Tag Archives: adoptee rights

NAM/NAAM 2023 Say 12: Michigan: Bastard Nation Letter of Support for HB5248 and HB5149

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We support HB5148 a “clean bill” that allows all Michigan-born adoptees, their descendants or legal representatives to obtain the adoptee’s original birth certificate without restrictions or conditions upon request at the age of 18, The bill contains a voluntarily optional Contact Preference Form which allows biological parents to record if the would like contact, but does not control the release of the OBC.

We support HB5149 which eliminates current court and Central Adoption Registry control over the release of the OBC. It retains biological parent denial of identifying information requests already on file, BUT that request does not restrict OBC access. No release vetoes can be filed after July 1, 2024. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 11: The Adopted Remember, Veterans Day 2023.

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Adoption severs legal ties, but more importantly, it wipes out identity, genealogy, and historical memory– the right to historical identity and knowledge. Sure some adoptees, moreso today than in the past, can have an easier opportunity to learn where they came from, their history, their context,  and their place in the great family. But do we really? ( So much is missing. (and of course, some bio families disregard those same identity markers. I have been astounded at the people know who have no idea who their grandparents were. much less anyone else.  But, at least they have a path to learning, unlike The Adopted who are just left at the end of a weedy road without a sythe. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 10: Hutchinson, Kansas Gets 2 Baby Boxes–from Canada. What’s Up With That?

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The City of Hutchinson, Kansas issued a media release the other day to announce that 2 “Safe Haven Baby Boxes” will be coming to Hutchinson as soon as $50,000 can be raised. Only, they aren’t “Safe Haven Baby Boxes.”  They are “Hope’s Cradles” from Gems for Gems a Canadian non-profit that has installed a couple of their own boxes in Alberta and Manitoba and has a few more locations lined up for Ontario. Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM Day 9. It’s Out! Susan Kiyo Ito’s “I Would Meet You Anywhere”

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Susan’s words remind me that adoption by design builds secrets– a tangled wall of family, state, and internalized personal rules of identity, history, and self-worth that for some reason are never expected to be broken, without pain to us and others. That’s how adoption works, even in the “best.” Continue Reading →

NAM/NAAM 2023 Day 6: How to Say Nobody Cares About Adoptee Rights Without Saying They Don’t

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Yesterday I did a few legislative updates, and it really struck me while doing them–as if I didn’t already know this–that hardly anyone cares about adult adoptees or adoptee civil rights–especially those who have the “authority” to fix things legally such as policy and lawmakers. When compared to the speed which Safe Haven Baby Box legislation passes, records access for adults, even with the successes of the last couple of years, runs a very poor second. Continue Reading →

Safe Haven Baby Boxes Coming to Oklahoma!

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Under Oklahoma’s traditional safe haven law, babies up to 30 days of age can be dropped off. Mrs. Kelsey, seems to imply in the article, though, that that age restriction isn’t adequate. Does she mean that parents need more than 30 days to decide if parenting is “right” for them? That safe haven laws pressure parents to decide early? I dunno. I’m old, and I remember when drive-by parenting was discouraged. Unthinkable. Condemned. Continue Reading →

Veterans Day 2022: Adoption, Stealing History, Stealing Family, Stealing Connections

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My 6th grade class had to memorize the Gettysburg address. I wish I had known about Jesse Harrison and my family’s connection and tragedy to the battle and to him. It would have meant so much more to me than just a tiresome school exercise. This is what adoption steals from us. Continue Reading →

Students for Life America Has Plans for Adoption and It Doesn’t Include Adoptees

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There is no mention of adoptee civil rights. Did you see a word about original birth certificates, adoption records and files, search and reunion, medical histories, the re-homing epidemic, adoptee abuse and murder, adoptee mental health issues, family policing, societal dysfunction vis a vis adoption, the foster-to-prison pipeline, racism, classicism, sex and genderism in adoption policy and practice, corruption, graft, neo-colonialism? The over-arching control of evangelicals-with-agendas in the adoption industry? Did SFLA even ask adoptees how they feel about their adoption demands? Continue Reading →

On Being “One of Those People:” Vote as if it matters

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Voting is a civilized tool to keep order, or at least pretend to. It works well in the US despite its fakery and faults because people want it to. At least until Trump came along, lifted up the wormy rock, and crawled into the hole with the rest of the verminize. I honestly believe that we are in the last days of a civilized United States. The Darkness is coming, if not here. Continue Reading →