BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: HAWAI’I –VETO HB 1830–SAFE HAVEN LAW

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PLEASE FORWARD FREELY! BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT IF IT’S NOT BROKE–DON’T FIX IT! VETO HAWAI’I HB 1830 – Safe Haven Act Aloha!! Hawai’ian adoptees and Governor Linda Lingle need your support…now! HB 1830 which would legalize newborn abandonment in Hawai’i through the implementation of “safe havens” has passed both houses and is on Gov. Linda Lingle’s desk awaiting her signature. In 2003 Lingle vetoed a similar bill saying that it would undermine traditional Hawai’ian family values and discourage mothers from seeking assistance from in-place resources. Lingle has made no public comment about the current bill, but there is no indication that she has changed her mind about “safe havens” in Hawai’i. In April, her senior policy adviser Linda Smith, in written testimony to the legislature, said, “Enactment of this bill may encourage those mothers to abandon their children rather than seeking help from the birth fathers, their families, and other supportive resources,” an almost direct quote from Lingle’s 2003 veto statement. Gov Lingle is under tremendous political pressure to sign HB 1830 or let it pass into law without her signature. She has until June 23 to indicate whether she is considering vetoing the bill and until July 10 to Continue Reading →

BABY THIEF UPDATE: DOWNLOAD BARBARA RAYMOND INTERVIEW

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Barbara Raymond author of The Baby Thief, appeared on the Diane Rehm Show today (June 7) for an hour-long interview that must have given the adoptacrats indigestion. If you missed it, you can download it at www.wamu.org/programs/dr Once more, I can’t speak highly enough of the book. Adoption secrecy is the legacy of The Baby Thief: Georgia Tann. Ask your local politician who supports sealed birth certificates why she or he endorses the crimes of Georgia Tann. Adoptees are not dirty little secrets. Adoption is not the witness protection program. Boot the identity thieves out of office.

BASTARDETTE COMMUNIQUE: BASTARD NATION NOW ON MY SPACE!

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BASTARD NATION: the Adoptee Rights Organization is happy to now be on MySpace. And the page rocks! At least that’s what our first visitors think, and it’s only been up for an hour (as I write this). Please stop by. And if you’re on MySpace, add us as a friend. If you’re not on MySpace, start your own page. It’s not that difficult. If a certain Bastardette can do it, you can! BNAdoptee Rights is not a replacement for our webpage It’s an enhancement. And you would not believe all the Bastards, Friends of Bastards, and disgruntled adopted people–and first families–hanging out there. www.myspace.com/bnadopteerights

NORTH CAROLINA: ADOPTEES DON’T NEED NO BAGMAN. BASTARD NATION’S RESONSE TO NCCAR’S CAPITULATION

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Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization abhors the decision of the North Carolina Coalition for Adoption Reform to drop its HB 445 equal access records bill and replace it with an amended bill (HB 445 2nd ed) that authorizes adoption agencies, for a hefty fee, to voluntarily act as Confidential Intermediaries. The CI system might have been “progressive” 45 years ago. But this is 2007. Outside of the adoption industry’s extravagant fondness for perpetual control over the lives of its “clients” and love of the fast buck, there is no rationale for privatized child welfare businesses to act as state-mandated go-betweens for adult adoptees and their first families who are perfectly capable of responsible decision-making and relationship-building without their supervision. HB 445 restored the right of adopted adults to access their own original birth certificates without interference from anyone. HB 445 2nd ed denies that right, by allowing the adoption industry to control and mediate the free flow of information between adults. To add insult to injury, there is still no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Original birth certificates remain sealed and unaccesible. If the National Council for Adoption didn’t think up HB 445 2nd ed, Continue Reading →

HAWAI’I: BASTARD NATION LETTER TO GOV. LINGLE:–PLEASE VETO HB 1830 BABY DUMP

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Bastard Nation has faxed the following letter to Gov. Linda Lingle. Lingle vetoed a similar bill in 2003. May 22, 2007 The Honorable Linda LingleGovernor, State of Hawai`iExecutive ChambersState CapitolHonolulu, Hawai’i96813 RE: HB 1830: Safe Haven/”Safe Place for Newborns”—Please Veto Dear Governor Lingle: Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization urges you to continue to reject enactment of so-called “Safe Haven laws” in Hawai’i and to veto HB 1830. Bastard Nation agrees whole-heartedly with your June 20, 2003 veto statement in which you assert that “legalized abandonment” subverts hanai and traditional Hawai’ian family practice and values. “Safe Havens” endanger all families. There is no epidemic of newborn abandonment and neonaticide in Hawai’i. Even “Safe Haven” proponents admit this. An archive search of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin indicates that since 1996 there has been one reported prosecutable newborn death (manslaughter in Koloa, Kaua’i) and no reported cases of unsafe newborn abandonment. What need then is there to legalize newborn abandonment when illegal abandonment doesn’t happen? The mechanistic anonymous “Safe Haven” system of infant abandonment rejects the long-standing Hawai’ian cultural practice of extended family care. Moreover, HB 1830 rejects informed consent and best practice standards of child welfare such as the collection of a Continue Reading →

AN OPEN LETTER TO NCCAR FROM PAT MARLER, OKLAHOMANS FOR OPEN RECORDS

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Pat Marler writes a response to the North Carolina Coalition for Adoption Reform’s decision to replace it’s open records bill with a Confidential Intermediary system proposal which makes adoption agencies the gatekeeper of adoptee information. Bastardette will be posting her own comments about the amended bill today or tomorrow. Dear Roberta, As a Co-Chair of Oklahoma’s open record organization, OORAH, Inc., I know about the Confidential Intermediary Program instituted in Oklahoma in 1997. confidential intermediary related to me that the CI Program has been a failure and I’ve heard from other states, like Illinois, that theirs is a failure too. Adoptees complain it isn’t fair the state charges a fee, and feel it’s a “rip-off.” Even though the CI program reunites them, it does not give them the right to their records. They still have to petition the court to get any birth documents. The CI system is a “bone” thrown to adoptees; with the state saying “you are not capable of taking care of your own relationships, you are still a child under our authority–forever.” I resent this kind of attitude from the state. I hope you do, too. Pat Marler.Co-Chair, Oklahomans for Open Records and Adoption Honesty Pat Continue Reading →

BAD BINKIE AWARD RECOGNITION

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Finally some recognition–sort of. Three letters from ungrateful bastards criticizing the recent University of North Carolina Daily Tar Heel’s adoptee bashing editorial were printed in today DTH along with a picture of the binkies that accompanied the letters. I’m ashamed to say that after promoting the BBA, Bastardete didn’t get around to sending the Tar Heel editorial board the binkie of her disgust. She did however, buy a bag of binkies at CVS and will be sending them out to future offenders. *******PERSONAL NOTE: I’ve been busy the last few days pimpin’ my new MySpace page. I’ve got it about 92% the way I want it (for now), but am having a couple small tech problems still. I’ve got some BN stuff, but this is really my personal page. Bastard Nation needs to have a My Space presence, and I hope to have a BN page up within the next 10 days. If you’ve got some free time now though, go over and take a look at what I’ve done. Some Old Bastards have crawled of the woodwork and I’ve put up some Russian music videos. If you’ve got a MySpace account and want to be my Friend, just hit Continue Reading →

GOLDEN BINKIE NOMINEE: BOB KATZEN, BEACON HILL ROLL CALL

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I don’t know how BB Church feels about awarding a Golden Binkie, but surely Bob Katzen, a reporter for the Malden Observer/Beacon Hill Roll Call deserves special recognition for his May 7 review of S 63, the Massachusetts Adoptee Black List bill. In a mere 208 words, Mr. Katzen managed to call adopted adults “children” 8 times. That’s once every 28 words. It takes about 75 seconds to read the article out loud at normal speed, which mans every 9.375 we’re called children. Hand that man a binkie! Here’s the entire article: Beacon Hill Roll Call By Bob Katzen/[email protected] GateHouse Media News Service Mon May 07, 2007, 05:57 PM EDT Give adopted children access to birth records (S 63) — The Senate approved and sent to the House a bill giving children adopted before 1974 and after Jan. 1, 2008 access to their birth certificates including the names of their biological parents. The measure applies only to children who have turned 18 years old. Children born between 1974 and 2007 would not have automatic access but would still be able to attempt to get a court order to obtain the certificates. The 1974 cutoff date was chosen because the state Continue Reading →

AMERICAN LEBENSBORN: GUEST BLOGGER BARBARA RAYMOND

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The Associated Press recently ran a remarkable story on the Nazi Lebensborn program. Those of us involved in US adoption reform were quick to see similarities between the “modern” US adoption practices of fake birth certificates, identity erasure, eugenic child distribution and secret adoption and Lebensborn. Author Barbara Raymond articulates those similarities in the essay below, published here with her permission. Like many involved in adoption, I read with interest and sadness the recent AP story about the World War Two-era Lebensborn program, which involved the kidnapping of “racially pure” non-German children and their placement with German adoptive parents. Social engineering at its worst, it was meant to strengthen what Hitler considered the master race, and its victims have had long-lasting repercussions. The victims of America’s own Lebensborn program may suffer even longer than their European counterparts. Our Lebensborn program was run by Georgia Tann, who operated out of Memphis, Tennessee from 1924 to 1950, kidnapping children from poor Southern families and giving them to wealthy adoptive parents. She considered her goal — to make poor children middle class citizens — noble enough to justify the deaths of more than 50 children in her care. Protected by political boss Edward Continue Reading →

NORTH CAROLINA RE-WRITE: ADOPTEE RIGHTS OUT, ADOPTION AGENCIES IN!

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And the Bad Binkie goes to….The North Carolina House Judiciary Committee! Not only did the committee ditch a clean birth certificate access bill (HB 445) yesterday, but amended it into a Draconian fox-in-the-henhouse bill which puts adoptee identity “rights” into the hands of the state’s adoption agencies– the very people who profit most from sealed records. AND YOU THINK YOUR STATE IS BAD…Laughingly called a “compromise,” HB 445 “2nd edition“will “allow” adoption agencies, if they desire (and are still in business!), to act as “confidential intermediaries” between adoptees 21 years and older and a “biological parent.” With the written consent of each, the agency “could” facilitate contact between the parties or (gasp!) share identifying information. The Associated Press notes that the compromise bill would permit agencies to “obtain” and share non-identifying information between the two sides. Obtain? Don’t agencies keep that information on file already? For all we know, they don’t, and Bastardette bets her advance copy of The Baby Thief, that plenty of people want to keep it that way. North Carolina currently does not even permit agencies to freely pass on information between adoptive parties upon mutual request. The state, in fact, bars agencies from telling adopted adults Continue Reading →