these people. Proponents: Terrance Martin, the organization Shiva Siv (sp?), Linda Coon from the Chicagoland Bar Association, Julie Tye of The Cradle (an adoption agency), Melisha Mitchell of the American Adoption Congress (sic), George Rudis of Illinois Dept. of Public Health (who runs the Illinois registry), a representative of DCFS. Opponents: Tom Nolan, Christopher Brown (husband of adoptee Gay Brown), Gay Brown, Mary Lynn Fuller of Illinois Open, Rev. Bob Vanderberg of Concerned Christians America, Mary Dixon of the ACLU, Ralph Rivera of Right To Life, and me for Adoption Reform Illinois sponsored by the Green Ribbon Campaign For Open Records.

Senator Wilhelmi started off by expounding on all the "good" Sara Feigenholtz has done for adoptee rights and what an honor it's been to work with her. Everyone sees her as a "champion" of adoptee rights, except those of us left behind by her compromises. Then he turned it over to Feigenholtz who talked about "wearing her heart on her sleeve" and "begging for human rights." She whined about being called a "traitor to the Adoption Reform Movement" but felt that she was striking a balance by honoring the voice of the majority. Small consolation to those in the minority.

For those of you reading, if you don't already know: I am in that minority. My birth mother has filed the denial of contact. So hearing that it's okay for people like me to be left out so others can have access does not sit well with me. And I speak as someone who used to believe that intermediaries were the answer, that compromise was necessary and fair, until I got screwed by the process and realized that it's really all about politics, influence, and making money off adoption records access. All of this became even more clear to me as I sat and listened to the committee meeting.

Feigenholtz pointed out that confidentiality is a myth because adoptive parents can obtain the decree of adoption which states the birth parent names on it. This became quite a contentious point later. She also mentioned that if a child surrendered for adoption is not adopted, the record is never sealed, and that some adoptive parents choose not to seal the file.

What's ironic is that she was all about the rights of adoptees. The good news is, the legislators are starting to understand why adoptee rights are important. Feigenholtz's testimony was full of the message we want to get across: why adoptees deserve the same rights as everyone else, why lack of access is discriminatory, etc. The bad news is that HB 5428, like everything else Feigenholtz has introduced, fails to fulfill that. If everyone deserves equal rights, then EVERYONE deserves equal rights, bar none. But Feigenholtz is very good at convincing people that it's okay for the lizards to eat a few humans if the rest get to survive.

Rep. Martin of Alaska spoke of his experience in an orphanage in Baltimore and his struggle to gain access to his origins. "It's all about truth," he said. Julie Tye of the Cradle spoke about how adoptees aren't trying to "stalk" birth parents. "They don't do that," she said. No one mentioned the adoptees left behind by this legislation. Next, Senator Harmon allowed Senator Wilhelmi to choose who got to testify and suggested he pick one person from each of the two opposing camps: those who feel the bill goes too far (e.g. Right to Life, ACLU) and those who feel it doesn't go far enough (like Adoption Reform Illinois). I thought this was inappropriate because it allowed the sponsors of the bill to choose who got to speak.

Ralph Rivera of the Right To Life movement got his ass handed to him over the matter of purported confidentiality because it had already been established that adoptive parents have access to the birth parent names via the adoption decree. He doesn't like the retrospective aspect of the legislation although he would be fine if it were prospective, in other words if birth mothers got to choose at the time of relinquishment if they want later contact. Yeah, yet another thing to burden a woman who's immediately post-partum; a lifetime decision on contact. Ms. Dixon of the ACLU questioned whether adoptive parents actually know the birth parents' names and pointed out that adoptive parents almost always opt for sealed records. (I bet most of them are never told there is a choice.)

Something Ms. Dixon said is important for every adoptee. She spoke of the legislative intent of sealing records from the general public -- and said that the adult adoptee IS INCLUDED in the general public. She didn't share what she'd been smoking.

Next they called oral testimony from someone who believes the bill doesn't go far enough. That person was Gay Brown, an adoptee who flew in from New Jersey to testify. She spoke of her need for birth certificate access because of her medical condition in which she needed to be tested for the breast cancer gene. Her insurance wouldn't cover it because she couldn't prove anyone in her family has it. She said, "Answers could save my life, and my daughters'."

With respect to Gay, medical necessity is a red herring that only encourages legislators to opt for conditional legislation. Because if all we need is medical, then it's easy to condone things like registries and confidential intermediaries, even though they're expensive and not available to everyone. It's easy to say, "Okay, we'll give you the information, but only if it's redacted." It's easy to continue to deny our civil rights to access our original birth certificates.

My biggest disappointment was when Senator Harmon asked Gay, "As Senator John Cullerton [Sara Feigenholtz's mentor and current Senate President] used to say, do you think this bill is bad, or is it better than we have now?" She said, "Perhaps," and they swung right into the vote. In other words, the oral testimony that was supposed to reinforce the position that everyone deserves equal rights was basically negated.

The committee voted without reading any of the submitted written testimony, and the measure passed 6-3. Voting for were Don Harmon ("Step in the right direction"), Ira Silverstein (a sponsor), Terry Link (spoke of his experience as an adoptive uncle and favorably toward the concept of adoptee rights), Michael Noland ("the benefit to society outweights the possible detriment to birth parents"), Kwame Raoul, and Edward Maloney. Voting against were Randall Hultgren, Kirk Dillard ("I'm not ready to be on board this bill, but after meeting with my constituents I might change my mind"), and Matt Murphy. There were two abstentions (I believe Dale Righter and William Haine).

The second reading in the Senate is today, April 15th. This thing is being lubricated through the process as quickly as possible because Sara Feigenholtz and her allies know that time allows opposition.

Once again, I find myself not only fighting people who believe adoptees have no rights but also those who believe in adoptee rights but think conditional access is okay and we can go back and fix it later. What if there isn't a later? Don't you think they will grandfather in anybody who's had a disclosure veto filed against them? My rights may be gone for the rest of my lifetime, but I'll be damned if I sit by and allow it to happen. I encourage those of you in other states to think long and hard before agreeing to compromise. You may never get another chance, and you are selling out your fellow adoptees and possibly yourself in the process.

All people deserve equal, unfettered access to their original birth certificates without having to go through expensive and ineffective intermediaries. As I said, the legislators understand why adoptee rights are important. What they don't get -- because they haven't had the opportunity to listen to anyone other than the Feigenholtz team -- is that rights belong to everyone, without exception.

Post-meeting fun: meeting Sara Feigenholtz and her right-hand gal Melisha Mitchell in person. Melisha says she reads everything people say about adoption reform in Illinois, so let me say a big online howdy and hope you're enjoying my blog.

Please contact the Illinois Senators TODAY and ask them to vote NO on HB 5428. Ask them to enact legislation that truly honors the civil rights of ALL adoptees. Use Maine as an example. And speaking of Maine, a big shout-out to Paula Benoit who took time out of her busy life to submit written testimony and coach me on speaking to legislators.

Contact Illinois Senate TODAY: Oppose HB 5428, Leaves Some Adoptees Behind

2010-04-15T07:33:00.008-05:00

I will be blogging about my experience at the Illinois Senate this week opposing HB 5428, a bill that claims to be about adoptee rights but instead divides us into haves and have-nots. But I wanted to get this advisory out immediately. The Senate will discuss this bill TODAY. Please write ASAP and ask them to oppose this bill.

*** Please distribute freely ***

Dear Adoption Reform Illinois supporters,

HB 5428 has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. It will be heard in the Senate today, Thursday April 15, 2010. Please contact the Illinois Senate NOW and ask them to oppose. This bill has been touted as restoring the rights of adult adoptees--but equality should be for ALL adoptees. HB 5428 divides adoptees into haves and have-nots leaving some behind. This is discriminatory and unjust.

Talking points when contacting legislators:

* Identity is identity, whether you are adopted or not.
* ALL adoptees, all people, deserve equal treatment under the law.
* The state of Illinois cannot afford to waste money on this expensive and ineffective bill.

Contact info for senators available on our web site:

http://www.adoptionreformillinois.org

or the ILGA web site:

http://www.ilga.gov/senate/default.asp

Thank you for your help!

Why Adoptee Rights Depend On Stopping Illinois HB 5428

2010-04-10T11:07:00.009-05:00

Illinois HB 5428, a bill that severely curtails adoptee rights, is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee. A meeting will be held Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 2:30pm at Capitol 400 in Springfield, Illinois to discuss the bill. From the Adoption Reform Illinois web site:

We welcome anyone who can attend (you do not have to speak). We also welcome written testimony, regardless of whether you are in Illinois. You can send it to Adoption Reform Illinois at info@campaign4openrecords.org. Please include your name, address, phone number and email address. We suggest you limit to one page and include any personal experiences you have either with Illinois in particular or sealed records in general. If we receive your testimony by Monday night we will submit it to the legislators on Tuesday.

Adoption Reform Illinois has some talking points on our web site, as well as our position paper (PDF) which explains why we oppose HB 5428. We also encourage you to call or fax the Senate sponsors and members of the Judiciary Committee to express your opposition to this bill.

Why is it important that we stop Illinois HB 5428?

If HB 5428 is enacted in Illinois, it will impact adoptee rights across the country. Do you really want to be considered a criminal for simply pursuing your own genealogy, even if you don't contact anyone? Do you want to support a bureaucratic nightmare that exists only to make money at your expense?

What's so bad about this bill?

From my blog entry Illinois HB 5428: Toxic To Adoptee Rights, Makes It A Crime To Search:

First, there is the way IL HB 5428 is being slipped under the radar... It has already been fast-tracked through a House vote of approval, and is currently in the Senate's Assignments committee.

Next, there is the unprecedented level of bureaucracy this bill creates -- because the more bureaucracy, the more opportunities to charge you for your own information. HB 5428 introduces no less than five levels of disclosure veto (mislabeled "preferences"), ranging from "access if your Mommy approves" all the way down to "F*** you." It goes so far as to mandate modification of vital records, permanently erasing adoptee identities. Adoptees who have already been shafted by disclosure veto remain screwed.

IL HB 5428 puts the very same people who run Illinois' mismanaged registry and CI program on the council overseeing it.

HB 5428 calls for state money to advertise the program. It's all about profit at a time when our state can't even pay its own bills. And it's all about obscurity at a time when the citizens of Illinois are trying to shine some light on the corrupt politics in this state.

And if that's not bad enough... IL HB 5428 would make it a CRIME to pursue your own search via non-identifying information (damages plus $10,000 minimum punitive fine).

Isn't it better that some adoptees have access than none?

From my blog entry Compromise Legislation: Why Some Adoptees And Not Others?

If you are an adoptee who has original birth certificate access, find out what laws in your state allow you to do so. Do those laws deny the rights of your fellow adoptees? How does that make you feel? And if you support conditional legislation, either deliberately or because you haven't really thought about it, ask yourself why. Why is it okay for some adoptees to have access and not others? What makes a person born on this date better than someone born on that one? Why are adoptees in one state more deserving than those in another?

Are you willing to leave people behind? What if you turn out to be one of them?

Can't we just go back and make it better later?

Legislators don't revisit legislation like this. If HB 5428 is passed, it will set adoptee rights back decades in Illinois and elsewhere. From my blog entry Think Before You Support Compromise Adoption Reform Bills:

Baby steps are not needed to achieve clean original birth certificate access. It's been done in Maine. It's been done in Oregon. IT CAN HAPPEN. But you have to work at it, and if your nice clean bill gets lobotomized, you have to take the higher ground, kill it and start again.
Look to your left. Look to your right. One of your brethren in adoption is going to be left behind if you compromise. Ask yourself if you actually want to support a bill that means getting your information at the expense of someone else. And remember, that someone else could easily be you.
NOT ONE STATE that has enacted compromise legislation has EVER changed it later to clean birth certificate access. Once you have the compromise you are stuck with it. The politicians consider it a done deal and won't revisit it. You'll have shot yourself in the foot for nothing.
Compromises in one state bleed over onto others. Legislators ask, if it works for this other state, why shouldn't we do it that way? It makes it harder to enact clean legislation elsewhere.
There are politicians and lobbyists who want you to compromise because it's a way for them to pay lip service to reform while not actually doing anything. In other words, it's a ploy to get us to be good little bastards and birth mommies and go away. Post-adoption services exist to make money, period. They do not exist to help you. They do not exist to restore your civil rights. Don't buy into the rhetoric. Demand clean legislation, each and every time.
Adoption records access is not about medical history, search and reunion or anything else. It is about identity. It is about the right to be treated equally. Don't get caught up in the arguments. Take it back to basics and stay focused.

I urge all of you to contact Illinois Senate sponsors and Judiciary Committee members and express your opposition to this bill. There is also a petition on Change.org you can sign. And you are welcome to join our Adoption Reform Illinois coalition.

Illinois HB 5428 must be defeated for the good of ALL adoptees, not just those deemed worthy by arbitrary bureaucrats. I'll be reporting on my trip to Springfield and my experience testifying against this atrocity of a bill.

Illinois HB 5428: Toxic To Adoptee Rights, Makes It A Crime To Search

2010-03-27T14:49:00.032-05:00

Please write to these senators and tell them to oppose IL HB 5428. And be sure to sign our Change.org petition!

You can find the bill status for Illinois HB 5428 here and the full text here. I also encourage you to join Adoption Reform Illinois, a coalition of triad members and others seeking to defeat bills like this and introduce clean legislation to Illinois. On our web site you will find contact information for the Senate sponsors and Assignments committee, and our position paper, Why ARI Opposes HB 5428 (pdf).

I haven't blogged much lately because I've been busy fighting IL HB 5428, a new-bill-same-as-the-old-bill which kicks Illinois adoptees when they're down. This bill, introduced by legislator and token adoptee Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, is utterly toxic, even more so than most compromise legislation. (Please read this if you think compromise legislation is okay and "baby steps are needed" to achieve adoption reform.)

First, there is the way IL HB 5428 is being slipped under the radar. After the defeat the adoption reform community handed t he similar IL HB 4623 in 2008, Feigenholtz must have realized she would never be able to pass one of her odious initiatives if anyone knew about it. So this thing has been silent but deadly. It has already been fast-tracked through a House vote of approval, and is currently in the Senate's Assignments committee.

Next, there is the unprecedented level of bureaucracy this bill creates -- because the more bureaucracy, the more opportunities to charge you for your own information. HB 5428 introduces no less than five levels of disclosure veto (mislabeled "preferences"), ranging from "access if your Mommy approves" all the way down to "F*** you." It goes so far as to mandate modification of vital records, permanently erasing adoptee identities. Adoptees who have already been shafted by disclosure veto remain screwed.

Feigenholtz is touting this to the media as being good for adoptees, while snickering behind our backs with dollar signs in her eyes. DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES. This bill does NOT grant birth certificate access. It cements profiteering at the expense of adult adoptees.

IL HB 5428 puts the very same people who run Illinois' mismanaged registry and CI program on the council overseeing it. This makes the Midwest Adoption Center (MAC), the sole-source no-bid entity contracted to perform these services in Illinois, accountable to no one but themselves. This council is filled with entities who profit from access to adoption records. AAC's representative (Melisha Mitchell aka Allen) is a paid searcher, a conflict of interest. No adoption reform groups are represented.

When it comes to MAC, we are talking about the same people who consider the confidentiality of their policies and procedures more important than protecting the identities of participants. I speak from experience when I say I wouldn't trust these people to clean up radioactive sewage -- which is what HB 5428 is.

The bill is primarily a money grab for MAC and the CI program. HB 5428 calls for state money to advertise the program. It's all about profit at a time when our state can't even pay its own bills. And it's all about obscurity at a time when the citizens of Illinois are trying to shine some light on the corrupt politics in this state.

And if that's not bad enough...

IL HB 5428 would make it a CRIME to pursue your own search via non-identifying information (damages plus $10,000 minimum punitive fine). From the bill text:

Any person who learns a sought-after relative’s identity, directly or indirectly, through the use of procedures provided in this Section and who improperly discloses information identifying the sought-after relative shall be liable to the sought-after relative for actual damages plus minimum punitive damages of $10,000.

Yes, you heard that right. If you're not adopted, it's called genealogy. But if you are adopted, under IL HB 5428 you will be penalized if you attempt to search on your own. This is so that all Illinois adoptees and their birth families will be forced through the jaws of the intermediary program's profit-making machine.

Oh, and at the same time they hold themselves unaccountable for any mistakes they may make while meddling in your business, such as the way they disclosed my identifying information to my birth family without my consent. CIs who make mistakes keep their jobs and are charged a modest penalty which is paid to DCFS, not the injured party:

The Department shall fine any confidential intermediary who improperly discloses confidential information in violation of item (1) or (2) of this subsection (k) an amount up to $2,000 per improper disclosure. This fine does not affect civil liability under item (2) of this subsection (k). The Department shall deposit all fines and penalties collected under this Section into the Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Fund.

Here's a barf bag. I'll wait while you hurl.

Bastardette has posted part 1 of what is sure to be a rousing series on Sneaky Sara and her machinations. I strongly encourage you to read it, and to write to Illinois senators to put a stop to this toxic bill.

Vote For Adoptee Rights: They Affect Everyone

2010-03-06T09:11:00.006-06:00

Please vote for adult adoptee rights to their original birth certificates, even if you think this issue doesn't affect you. The final round ends March 12th, and the top 10 issues will be presented in Washington. Click the link below (goes to change.org), or see the sidebar to the right.

http://tinyurl.com/Vote-4-Equality

And if you think adult adoptee rights don't affect you, think again. Almost everyone in the United States is touched by adoption. Between the 6 million adoptees, our adoptive families, birth families, spouses, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren... the chances are someone you care about is impacted by adoptees' lack of access to their original birth certificates.

Take, for example, my mother-in-law. She is not adopted, has not adopted, has not relinquished a child. She does, however, have six sons... and three of them, fully half, ended up marrying women who were adopted. That means a significant number of her grandchildren are minus half their heritage. She supports adoptee rights. She even reads my blog. (Hi, Mom!) She understands that adoptee rights affect everyone.

So please, vote today. Ask your friends, colleagues, loved ones to vote. Even if you think you have no connection, vote. Because a vote for adoptee rights is a vote for equality and identity for everyone.

Compromising On Adoptee Access? The Foot You Shoot May Be Your Own

2010-02-24T14:06:00.008-06:00

I wrote this as a response to the news that Missouri has enacted a compromise bill for adult adoptee original birth certificate (OBC) access. I really wish people would understand that compromise legislation is a ploy to get us to shut up and go away. You never know if you yourself may be the one vetoed out of your own rights.

If you are thinking of supporting a bill, please understand what these compromises actually mean. Insist upon clean bills, every time, no exceptions.

What I said was:

While I appreciate all the hard work those involved have done to enact this bill [in Missouri], baby steps and compromises are not a fair solution. So-called "disclosure vetoes" such as the one in this new MO law require adoptees to get approval from their birth mothers before they can have their original birth certificates. Disclosure vetoes are sometimes phrased as "contact preferences", but if it is binding on adoptees and prevents them from accessing their OBCs, it's a veto.

This is unequal and a blow to the civil rights of adoptees. No one else needs such approval. The fact is that "baby steps" end up stopping at step one. No state that has enacted compromise legislation like this has ever revisited it. The legislators consider it a done deal and don't want to revisit. Speaking from experience, a system like this does NOT work. The people typically in charge of it are often political allies of those who enact it. In other words, it's a way to make money off adoptees, again. For example in Illinois the people who run the program are political allies of the legislator who enacted it, and make six figure salaries off babysitting adoptees and their birth families.

Compromise legislation is neither right nor fair. ALL citizens, regardless of adoptive status, deserve the same equal treatment. That means ALL adult adoptees should be able to access their original birth certificates in the same manner, and for the same reasonable fees, as everyone else.

Forgive me but this strikes close to home. I am an adult adoptee who has been denied her original birth certificate because of Illinois' disclosure veto. I personally could not look at myself in the mirror if I got my OBC via a law that meant the adoptees in front of or behind me were unable to get theirs. We must all stand together and insist upon our civil rights instead of falling for cleverly-worded "solutions". This is a political gimmick to lure you into thinking you are restoring your rights when you are really shooting yourself (and others) in the foot. Please think about and understand what compromise legislation means. It means you get your information at someone else's expense. It means you yourself could very easily be the one left behind. You won't know until you try to access your OBC and discover that you're one of the "small percentage" that got bit by a veto.

It is perfectly possible to enact clean legislation. Other states like Maine have done it. You have to take the higher ground, insist on clean bills, and kill the bill if it is amended with a disclosure veto. South Dakota just went through that and I admire the South Dakota SEAL group for vowing to kill the bill they worked so hard for if it was compromised.

For every state that enacts a compromise, it makes it that much more difficult to enact clean legislation elsewhere. This is why we have not made more progress in opening records, because people are willing to fall for these compromises. Working together is paramount. Access must be equal, across the board. I have no problem with true contact preferences, those that allow birth families to state their preference while still allowing the adoptee to obtain his/her OBC (versus a binding veto, whatever it might be called). The notion that such preferences must be binding assumes that all adoptees are potential stalkers, which is demeaning and discriminatory. There is a vast difference between search/reunion and the right to one's identity. The former is a decision that families must make among themselves. The latter should be a basic right of all human beings. Missouri's bill is a tragedy for those who will be left behind.

One thing I would like to mention is that I do actually have a problem with true contact preferences (those that are not binding on the adoptee). Namely, that is that it is too easy for what begins as a "preference" to become a binding veto. Politicians are confused as to the difference between a contact preference and a disclosure veto. See the recent South Dakota decision on HB 1223 for an example of that. But I would rather see an otherwise clean bill pass with a nonbinding preference than a binding veto.