THE BIRTHPARENT* PROJECT
This morning Bastardette received an email about the newly formed BirthParent* Project, headed by long time adoptee and birthparent rights activist Mirah Riben with the assistance of Carole Whitehead. This is a long-needed project. The National Council for Adoption as well as the ACLU (see Bastardette’s April 24 blog ACLU slags adoptees again, Right to Life and other well-heeled anti-adoptee lobbies have long argued that open records (i.e. the right of adopted persons to access their own birth records and heritage) break promises made by the state to never reveal the identities of women who relinquish their children to adoption–even though in over 25 years none of these adoption industrialists has been able to present one single legal document that makes any such promise. The fact is that records are sealed at the time of adoption finalization, not at the termination of parental rights, so there is no way anybody could make such a promise, since there is no “promise” that the baby will be adopted. If the child is never adopted, then the records remain open and available for anyone to read. For a detailed rundown on why there can be no such thing as anonymity in adoption (unless Continue Reading →