Tag Archives: Safe Haven Baby Boxes

Welcome to Legislation 2022 Hell!

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Dear Bastards and Friends: Happy New Year! Welcome to Bastard Nation Legislation 2022 Hell! The Bastard Nation Legislation 2022 page is now up. The political outlook hasn’t changed much from 2021. Granted, Connecticut did free up its OBCs and Massachusetts continued to move forward on its lumbering road to victory, but other than that, 2021 was a disappointing, frustrating, dreary year. Arizona went weird, Maryland zilched, and deformers continued to stumble their baby booties through their own muck. Safe Haven Baby Box bills and Baby Boxes continued to flare up like herpes under the banner of “women demand anonymity,” the feel-good alternative for politicians who cringe over “adoptees demand rights.” Even more dismal, legislatures, blaming Covid, made discovering how to submit written testimony or to present remote or in-person an often unsuccessful endurance test. Bastard Nation, of course, continues our battle. Many state legislatures have yet to open. So far, though, we have several carry-over bills from last year. Most important of those is Massachusetts.HB2394. The bill passed the House last year and now is ensconced in the Senate, where it allegedly has no detractors, We’ll see. The bill is only two sentences long, so lawmakers can’t complain that they Continue Reading →

NAM 2021 is Done and Gone. Now the real work begins–again!

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

As I wrote earlier, I was stuck without internet access from November 28-30, and couldn’t post.  But I have this ridiculous sense of duty when it comes to blogging every day for NAM, so I’ve backtracked and backdated to complete the month, to make it look like it’s real. I suppose that’s some kind of a lie, but isn’t that what adoption is all about? It’s certainly no worse than sealed birth certificates, forged new ones, or the lie these happy adoptive parents I  saw at the Dollar General the other day,  are perpetuating by calling themselves Horses when they are really Unicorns. I IrefuI refuse to feel guilty Unfortunately, while NAM is gone, its curse remains. We have a lot to work on. The most important things right now are two new issues. It never stops: (1)  organizing against Justice Amy Coney Barretts’s pawning and dehumanizing of Class Bastard during the Roe hearing a few days ago, and her promotion of  Safe Haven and Safe Haven Baby Box laws as alternatives to abortion. This bullshit has a long history that I’ve written about and will elaborate on more in the next weeks.  Adopted people will not let people like Continue Reading →

Adoptee Narrative Expropriation: Some short thoughts

Posted on by — Leave a reply

That said, we know that our personal adoption stories are up for grabs.  First parents, adoptive parents, reporters, adoption agents, social workers, re-homers, facilitators, religious nuts, neo-libs, do-gooders, and outsiders of multiple stripes hijack our stories for their sometimes contradictory and oppositional, own agendas.  I call this Narrative Expropriation. Somebody speaks for us. Somebody pretends to be us. Somebody pretends we share the same histories, opinions, and desires. Somebody uses us to create their own stories. Continue Reading →

Safe Haven Baby Boxes: Get out of the way! It’s a birthday party!

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Znachko, famously at least for me, likes to say weird things in public. Things that anyone attuned to authentic adoptee experience instead of romantic adoption agitprop,  even if they believed it, would keep their trap shut about for fear of walking away with a bloody nose.  When she speaks at baby box blessings, for instance, she refers to the day a baby is boxed up and left behind, as “a birthday party waiting to happen.”  Continue Reading →

My NAM Basket was poked. Sorry, adoption is not normal and adoptees don’t have normal lives

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Adoption is not normal, Mayor Senter, It is a paradigm of family, political, and societal dysfunction and pretend greased by greed.  The public, church, politicians, and media romanticize adoption and adopted people as long as we behave.  We are always babies with no agency of our own, always and forever in need of guidance. Special interests across the political spectrum objectify us to meet their own personal and political ends. Abortion. Evangelism. Infertility. Welfare. Whatever d’jour  We are their propaganda. If we object to being objects, commodities, gifts, moral lessons, and eternal infants, object to fitting in, object to our secret government files, object to our ‘”better life”  we are ungrateful–or crazy! You need help! We’ll pray for you!  I’m sorry you had a bad experience!! Shut up! Continue Reading →

Michigan: Baby bopping and boxing with Bethany Christian Services

Posted on by — Leave a reply

So why is Bethany so invested in “safe delivery” including baby boxes?   Do we really have to guess? I checked the Michigan Department of Health and  Human Services webpage  Bethany isn’t alone in this battle for babies. It’s just the biggest. Every adoption agency in the state is in the game. Continue Reading →

Voluntary Donations v Public Funding: Ohio politician thinks taxpayers should pay for privately funded Safe Haven Baby Boxes

Posted on by — Leave a reply

  One of the selling points for getting a town to install a Safe Haven Baby Box has been the claim that the cost of the box will not come out of taxpayer pockets. It’s all private voluntary contributions from the community. That’s not what one Ohio politician, however, has in mind. According to the September 19,  Dayton Daily News, Lebanon, Ohio  City Council member, local attorney, and forced-birth advocate* Adam Matthews says he plans to propose that the Lebanon City Council foot the bill for a box. He wants to add the $16,000 cost of the box and the $300/year maintenance fee to the city budget. Ohio cities already host 4 boxes (Defiance, Hicksville, Sunbury, Van Wert with another one  proposed in New Delhi Township near Cincinnati) and none of those towns reported spending public money on their boxes. In fact,  BST&G Fire District officials in Sunbury were clear that its then-proposed baby box was off the table unless enough funds to lease, install, and maintain it could be raised through private donors and grants. The first box in Ohio was installed in 2018, but none have been used. Contrary to Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Inc’s propaganda, Ohio does Continue Reading →

Maine: Who Knew? Safe Have Baby Boxes honor adoptees and their stories!

Posted on by — Leave a reply

What fresh hell is this?  How does promoting sneak-dumping a newborn anonymously into a box in the wall at the local fire station honor adopted people or their stories?  How does it even honor the adopted promotors of this atrocious bill other than to get them an A-1 approval rating from the adoption-is-beautiful crowd? Continue Reading →

The Shame’s in Maine. Safe Haven Baby Boxes now law. And it got weird.

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

In July 15, 2021, Maine LD560  became law without the governor’s signature. The measure amends the state’s Safe Haven law to authorize the use of Safe Haven Baby Boxes at fire stations and ERs where  “desperate mothers” can anonymously drop their inconvenient newborns.

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

Posted on by — 5 Comments ↓

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 →