Baby Box bill
HB1437, died when the Missouri Legislature closed up shop on May 15. The bill would have amended the state’s Safe Haven Law to allow parents to drop off infants up to 45 days old in a hole-in-the-wall Safe Haven Baby Box. Read that again. 45 days old Continue Reading →
In 2016 Reclaim the Records, using the Missouri Sunshine Law, requested a simple database extraction of state birth and death listings from January 1, 1910-December 31, 2015. According to Reclaim the Records attorney, Bernie Rhodes, the extraction should “take only a few keystrokes” to complete. DHSS , however, for reasons unknown, responded with a “backdoor denial.” It first demanded $1.49 million to fulfill the request, crazy-claiming compilation would take over 35,000 staff hours at $42.50 per hour (!) When Reclaim the Records balked, the fee was lowered mysteriously to a still high $5000. Then, DHSS rejected the request in full and ran to former Missouri Registrar Garland Land for advice on how to keep the birth and death indices from public perusal. Continue Reading →
Earlier this session Lauren Book chair of the Senate Health Policy Committee, opposed SB864, the Senate version of the baby box bill and held it up in her committee where it died after failing to meet hearing deadlines. After the House version, HB1217 passed it bounced into The Book Committee where once again the senator refused to let it be heard. Continue Reading →
Last week Florida H 1217, a bill to authorize the installation and use of Baby Drop Boxes in the state, passed the Florida House 115-2..The Senate version of the bill S 864 died on February 10, 2020 when Senator Lauren Book, chair of the Senate Health Policy Committee refused to give a hearing to the bill. HB 1217 has now bounced into that committee for a second run. Continue Reading →
Baby Boxes are anti-adoptee, anti-adoption, and anti-family. They are a direct attack on adoptee civil rights, fathers’ rights, and ICWA. They fly in the face of contemporary child welfare practice and are a punch in the head to adoptees. Baby Boxes do not empower women and certainly not their abandoned children as they grow up. They trivialize pregnancy, commodify babies, and maintain adoption secrets and lies. Baby Boxes are promoted as an easy solution to very complex problems, and in the end leave everyone behind. Certainly, there are better solutions. Continue Reading →
I know I’ve written about this before, but it can’t be said enough: JAY SEKULOW IS AN ADOPTEEPHOBIC BIGOT. He believes we have no right to our OBCs and other records. But besides this general disability, he has claimed we are conniving dupes and baby killers. Yes, according to Sekulow, the adoptee rights; movement is a front for “abortion advocates.” Continue Reading →
We have been given limited information from our DOH contacts—as others may have received—that the state and city are both “diligently” working on the application forms but such forms are not yet available or fully developed. We have been advised that there will be a webinar with all applicable agencies sometime during the week of 1/6/20 to help make the process more efficient. Continue Reading →
If passed, instead of receiving their Original Birth Certificates upon request, without restriction, Lucky Bastards will receive a court -generated document— a copy of their Report of Adoption form. The form is routinely sent by the court to the Wisconsin Office of Vital Statistics after an adoption is finalized, to request the Amended Birth Certificate be issued. It includes the names of the child, birth and adoptive parents and other OBC information. Continue Reading →
Many adoptees online (and I assume off) dread the coming of Christmas. They talk of sadness, loneliness, dissatisfaction, stress, anger, and fear. Some emotions are vague and hard to pin down; others quite concrete. I believe absolutely every person who talks out their feelings and experiences. Even though I empathize, I feel like an insensitive outlier. Christmas, other holidays, and birthdays have no negative effect on me. I have no idea why. Being a fatalist and nihilist I just expect shit to happen. Maybe there is more to it. Perhaps I compartmentalize well, or I’m in the infamous fog, or I’m a sociopath, or I am over-traumatized, or I just don’t care. Since I don’t care about a lot of things everyone else does (and visa versa) that may be the correct answer. Continue Reading →
I consider these numerous news stories to be adoption porn, especially since this finalization took place on Kent County, Michigan’s Gotcha Day, December 4. Or rather Sealed Records Day. Or Adoptee Erasure Day. Or Child Scoop Day.. Or Adoptee SaIvior Day (race and religion optional but white and Christian preferred). Continue Reading →