New Jersey. When is OBC access not? What kind of right denies itself?

No copy of the agreement, if it actually exists in writing, has been published, so we have only news reports to go by. So far, it appears that all the state’s adoptees will be able to receive a copy of their original birth certificate; but some OBCs will be mutilated by state bureaucrats to make a few disgruntled birthparents emotionally comfortable. I haven’t heard if it is only the parent(s) name that will be blacked out (as per the new Ohio law) or if the original name of the adoptee or other information that could be deemed as “identifying” will go, too. This is nothing more than the old black-out/white-scheme that’s been around for decades and rejected repeatedly. Until now.. Continue Reading →

Birth Certificate Webinar: What the Adoption Industry Thinks of NJ’s Compromise Bill

I was going to write about something else tonight, but then this came along on Facebook (thank you Claud!). I couldn’t resist: Adoption – The Open Birth Certificate Webinar sponsored by the New Jersey State Bar Association. Don’t expect to catch a break. The NJ Bar opposes your right to your own birth certificate The webinar will be held Thursday (November 18) from noon to 1:00 PM. The Convenor is Daniel M Serviss, a family law attorney in New Jersey with Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith and Davis. He is not a member of Quad A (The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys) which also hates bastards except when members can make a bag of money facilitating their transfer from inappropriate birther wombs to appropriate adopter cradles. Bastard Nation leaves no one behind, and it’s no secret that BN and Bastardette oppose the current NJ piece-a-crap AB1399/1406/S799. But we also oppose the NJ Bar’s bright bulb (see below): the Confidential Intermediary System. You know, when the state hires low-paid functionaries and contractors to hunt down parents in hiding so you don’t have to. Even compliant compromisers hate this. Here is Bastard Nation’s policy paper on CI’s, The Intermediary System is not the Solution, Continue Reading →

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: NEW JERSEY S799 – VOTE NO!

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT Please forward freely STOP DISCLOSURE VETO/WHITE OUT LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY!!! ASK THE NEW JERSEY SENATE HEALTH, HUMAN SERVICES & SENIOR CITIZENS COMMITTEE TO VOTE NO ON S799 DON’T LET PASSAGE OF BAD LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY THREATEN EFFORTS IN OTHER STATES FOR TRUE EQUAL ACCESS FOR ADULT ADOPTEES!! IT’S BACK! S799 , (formerlyA752) is scheduled for a hearing in the New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee on March 4. Please contact committee members immediately and urge them to VOTE NO ON S799. See contact information below.If you are from or in New Jersey or have a New Jersey connection, be sure to mention it in your communication. Be sure to put: “S799 Adoptee Birthright Bill – Please Vote NO” in the header The bill: * contains a white-out disclosure veto that replaces the original birth certificate with a mutilated copy of the obc with all identifying information, including the address of the parent(s) at the time of birth (if it appears on the cert) deleted. *requires birthparents who file a disclosure veto to submit an intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form to activate the veto. *requires birthparents who Continue Reading →

GOOD NEWS: CAL AND JERSEY BAD BILLS DIE

For once we have some good news! California AB 372 is officially dead! The January 22 deadline for it to pass out of committee and on to the Senate floor went by with no action. Although nothing official has come from sponsor Sen Fiona Ma, her office told CalOpen that the bill would “will not be pursued.” Astoundingly, CARE (California Adoption Reform Effort) as of tonight, has not seen fit to announce the demise of their bill on its website. It’s last update is dated May 28, 2009. That’s what we’ve come to expect, though, from fake reformers who scrub their website of their own history and embarrassing documents, dismiss an ideology of rights. embracing instead “non-emotional” wishes and desires”, (whatever that means), and posit that adoptees need to be “navigated by professionals” rather than ourselves. Veteran grassroots bastard activists who have actually gotten clean bills passed were ordered to take a hike by the dilettantes of CARE. We’re sure CARE, like herpes, will come back. Jean Strauss and CARE are all over the March 18-21 AAC conference in Sacramento. CalOpen and Bastard Nation continue to hold the line in California. There is much work to be done there, and Continue Reading →

NEW JERSEY: MY CAUSE IS BETTER THAN YOURS. ADOPTEES V GAYS

A letter in support (I think) of A572 appeared in Thursday’s My NewJersey.com. The writer, Cpt. Peter W. Franklin, believes that adoptee rights are being run over by gay marriage rights. He writes: After decades of debate and compromise, adoption reform should not be sidelined simply because a few prominent Democrat officials insist that this is the “right time” for gay marriage. I simply cannot imagine that denying someone the right to a ceremony can be as cruel and reckless as denying someone their true identity and access to family medical history. The hierarchy of pain has been a big deal in AdoptionLand for as long as I’ve been around. We share Cpt. Franklin’s pain that adoptee rights is not a priority issue with Joisy politicians–or even for the NJCare Krampi who claim to be the voice of NJ adoptee rights. Pushing one cause against the other, however, doesn’t help anything. It only alienates. Who’s to say whose “pain” is greater, or even if there is any “pain?” (Bastardette knows lots of painfree bastards,) There is no relationship between obc access and gay marriage for Pete’s sake. Whining about somebody trying to get something that you have by default is Continue Reading →

BASTARD NATION’S LETTER TO NJ HOUSE SPEAKER JOSEPH ROBERTS, JR–PLEASE OPPOSE A 752. ADOPTEE DESERVE RIGHTS NOT FAVORS!

December 10, 2009 Dear Speaker Roberts: Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America opposes A752. We ask that this bill be left to die in committee at the end of this term, without a hearing. If it is heard and passed out of committee, we ask that the bill be voted down on the floor. If passed, this bill will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s). Bastard Nation rejects the special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Why should birthparents have different rules? Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: OregonAlabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates Continue Reading →

NEW JERSEY: ANYTHING TO GET A BILL PASSED. WE LEAVE EVERYBODY BEHIND!

Just in time for Krampus (see below) we have New Jersey’s A752 “adoptee rights” bill. Sponsored by NJCare, (aka The Krampi) A752 (aka The Krampus Bill) is one of the worst throw-our-rights away bills on record. The bill, of course, contains the compromiser’s favorite compromise, the “birthparent” disclosure veto. But wait, there’s more! In order to make this veto work, the state extorts a family/medical history from closeted parents. Kind of a pay to play scam. If parents don’t submit the government mandated snoop form in 60 days, then The Bastard gets the obc. Sounds like a violation of HIPAA to me. But wait, there’s more! A752 also contains the whiteout “alternative” that will give adoptees, slapped with a veto, an “original birth certificate” that’s been mutilated by a government censor with a glob of white-out smeared over identifying information including their own names, and the parental addresses at the time of birth. But wait, there’s more! The Krampus Bill automatically seals the obc of all persons anonymously dumped under the state’s “safe haven” law, even if one or both parents are identified on the obc (one of baby dumping’s dirty little secrets). See, a safe haven dump, coerced out Continue Reading →

NEW JERSEY: THIS IS NOT A SAFE HAVEN….

…so why is it being treated as one? The June 11, 2009 online edition of The Packet/CentralJersey.com reports that on May 6, an unidentified woman driving on the New Jersey Turnpike took the Cranbury exit, and dropped off a 6-month old boy at the local police station. He was accompanied by a blanket, diaper bag, baby carrier, bottle, and stroller. Now, anybody who has watched COPS knows that police are a curious bunch. Not so in Cranbury, population 2,008 (2000 census). Police asked the woman no questions, and called DYFS. The abandoner stuck around long enough to “speak to their representative” when the agency picked up the infant. What she had to say is, of course, a state secret. Cranbury police chief Ed Kahler is ecstatic: “The bottom line is at least she had enough forethought to take advantage of Safe Haven and knows that the baby will be taken care of.” Hey, Chief! This is NOT a “safe haven” catch. This is a drive-by abandonment. If Mom (if she is indeed the mom) had enough forethought to dump the kid on the cops, she had enough forethought to drop by a public or private social service or adoption agency Continue Reading →

LETTERS, WE GET LETTERS….MOTHERS REACT TO NEW JERSEY CATHOLIC CONFERENCE PLEA FOR STORIES

Letters have been pouring in to Respect Life Today and the New Jersey Catholic Conference since we and others posted the NJCC request for natural mother stories. The conference had hoped the letters, replete with horror stories of the speculative knock on the door and ruined lives, would boost the Catholic Church’s sealed records agenda. Well, letters were written, but not the kind the conference was looking for! Instead of cowering in the closet, proud and unafraid mothers have come forward with the universal message: We don’t want or need your protection. Unseal our children’s records! Many letters have appeared on lists. I have been thrilled and moved at the wonderfulness and honesty of the writing. Though I’ve probably heard hundreds of first mother narratives, none of those has moved me as much as these articulate letters written by mothers on behalf of their surrendered daughters and sons–and themselves. One has to wonder if the church hierarchy and its policy wonks have any concept of what was done to women who sought their help in time of personal crisis and indecision. Or do they care? Adoptee Amy, with permission, has posted a selection of these letters as a blog entry, Continue Reading →

BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU ASK FOR! NEW JERSEY CATHOLIC CONFERENCE WANTS TO HEAR FIRST MOTHER STORIES!

For the record, Bastardette and Bastard Nation oppose the tortuously compromised S 611, passed by the New Jersey Senate on Monday 30-7. The bill allows some adoptees to get their original birth certificates while others, slapped with a disclosure veto, get the sanitized white-out version. There are other restrictions, too. I haven’t written about the Jersey situation lately, but my blog Settling for Less Than You Deserve on the 2006 look-alike bill will fill you in. (For more NJ entries just type in to Bastardette’s Blogger search engine). That said, it’s been entertaining in a sick sort of way to watch New Jersey’s adoptee haters, legalized child traffickers, religious conversionists, and identity thieves bloviate over ungrateful adoptees and their rights. To hear the Catholic Church’s affiliate hornswogglers — The Catholic Conference, New Jersey Right to Life,and the Knights of Columbus–talk, even limited government respect for adoptees and their rights will cause the state to break off and fall into the Atlantic. Patrick J. Brannigan, Executive Director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, for instance, holds the quaint belief that first parents just “move on” after surrender since the state seals their pasts as tight as a tomb, leaving them to Continue Reading →