NAM/NAAM 2023 Say 12: Michigan: Bastard Nation Letter of Support for HB5248 and HB5149

We support HB5148 a “clean bill” that allows all Michigan-born adoptees, their descendants or legal representatives to obtain the adoptee’s original birth certificate without restrictions or conditions upon request at the age of 18, The bill contains a voluntarily optional Contact Preference Form which allows biological parents to record if the would like contact, but does not control the release of the OBC.

We support HB5149 which eliminates current court and Central Adoption Registry control over the release of the OBC. It retains biological parent denial of identifying information requests already on file, BUT that request does not restrict OBC access. No release vetoes can be filed after July 1, 2024. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 9. It’s Out! Susan Kiyo Ito’s “I Would Meet You Anywhere”

Susan’s words remind me that adoption by design builds secrets– a tangled wall of family, state, and internalized personal rules of identity, history, and self-worth that for some reason are never expected to be broken, without pain to us and others. That’s how adoption works, even in the “best.” Continue Reading →

Thoughts and Prayers and Shut Up! Safe Haven Baby Box pushers dismiss adoptee voices; undermine the Adoptee Rights Movement.

These self-righteous arguments ignore and shun adopted people who object to the SHBB  program of controlled newborn abandonment. .SHBB proponents repeatedly say that can’t imagine why–and even ridicule–any adoptee who would have a problem with being stuffed in a box-in-the wall. “Ingratitude” is their watchword.  If anyone actually does hear us –usually  second hand–we are told we are “bitter,”  “don’t understand adoption(!)”  or “anomalies  who had “bad adoptions.”  Of course, we may just be liberals. Continue Reading →

The B List: Bastardette’s Adoption Playlist

Writer Suzanne Gilbert (Tapioca Fire) posted her playlist of adoption search and reunion songs on Facebook today and asked if anyone else had their own. Looking around tonight for something to write about, I thought I’d glom off her idea. My songs, though, aren’t particularly about search and reunion but about adoption in general–how I’ve thought about and reacted to adoption over the last four decades. What affected me once, doesn’t necessarily affect me now, but when I hear it I think: a-ha adoption! Continue Reading →

Bastard Nation Bedtime Stories: #flippingthe script on the adoptee narrative

One of the greatest tools we have in adoptee rights today is ridicule: satire, parody, and humor. Unfortunately many adoptees fail to see humor in their situation. Spending $20,000 and 20 years of your life to find out where you came from is enough to take the edge off. Continue Reading →

The Celebrity A List: Adopted, the not adopted, and the definition of adoption

Adopted celebrities or the adopted adult children of celebrities aren’t ever asked how they feel about being adopted or how they even view adoption in a general sense. Not even a crass, “Do you know who you real parents are?” Most definitely they are not asked if it’s OK for socio-political agendized organizations to queer their personal adoptee (or not adoptied as we shall see) narratives for themselves to fit whatever program they’re pimping. Celebrity adoptees are simply paper dolls for the adoption industry and a gullible public, meant to entertain and play with, not to care about. Certainly nobody is going to bring up the adopted children of celebrities who reject their adopters or whose adopters reject them or those who have otherwise depressing outcomes. How many of you know about Barabra Stanwyck’s shipped-off adopted son Tony Fay who once wrote an article for Confidential “Why does my mother hate me?” or Joan Fontaine’s possibly illegally adopted Peruvian daughter Marita (they reconciled after decades of estrangement) or Hedy Lamarr’s adopted/not adopted son James Lamarr Loder (think Loretta Young and click the link.) Christina Crawford is the only celebrity adoptee/adopted I can think of who dared to speak out, and you won’t see her paraded around by NAM. In the future no NAM pusher is going chat up Chelsea O’Donnell, though Rosie, no doubt will shoot her mouth off, for years much to the pleasure of her fanc about the ungrateful little bastard formerly known as her adoptee. Continue Reading →

Scandal 2015 and The Defenders 1962. Same subject, two different reactions

Unfortunately, Lila Rose and her ilk cannot treat Americans as adults like they were treated 54 years ago. They can’t take the heat for a serious discussion. Are their arguments so fragile that a TV show can crumble them? Moreover, they don’t want to admit that the only “big deal” about abortion for some women is trying to get through the maze of laws and restrictions people Lila Rose and Ryan Bomberger have either created or supported to make forced pregnancy the only “choice” some have. Continue Reading →

Scandal: The Radiance Foundation v Shonda Rhimes

I’m beginning to think that this should be Stop Radiance Foundation Month instead of National Adoption Month.  Not a day goes by when I don’t retch or laugh or both at what shows up on its FB page. It is not a safe space for Bastards. I mean, if you think the I Am Adopted FB page is full of happy adoptees who will transform you into a diabetic in 10 seconds with their pink cotton candy and kool-aid, (even if half of them seem really angry) then RF is totally blissed out on it. Did somebody over there indulge on Purple Owsley and never come back?  Forced pregnancy followed by happy relinquishment is the RF model.There’s no middle ground here.Unplanned pregnancy = abortion. The way RF propagandizes, you’d think no single women keep their kids. I’m not sure what one of RF: slogans “Be the Hope” means. Many adoptees have been acquired as the hope of childless couples (or singles, though  I doubt RF supports that part of the deal.) Does any normal person want to be someone else’s hope? Has Bomberger ever talked to one of those`adoptee hope survivors?  Don’t we, especially if we are adopted, have enough problems? Continue Reading →

Bastard Reading; Bastard Learning

I don’t make it a secret that I don’t read a lot of adoption literature. I read a lotof books, but adopta-lit isn’t high on my reading list. I prefer 19th century English and American novels, mysteries. pop culture, American history, organized crime ( my field in grad school) and auto/biographies. But I do have a list of adaption books that I’ve enjoyed over the years and find important.to the political and the personal. Occasionally, I”m asked what adoption-related books I like. Here is a non-fiction list: Continue Reading →