Tag Archives: adoptee rights

Donation of Jean Paton Book Royalties to the AAC and CUB

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The University of Michigan Press, publisher of the book, is currently offering a 30% discount. Here is a message from Professor Carp regarding the discount::

I am donating 10 percent of the royalties of my book, Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption, to the American Adoption Congress and another 10 percent to Concerned United Birthparents. Jean was instrumental in creating both organization and consequently it made sense that I donate to them. But even more important, as you will read in my book, Jean hated for people to make money off the backs of adopted people and birthmothers, and it is that sentiment that fueled my decision. Continue Reading →

Georgia: HB 524 update and Bastard Nation Action Alert

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Georgia Adoptyees Need Your Help Today! On Monday, January 27, HB 524 was heard in the Welch Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice. Due to the enormous amount of contact to committee members from Georgians and people across the country, the bill was discussed and the hearing continued to (probably) later this week. As you will see from the report by Georgia activists Kat Stanley below, leggies are taking this bill quite seriously and have been influenced by our voice. Continue Reading →

Facts of Life: Natalie’s Adoption

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Natalie’s Adoption was broadcast in April 1980, the year the Carter administration was discussing unsealing records and the National Council for Adoption was founded specifically to coldcock the discussion. CUB was five years old and the American Adoption Congress was only two years old,. BJ Lifton had recently taken off, and Joanne Wolf Small was starting to publish her work on sealed records in professional journals. Only Jean Paton’s Orphan Voyage and Florence Fisher’s ALMA Society predated,but not by much. Although small political oriented search and support groups were springing up across the country,t here wasn’t anything that could be called a viable national movement operating. 1980 was also the year I got my OBC from the State of Ohio.. I’d never known anyone personally who had done that. much less searched and found.

For decades the portrayal of adoption on TV was limited to happy tales of legitimates adopted after the deaths of parents (Ernie on My Three Sons and Cissy, Buffy, and Jody on Family Affair for instance, or later Different Strokes and Webster.). A couple times Sterling Siliphant addressed bastard adoption (or child abandonment/orphan loss) realistically in his visionary scripts for Route 66 and Naked City. Usually serious dialogue on bastard adoption was exiled to soaps where it could do little harm..I’m not being factious. The only time I ever ever saw adoptees, even if they were just actors, was on soaps. Continue Reading →

In the Eye of the Storm: My Interview with the Weekly Standard. The enemy got it right.

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fterwards I fretted. In my weather-distracted state, what in the world did I tell the Weekly Standard? How stupid did I sound? I knew the writer was also interviewing Bill Pierce and he’d be probably call BN a bunch of ungrateful hippie commies. He once assucsed Bastard Nationals of wearing Birkenstocks. Bill was like that. How I miss those days! Maybe the writer thought I was tripping, with my talk green sky and flying tree limbs.

Much to my perverse pleasure the article came out (online and print) as hit piece, but the best article ever written about Bastard Nation and the adoptee rights movement up to that ptime. Every one of our points made it in. The hit piece was a hit. We forwarded it around. Hey, the Weekly Standard gets it, even if they don’t like us! Reading it again 13 years later, I still think that, despite a couple of small errors. BN has never promoted the movement as a medical history issue nor are we left-leaning. We are no-leaning. Continue Reading →

MISSOURI: WHO IS CAROLYN POOLER AND WHY IS SHE SAYING TERRIBLE TIHNGS TO REP. JOHNSON?

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AdoptionLand is abuzz with the news that Rep. Connie “LaJoyce” Johnson, sponsor of Missouri records access bill, HB 1998, has pulled the plug after a woman named Carolyn Pooler got into it with her over something in it, but we don’t know what. Pooler’s objection could be this section of the proposal in which a contact veto is disguised as a “contact preference,” a restriction Bastard Nation and Bastardette vigorously oppose. Continue Reading →