Attention Ohio AdoptionLand: Ohio Birthparent Group Invites you to Attend its First Anniversary Event

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The Ohio Birthparent Group is celebrating its first anniversary next month. To celebrate, on Sunday, November 13, the group is holding a special one-day event: Living Adoption: Life-Long Issues in the Birthparent Experience here in Columbus.  The morning session is for parents only; the afternoon session, and educational workshop is open to professionals and the public,  Both  sessions are free, but CEI credits are $20.00 (pre-registration). Brenda Romanchik is guest speaker and facilitator.  Brenda is one of the first persons I met in online AdoptionLand nearly 20 years ago (yikes!).  I’ll be there and I hope my Ohio readers can join us. OPG is not affiliated with any religion and is not sponsored by any adoption agency or facilitator. Here’s more information: LOCATION:   Camp Mary Orton 7925 N. High St. Columbus, OH 43235 In recognition of our First Anniversary, Ohio Birthparent Group invites you to a special National Adoption Month event exploring the experiences of women and men who have placed children for adoption in the U.S. Living Adoption: Life-Long Issues in the Birthparent Experience with guest facilitator Brenda Romanchik, LMSW, ACSW, CTS Sunday, November 13th, 2011 9:00am-12:30pmBirthparent Support Meeting (For Birthparents Only) 2:00pm-4:00pmEducational Workshop for Professionals and Community Members (Open to the Public) / Continue Reading →

Long Awaited Trial of Brian Dykstra to Start October 24

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; Cross posted from Nikto Ne Zabyt–Nichto Ne Zabyto  According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Daily Iowan, the trial of Brian Dykstra, accused of the August 2006 beating death of his adopted Russian son  Isaac Jonathan Dykstra (birth name unknown) will start October 24. A pretrial was held on Thursday to discuss “specifics of how technological issues would be dealt with, especially in reference to the handling of redacted footage,which caused a mistrial in the Charles Thompson homicide trial in September.”  (unrelated to the Dykstra case)  Dykstra, apparently still in  South Carolina, where he lives with his wife, an assistant professor of Spanish  at Clemson University, listened in on the hearing by speaker phone  Earlier this  year prosecutors and defense said they intended to call eleven doctors and 39 witnesses to testify.  The trial is expected to last about eight days. To read more about the case,  including In Memoriam  (Summary of all cases) and Summary of Killers and Sentences,  go to Nikto and click on Isaac’s name in the  “Labels”sidebar at the right..

Ohio Right to Life: Informed Consent v Informed Consent–It’s All Situational

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On September 27, the Ohio Senate passed HB 63, an Ohio Right Right to Life (ORTL) bill to “tighten” up the procedures by which unmarried women in Ohio under the age of 18 can get an abortion without parental notification and consent. The passage of HB 63 is another tool to hack away at abortion access in the state. The bill, however, gives us the opportunity to expose the duplicitous nature of ORTL’s fraudulent concerns about “informed consent” “parental involvement” and “best interests” of teen women.. Dubious at best, these bytes spewed out to the public are nullified by ORTL’s sponsorship, support, and promotion of Ohio’s “safe haven law,” which encourages women– and targets teens especially– to hide pregnancies, give birth unattended, and to turn over their newborns anonymously to the state with no counseling, no parental involvement, and no health care, all under their “pro-life” banner. JUDICIAL BYPASSUnder Ohio law, an unmarried woman under the age of 18 cannot get an abortion without parental consent. She can, however, loophole out of by utilizing the judicial bypass procedure which permits her to go to juvenile court and request the state’s consent for her abortion outside of the family structure. This legal Continue Reading →

The "Shape" of Adoption: What’s a Meta For?

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Earlier today on FB, Hanne Andersen linked a 2009 Motherhood Deleted post, The Myth of the Triad. In  that entry, blogger Robin Westbrook (one of favorite bloggers, btw),  linked to one of my first pieces on the triad myth–a copy of my presentation at the oxymoronical  2006 Ethics in Adoption Conference in Arlington, Virginia where adoptees and moms suffered through bastard moments and shut-up Q & A sessions. Re-reading my short presentation got me thinking about  the pretty shapes-of -adoption deformers like to toss about at hearings while they’re being polite obedient children asking for a cookie. ADOPTION:  CIRCLE, TRIANGLE, PENTAGON, CONSTELLATIONWhat next?  Decagon? So I did a Google search on geometric figures to see if there is anything that actually fits adoption and the complicated and secret relationships it invents. I like Adoption Trapezoid, with its scary implications, but it’s just a four-sided  “triangle.” The Cone of Shame is tempting. Personally, I favor  the Metatron’s Cube model,  but  it’s something only adoption nerds can enjoy, and impractical and irrelevant to politicians and frumpy bureaucrats who hold the key to the locked cabinets. WARNING:  :  For internal use only! This  leaves only one symbol  The cross.  (I know!) But think about it.  A big horizontal plank with two little planks nailed to Continue Reading →

Bastardette is Back!

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I  have not blogged for the last two months or so due to an extremely stressful situation in my life which has made sustained concentration virtually impossible. I’m not going to discuss it here, but things have improved (I think) and hopefully I will be able to put together a coherent sentence from here on out, and get back to business. This month, I’m dedicating some of my posts to Ohio Right to Life. I’ve adopted (sorry!) the new Blooger interface. You can see obvious differences now,  (still having some problems) but I plan to make some more when I have the time.

Demons of Adoption Awards 2011! Vote!

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(NOTE:  I switched to the new Blooger interface and I’m not sure how well my links are showing up on the screen.  Can a few people let me know if they can see them well.  It may just be the computer I’m working on.I’m also having trouble with spacing.) It’s that time of year again! Voting for the 5th Annual Demons of Adoption Awards is at hand.   Pound Pup offers us a fine selection to chose from this year, and as usual, what’s a girl to do?  So many choices; so few votes! .  Nominations have been expanded  this year into separate categories:  The Industry; The Regulators, and my favorite,  The Mouthpieces. My hometown industry  favorite is Adoption by Gentle Care whose been begging for  the award for years. They’re the ones who handled the notorious Baby Grayson placement. ( I’m mean!  I’d planned to nominate Grayson’s PAPs, but came up a day short and a dollar late.) This years nominees are: The IndustryA Act of Love Adoption Agency:  for purposefully finding ways to curcumvent fathers consent (and me:; not to mention bad grammar)Adoption by Gentle Care:   for keeping a young boy (Thad Wyrembek aka Grayson Vaughn) from his biological father Lifetime Adoption:  for predating Continue Reading →

For Jane on her 100th Birthday

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Today is the 100th anniversary of my mother’s (a) birth. Jane Hunt was born at home on August 2, 1911 in Columbus, Ohio.Her mother was Alice Thoman Hunt. Her father Charles O Hunt. Alice’s parents Emerson Thoman and Elizabeth Jane (Snyder) Thoman (who I was named for), were transplants from Leetonia, Ohio (Columbiania, Ohio) in northeast Ohio, close to the Pennsylvania line. The Thomans had been in America since the around the mid 1700s when the settled in the York County, Pennsylvania area. The Hunts came to America in the early 1700s settling in Sussex County NJ and eventually moving southwest to Perry County, Ohio. Emerson and Lizzie owned a grocery on S. 17th Street in Columbus. The family, and as far as I know, lived above or behind it. Alice graduated from Columbus East High School in 1906, with a diploma in Latin and Literary Studies. She took a job as a clerk in the shoe department of The Bee, the second largest department store in the city. tHAT same year, Emerson Thoman (l) died at the age of 43. Alice was devoted to her father and was grief stricken. Five months later she ran off to Newport, Kentucky Continue Reading →

Rhode Island #7: Governor Signs Law! Another Brick Falls

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It’s been a long 67 years! Around noon today, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee, without ceremony, signed S478 Sub AA into law. The bill restores the right of all Rhode Island adoptees, abrogated in 1944, to claim their original birth certificates, without restrictions or conditions, upon request. The law will go into effect July 1, 2012. It has been a pleasure to work in an advisory and support capacity with Access Rhode Island: the Little Engine That Could. Through sheer perseverance, clarity of purpose, and a refusal to back down from its core principle of access for all without restriction, Access Rhode Island defeated incredibly strong opposition in the Senate. I don’t personally know all the people involved in this victorious campaign, but in alphabetically order, these are some of the who who led the way: Kara Foley, Nancy Horgan, Christine Lachapelle-Miller, and Paul Schibbelhute. A former activist once told me that states like Rhode Island didn’t really count. He wanted the key states. Of course, we all want them, but I argued that all states count. All are important. Small states can bring down key states in the end. Rhode Island just knocked another brick out of the wall! Continue Reading →

Rhode Island S478 Sub AA: Support Letter to Full House

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Bastard Nation, the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, urges the passage of Rhode Island S478 Sub AA, which restores the right of all Rhode Island adoptees to access their original birth certificates without restriction, upon request. We, however, reject the age qualification of 25, set by the Senate,. The House earlier had voted 66-0 for H5443 Sub A which authorized the access age at 18, the state’s age of majority. with which we agree. That said, lawmakers in both Houses have already decided that all Rhode Island adoptees, without condition and restriction, have a right, as they did until 1944, to their original birth certificates. It is, therefore, imperative to restore that right now, and get a clean law on the books and working. We believe that in the near future, the access age set out in S478 Sub AA should be and can be reduced to the age of majority in order for the adopted and not-adopted to be treated the same under law and policy regarding public document access. The age discrepancy sets a bad precedent, and treats the adopted and no adopted differently. We are grateful for the support Rhode Continue Reading →