The other day I got an email from the National Council for Adoption announcing its new and improved website. Sort of a launch into its 30th anniversary celebration capped off in July by its annual conference (Note to Chuck Johnson: I’ll be there. I promise to behave if you promise to keep adoption attachment whacko Karyn Purvis from speaking again–and please–no baby massage this time!) The conference is followed in November by The Bow Tie and Pearls gala at the Willard where the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute will be given NCFA’s Friend of Adoption Award. I can already hear Dr. Pierce jumping on heaven’s trapdoor over that one. Me, too.
The website announcement included this curious greeting from NCFA’s acting CEO Chuck Johnson:
Whether you are a birthparent, an adoptive family, adoption agency, a representative of the government, the media, or you are simply a person interested in adoption, you will know exactly where to click to find the information you’re looking for.” –Chuck Johnson, NCFA vice president and chief operating officer
Thank you Chuck for admitting finally that after 30 years of posturing to the contrary, NCFA, offers nothing to bastards and adoptees. (“Birthmothers” will have to take up their inclusion with you personally.)
Under the History –or shall we say Revised History–tab we learn (my emphasis):
For 30 years, NCFA has been the authoritative voice for adoption. Our research and education programs have led the way in promoting sound, ethical adoption policies and practices that have enabled children to find nurturing, permanent families through adoption.
I realize there’s a whole NuNuNCFA (staff changes faster than Tommy Manville changed wives) that has no idea of their employer’s own lunatic history. Just how “sound and ethical” is sealing public records and pathologizing the product on whom you owe your very existence? Maybe I should remind NCFA of its past and mission and overnighg it a copy of its incorporation papers and other documents (like confidential correspondence from Dr. Pierce) which states quite clearly that NCFA’s mission, in response to the Carter Administration initiative, is to keep birth certificates sealed from the snoopy bastards they claim (or claimed) want to destroy the grand beneficient institution which created them. Give ’em a birth certificate, and the next thing you know, they’ll want the keys to the adoption agency’s safe deposit box. Then, there’s the Wild Wild West NCFA Factbooks 1, 2, and 3 (4 was really boring) which portrayed bastards demanding their rights back, and those who support them, as ungrateful homewrecking flag burning psychos. Calling Dr. Kirschner! Calling Dr. Kirschner!
Bastards don’t make it into the NCFA Adoption Advocate 2010 Adoption Legislative Issues (January 2010), either. The big concern there is tax credits and other big government hand-outs and bail-outs, foster and international child redistribution, “birthmother” bribes and surrender tax breaks, and “birthfather rights” through putative father registries. Maybe if bastards came to NCFA and its friends in high places with our hands out for taxpayer boodle we’d be farther along.
Finally! Under Achievements, we come in #5, just above a lukewarn endorsement of “safe havens”:
While we are not opposed to open adoptions, reunions, or the exchange of identifying information when parties to adoption mutually agree, we are opposed to laws that empower one party to adoption to receive confidential identifying information about the other without the other party’s consent. Openness in adoption can be healthy when both parties to adoption choose it voluntarily; but it can be traumatic and disrupts lives when one side forces him or herself on the other.
For 30 years, we have demonstrated our commitment to protecting the option of privacy in adoption by repeatedly initiating efforts to educate state legislatures across the country about the harmful effects of legislation that would allow an unrestricted right of access to birthparent identifying information in lieu of requiring mutual consent of birthparents and adult adopted persons prior to release. As early as 1983, we drafted a model mutual consent bill and began educating state legislatures about the advantages of using mutual consent registry laws to safeguard privacy and enable mutually desired contact between adult parties to adoption.
Even if this section were worded better, it still wouldn’t explain how NCFA has achieved anything regarding bastards. There may have given us some minor setbacks on unrestricted access, but our biggest enemy is our NCFA-lite friends in places like New Jersey, California, and Illinois–those useful idiots, (bastards gone good) whimpering for reunion, not demanding restoration of civil rights. Come to think of it, I can’t remember NCFA ever actually addressing rights in any meaningful manner. Maybe it’s cuz they can’t.
Give NCFA a few more years and it and the deformers will be on the same “playing field.”
NCFA would like us to go away. It would make the organization’s life so much easier. But we won’t go away. The only solution, then, is for NCFA to give it up and let us be.
Onya! I found it very strange and I’m not from round here.The day us bastards get a look in will be the day we throw a very large party!
“(“Birthmothers” will have to take up their inclusion with you personally.)”
That’s like the fox inviting the hens to the party. I have so many things to take up with the NCFA I wouldn’t know where to start. >:o( My first suggestion is that they find a new name for “the angel in adoption” award. Maybe it could be “the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” award. If they do have something to offer natural mothers, I can envision it being something like a “don’t bleed, breed!” workshop. Augh…I’d rather not be included in the concerns of the NCFA, thank you very much.
You knew this would get me going, didn’t you, BD? ;o)
Aside from omitting bastards, it’s their language and the tone.
“While we are not opposed to open adoptions, reunions, or the exchange of identifying information when parties to adoption mutually agree, we are opposed to laws that empower one party to adoption to receive confidential identifying information about the other . . .”
Paternalism from another era, and they don’t even get it or recognize it. All the more strange when you consider the photo of the current executive membership you ran awhile back.
Hello, BD,
A word from “the other side” here…
I’m a prospective adoptive parent – please know that not all of us out here who are adopting agree with the NCFA. It horrifies me that adoptees do not have access to their own records and that NCFA would continue to encourage secrecy in the name of privavcy. Excuse my language – but what a load of horse shit.
For my particular adoption situation – I am trying every which way to make certain that our adoption is open and that the child we raise will not only have access to information, but also to her family members – ALL of them – adoptive and biological.
Thanks for allowing me a little space to share my thoughts.
Best and peace.
Hi Jennifer–Thanks for dropping by. I know that many adoptive parents are not NCFAnoids.My parents weren’t, but I was adoted way before NCFA was born. It’s very important that adoptive parents and paps to “just say no” to old fashioned and harmful ideas like NCFA pushes. Of course, NCFA is not alone. We have the ACLU, anti-abortion groups, NOW, and Planned Parenthood to contend with too. What an unholy alliance.
Robin–NCFA cares about you! You’re just a frail little woman with bad decision-making skills. Somebody has to stand up for you.
Right, BD. I forgot that. And somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to speak for myself, fainting flower of womanhood that I am. (Hubby said I am about as frail as a Mach Truck with an attitude..heh heh) Uh, I forget. When did we ask the NCFA to speak for us?
Jennifer….
If you really care about the child you are adopting, refuse to have his/her birth certificate amended.
You can do this, you know. Your adoption attorney probably wont tell you.
“Don’t Bleed…BREED”!
Love it, Robin…LOL!
Are you attending the Pearl and Bowtie Gala? I haven’t been to an NCFA function since the 1980’s, so I bought a ticket.
I reserved a spot in the utility closet off the ballroom. They set it aside for us biologicals to protect our privacy. If we don’t make a fuss we get the leftovers. I had to turn some more tricks and make a drug run to cover the cost but hey, it’s worth it.
I can’t decide what to wear – my flowered muu muu or day-glo stretch pants and halter top. My sackcloth and ashes seem a little drab and out-dated. Normally we don’t bother getting dressed in the wild naked jungle of the unwed mother.
Decisions, decisions… Remind me to bring my Valium and industrial-size barf bag. I forgot them last time and lost my cookies on Marietta Spencer.