Tag Archives: adoptee rights

Adoption Swag: Are Adoptees Immaculately Conceived?

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Until 1980 when  I read BJ Lifton’s Lost and Found   I felt like I’d been dropped out of the sky like Clark Kent, only without his super powers.I knew I had a “mother” out there somewhere who for some reason couldn’t “take care of me.” I pictured her as a no-nonsense  business woman in a brown suit. I have no idea where that came from except the  idea revealed itself shortly after I watched Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set. A couple years later, my sophomore year in high school to be exact, I was horrified when a classmate mentioned to me casually, as we lolled against the gym wall eying boys at a school dance, that her parents had married a year after she was born. I was not as much horrified for her as I was for her icky parents who had had sex before marriage. I think I kept my facial composure.  I actually wondered what I’d do if I learned my parents (adoptive, I suppose) had had sex before they were married. I was a slow learner. Only later that year did it occur to me that I might be the product of two icky parents who couldn’t Continue Reading →

Welcome to National Adoption Awareness Month, Again. Getting ready for the collective upchuck.

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It’s that special time of year again when adoptees young and old, are objectified, commodified, homogenized and monetized by the media, the adoption industry and its special- interest hangers-on– consumers, lobbyists, politicians, anti-aborts, evangelicals, white saviors, neo-colonialists, social engineers, nation builders, and kitchen table entrepreneurs–rallying ’round the flag chanting their good works. Note the invisibility in this celebratory circle jerk of producers (natural, birth, first, original biological parents) and products (hapless schmuck bastards) and the emphasis on white picket fence consumers with disposable–or crowd funded– incomes in need of “a child” to make them “complete.” With their stories dripping in sentiment, personal drama, and public theatre, you’d never know that the adoptee rights movement is well into it’s 7th decade or that not all adopted people are enamored for a myriad of reasons, with adoption in general or their adoption in particular. Hell, most people outside of AdoptionLand don’t even know that our original birth certificates are sealed. NAAM, in essence, is a time for hard core primal woundies and reunionists, and hard core political organizers and activists, often at odds, to issue a collective projectile upchuck. Continue Reading →

Michigan LGBT: Stop building your social desires on the backs of adoptees and our rights

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Now the LGBT assimilationist community joins the state (which until very recently repressed them) in repressing the documentary and identity rights of others by demanding it create scientifically and legally spurious documents–similar to ABCs– for themselves and their children: adoptees, adoptee lites, DI’s, and creations of other high tech repro breeding schemes that create the non-traditional traditional family. Closets abhor a vacuum.

This nonsensical demand for a special favor goes even beyond sealed adoption records by demanding a charade of two same sex parents conceiving and birthing a child. It’s another layer of secret bureaucratic fiction to dig through thanks to a need to… Continue Reading →

New York: S5964: Bastard Nation Letter to Acting Rules Chair Sen. John J Flanagan. Do not take up and consider.

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S5964/H2901A is not a matter of clean- up language or simple additions or subtractions. Instead it strips the original bill and adoptees of their right of OBC access, replacing it with a highly bureaucratized system of court orders, permission slips, and fiscal irresponsibility that infantilizes and restricts the rights of New York’s adopted adults. Incredibility, it mandates that judges take into consideration the “feelings” of an adopted adult’s adoptive parents when deciding to release the OBC!

Another section mandates that the state track down the birthparents of adoptees who apply for their OBC, in order to get consent for their for release. According to the bill, even birthparents whose rights were terminated by the courts for abuse and neglect would have the authority to stop the release of the OBC.

Since no fiscal note is attached to pay for these searches, which we estimate at today’s going search rate would cost over $7 million the first year alone, either NYS taxpayers are expected to pony up or adopted adults will be forced to pay the state hundreds of dollars each to get permission to receive their own birth certificates—a right every not-adopted New York-born possesses free and clear without anyone’s permission. Continue Reading →

Massachusetts: Tuesday June 23, 2015–Hearing on Clean Access Bill

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Proposed S1144 and its companion, H.2045, possibly the shortest and easiest to understand adoptee access bill ever, reads as follows:

Section 2B of chapter 46 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking out, in line 3, the words “on or before July 17, 1974 or on or after January 1, 2008” and by striking out in lines 4 and 5, the words “on or after January 1, 2008.”

In other words, it would remove the” black hole” and give all adult MA adoptees their OBCs, without condition, redactions or vetoes.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015 from 1pm-5pm, these (and other) bills will be heard before the MA legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Health, Room A-2 at the MA State House. Continue Reading →

NEW YORK: Bastard Nation Action Alert. Tell NY Senate to Vote NO on S5964-2015

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Bastard Nation OPPOSES New York Bill S5964-2015, which contains amended language that violates both the rights and dignity of New York’s adult adoptees. Bill S5964-2015 creates a robust Disclosure Veto system administered by the adoption court system, would mandate confidential intermediary searches by the state, as well as require judges to consider the wishes of the adoptive parents of adult adoptees when deliberating granting access to requests for copies of original birth certificates by adult adoptees. The amended language is an affront to all adoptees.

Both New York sponsoring organizations have issued statements in opposition to the amended bill. So, we join them in urging you to call the primary sponsors of Bill S5964-2015 and its Assembly companion bill at their Albany offices, Continue Reading →

NEW YORK: Bastard Nation’s Letter to New York Legislature. Vote NO on A2901-2015

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Unaccountably, while other states are restoring the unrestricted right to OBCs, it appears that the State of New York is bent on denying its adoptees any type of civil rights and recognition. A2901A sends the message that adoptees are dangerous and need to be monitored by the government.

I have been lobbying for adoptee rights for nearly 20 years, and I can honestly say that I have never seen such an ugly, reactionary, and dangerous bill flying under the banner of “adoptee rights.” New York adoptees are better off under the current hideous law than under A2901A’s Draconian assault that turns them into the chattel of birthparents, adoptive parents, and courts.

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NEW YORK: Bastard Nation Action Alert. NY Assembly: Vote No on A2901A-2015!

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Call Assemblymember David Weprin and State Senator Andrew Lanza TODAY, NO ON NEW YORK BILL A2901A-2015!

Bastard Nation OPPOSES New York Bill A2901A-2015, which contains amended language that violates both the rights and dignity of New York’s adult adoptees. Bill A2901A-2015 creates a robust Disclosure Veto system administered by the adoption court system, would mandate confidential intermediary searches by the state, as well as require judges to consider the wishes of the adoptive parents of adult adoptees when deliberating granting access to requests for copies of original birth certificates by adult adoptees. The amended language is an affront to all adoptees.

Both New York sponsoring organizations have issued statements in opposition to the amended bill. So, we join them in urging you to call the primary sponsors of Bill A2901A-2015 and its Senate companion bill at their Albany offices. Tell him, briefly and politely, that as an adult adoptee you OPPOSE the bill as amended, and urge him to pull it. Continue Reading →

An Ohio Story: Black Boxes by Megan Collins, guest blogger

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When I opened my original birth certificate, seeing the name “Holly” was validating. I had spent years of my life wondering if that really was my birth name and now had tangible proof. When I saw “Danielle” as my middle name, I was surprised, but the sister I spoke of had a twin brother named Daniel, so I thought it could be a reference to this or maybe it was chosen randomly.

I then saw a black box where my last name should be. I expected some redaction in theory, but I wasn’t emotionally prepared to see black boxes all over my birth certificate including over my last name. It shocked me. Page after page of black boxes and missing medical information and a box checked to inform me she wanted no contact at this time. It also stated that the preference form could not be enforced…

It’s absurd that I received an original birth certificate with my last name replaced with a black box, my birth mother’s name as a row of black boxes and the birth father information as blank spaces. This is not the original birth certificate. It is a legal document that was changed to reflect the legislation currently, just as my other birth documents are.

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Bastard Nation Statement on the Defeat of Texas HB 984

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Unfortunately, it also contained a contact veto disguised as a “contact preference form” (CPF) that exchanged the traditional CPF language of “prefer” for the regressive “authorize,” If passed HB 984 would have enacted a discriminatory restraining order scheme against adoptees, based solely on their adopted status, for contacting birthparents without consent; thus violating adoptees right to due process and equal protection of the law Continue Reading →