Tag Archives: National Council for Adoption

NEBRASKA FIASCO: BASTARDETTE GETS A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH NCFA’S TOM ATWOOD ON NEBRASKA TEEN DUMPS AND ‘SAFE HAVEN" LAW

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Recently I attended the annual National Council for Adoption conference in Washington–my third in four years. On Saturday (Sept 27) I caught NCFA president Tom Atwood, between the last panel and lunch. I was able to do a short interview with him about the Nebraska Fiasco–Nebraska’s teen dump epidemic. Atwood was unaware of Gary Staton’s “legal abandonment” of his 9 kids at Creighton Medical Center ER, which took place during the conference, until I told him. We only had a couple minutes to talk and were cut short by lunch call. Obviously there is much more to discuss. There is time yet to bring NCFA to the Dark Side! The most interesting part to me is that Atwood’s criticism of the Nebraska law and its consequences are very similar to my and Bastard Nation’s arguments against baby dumping all together–only he excludes newborns from the equation where we oppose it for all, no mater what the age. With Atwood’s consent, I tapped my interview with him. The transcription is below. I have edited nothing except an interruption. INTERVIEW:BASTARDETTE: I’m here at NCFA [conference] talking to Tom Atwood about the Nebraska Fiasco. For a little background: Wednesday, a father safe havened Continue Reading →

RETURNING TO THE HEART OF DARKNESS: NCFA CONFERENCE

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Today I’m trekking once more into the Heart of Darkness to attend the annual National Council for Adoption conference, this year appropriately titled Surviving and Thriving in Volatile Times. Indeed! Topics include lots of industry survival stuff: private-public collaboration, mergers, ethics (or lack thereof), international updates, and my favorite: Validating Your Agency’s Purpose: What Research Really Tells Us About the Impact of Adoption on Birthparents, Children and Families. (Care to bet a week’s wages–if you’re fortunate enough to have a job–there’s no mention of records snatching and identity theft?) I’m especially looking forward to the return of The Story Lady–Dr. Karyn Purvis–who equates wheeling your kid around the store in a grocery cart with child abandonment. (Do you really want to know?) Purvis will keynote lunch on Thursday followed by a break-out with an “infant massage representative.” Guess what I won’t be sitting through. I’m undecided about the unPierceian 6:30 am pilates. On the upside, I won’t have to listen to a lecture on Primal Wound Theory or pass a Kleenex box around the room.

JAMES DOBSON CRIES ME A RIVER

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The American Adoption Industry once more comes begging: Give me your child, lest I die.” The latest panhandler is snake oil preacher, psychologist, adopter, and dog beater Dr. James Dobson. A couple days ago Dobson’s Focus on the Family daily email newsletter Citizen Link posted the scary (to some) headline: Legalized Abortion Drives Down Adoption Rates.” Dr. Dobson, or rather his ghostwriter, complains: Adoption rates in the U.S. have plummeted since abortion became legal in 1973, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Get out your hankies, folks. It gets worse According to the CDCP before 1973 nearly 9% of babies born to never-married women were “placed” for adoption. By 2002 the number dropped to about 1%.Then (surprise!) NCFA weighs in: Chuck Johnson, vice president of the National Council for Adoption, said that creates a sad situation for the thousands of families waiting to adopt. “Americans’ attitudes about adoption have remained positive,” he told Family News in Focus. “(Unfortunately) with that has come a decrease in the number of women considering adoption.” For what it’s worth, Mr. Johnson isn’t quoted as saying that this lack of newborn adoptables for the desperate and childless is a “sad situation,” Continue Reading →

HOW MANY NCFANOIDS WILL FIT INTO A CLOWN CAR?

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Bastardette has lately been remiss in stomping on everybody’s favorite corporate adoption shill, the National Council for Adoption. Since I’m leaving town for a few days to attend my high school class reunion (Yes, I actually graduated from high school, but in the bottom third of my class. I was too busy tending my primal wound and snooping through closets looking for my identity to tend to algebra), I thought I’d leave you with this. NCFA’s new PR flack: Rodney Huey. Yes, this picture is for real. Before joining NCFA’s crack team of baybee broker busybodies, Mr. Huey was the VP of PR for Feld Entertaiment, that is… at Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows… that is…the circus. (He is also the former VP of Communications at NPR!) Two years ago he received his doctorate in Cultural Studies from George Mason. His dissertation, “The Social Construction of the American Circus Clown,” focuses on how clowns are made and their role in society. (This is actually a great topic. I worked in theatre for 15 years. I should know!) Rodney says: I would see the audience laughing and going crazy when the clowns came on, and it made me start Continue Reading →

BASTARDETTE TO NCFA: SAVE ADOPTION FROM THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

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George W Bush opposes adoption! According to today’s Washngton Post, the White House is threatening to veto a change in the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act that would permit federal and congressional employees to receive four weeks of paid parental leave after birth, adoption, or taking in a foster a child. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the expanded benefits would cost $850 million between the second half of 2009 and 2013 — about $105 per federal employee per year. It’s “costly and unnecessary” according to Bush’s social welfare and family values brain. Unlike, say, the Iraq War, the War on Terror and TSA. The bill passed the House 278 to 146 with 50 Republicans voting for and one Democrat voting against it. A companion bill is in the Senate. RED ALERT:NCFA’s Tom Terrific Atwood should pitch his tent on the White House lawn on this one. Unless this bill passes and is signed into law, thousands of newborns will remain unadopted–victms of the brutish anti-adoption Bush administration.

BAN ANNE OF GREEN GABLES: HARMFUL TO ADOPTEES!

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Call out the National Council for Adoption! According to the July 13 issue of Newsday*, the much loved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables insults adoptees. I jest you not! Last month North Bellmore, New York (Long Island) adoptive parents dashed off to NCFA to complain about the ArtsPower National Touring Company production of Anne of Green Gables performed in their school district. Sensitive adopters who can’t tell the difference between songs and playground fisticuffs, complained that the 55-minute musical was “mean” towards adoptees. Apparently these pampered cultural illiteratti are unfamiliar with mythology, religion, literature, folklore, film, and dramatic structure. Oedipus, Cinderella, Snow White, Eppie Cass, Dick Whittington, Pippi Longstocking, Little Orphan Annie, Harry Potter, James Henry Trotter, Adam Farmer, Jesus, Huck Finn, Pollyanna, Baby Bumble, the Little Rascals and Shirley Temple must be as unknown to them as an obc bill hearing in Albany. Anne of Green Gables has a long literary and film history. The 1908 Canadian novel, by Lucy Maud Montgomery, tells the story of English orphan Anne Shirley sent to a family on Prince Edward Island by “mistake” (they’d ordered a boy to work on the farm), and her triumph over adversity. Originally, an “adult novel” Continue Reading →