NAM/NAAM 2004 Day 5: Adoption Agitprop, Annette Kicks It! and I Comment

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 →

NAM/NAAM Day 4: Spam. This is what happens if you don’t check your blog

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 →

NAM/NAAM Day 3. It’s About Time: Adoption Oversight, Protection, Transparency Bill Hits Congress

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 →

Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc Connection to Florida Community Pregnancy Clinics

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 →

Welcome to National Adoption Month/National Adoption Awareness Month 2023. Poke the Bear!

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 →

The Wicked Witch is Dead! Goodbye NAM/NAAM. Jumping Off Your Yellow Brick Road

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 →

Indiana Baby Box Adoption Hits the Wire. We Have Questions. Why Doesn’t the Media?

Does anyone believe that all 21 (or is that 22?) babies left in baby boxes and their mothers experienced no medical issues? No medical provider I have ever spoken to believes this. Some might be OK. Others not. Since no one can officially check on mothers, due to the baby box “anonymity” law, we can’t say how many of either experience pre- and postnatal complications. Of course, the anonymity of some of the moms is questionable, since Mrs. Kelsey talks about her personal relationships with them post-“surrender. but that’s a story for another day. Continue Reading →

Substgack or Medium or Anything? Singing Outside of the Choir

Most of the ‘popular” work that people do read, centers on “pain” and “healing” and victimhood and therapy and wounds and Primal Wounds that stand outside the real issue of adoption class war. This is how the enemy keeps the Adoption Mill running and adoptees in fear and shame and unworthiness. Even the best of us find ourselves at times fighting that Black Dog. Why l am I doing this? Who is reading this stuff I just pulled out of my ass to make myself comfortable and feel important and smart and maybe help some others? Continue Reading →

Adoption Porn 2022: A Few Thoughts on Media and the Public

National Adoption Day and its hooha, of course, is never really about children, Or for that matter, their bio or adoptive parents unless they fit into a joint media-framed adoption industry narrative. You’ll never see a news story about any of those parties talking about the tragic situation that brought them all to the point of adoption. I believe, in fact, that America’s attitude toward adoption and adoptees is media driven. Continue Reading →

Unhinged. My Life as a Right-Wing Nut Gatherer. A Short Memoir.

This ramped up eventually to oppositional research and hanging with Central Ohio abortion obsessives like masculinist Dave Daubenmire (Pass the Salt and Minute Men– not to be confused with the Minutemen), Dr. Patrick Johnston,(old link but you’ll get the idea), and Mark Harrington, “the Truth Truck Guy.” (Created Equal and other organizations.) During a chilly November afternoon, sitting on a wall by the Scioto River with Johnston and Troy Newman (Operation Rescue) I watched with great amusement as Johnston beat Newman repeatedly over the head with his Bible. I once got in a prayer huddle at the Ohio Statehouse with Janet Folger Porter, creator of Ohio’s original Heartbeat Bill. A couple of years later, Flip Benham, then director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, told me I nearly made him flub his prayer during a fetal funeral held by Fr. Frank Pavone (Priests for Life) in downtown Columbus when I heckled him with a line about a donkey and an embalmed fetus. It loses something without context. I’ll forgo it, but he got it. Continue Reading →