Here’s the deal: BioTex Center for Reproduction advertised a Black Friday sale–3% discount on its surrogacy packages. The standard single is about $50,000.Hmmm. $1500 off doesn’t seem like much. Continue Reading →
Bastard Nation friends Greg Luce and Adoptees United hold bi-monthly zoom discussions on topics that concern Class Bastard. and the state of adoption worldwide. I’ve missed a couple of them, for which I kick myself. I am making a real effort not to over-nap (late afternoon wipes me out) or get otherwise distracted, The next two meetings promise to be insightful and important to us as adopted people and adoptee rights activists. Continue Reading →
On November 10, Rep. Robert “RJ” May pre-filed HB 4566 in the House. The bill amends the state’s current law, passed in 2018 (which started out clean and went down dirty) that permits adoptees, age 18 and over whose adoptions are finalized after July 1, 2019, to obtain a non-certified copy of their OBC “and “evidence of adoption,” but only with the consent of the biological parent(s) That consent is authorized through the submission of a “Contact Preference Form or other notarized documents. In practical terms, the 2019 law can’t be utilized until 2037, except in cases of older child/foster adoptions. Those adopted before the effective date are forced to file a petition to a state court, a procedure that has a near-zero success rate. Continue Reading →
Bastardette has had a love affair with William Burroughs since she was 14. His A Thanksgiving Prayer is posted below. It’s nervy, but I’ve dared to add to the Master’s Voice. I believe it fits nicely after “Thanks for a nation of finks.” Continue Reading →
OK. We have reached Day 24 of National Adoption Month, and I’m tired. I don’t feel very clever, and for the first time in my life, I’m wondering what I would be doing if I hadn’t been adopted and hadn’t been aggrieved by the whole adoption process. Continue Reading →
That said, we know that our personal adoption stories are up for grabs. First parents, adoptive parents, reporters, adoption agents, social workers, re-homers, facilitators, religious nuts, neo-libs, do-gooders, and outsiders of multiple stripes hijack our stories for their sometimes contradictory and oppositional, own agendas. I call this Narrative Expropriation. Somebody speaks for us. Somebody pretends to be us. Somebody pretends we share the same histories, opinions, and desires. Somebody uses us to create their own stories. Continue Reading →
The Foster Youth Bill of Rights not only ensures that youth have a safe place to live, but also that they have a voice regarding their care and an opportunity for a normal childhood. Continue Reading →
Well, yesterday was National Adoption Day, that very special holiday where hundreds of children ritually and legally across the country, lose their names, histories, and biological families, and turn into someone else. Why is such a loss, such a tragedy celebrated? Why is the privacy of these children invaded and manipulated? Continue Reading →
Bomberger & Co has a problem with anything that reeks of racial and gender equality, economic equity, bodily autonomy, and movements to establish or restore rights, that even he himself, a bi-racial adoptee, fails to qualify for under the gaze of white supremacy. Apparently, it’s enough that We-the-Fetus has been saved, and the only right we deserve after that, is the right to be adopted. I’m not sure how someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about adoptee rights, can ethically promote adoption. I could have missed something, but I’ve never heard a peep about erased identities, sealed records, adoption trauma, or any other garbage that is lobbed at adopted people. Continue Reading →
I am trying to write a summary of some of my NAM work here but slogging through dense legal jibber- jabberesque that, at the moment, is impossible to climb through. Of course, laws are written in this obscure language to keep normal people from grasping what the federal, state, and local lawmaking hooligans are up to Continue Reading →