MAINE SQUEEZE: MAINE HATES ADOPTEES–IT REALLY DOES

A couple weeks ago Bastardette wrote that Massachusetts Senator Karen Spilka hates adoptees. As far as I can tell she still does. Our civil rights remain on her table buried beneath a pile of worn file folders and Burger King wrappers while politicians “study” the legitimacy of our illegitimacy. But Spilka’s puny hatred is nothing compared to the fear and loathing adoptees generate amongst the hacks on the Maine legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee. We once cute and cuddly saved-from-the abortitorium baybees are now ungrateful, intrusive, demanding, dangerous, uncouth, uncute adults. Give us an ice pick and we’ll Trotskyize a birthmom–or a politician–not to mention rip up the social fabric of Maine. Call out Homeland Security! Adoptees must be stopped! Without prejudice!

The once adoptee-friendly, open records bill LD 1805–taken almost verbatim from New Hampshire’s 2005 records access law–has morphed into the most repressive, restrictive. anti-adoptee piece of dreck to hit the hallowed halls of any legislature in decades exceeding NCFA’s biggest wet dream–what Bastard National Anita Field calls “a no rights bill.” If passed in any of its restrictive amended forms, Maine adoptees would come out with substantially less rights than they have now–which aren’t many. Under the front runner amendment, records currently available to pre-August 8, 1953 adoptees would be retroactively sealed. A once clean, pure open records bill has perverted into a dirty, corrupt sealed records bill that tells adoptees just what lawmakers think about them: Rin Tin Tin has more rights than you.

A weak sponsor, an over-reliance on “medical records” and birthparent “approval.” and bad political strategy on the part of local roll-over Access 2006 deformists (including their unaccountable invitation to longtime NCFA agency St. Andre Home, the Bishops, and Planned Parenthood to support the bill) all spelled doom from the beginning. Rumors have floated for months that HD 1805 would never land out of committee since the Democrat-controlled legislature has allegedly pledged to “protect” an unnamed prominent female Democratic senator. Bastardette doesn’t want to get sued. Go over to the Maine Senate bio page and scroll around the 6 Dem women senators and guess who needs protected.

And, did I mention that the co-chairs of the Joint Judiciary Committee have personal “issues” with uppity adoptees? Sen. Barry my-adopted kids-could care-less Hobbins (D-York) is an adoption lawyer, friend of bishops, and charter member of the Friends of NCFA. Rep. Deborah my-dad-is-adopted-and-he-could-care-less Simpson (D-Auburn) , says she’s “protecting adoptee confidentiality” by keeping our own records out of our own hands. A fan of of victim feminism, Simpson is mobbed up with the political whores at Planned Parenthood who believe that adoptees should be damned happy they weren’t dumpsterized. According to the Planned Parenthood cult, you see, adoption is a “reproductive right”–the same argument spewed by NCFA. “A vote for adoptee civil rights is a vote against women!” cries Simpson. (I can’t wait for CUB to hear that one!) Neither Planned Parenthood nor Simpson, I guess, has ever heard of Doe v Sundquist and Does 1-7 v State.

And then there’s Sen. Sean with-friends like me-who-needs-NCFA? Faircloth (D-Bangor) bizarrely a co-sponsor of LD 1805. Faircloth likes adoptees so much that he wants us to wait until we’re 40 years old to get our birth certificates. Faircloth, though, is a empathetic guy. “Under the current law, I could go to the grave without knowing my biological parent. That’s not right. That’s not fair.” “I”? Well, since Sen. Faircloth isn’t adopted (as far as we know), he doesn’t have to wait until middle age to get a birth certificate, learn the name of his parents, or listen to stupid statements emanating from his mouth, does he? Curiously, Access 2006 considers Faircloth a friend.

Before we go any farther, just what are these amendments? Well, we can go only by Access 2006 accounts on email lists, committee recordings, and newspaper articles. As of this writing the amendments do not appear on the Maine legislative website so they may have been submitted orally or the webmaster has run off to Panama City Beach over Spring break. Or maybe the pols are just blathering to get their faces in the news.

Simpson Amendment:

*guts the intent of the original bill.

* prospectively opens records to persons adopted after January 1, 2007 (and their adoptive parents while the child is a minor) unless a disclosure veto has been filed by birthparents within 7 days of surrender, consent or termination of parental rights. In that case, records would remain sealed.

* retroactively seals adoption records currently open to those adopted in Maine prior to August 8,1953

*imposes a confidential search business within understaffed county probate courts which allows the courts to subcontract for search services with all costs born by the adoptee. (Think 1-800-BIG HUGS)

As of this writing, this amendment has 6 committee votes.

Faircloth Amendment:

*guts the intent of the original bill

* prospectively opens records to persons adopted after January 1, 2007 (and their adoptive parents while the child is a minor) unless a disclosure veto has been filed by birthparents within 7 days of surrender, consent or termination of parental rights. In that case, records would remain sealed.

*requires the probate court to notify original parents of the right to file a disclosure veto (not clear if this pertains to past adoptions or prospective only)

*prospectively provides court access to original birth certificates to adult adoptees (or their adoptive parents if the child is still a minor) if the original parent is deceased.

*prospectively allows adoptees unrestricted access to their original birth certificate when they reach the age of 40 or to descendants if the adoptee is dead.

* imposes a confidential search business within county probate courts which allows the courts to subcontract for search services with all costs born by the adoptee (Think 1-800 SEARCH).

As of this writing, this amendment has 2 committee votes.

Rumors of additional amendments (what else could possibly be done to make this bill any worse?) are flying. Rep. Marilyn Canavan (D-Waterville) is exercised by the whole thing. She told the Kennebec Journal, “that the decision by a mother to put a child up for adoption is done under most difficult circumstances that even the child may not be able to understand at any age.” Perhaps Rep. Canavan will offer an amendment to furnish adoptees with a lifetime supply of binkies. And then there’s the gang from the Family Law Advisory Commission, described as a “group of judges, lawyers, and social workers formed by the legislature to advise lawmakers on family law issues.” These upstanding professionals are horrified at the mere thought of adoptees running amuck in their state. Since family law attorneys usually know as much about adoption as street car conductors their input is irrelevant. In fact, why are any of these “experts” inputting their nose in the business of adult adoptees anyway?

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who attended the February 28 hearing in Augusta. Pleas for medical records limped out the gate and stumbled along the rest of the afternoon. As one person whispered to Bastardette, “My tongue is bleeding!” Mine was too. And so were my ears.

NH State. Rep. Janet Allen, Adam Pertman, Bastardette, Craig Hickman, attorney Neal Hulbert, Prof. Elizabeth Samuels, and a few others stuck to rights arguments. Most others, apparently ignorant of strategic politics or even civil rights, wallowed in tales of illness. Certainly, a medical history is desirable for everyone and is essential for some adoptees. But excuse me….no one is entitled to someone else’s medical history or records. How getting your original birth certificate equates with humanitarian aid is beyond me. And some of the committee, too. During the grueling and boring 6 hours of tension headaching testimony, more than one member asked, “What in the world are you talking about?” I’m surprised that some bright bulb didn’t come up with a suggestion for an anonymous adoption medical registry. Hey, maybe that’s one of the amendments we haven’t heard yet. No doubt some deformer will fall to his or her knees in eternal gratitude.

The medical history “argument” has been long discredited amongst seasoned records access activists. It’s what people fall back on when they’re afraid to ask for what they really want. “Hmmm, excuse me, sir. Could I…would you…please be so kind….” NCFA’s local ambulance chaser recognized the fish when he smelled it. What’s more disturbing about this weak strategy is where it came from. An Access 2006 leader advised Bastardette that a certain highly-placed member of a well-known adoption deform organization told them to use it. “It’s what got records opened in Oregon and New Hampshire.”

It was? Oregon’s Ballot Measure 58 was Bastard Nation’s action, and I can assure everyone that “medical history” was never a strategy. Helen Hill would have gone on a date with Bill Sizemore before she’d agree to anything other than civil rights. Anybody who claims different is ill-informed or lying. New Hampshire was won on the rights issue, not some “humanitarian” BS as transparent as Britney Spear’s head. Our fight is successful when it is about adoptees relationship to the state–not medical records or “primal wound” or reunion or any other weepy problems deformers drudge up to skirt around the issue. We are not worthy!

Why is HD 1805 still alive, kicking and eating itself? Simpson and her adoptee-hating thugs have already said that there is no way the bill will come out of committee as originally written. And sorry. Despite the high hopes of naive local deformers, legislators don’t take amendments out after a bill reaches the floor. Access 2006: Find its balls and pull HD 1805. And if it can’t be pulled for some procedural reason, demand that it be voted down. If you don’t, you’ll be called out, feet to the fire. Anything less betrays Maine’s adoptees and every other adoptee in the US and Canada. Once rights are lost, they aren’t regained easily.

If you don’t believe me, look at the abysmal record of cant-we-all-just-get-along “adoption reform” in the last 25 years with its disclosure and contact vetoes, mandatory CI systems, and other reprehensible “improvements” that co-opt adoptee autonomy and assert government control over our private lives. Those restrictions and controls did not come out of the Axis of Evil (NCFA, Catholic Charities, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and their ilk) but from deformers willing to sacrifice the rights of all adoptees for the reunions of some. Deformers’ promise to come back and fix the mess has been as credible as OJ’s promise to find Nicole’s “real” killer. Then as now, deformers have let the anti-adoptee cabal frame the debate, apparently ashamed to stand up and say, “Yeah, it’s about me! So what?”

NCFA must be snickering up its sleeve.

Adopted persons need to get one thing clear in their heads: We are hated. We are feared. We are an abomination.

To a majority of Maine’s Joint Judiciary Committee we are fearful creatures in need of government monitoring if we so much as exhibit a desire towards genealogy or owning a public record about ourselves. But Maine is not alone in its fear and hatred. In every state where we attempt to restore our rights and integrity, we are met with scorn, ridicule, and fear. Can anyone ever forget Ontario Privacy Tsarina Anne Cavoukian’s horrified speculation that adoptees just want to “make a shambles” of other peoples lives? And let’s not forget the suicides and honor killings we busybodies cause!

Incredibly deformers continue believe that adoptees possess moral capital by the mere fact that we are “Chosen Children.” We don’t.

This hatefest is a good thing. The adopteephobiacs are out on front street now. They can’t go home again. We know who they are and what they really think about us behind their veneer of care and concern. We know their hypocrisy and their lies.

It’s time to rumble.

Will the deformers put on the knucke dusters or continue to turn and run?