Tag Archives: Ohio

NAM/NAAM Day 7: I’m Trying Not to Gloat, But….

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here is nothing worse than a sore winner. I’ve seen enough unpleasant people and organizations over the years gloat when they win. I thought I could avoid gloating tonight, but I can’t. As someone who has spent the majority of her life in Ohio, I am tripping tonight with the win of Issue 1 which enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution.  With 95% of the vote counted, it passed 56.6% to 43.4% Continue Reading →

Just in time for National Adoption Month: New Ohio law makes adoption “easier”

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Yesterday, the State of Ohio launched Family Forward, a program that creates state-backed low-interest 5-year loan assistance of up to $50,000, to qualified but financially stressed-out PAP/HAPs seeking to “build their families through adoption.” The program was created by HB 405, a bi-partisan measure that passed the legislature unanimously in 2020. Continue Reading →

What’s Up with Pennsylvania? No Safe Haven Baby Boxes

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For some time I’ve wondered why Pennsylvania hasn’t acquired any Safe Haven Baby Boxes–nicely re-branded now as benevolent-sounding “newborn safety devices/incubators.” The state legislature passed a law authorizing their use in 2017. To hear it from baby box friendlys kanoodling across the interwebs, lawmakers and just plain folks everywhere are chomping to get boxes installed in every firehouse wall they can find, yet the welcoming State of Pennsylvania sits empty with 0 boxes.

Well, now I know. why. Continue Reading →

Safe Haven Baby Boxes are Coming to Your State. And Yours…and Yours…and Yours

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The Safe Haven Baby Box Blitzkrieg continues to rip through Indiana. Today SHBB blessed (that means opened) its newest box in Westfield outside of Indianapolis. Since the campaign began in 2016 9 babies have been stuffed into baby boxes for safekeeping–8 in Indiana (5 this year) and 1 in Arkansas  In addition, 3 boxes are located in Ohio with a fourth scheduled for opening soon, probably in Delaware County, north of Columbus. Another box will open soon in Rogers, Arkansas. Yet another is scheduled to open in Oklahoma, but no details have been released. State web pages in Indiana and Ohio do not advertise baby box use or locations and probably won’t. The Indiana Department of Health opposed the SHBB campaign, and I am a little unclear still how the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services reacted I recently filed a records request with ODJFS to tell me more. Continue Reading →

What Ohio’s new OBC access law really restricts. Critical Left-Behinds told to behave

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Proponents of the law, though not pleased with this spanner in their work, readily took their last minute compromise with the bromide, “but nobody will do that.” knowing full well that somebody would. By the time OBCs were released in March, 115 Ohio adoptees (and possibly more) had been slapped with redactions. 115 people out of the 400,000 adoptees whose OBSs opened that day, were still barred by law from a true and accurate copy of their state-generated OBCs. Instead they got mutilations. The law’s proponents and pimps remained silent on this abrogation of their constituents’ civil rights while blasting out happy dappy reunion porn to local, state, and national media. The incurious media either didn’t know or didn’t care about the Left Behinds stuffed and abandoned in their blackhole.

And little did the Left Behinds, already humiliated and ostracized by the new law and their own biological parents, realize they were about to get screwed by the state some more. Continue Reading →

Presentation to Adoption Lawyers on OBC Access in Ohio

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On January 17 I delivered a semi-formal presentation before a  group of mostly Columbus, Ohio adoption lawyers on the subject of adoptee rights,  OBC access, and a bill that is scheduled to be introduced in the Ohio legislature later this year that would  equalize (I hope) access for all Ohio’s adopted citizens. That is, pull back to  pre-1964 unrestricted access.I want to make clear here (and did there) that this is not a Bastard Nation bill.  It  is brought by Adoption Equity Ohio and at this time none of us know what the final language will be. Consequently, neither BN nor myself  currently supports or opposes it..  We are particularly concerned with the status of the 1996  disclosure veto, which can legally muck up unrestricted access in any state unfortunate enough to be saddled with it.  As chair and co-founder of Bastard Nation, I was  invited to present to the group. This invitation was an opportunity to meet local adoption lawyers to discuss adoptee rights. Discussion afterwards indicted  a lack of hostility to the repeal of the current black hole. My observation over the years, in fact,  has been that OBC access with few exceptions has become no  big deal..  I hope it stays that way. Below is  formal version of my talk.  Ohio Continue Reading →

STATE-APPROVED ABANDONMENT HOAXES CANNOT PIMP BABY DUMPING

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Early this morning, Mr. or Mrs. Morrisey (probably Mrs.) hiding under the cloak of “anonymity” attempted to post a comment here regarding yesterday’s entry. The fact that for the last 2 1/2 years the couple has been banned from posting on The Daily Bastardette hasn’t stopped them from sending dozens of traceable comments to me. All their snark-bombs have been archived. I suppose one of these days I should post an anthology, complete with 4-letter explicatives, for reader amusement. But today, I am breaking my own rule and posting this morning’s M comment: The baby has its full medical and familial history due to the SH law, so this is a positive outcome! As usual, the Ms and their ilk miss the point: ODJFS/DJFS is abusing Ohio’s “safe haven” law. The state, in essence from what we can tell, has unilaterally and administratively amended Ohio’s “safe haven” law; created a post facto defense hatch for women who lie to police. The Passewitz abandonment was a hoax. If Ms. Passewitz intended to legally dump her baby via “safe haven,” she made no effort to do so at the time of her 911 call. She did not, in the ill-chosen words of Continue Reading →

OHIO ABANDONED BABY CASE SOLVED: WE KNEW IT! HOAX!

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I‘ve held back on this entry waiting for some follow-up, which hasn’t happened. So, here it is…except for some additions, as I wrote it on October 30. Back in early June, a justborn, umbilical cord still attached, was found by “passing motorist” Allison Passewitz, 24, on a patch of grass near the Meijer (discount store) parking lot in Lewis Center, just north of Columbus, To be specific, at the intersection of Owensfield and Neverland Drive. (Can I make that up?) The discovery received much local press coverage, including the release of the 911 call made by the heroic Ms. Passsewitz (who “did the right thing” by rescuing an infant in distress when she could have just sped right by on her way to the gym) to the Delaware County Sheriff’s Department. Ms. Passewitz fortuitously had a bedsheet in the backseat of her car in which to wrap the deserted baby. Bastardette was ready to bet a Hyatt Cap South Sunday Brunch that the quick-witted Ms. Passewitz was the mother. It was a way-too-typical “coincidence” to be anything else. But, I’m not the Sheriff, so we let it play out. (The link to the original June 9 Channel 6 video, which Continue Reading →

OHIO ELECTION-TIME ADOPTION BLATHER

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Adoption blather is a vital part of a candidate’s bonifides to office. Here in Ohio we’ve been subjected to two especially pernicious ads. Here’s one that raises PAP entitlement and US neo-imperialism to new heights of arrogance. It features a local PAP couple who whined long distance to Cong. Pat Tiberi’s office when…oh, dear… an Uzbek court “opposed” their adoption plan. Within 24 hours of Pat’s call to the FSU hinterlands, “their child” was safely home in the US. So much for Uzbek sovereignty and the country’s right to their own children. What size are those jackboots, Pat? And here is Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton running for re-election on an “adoption reform” platform. Don’t get too excited. Her idea of adoption reform is to make it easier for parental rights to be terminated. I know who I WON’T vote for. Thanks to my homie Dawn Friedman for reminding me of Tiberi’s ad