At 12:30 this afternoon the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Children and Families is scheduled to meet in Executive Session to decide the fate of SB 959. Word this morning is that prospective opening of original birth certificates )for future adoptees) will be voted out favorably. Retroactive access for the thousands of those already adopted in the state– will be tabled. That is , it will be thrown into an “active study committee” for further….well study. In other words, the bill if passed amended, will gut all purpose and intent of the original bill. Compromisers can walk away feeling good that they’ve done “something” for future generations while thousands of already adopted folks are left hung out to dry like ratty underwear. It will take years for those whose records remain sealed to even get a hearing. A study committee is the legislative equivalent of a task force. It’s where do-gooders, do-nothings, and politicians send issues they don’t want to deal with to die forgotten and alone. If this amendment passes the committee is telling the state of Massachusetts and the rest of the country that its adoptees don’t deserve identity rights. Don’t deserve birth certificates. Massachusetts adoptees should just shut Continue Reading →

Today’s Patriot-Ledger published a good story on SB 959–“A Basic Civil Right: Struggle Over Birth Records Is 11 Years Old”– featuring MARTA’s Cindy McGuigan and Christine LaPlume, 2 moms who surrendered into the sealed records system, and support the right of all adopted persons to acquire their own original birth certificates. For the sake of “fair and balanced” Senator Karen Spilka showed up, too. Here is what she has to say (in part) about our rights: There has to be an element of fairness for rights of all the parties. If the state created the law in 1974, they had a reason. Unfortunately, Sen. Spilka didn’t mention what that reason might be. Have gasbag lobbyists in Beltway drag been whispering in her ear? Whatever…when somebody talks about “fairness” and “balance” you know somebody else is about to get screwed. And–surprise!–it’s adoptees. Fairness and balance of interests–yes.Fairness and balance of rights–no. A right is a right. It exists or doesn’t. Apparently Sen. Spilka believes that Massachusetts adoptees just don’t have them. Not like legitimate people. Now go home and shut up. Be glad you weren’t tossed in the dumpster.

March 14, 2006 Dear President Travaglini: Below is a letter I sent this afternoon to all members of the Joint Committee on Children and Families regarding SB 959, the adoptee birth certificate access bill. I am deeply concerned at what has happened with this bill. When I testified in favor at the end of the October, I was told repeatedly by committee members and aides that this bill was a shoe-in. The only opposition at the hearing came from the National Council for Adoption, a well-heeled conservative lobby in Washington formed specifically to oppose adoptee access to their own birth certificates. Sen. Spilka at that time seemed to support SB 959 as written. Now we learn that she has not only held up the final vote on the bill (which we were told would take place within 2 weeks of the October hearing) but proposes to introduce a last-minute amendment tomorrow to make the law prospective only. This would gut the entire intent of the bill: to restore the right of birth certificate access to all Massachusetts adoptees–a right taken away in 1974 by the legislature. I understand that you support SB 959 and urge you to use your influence Continue Reading →

The following was sent this morning to the Massachusetts Joint Commmittee on Children and Families. Add your voice. Contact the committee today. Contact information can be found below in Massachusetts: Ground Zero.BASTARD NATION: THE ADOPTEE RIGHTS ORGANIZATION P. O. Box 1468 Edmond, OK 73083-1468 (415) 704-3166 MASSACHUSETTS JOINT COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN & FAMILIES March 14, 2006 WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR BILL SB 959, AS WRITTEN * The state must not keep secrets about its citizens; it must not withhold any personal information from them. * The state’s job is to issue an original birth certificate to anycitizen who requests it for himself or herself. * State governments must not have any special rules that apply only to adopted adults. * Adopted adults do not want any special treatment; they want to be treated like all other adult citizens of Massachusetts. * The state has NO compelling interest in adoptees after they reach the age of majority. * Adopted adults should be “aged out” of the system in the same way as foster children. * NEW HAMPSHIRE, ALABAMA, OREGON, KANSAS AND ALASKA, as well as the vast majority of countries in the free world allow adult adoptees to obtain their Continue Reading →

Massachusetts is ground zero! Bastardette learned a few hours ago that on Wednesday March 15 the Joint Committee on Children and Families is scheduled to vote on SB 959. We have been advised that Senator Karen Spilka, as rumored, intends to introduce an amendment to gut the bill, making birth certificate access prospective only. That is, only those adopted after the law takes effect would be treated equal to the non-adopted–“allowed” to access their own birth certificates. Generations of the already adopted in Massachusetts would continue to be stigmatized, treated like criminals, their rights civil rights denied by the state. UNEQUAL PROTECTION IS NOT ACCEPTABLE! How this once no-brainer shoe-in bill has become bitch-slapped around is a dog for another day. What we need now is committee passage of the bill as originally written–access with no exceptions. No restrictive amendment(s) is acceptable. Please write or call committee members now. For help with talking points go to SB 959 Talking Points. LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND!CONTACT INFORMATION MASSACHUSETTS SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVESSenator Karen Spilka – [email protected] 617-722-1640Senator Thomas McGee – [email protected] 617-722-1350Senator Frederick Berry – [email protected] 617-722-1410Senator Pamela Resor – [email protected] 617-1120Senator Steven Baddour – [email protected] 617-722-1604Senator Bruce Tarr – [email protected] 617-722-1600Representative Shirley Continue Reading →

An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop. Recently baby dump pimps in North Carolina have been sticking up posters around middle and high schools encouraging pregnant teens to anonymously “safe haven” their newborns. Here’s an article accompanied by a picture of their latest effort. Brenda Edwards, program manager with the North Carolina Divison of Public Health’s Children and youth branch says “safe havens” are the last option. “If other options do not work for them, they do have this option rather than killing the infant or abandoning the infant.” Hmmm, let’s see, abandon? kill? or “legally” dump? Tylenol? Bayer? Alieve? Coke? Pepsi? Dr. Pepper? What’s a girl to do? Laura O’Neal, director of the Nash County Department of Social Services continues this consumerist claptrap. “We’re trying to get where people are aware of this as an option as well as a much better choice” To help teens and “desperate women” make the “right choice” the department is also working to get baby dump info in movie theatres and on billboards. Strangely neither apparatchiks, whose agencies are ostensibly concerned with the health and welfare of children AND women (dads don’t count) throws off a whiff of concern about the medical and Continue Reading →

Check out God’s Little Girl and God’s Little Boy courtesy of our friends at adoption.com. There’s also an “international” version. Presumably, God created thousands of little Chinese girls specifically to be abandoned into the arms of Americans– or if importation doesn’t work out–the sex trade. And what’s this about? God’s Little Trannie? Oh, little boy, we’re all adopted at so great a price,But as God’s little girl, you’re adopted twice. All this time I thought it was Jack–not God– banging Dorothy out on the back Canton-Massillon road. But since God is my bdad, yall better show me more respect or I’ll have my dad send a swarm of locusts down on you.. Adoption theology at its finest.

Massachusetts State Senator Karen Spilka hates adoptees. At least that’s the way it looks. Despite a remarkably favorable hearing (see Massachusetts Meltdown below), committee consensus for a favorable vote, and a promise of a quick decision, SB 959 lingers in the Joint Committee on Children and Families like a one night stand. Sen. Spilka has remained silent on the bill’s future, refusing to reply to repeated requests for updates from Massachusetts, New England, and national adoptee rights advocates. She is said, though, to be tinkering with the bill. She reportedly wants to kick thousands of Massachusetts adoptees and their civil rights to the curb by adding an amendment to make the bill prospective only–that is, original birth certificates would remain sealed to anyone adopted prior to the date the law goes into effect. The same old screw you. And she or some of her anti-adoptee friends may have more “improvements” in mind. I If the bill is not released from the Children and Ffamilies Committee by March 15 it will die. AND IT WON’T COME BACK. This turnabout is surprising since Sen Spilka encouraged the slap-down of NCFA’s Lee Allen during the October 28 hearing. The bill–as written– has the Continue Reading →

February 28, 2006 An Open Letter to Senator Karen Spilka: As Chair of the Joint Committee on Children and Families, we request from you the status of SB 959. This bill when passed will restore to Massachusetts’s adult adoptees the right to access their original birth certificates—a civil right that was taken away by the state legislature in 1974. SB 959 had an extremely favorable hearing at the end of October (’05). Informal polls taken by MARTA members before the hearing indicated no committee opposition. Some members even assumed passage out of committee was a “no-brainer” and would be quick. The only opposition, in fact, came from the National Council for Adoption, a national trade lobby formed specifically to keep original birth certificates sealed and out of the hands of the adult adoptees to which they pertain. SB 959 is backed by Senate President Bob Travaglini and is a priority pass of the Massachusetts Legislative Children’s Caucus. The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of Social Workers, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, and adoption reform organizations throughout Massachusetts and the US support SB 959. Since its October Continue Reading →

Bastardette has been exceedingly remiss in failing to report earlier on NCFA’s October meltdown in Massachusetts. Fortunately, the editor of the Bastard Quarterly called me on it, forcing my lazy self to the keyboard to report my YOU ARE THERE moment for the upcoming issue. I’ll be updating the Massachusetts situation on the DB in a couple days. In the meantime, however, I decided to give my eye witness account to those faithful readers unfortuante enough to be absent from Beacon Hill on that faithful day when AdoptionLand ceased to exist as we know it. The day the National Council for Adoption chickens roosted. Consider this an advanced copy. MASSACHUSETTS MELTDOWN: An Eyewitness AccountOn October 27, 2005, the earth moved in Massachusetts. For the first time in memory a birth certificate access bill, AB 959, received a committee hearing on Beacon Hill. For nearly a decade similar bills languished in the adoptee-hostile Judiciary Committee, stalled by an adopter lawmaker determined to keep original birth certificates under state seal. In 2005, however, records access was moved to the new friendlier Joint Committee on Children and Families. I arrived early in Boston and worked the halls, talking to nearly all of the Continue Reading →