THE AAC AND ADOPTEE RIGHTS: A REPLY TO THE EXAMINER

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The Examiner has a 4-part interview with Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress. Part 3 is dedicated to the AAC’s policy on records access. Eileen talks out of both sides of her mouth: Adoptees never agreed to the sealing of their birth certificates, and no one had the right to forbid them access to the key document that is available to all other citizens. The AAC does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate, because they relinquished all parental rights, including the right to control the birth certificate access. The appropriate balance is the one enacted in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine – the birthparent can file a contact preference form, to indicate a willingness for contact. and The AAC believes that the decision to compromise must be made at the state level, depending on the assessment of local advocacy groups. I’ve been meaning to write a response to a statement along the same lines that Eileen made in the last issue of the AAC newsletter, The Decree. I still intend to, but this Examiner statement needs to be answered now. I sent off a response to the Examiner, but Continue Reading →

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

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Well, not really, but I started a major project of scanning and downloading lots of picture on my personal Facebook page. I’m working on strictly Bastard Nation pictures this weekend, but geared up with some Bastard Nation activities outside of the organization. Much of what I have is pre-digial camera so it’s a big scan job. I’ll have more pictures soon, but here’s the first patch California Open 2001 party, press conference and hearing for AB 1349, January 2002 Bastard Nation at the AAC 2007 Bastard Nation at the Ethics in Adoption Conference 2007 Bastard Nation at the AAC 2009 You don’t have to have a Facebook account to see this.

ABC NEWS LOOKING FOR ADOPTEES: DISCRIMINATION

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From Bastardette’s Mailbox: A reporter is looking for domestic adoptees who have experienced adoption-related discrimination and bias that carried over into adulthood. If anyone fits this description and is interested in talking to the media about it, please contact the reporter directly at: Susan Donaldson JamesReporter/ProducerABCNews.com7 W. 66th St., 2nd FloorNew York, N.Y. 10023212-456-4875 (office)609-529-0268 (cell) This may be related to the report the Evan B. Donaldson released today. When I get around to reading it, I may have something to say. Maybe not. You can find the Executive Summary with a link to the whole report here BEYOND CULTURE CAMP: PROMOTING HEALTHY IDENTITY FORMATION IN ADOPTION Authors: Hollee McGinnis, Susan Livingston Smith, Dr. Scott D. Ryan, and Dr. Jeanne A. HowardPublished: 2009 November. New York NY: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption InstituteDocument Type: Research (112 pages)Availability: PDF Full Report | Web Page | Press Release | Executive Summary This study, released in November, is the broadest, most extensive examination of adult adoptive identity to date, based on input from the primary experts on the subject: adults who were adopted as children. The principal recommendations of the 112 page study include: * Expand parental preparation and post-placement support for those adopting Continue Reading →

ADOPTION IS A FEMINIST ISSUE: DAWN FRIEDMAN TAKES ON THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION

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Hey, Bastardette’s friend, BEA (Buckeyes for Equal Accss) stalwart, and blogger Dawn Friedman takes the National Council for Adoption to task big time in BITCH today! Adopt-ation: A feminist take on the state of the adoption industry (NOTE TO DAWN: How can Bastardette pitch to BITCH!) Here’s a couple snips (NOTE: go to the original to download her links. Some aren’t working with this format)The NCFA is so all about adoption that they commonly speak out against the rights of adopted people to make their point. Their fight against the open records movement, (which argues that adult adopted persons have a right to their original, pre-adoption birth certificates) is based on the belief that it causes people to abort otherwise adoptable children. Obviously, some number of women with unplanned pregnancies, who would otherwise choose adoption, would choose abortion if they could not choose adoption with the assurance of privacy. What that number would be is impossible to tell, but what does it need to be? The loss of human potential from even one abortion that would have been an adoption is unknowable. And the ratio of adoptions to abortions in New Hampshire is already extremely low. In 1996, New Hampshire Continue Reading →

UK FLIM-FLAM: THE FERTILITY SHOW

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The November 12. 2009 London Daily Mail offers us a a glimpse of England’s first-ever “fertility show” with Claudia Connell’s cleverly titled, There’s one born every minute… We know we’re in for a first class tour as soon as Claudia walks through the gate: Stepping into the huge exhibition hall at London Olympia, I haven’t had time to look at my programme guide before I’m approached by a young American woman carrying a clipboard and dressed like an air hostess. ‘Hi, good to see you. Are you ready to discuss your fertility options?’ she asks, dazzling me with her megawatt smile. Before I can say anything, she continues: ‘We’re here today all the way from Connecticut in the U.S. to help people just like you. For the next 8 hours Claudia takes us on a Wonderland trip of high tech repro hardsell for teary women and a handful of embarrassed, sullen men, who’d seem much happier nursing a pint of Taddy Porter that walking the halls of female babydesire. It’s a shame she didn’t have a video camera with her. “Everywhere I look,” she writes, “I can see pictures of cherubic babies, while skilfully manipulative videos, showing pregnant women lovingly Continue Reading →

MORE FILM–THAT HAGAN GIRL: YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT PROBLEMS. BE GLAD YOU’RE NOT MARY!

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Bastardette is short on time today, but we need to plow through Adoption NaBloPoMo, so we’re cobbling together another film clip. This time, That Hagan Girl, (1947) one of Bastardette’s all-time favorite bastard films. The film is hard to find. As far as I know it has never been released on video or DVD, but it shows up on TCM occasionally. Several years ago I was given a bootleg copy as a Christmas present. Due to its scarcity, and my inability to watch it, I previously wrote about the film secondhand, based on what critics had said at the time of release. I also used comments by its stars Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan who found the movie, at best, career-humiliating. Yet, when I finally watched That Hagan Girl, I was blown away by Shirley’s first rate performance (despite the silly plot) of a teenager who endures years of vague small town gossip, learns that she is adopted despite 18 years of family denial, and her whole life has been a lie. I have never seen any film that addresses adoption lies, bastard anger, isolation, and identity dislocation as this film does–even if it doesn’t mean to. In it’s clumsy Continue Reading →

THE GREAT LIE. THE GREAT CAT FIGHT. ONE OF MY FAVORITE ADOPTION FILMS

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The Great Lie is one of Bastardette’s favorite adoption films. What’s not to like about a good old-fashioned Hollywood cat fight? Especially when its between inconveniently pregnant career woman of mature years with a butch haircut “Sandra,” and softly coiffed Maryland horse farmer of pap entitlement, “Maggie?” My initial viewing of the film about 25 years ago, pre-bastard consciousness, put me squarely on the side of Davis’ pappery and amommery. I mean, are we really supposed to root for somebody who prefers Tschiakovsky over motherhood? When I watched the film again in the mid-1990s, I’d turned completely around. Sandra was my new hero, who even as she acquiesces, still has the moral victory over whiney wifey, who’s gonna spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. I can’t wait for “Peter” and “Pete, Jr.” to learn the truth 20 years later. If nobody else tells them I will! Here is what I wrote about the film in The Happy Family (part 3 of “Scarlet Women, Bastards, and Happy Families,” published in the Winter 2001 issue of the Bastard Quarterly. Re-written from the original to correct a mistake. A not-so-tolerable and often disturbing relationship is explored in The Great Continue Reading →

CONGRATULATIONS DAN CHAON!

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Cleveland adoptee Dan Chaon’s latest book, Await Your Reply. “a novel of shifting identity” has been named to Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 Best Books of 2009: Await Your ReplyDan Chaon (Ballantine) Chaon was a National Book Award finalist for Among the Missing, and this gripping account of colliding fates, the shifty nature of identity in today’s wired world and the limits of family is easily as good, if not better. It’s a literary page-turner, a cunningly plotted and utterly unputdownable novel. We’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Dan, though we’ve exchanged a small handful of emails over the last 15 years. He supports fully our rights. Dan’s book, (adoptee fav) You Remind Me of Me, was named one of the best books of the year, by the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Entertainment Weekly . He was the the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Here’s three inverviews with Dan: Poets and Writers, July 19, 2004 Hot Metal Bridge, Spring 2009 Bookslut, October 2009 Support our writers!

MY FIRST ADOPTEE: RONNIE BURNS

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Ronnie Burns was the adopted son of George Burns and Gracie Allen. There had never been any secret about his adoption. He came from The Cradle. Gracie said they chose him because he was the most sickly baby there and needed the most care. Ronnie was always referred to by the press as “the adopted son of.” He was just one of many of those “adopted son/daughter ofs” in the First Golden Age of Hollywood Adoption, but he was the only one, as far as I knew, who was on TV. He was the first visible adopted person I ever “knew.” See, back then, even during that Golden Age, where it seemed half of Hollywood was adopting, adoption in the real world wasn’t discussed in public. I’m not sure that was a bad idea . If the Internet had been around then, and my parents adoptaobsessed like adopters are today, I’d have been mortified. It was bad enough being adopted without having your business spread all over front street. I don’t remember feeling any externalized identification with Ronnie as an adoptee; he just was. I was 9 or 10 years old when he joined the cast of the Burns & Continue Reading →