Susan’s words remind me that adoption by design builds secrets– a tangled wall of family, state, and internalized personal rules of identity, history, and self-worth that for some reason are never expected to be broken, without pain to us and others. That’s how adoption works, even in the “best.” Continue Reading →
Maybe Mrs. Kelsey, in her peripatetic journey across the US to make it a Jesus-approved easier place to abandon your baby, has been staying at upscale hotels with an upscale mobile check-in where she doesn’t have to mess with bothersome registration cards and printouts and can move directly into her comfortable and secure room. Come to think of it, mobile check-in sounds like a 2nd cousin of the baby box procedure, where “desperate moms” can just walk up to the box, drop in Baby Bumble, and hi-tail it back to her own comfortable and secure space. Maybe she’s even got a bottle of Scotch. Continue Reading →
here is nothing worse than a sore winner. I’ve seen enough unpleasant people and organizations over the years gloat when they win. I thought I could avoid gloating tonight, but I can’t. As someone who has spent the majority of her life in Ohio, I am tripping tonight with the win of Issue 1 which enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution. With 95% of the vote counted, it passed 56.6% to 43.4% Continue Reading →
Yesterday I did a few legislative updates, and it really struck me while doing them–as if I didn’t already know this–that hardly anyone cares about adult adoptees or adoptee civil rights–especially those who have the “authority” to fix things legally such as policy and lawmakers. When compared to the speed which Safe Haven Baby Box legislation passes, records access for adults, even with the successes of the last couple of years, runs a very poor second. Continue Reading →
November 3rd’s video on the subject of adoption propaganda really struck home with her discussion of among others, the adoptprop myth: “Your mother loved you so much she gave you away.” While most adoption mythology and adoptprop bounce off my insensitive self, (that is, I don’t take it personally), this one always sets me off. It makes no sense. The height of cognitive adoption dissonance. The height of adoptee commodification. A weird binary of generosity and greed. How is this trope supposed to make someone, especially children, feel secure or good or ultimately safe and loved? Continue Reading →
Due to NAM/NAAM/NaNoPoblano, however, I’m back here. Much to my horror I discovered, as of this moment, 10,428 “comments” await me. 99% of them will be spam. I thought I had a good spam catcher. Guess not.! Most of them are in Russian, which I know to a certain extent, and are about shoes, CHATbots, and sex. Gotta love those troll farms. Continue Reading →
The Adoption Deserves Oversight Protection, and Transparency Act of 2023 (ADOPT Act), a direct attack on the unlicensed adoption intermediary industry and its “services” hit the House hopper today…Unlawful intermediary practices will be criminalized. Continue Reading →
For some time now critics of Safe Haven Baby Boxes have discussed amongst ourselves the possibility that some of these perfectly healthy babies who anonymously arrive pristine and “much loved” in a local box-in-a-wall might be run through the box system via Crisis Pregnancy Centers now nicely known as Pregnancy Resource Centers. CPCs are huge supporters and funders of boxes, under the belief that their availability can decrease abortion (where it’s still allowed),give a “safe option” to women whom they speculate will otherwise dump their babies in a ditch or dumpster if they can’t get an abortion or find themselves in some other undefined crisis. Continue Reading →
Greg Luce founder of the Adoptee Rights Law Center, reminded me tonight that I wrote this NAM/NAAM blog way back in 2015, which explains the differences theoretically. Even though the intent appears to differ between each “celebration” the conclusion is always the same: praise, promotion, and support for a greatly flawed and failed social and child welfare experiment that abrogates and ignores the civil rights, and social, emotional, and mental welfare of those the experiment and the institutions it has created claim to nurture and protect. In socio-structural terms, the institution is more important than those it serves. Adoption, of course, finds itself in good company: Continue Reading →
So I am retiring for a couple of days. I plan to watch a lot of B-movies. I am really into Warren William, Lyle Talbot, and Bela Lugosi right now. Also, do some web work. But damn, I just spotted some really absurd shit on Twitter. I might not be quiet after all. Continue Reading →