STAR has gone dark. Its leaders have been contacted privately and asked publicly where they stand on HB2725. They have refused to respond. No Facebook, no Twitter, no web page updates. We hope STAR’s members and social media followers get their news elsewhere; otherwise, they are still wondering what happened. Continue Reading →
This brings up a couple of questions:Is Gladney saying, with the save-face caveat (or warning?) that disclosure “may” be dependent on state laws–which of course, Gladney can influence in Texas and perhaps in other states?While making adoptive parents the domestic gatekeeper, is Gladney saying that it is OK for adoptees (usually) 18 and over to get access to the OBC, court records, and other recordsIs Gladney back-door endorsing the QuadA endorsement of record access?Then there is this weird statement: Continue Reading →
Now, we know that the adoption industry is shrinking, making the circle jerk tighter. Nonetheless, we were surprised to read that all the awards went either to Gladney itself or close fellow travelers. (OK. One is actually set aside for a Gladney volunteer) . Continue Reading →
Ablow, like most narcissists, trolls individuals and even whole classes he perceives as vulnerable–in the cases above, women, queers, and adoptees and their families. He worships the hyper-masculine and feminizes, in a class sense, those who don’t measure up to the man in the mirror, or should I say the man he thinks he sees in the mirror. Continue Reading →
Now, when I was doing oppositional research at clinics on a regular basis, I saw a lot of this. Often the sign-holder was a toddler or a little older, (presumably an adoptive acquisition) telling us, “my mommy didn’t kill me” or demanding “don’t kill the babies” or preaching “abortion kills children.” They were accompanied by the usual adult wannabe pleader advertising their desire to adopt a stranger’s fetus. Continue Reading →
SB300 is currently in the West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee. This is a restrictive OBC access bill that mandates adoptee educational requirements to receive their OBC. It also contains redaction language that authorizes the state, upon request of a birthparent, to black-out their identifying information, before it is released to the adoptee. Continue Reading →
Unfortunately, many adoptive parents did not check citizenship status at the time of adoption or follow through on the citizenship process. Some say they were unaware of naturalization requirements and believed citizenship was automatic upon adoption finalization. Some claim to have been misled by their adoption agencies, courts, lawyers, or federal immigration authorities. Some believed that it was up to the adoptee, at the age of majority, to choose their citizenship status. In some cases, adoptive parents disrupted the adoption, and either “rehomed” the children they brought to the US or turned them over to the state foster care system where they lingered with no legal closure or permanent citizenship status. Continue Reading →
As a direct result of our hard work, your unwavering support, and the assistance of other adoptee rights activist groups we can now announce that the bill NYARC supports and assisted in drafting, A55494/S3419 is officially live on the state pages Continue Reading →
As you can see, it’s only the beginning of February, and already there are plenty of screwy bills up and running to screw over adoptees. New York A2691/S2492 (aka the Benedetto bill after House sponsor Michael Benedetto) is by far the screwiest. It mandates unrestricted certified OBC access all right, –but there’s a catch. The OBC would contain the “circumstances of the adoption,” which translated means (according to the bill’s pimps) that the name(s) of your adoptive parent(s) and the date of your adoption would appear on your ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE. This fake OBC would include the disclaimer that it could not be used for identification purposes. So, you’ll get a special second fake “Amended Birth Certificate” to add to your original fake Amended Birth Certificate instead of your genuine OBC, adding one more link to the chain of abuse. This scheme, which we are all supposed to be grateful for (again!) not only defaces the OBC, but de-centers adoptees by giving adoptive parents a documentary role in our birth, and upends one of th core principle of the adoptee rights movement–access to a clean, unaltered OBC. Continue Reading →
Bastard Nation is thrilled to announce that the long-awaited update of our state pages is finished. This has been a slow, time-consuming, often mind-numbing off-and-on project for quite some time. Each state page has been updated to include links to current OBC and records access laws and state legislatures. (Special thanks to Greg Luce from the Adoptee Rights Law Center for his generous assistance). We have added hundreds of links to BN and BN-Partner state activities, news stories, and graphics. The state pages not only serve the immediate purpose of educating and alerting our readers and members to actions in their state but serve as a repository of BN history as well as adoptee rights history since our founding in 1996. When we moved our webpage to Word Press a few years ago, some of the material on our original page went missing. We have been able to reclaim some of it through the Wayback Machine and will continue to dig around when time permits and add more. With so many new additions and improvements, there are bound to be some bad links. If you find any let us know and we will try to fix the problem, In addition, if you have any material you would like to add–especially pictures from various Continue Reading →