Unlike the United States, Australia has been feeling its way forward much more cautiously concerning issues of surrogacy and what has been termed “reproductive or fertility tourism,” grounded firmly in its own criminal history pertaining to childless couples and adoption.

As a result, it has recently passed a law banning travel overseas for the explicit purposes of obtaining a child born of a surrogate Mother.

But it has also passed laws bypassing adoption requirements in surrogacy cases, instead simply applying for orders pertaining to parenting, largely for pragmatic reasons in that the need for adoptions was creating various bureaucratic and logistical problems, thus taking surrogacy one step closer to a hybrid form of direct legal parentage and that much closer to erasing the role of the (surrogate) Mother in legal parlance. This “streamlining” has implications for both Mothers and the resultant children.

The impact on Queer couples has been front and center through all of this and may have been one of many factors that went into the creation of the law in the first place, again raising questions of the ways in which discrimination can creep into such.

Pulling just a few brief quotes from the article:

In a move that has outraged would-be parents – whose only option left for starting a family is to travel to countries like India or the US to pay a surrogate mother – the NSW Government has extended the ban on commercial surrogacy to arrangements made overseas.

NSW residents who go overseas to countries where commercial surrogacy is a legal and thriving industry face up to two years in jail, a $110,000 fine or both on their return.

The change is designed to deter people from dodging the local prohibition and to prevent the exploitation of poor foreign women.

Unfortunately, comments like this from the Gay Dads Alliance (whether taken in or out of context) leaves the appearance of being tone deaf to the plight of women, both abroad in countries like India where reproductive tourism reduces a number of women to practically incubator status, as well as within Australia itself, in that there are a number of very solid historical reasons finding a woman willing to consentually engage in surrogacy can be quite tricky, not the least of which being Australia’s criminal adoption history in which children were literally taken from their Mothers without consent.

Gay Dads Alliance spokesman Sam Everingham said NSW was becoming a “nanny state” with laws to protect people from irrational fears.

He said finding an altruistic surrogate in Australia was almost impossible and the amendment sent a blunt message to parents who had already used commercial surrogacy that their family was wrong and unlawful.

These fears based on Australian history and present day global reproductive exploitation are certainly not irrational, though it remains unclear whether the Gay Dads Alliance spokesman intended his comment to be applied to such or not.

As for both the industry and this particular spokesman’s concerns about parents who have already used international surrogacy services or kids who are a result of such being left with concerns about legality and “legitimacy,” they, not dissimilar to Americans who appear to have adopted children babyfarmed or even kidnapped in places like Guatemala yet “legally” sold for adoption are left to deal with the aftermath of things that were legalized, yet often not the least bit consensual for the Mothers involved nor ethical.

Rather than attempting to sweep such actual practices under the rug and pretend they do not exist, getting to the truth, and making decisions from there sooner rather than later should be policy.

All the more so if there are cases in which the mothers never consenting to losing their children and want their children back.

The article also makes mention of how some women may participate in commercial surrogacy as a matter of beliefs, and attempting to do good works as a part of working out their personal karma in addition to their need for money.

…Bangkok, where commercial surrogacy is reportedly as much about the Buddhist ideal of “making merit” – the karma that comes from doing good for another – as it is about making money.

It also brings up the complex issue of the law’s actual enforcement, and how such can be tangled through the need for self reporting and displays of intent.

Mr Lynch said if faced with a lack of evidence that an arrangement made overseas was commercial in intent, the new laws would be difficult to police.

“What’s to stop someone from saying I had sex with a woman while I was overseas?,” he said, and added it would force “genuine couples” to engage in a “victimless crime”.

While the new laws are aimed at preventing exploitative practices and at least the Australian cash feeding those portions of the fertility tourism industry as well as protecting women and their genuine consent, it will be very interesting to see how they play out in practice.

I am not familiar with Australian law, but here in the United States there are essentially two classes of those who parent, those who are biological parents and need no licensing nor approval from the state and those who are not biological parents who seek state approval for fostering, adopting, etc.

For those in that second classification their parenting of these particular children is not an inherent right, but a state granted privilege that comes as a result of at least some stab at a vetting and approval process.

One may have an inherent human right to be a parent, but one does not have an inherent human right to another’s child.

(This is why adoption industry lobbyists here in the States twist the argument around, claiming a lack of being adopted “interferes with a child’s right” to being raised in a family or having parents, when what they are really claiming is that it constitutes a form of discrimination for would-be-adopters to not be able to adopt any given child. They understand all too well that would-be-adopters do not have an inherent human right to someone else’s child. Smart marketing that, on behalf of their clients, would-be-adopters, but a co-optation of Bastard voice and genuine rights to industry purposes.)

Part of the problem that Queers, Trans and Gay men in particular face across the board is that other than kids from previous marriages or Queer women giving birth, Queer parenting is often tangled through an approval process.

This is why until fairly recently, living with a Gay male partner often meant being childless save for kids from previous marriages, helpful Lesbian or Bi friends, etc. Gay adoption, more so than Gay fostering (here in the states at least) is still legally, a relatively recent phenomenon.

Heterosexual couples dealing with fertility issues have a similar problem, they cannot reproduce on their own, and then must rely upon that second classification, whether turning to surrogacy, fostering, or adoption.

Once those who want to parent no longer fall under the first classification of being able to do so completely on their own, they then fall under the second category, under which parenting someone else’s child is simply not an inherent “right.”

The key here of course is that once you have entered the realm of someone else’s biological child, these systems should not go on autopilot. There are responsibilities and emotional components that simply are different from raising a child biologically related to you.

This becomes all the more convoluted when there is provably, an industry built upon women’s reproductive capacity and lack of consent seeking to harness that market of those who are willing to pay to become parents who fall into the second category.

Australia is attempting to deal with those realities. How it turns out remains to be seen.

The situation in Iowa is something I’ve written about before, see First Nations peoples continue to decry the ongoing stealing of their children for adoption. There has been an ongoing activism campaign by Native Peoples around this issue for years there.

In the past month or so there has been some new coverage and important new developments.

Testimony was given to the recently created Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs during a two-day meeting at Four Directions Community Center in Sioux City, Iowa as part of the lead in to a bill that is being drafted for the 2011 legislative session.

Stephanie Woodward’s article from last month  Moving forward on child welfare issues, and Iowa Commission Takes on Child-Welfare Morass (over on the dreadful HuffPo) should both simply be read in their entirety as they provide a solid backgrounder and lots of important details.

This from the “Moving forward” piece perhaps sums the situation up best:

LaMere described the child welfare system as a “minefield” and stressed the problem’s pervasiveness. “Almost all our area families are touched. Hardly a day goes by at Four Directions when someone doesn’t contact us to say they’ve lost parental rights.”

I’m not going to even try to start pulling any further quotes out of the two pieces, just go read them.

The DesMoines Register also had a piece earlier this week, Iowa panel crafts bill addressing American Indian parental rights.

A state commission plans to introduce a bill during the 2011 legislative session that would provide a pathway to restore parental rights to Native American parents who have lost children through Iowa’s child-welfare system.

The proposal comes after a number of native families and advocates again voiced dissatisfaction with the state’s high rate of removal of Indian children during a two-day hearing in September before the Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs.

The state has for years had a severe disproportion of Native American children removed from homes in and near Sioux City, home to the state’s largest Indian population. The issue gained new attention after an article on the commission summit was published last week in Indian Country Today and Wednesday on the Huffington Post website.

The bill being drafted for consideration is modeled after one passed in Illinois.

It would provide a process for parents to regain ties with children after their rights have been terminated, provided “they clean up their act,” said Rachel Scott, spokeswoman for Iowa’s Department of Human Rights. Parents could appeal to have their parental rights restored if children had not already been adopted.

Therein of course, lies the key, if the child has not already been adopted.

Makes one wonder just how quickly First Nations childrens’ adoptions are going to be handled in Iowa from here on in.

As always, the onus is being put on the parents to “clean up their act” rather than the state to explain why it’s circumventing and terminating so many Native families parental rights in the first place.

When a state’s Department of Human Rights is down to chiding Families to “clean up their act” one really has to wonder just whose rights they’re looking after?

We’ll have to wait and see what the legislation looks like when it’s finally presented, but label me skeptical.

Finally, also see this piece, Four Directions Community Center extends its reach, about the Community Center itself and its annual Memorial March to Honor Our Lost Children that I mentioned back in my earlier post.

Four Directions’ major annual event is the Memorial March to Honor Our Lost Children, held each year on the day before Thanksgiving. Walkers proceed from South Sioux City, Neb., across a bridge over the Missouri River to Sioux City, Iowa, calling attention to Native children caught in the child-welfare system, including several who died while placed with foster or adoptive families.

…

Recent events at Four Directions included a two-day meeting of the Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs, a group of gubernatorial appointees that includes Yellowbank. The subject of the first day was child welfare and featured a training session by Indian Child Welfare Act specialist Allison Lasley, Meskwaki, who explained ICWA provisions for commissioners and invited guests, including Iowa human rights director Preston Daniels, a representative of the governor’s office, and members of the Native American Unit of the state’s department of human services.

Adoption in relation to Abortion provision, notes on clinics that embrace adoption marketing

As time allows I hope to write a response to these two pieces as well. But by way of a simple statement to chew on for the time being, allow me to point out the obvious:

There is no part of adoption that can be considered in any way “outside the culture wars.”

I’ve been blogging about the situation in Arkansas for some time now.

First see my earlier posts:

Sewing the scarlet “b”- California’s newest bastards, and other abysmal anti-Queer anti-child bastardization

In other anti-Queer bastard related election news, Arkansas passed its measure prohibiting Queer couples or straight unmarried couples from adopting or fostering, thus doing an end run around the Arkansas Supreme Court ruling.

Naturally this will screw with parents’ ability to decide who will raise their kids. Take for example, a parent who wanted to place their child with a Lesbian aunt instead of a complete stranger. Now as Queers are legally prohibited from adopting in Arkansas, the aunt is now deemed “unqualified” to adopt, based purely upon the very nature of who and what she is.

and the entirety of  my follow-up post ACLU goes to court over Arkansas Act 1, the “Arkansas Adoption and Foster Care Act.”

After being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) last Friday Judge Chris Piazza of Pulaski County Circuit Court struck down the Queer and Unmarried cohabiting couples parenting and foster parent ban Arkansas voters had passed last fall saying:

“Due process and equal protection are not hollow words without substance.”

Queer couples’ ability to serve as foster parents stood at the core of the case. (They were unable to meet Arkansas’ heterosexually defined definition of marriage, and therefore barred. Back in 2004 Arkansas had amended its state constitution to a hetero-centric definition.)

From the ACLU press release:

An Arkansas court today struck down a law challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union that bans any unmarried person who lives with a partner from serving as an adoptive or foster parent in the state of Arkansas.

“We are happy that the court recognized that Act 1 harms Arkansas’s foster children because it eliminates potential qualified parents,” said Holly Dickson, staff attorney with the ACLU of Arkansas. “We have a critical shortage of homes now and this ban was denying good, loving homes to our most vulnerable children.”

The ACLU filed its complaint against the law, known as Act 1, in December 2008. Plaintiffs participating in the case included a lesbian couple who adopted an Arkansas foster child before Act 1 was passed and would like to open their home to a second special needs child, a grandmother who was barred by Act 1 from adopting her own grandchild and several married heterosexual couples who would have been prohibited by Act 1 from arranging for certain friends or relatives to adopt their children if they die or become incapacitated.

“As the proud parents of a former foster child, we are relieved that the court recognized how Act 1 harms the many children in the state in need of homes,” said Wendy Rickman, who, along with her partner of 11 years, Stephanie Huffman, would like to provide a home to another child in need.

Earlier in the week, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee had gone on the attack, equating gay marriage with drug abuse, in the course of supporting the state’s ban on Queer and Unmarried Co-habitating couples fostering or adopting.

“I think this is not about trying to create statements for people who want to change the basic fundamental definitions of family,” Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, said.

“Children are not puppies,” he continued. “This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?”

Huckabee was similarly dismissive of same-sex marriage and even civil unions, which he called “not necessary.”

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” Huckabee said when asked about same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

The irony of course being that adoption itself, (whether by heterosexuals or not) as practiced here in America is nothing more than a product of social experimentation. Huckabee’s failure to recognize that all adoptions here are little more than ongoing social experimentation belies the central lie at the core of his so called “arguments.”

While he wishes to characterize heterosexual adoptions and foster care as some notion of “normal” and Queer or unmarried couples adoptions and fostering as merely “an experiment” nothing could be further from the truth. All adoptions and for that matter foster care here in the U.S. are part of an ever evolving process of social experimentation, from the development of the sealed records policy to more recent developments relating to so called (usually unenforceable) “open” adoptions.

Point being, adoption policy (regardless of whether het or Queer, married or unmarried)  has been a result of an ongoing evolving process subject to whatever pop-psychological theory is in vogue, or whatever faction in child care policy is in power at any given moment.

To say otherwise is to ignore or be woefully ignorant of adoption history here in the United States.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the wingnut Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC) has also been engaging in scare tactics to its own effort to raise their followers fears of Queer couples in the course of the ongoing Florida adoption and foster care fight.

Utilizing their readership’s fears of all women who are butch or gender non-conformist, the FFPC published the (photoshopped?) picture on the left in the course of describing the case of the actual Lesbian couple on the right.

See Flordia Anti-Gay Adoption Group Accused of ‘Scare Tactics’ Photo for further details.

Apparently when reality doesn’t line up with what opponents of Queer adoptions want to utilize, they’re more than willing to fabricate up some lies.

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/04/18/arkansas-judge-strikes-down-queer-and-unmarried-cohabiting-couples-foster-and-adoption-ban-last-friday/feed/ 0 http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/01/15/haitis-children-and-the-american-adoption-market/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/01/15/haitis-children-and-the-american-adoption-market/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:11:35 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=1641 People still trapped in the rubble, hunger, death, and complete social collapse.

What’s the story here in America?

Adoption.

Natural disaster, for some, spells an opportunity to extract Haiti’s children.

Haitian adoption used to take roughly two to two and a half years. Some will use this as an excuse to call for efforts to fast track resettling these kids into new families internationally.

If you ever needed a reason not to give money to those who conflate disaster relief with extraction of children Marley’s vital and timely post lays out the lay of the land. It’s a long, but very important post,

HAITI CHILD EVACUATION: A NEW OPERATION PEDRO PAN?

Where should donations and resources be going instead?

Donations should be aimed towards those who explicitly reject the re-branding of kids as “orphans” at every opportunity (particularly when the kids still have living relatives) and who explicitly reject strip mining disaster striken countries for child export.

Look towards organizations with a track record of rejecting child export as anything other than relocation to other family members.

Stealing a country’s children means stealing a country’s future.

Haiti, pre-quake was already a nation of dire poverty, a culture in turmoil and a country of children.

See this from the Unicef Executive Director’s Jan. 13th statement:

“Expert estimates suggest that 46 per cent of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are under 18 years of age.”

Sadly when it comes to the redistribution of children in the wake of natural disasters (as well as  wars and other such) the industry has learned that getting in quick, getting the kids out, and then forcing their country of origin, or individual family members to mount legal battles to reclaim children can be an effective strategy.

In adoption, as in many other such extra-legal grabs in the wake of catastrophes, disgustingly, the mere act of possession (and relocation) can end up being 9/10ths of the ‘law’.

Just ask the mothers of children stolen from Guatemala and relocated to America who have yet to have their children restored to them.

Return to the Table of Contents of my Haiti series.

The development of “artificial sperm” and the UK study on European fertility tourism are both important milestones.

Bastardette’s recent pieces on the development of artificial sperm-

ARTIFICIAL SPERM ON THE MOVE

and

MORE REACTION ON LAB SPERM: I NEVER HAD SEX WITH …

Lest anyone think what Marley is discussing is dismissible, the demand at least is clearly already present-

Artificial sperm and the race to build a baby

Pacey is also concerned about raising patients’ hopes and expectations. Just 45 minutes after the announcement last week he had been e-mailed by a patient asking where he could be treated with sperm grown for him in the laboratory. Within days Pacey had received dozens of inquiries from patients asking the same question.

Up next a smattering of surrogacy and adoption related articles, particularly looking at India and Spain and the global fertility quest-

NY Times-, writing on surrogacy- No Stork Involved, but Mom and Dad Had Help includes this reductionist woman erasing drivel used by a woman who utilized a Surrogate-

Although she considers her children too young for a talk about embryos and uteruses, Ms. Lunden already has a metaphor ready for when the time comes: cupcakes. “It’s almost like we can’t cook the cupcakes in our oven because the oven is broken,” she said. “We’re going to use the neighbor’s oven.”

To her mind, the woman who acted as surrogate is little more than an inanimate object, a mere ‘neighbor’s oven.’

Needless to say, children are not “cupcakes”, and women, whether deemed to be in “working condition” or otherwise, are not “ovens.”

Conceptual metaphors, as George Lakoff has pointed out, can be used to hide information, in this case, free will, the complexities of consent, health risks undertaken, birth-giving, autonomy, and sentience itself.

And two recent stories on the surrogacy market in India-

Surrogate Mothers: Womb for rent

Want A Baby? India Beckons

Besides the health risks, there is the issue of adoption. “The many steps involved in adoption once the child is born can be a problem,” says Dr Hari. The Indian Council of Medical Research has not issued any guidelines to help deal with foreign clients using Indian surrogates. So the child has to be adopted under Indian law and all procedures outlined in the Hague Convention on inter-country adoption have to be adhered to.

Spanish couples attempting to get around Spain’s regulations turn to a US agency only to get scammed- SoCal Surrogacy Clinic Accused of Scam

Also see- Spain’s first ‘test tube baby’ is now 25

Here are just two examples of the many articles that have been published in the wake of the European Fertility Tourism study.

The evidence makes it clear, when a country bans or restricts a procedure, those with the wealth to do so simply cross borders to buy what they want in another country.

NHS restrictions prompt fertility tourism boom

Hundreds of women over the age of 40 are travelling to fertility clinics in Europe to try to get pregnant because NHS clinics in the UK will not take them, the first-ever Europe-wide study of fertility tourism shows.

The research shows considerable movement across Europe, with women seeking out procedures that are banned in their own country. Italian women are crossing the border in droves following tough legal restrictions on IVF imposed in 2004, while large numbers of gay French women bypass a ban by seeking treatment in Belgium.

Francoise Shenfield from University College hospital in London, who co-ordinated the study, said at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Amsterdam that it appeared at least 20,000 to 25,000 cross-border fertility treatments were carried out each year. While one woman might have more than one treatment, there are still many thousands seeking help to get pregnancy abroad.

Hundreds are thought to be travelling from the UK every month. The most popular destinations for UK women are the Czech Republic and Spain, the top locations for obtaining donated eggs. As women get older, their eggs are fewer, and less likely to fertilise and implant in the womb. Donated eggs can be their only chance, but they are in short supply in the UK, where the rules say donors can only be given expenses up to £250. A further disincentive has been the rule change to help a child discover the identity of the donor when he or she is 18.

(Emphasis added- BLC)

Hundreds of women risk health by ‘fertility tourism’

A recent change in the law, which removed the right to anonymity for egg donors, had also led to a fall in the number of eggs available for women needing fertility treatment in Britain, she said.

And a sampling of just a few of the domestic economic articles that speak to what happens when times get tight-

Sperm, egg donors increase during recession

Need Money? Donate Your Eggs!

Sperm and egg donations up in South Carolina

also note-

New York State Allows Payment for Egg Donations for Research

There have been a number of important posts there even over just the past few days, including these two both of which are cases I’m watching,

In Memoriam: Faith Finley

The Murder of 13-year-old Alexis Glover: “My mom is going to kill me…nobody believes what I say…”

and this particularly important post,

Attachment/Holding Therapy Inspired “Gay to Straight” Movement Leader

If ASFS isn’t already in your reader, Bastards and allies may want to add it. WR has been creating a set of posts over the past year that both compliment and overlap with some of the writing I do here.

Just as I cannot track but a very few of the stories/cases that cross my desk ever day, he’s carved out a niche of tracking the “attachment” related deaths and abuses. His ongoing In Memoriam work keeps memory alive and shows the tragic overall pattern.

ASFS is a specialized subset of adoption and its related quack therapy related abuses, but the implications of the growing “attachment” industry for adoption as a whole, and of course adoptees themselves are profound.

I’ve argued in the past in support of getting up to speed on what is happening there, allow me to reitterate the importance of doing so.

A Search for Survivors is an important body of work, and deserves to be widely read.

(Photo Queerty)

Well, I was on the verge of getting part II of my current series finished up when I noted a story perhaps a bit more pressing to blog about.

Let’s take a pause from our usual ongoing cavalcade of healthy white newborn obsessed procurement industry twists and turns to look instead at one of those other meanings to the word “adoption.”

Today I want to bring readers’ attention towards Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS) out in L.A., whose board just voted to declare bankruptcy.

Pam’s House Blend- Is GLASS the first non-profit domino to fall? has a brief write up. I’ll just pull an excerpt:

Wednesday night, eight days after its 25th anniversary, the board of directors of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS) voted 7-0 (with one abstention) to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this afternoon. According to founder and executive director Terry DeCrescenzo, the staff is so “outraged” at the board’s decision, they plan to ask a court to intervene and accept a reorganization plan instead.

“This is a world-class disaster,” DeCrescenzo told me by phone, noting that GLASS just became the first licensed LGBT adoption agency in the country. Their primary program is providing group homes for 40 LGBT 15-17 year olds, and transitional living for 25 teens between 17-19.

Queerty’s headline puts the significance in perspective- First Licensed LGBT Adoption Agency in U.S. Declares Bankruptcy.

It’s perhaps too soon to speculate on quite what led to the decision, whether it was the collapsing economy, Californian Queer donation dollars being redirected into the “No on 8″ effort, factors internal to GLASS itself, or some other as of yet unknown factor. DeCrescenzo explained the vote thusly:

DeCrescenzo says that what lead to this current fiscal crisis was nine years of flat funding, increases in Worker’s Comp, increases in liability, tremendous increases in health insurance and donor fatigue that made it hard to raise money.

But what can be said with clarity is that GLASS closing its doors could make a bad situation worse for some Queer youth.

Having come close to being a Queer streetkid myself, and certainly having been close to others down through the years, I guess you could say I know a thing or two about how important both services and stability can be for kids in these situations. Programs like this provide the only family that doesn’t hate them some of these kids will ever know.

A number of these kids age out of foster care, their connections with other Queer peers are in some cases pretty much the only anchors in their lives. The loss of programs like this will only increase their isolation.

***

Obviously, there have been a torrent of articles, media interviews etc about the “Adam Herrman” / Irvin Groeninger III case. I’ve been combing through such trying pull out some of what actually matters. This is my second post about the boy. New readers will want to first read through that initial posting, Adam Herrman- homeschooled and gone missing for years, parents continued to receive subsidies.

***

KWCH has a useful set of profiles to help readers keep all the various personalities in the Adam Herrman story straight:

Adam Herrman’s Family

To that, readers can also add this article, Adam Herrman Missing: Biological Mother Speaks, in which Gerri George is identified as Adam’s mother. She recalls how her parental rights were terminated:

She said, “I didn’t exactly give him up. They kept — the county kept throwing my past of what my parents did to me. And they more or less said that I would repeat history again with my own children. And it seems like they’re the ones who are repeating the history of what my parents did to me. But they’re doing it with my own kids.

Both of his parents Gerri and Irvin were interviewed on Larry King Live, on Jan 7th. Separately, later on in the broadcast the Herrman’s lawyer was on as well.

The boy’s father brings up what should have been obvious:

GROENINGER: Right. Yes. I’ve got all kinds of questions about that, how a doctor whose seen him during his first 11 years didn’t — all of a sudden, you know, he ain’t showing up for doctor visits anymore. He ain’t showing up for dentist visits anymore. They said he was under psychiatric care. He’s not showing up for psychiatric care anymore. Somebody had to miss him.

Adam had originally been named Irvin Groeninger III. According to his mother, he apparently entered state custody around age 2.

“I had been a little bit not exactly a good parent,” she said, adding she had left a bruise on an older child.

Still, she said, she did her best to give her children a good home. She last saw her son when he was about 4.

Adam’s older biological sister, Tiffany Broadfoot, now 22 and living in Wichita, lived for a time with Adam’s adoptive family before being adopted by someone else.

Broadfoot remembers Adam having dark, almost curly hair and “this cute, really round face.” She last saw him at a birthday party when he was 5 or 6.

Over the years, she said, she called the adoptive mother to ask how he was doing.

At first, Broadfoot said, the adoptive mother said Adam was OK. But about three years ago, she said, the woman asked her not to call again because she didn’t want Adam and two younger siblings to know they were adopted.

Broadfoot tried again, without success, to contact Adam last year, she said.

Then last month, she said, her biological father called and said, “Are you sitting down? Because I need to talk to you.”

He said a detective told him that Adam had been missing since 1999.

“He (the detective) said he’s been missing nine years, and that just blew my mind,” Groeninger said.

(Emphasis added)

I detailed Tiffany’s brief stay with the Herrmans in my first post about Irvin/Adam. As I pointed out there, it appears to have been the Herrman’s biological daughter’s tip that kicked off the investigation, see Missing boy’s sister was one who called officials.

So according to Broadfoot, Valerie Herrman was at least saying she wanted to keep the fact of the kids’ adoptions from them, and utilized such as an excuse to try to make his sister stop attempting contact him. She was saying this three years ago, or approximately 6 years after his “disappearance.” Adoption secrecy makes a great excuse to never have to put the kid on the phone.

While his sister was being stonewalled later on, his adopted aunt, Kim Winslow saw him at least a few times over the years while the boy was still with the Herrmans. Her recounting of the final time she saw him, locked in chains in the bathroom, no one bringing him food or water over the course of hours really makes one wonder how the hell she never one contacted the authorities in light of what she and other family members were seeing.

I STRONGLY urge readers to watch the full video interview with Winslow on the video link here, Missing Boy’s Aunt Regrets Not Reporting Abuse.

There can be no excuse for not reporting, when you see a kid locked up like that you don’t sit back and watch the game and socialize. You don’t pretend everything ok, or that a child chained up like that could ever be any semblance of “normal”.

I don’t particularly care what quack pseudo-diagnosis (see For the Last Time, “Attachment Disorder” DOES NOT EXIST!) a kid has been labeled with,

Psychiatrists said Adam was either bipolar or schizophrenic or suffering from attachment disorder, they said.

Nor do I care that the Herrmans’ claim they kept him locked in the bathroom on the “advice of a psychiatrist.” There can simply be no excuse for pretending the kid locked away like that does not warrant at minimum a phone call to the local police.

But despite article after article now discussing “regrets” and discomfort, etc, that call that would have led to his rescue never came.

As to who precisely is to blame here, I don’t think we have a firm enough grasp on what happened to pinpoint responsibility just yet, but I do think someone should be looking at not only the relatives some of whom were aware of the boy’s plight and yet did nothing, but also whether or not “attachment” quackery played a role in his suffering, as it has in a number of adoptees’ deaths to date.

Herrman later explained Adam’s disappearance away as him having gone back into the child welfare system, and thus family members such as Winslow made the erroneous assumption that he was “safe.” While this was perhaps an excuse in line with the Herrman’s previous history with Irvin/Adam’s biological sister having been removed from the Herrman home, (see Adoptive mother denies she abused missing boy.)

At one point when Adam was younger, around 1990 or 1991, the Herrmans said they lost their foster care license after an investigation, which they declined to discuss in detail. They said authorities removed one of Adam’s younger sisters, then about 2, but said she was not removed because of child abuse.

It is still yet another of those adoption related excuses/lies that made it easier for friends and family to excuse the boy’s absence.

Herrman’s former sister in law, Linda Bush described the excuse thusly:

Bush said the Herrmans told other family members that they had turned Adam back to the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services. She said she had no reason to believe otherwise because the couple had other foster children who went back to state custody.

“They had turned other children back, whether voluntary or mandated,” Bush said. “Nobody had any reason to disbelieve. Who would think of something so heinous happening? Nobody did.”

Irvin/Adam’s adoption saga is very much in line with what many foster/adoption kids experience.

Born in born in Wichita in June 1987, he was removed from his parents’ custody after his mother bruised an older child, his parents were divorced. At about age 2, Irvin came to live with the Herrmans first as a foster child, then later her was adopted and renamed Adam.

His father, tried to regain custody, but despite being cleared of any wrongdoing, his parental rights were terminated (see this good AP story from 2 days ago, Boy’s 1999 disappearance raises questions, regrets.)

The boy’s biological father, Irvin Groeninger II, also expressed regret. The Indiana trucker was divorced when authorities took Adam and his siblings from their mother’s home after alleged abuse. He says he was cleared of any wrongdoing and tried to get custody of his children, but child welfare officials terminated his parental rights.

“Basically, I have lost him twice,” Groeninger said.

The boy — whom he knows only by his birth name of Irvin Groeninger III — was 18 months old when Groeninger last saw him. He had hoped his son would try to contact him when he was old enough to search for his biological family.

He says he wishes he could tell his son: “I love him and I wish I had fought harder back then to get him and keep him in my custody.”

While Adam and two younger siblings were adopted by the Herrmans, Adam’s older biological sister, Tiffany Broadfoot, was adopted by another Wichita family. Broadfoot has not seen her brother since a birthday party when he was 7 or 8 years old.

Broadfoot said the first time she called Adam’s adoptive mother she was told everything was fine and Adam was doing well. Other times she was told not to call again because Adam and his siblings did not know they were adopted.

In August or September, she called Valerie Herrman again. “The last time I talked to her she was very in my face and very adamant: `You have no business calling here. You have no right. That is not your family. Don’t call here. Don’t talk to us. Don’t do anything. That is not your concern. Back off,’” Broadfoot said.

Naturally, as the boy had been missing for the past 9 years, Broadfoot’s call last August or September apparently unleashed quite a reaction.

The same article contains yet another account, this time from Linda Bush, of how Valerie Herrman mistreated Irvin:

Linda Bush, a former sister-in-law of Valerie Herrman, remembered Adam as a timid little boy. She has not seen him since he was at least 6 years old.

“He wasn’t boisterous, running around making a lot of noise like other children. And he stared a lot. That was strange,” Bush said. “He gave me the creeps sometimes because he would stare. But it was nothing to hate him for.”

Bush said she remembered Valerie Herrman telling the boy he was stupid.

“It was the tone. It was constant. She constantly berated him and put him down, a hateful tone,” Bush said. “It was constant and we couldn’t figure out what that boy had ever done to make her hate him like that.”

The Herrmans did not treat Adam’s two younger siblings the same way, she said.

In my initial post, I brought up the repeated accounts of “missed opportunities.” While we have multiple perspectives/police statement from relatives admitting they failed to report what the boy was enduring:

Winslow, now living outside the Wichita area, and some of Herrman’s other close relatives said they saw Herrman abuse Adam other times over the years but for the most part didn’t report it and now feel terrible that he is missing.

There were also instances where clearly there was some interaction with external authorities, only one of which seems to have resulted in the Herrman’s losing the boy, and in that case, he was removed for a mere two days:

• “In at least one instance, a relative reported alleged abuse to authorities.” from Relatives say missing Butler County boy was abused
• “Justin Herrman said he called to report it and Derby police officers came to the home. But he said his mother persuaded him to tell the police that he lied. He said the officers lectured him about lying and left.” also from Relatives say missing Butler County boy was abused
• “In the Christmas Eve conversation, Valerie Herrman told her former sister-in-law “that she beat Adam once with a belt” and that Valerie had gone into her room and cried about it, remorseful. … Bush said Valerie Herrman told her that that after she used the belt, someone at Adam’s school saw bruises, and authorities were called to investigate.” also from Relatives say missing Butler County boy was abused
• “At one point when Adam was younger, around 1990 or 1991, the Herrmans said they lost their foster care license after an investigation, which they declined to discuss in detail.” from Adoptive mother denies she abused missing boy
• “Around 1996, she said, she spanked Adam with a belt, and his psychological counselor saw bruises and called police. … Adam went to the Wichita Children’s Home for two days, then came home, she said. … Doug Herrman said: “I don’t think they felt he was in any danger. They just told us we couldn’t discipline him with a belt.” also from Adoptive mother denies she abused missing boy

Within the past 24 hours, articles such as these have come out, I’d advise readers go through all three:

• Police & SRS Investigations Cleared Herrmans Of Abuse
• Investigators Found No Abuse at Missing Boy’s Home
• Missing Kan. boy was once briefly in state custody

The first article includes:

Since the news of Adam’s disappearance several weeks ago, Ponce says the agency is now involved in a full-scale review and investigation of both Adam’s and the Herrman’s history with SRS. Ponce says that includes a review of how the Herrman’s were able to continue receiving state subsidies for Adam’s adoption years after he vanished.

The third article, we also find details of the state subsidies:

The Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services confirmed Thursday that the Herrmans continued to receive adoption subsidy payments for Adam after he was missing, but the agency could not immediately determine how much. The department said it was researching the case.

Such subsidies generally are given in situations where the children are difficult to place or in cases in which several siblings are adopted by the same family, she said.

The Herrmans adopted Adam and two of his younger siblings, family members have said.

Families receiving adoption subsidies are required to file a yearly report to verify ongoing legal and financial responsibility for the child, she said.

“If there were a situation in which an individual would knowingly supply false information to the state in order to receive benefits, that is a crime,” Ponce said.

***

So here’s a brief post I’ve been meaning to write for some time now. Start with this November 21st article out of the Star Ledger in New Jersey, How you can put a baby in a loving home.

Sure enough, “Boarder Babies” are being folded into New Jersey’s “safe haven” stats.

(See the National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center’s 2005 Fact Sheet on Boarder Babies, Abandoned Infants, and Discarded Infants {link opens a PDF} for some basic information on the boarder babies phenomenon and some of the ongoing issues with “safe haven”/legalized child abandonment laws.)

Keep that in mind the next time you hear some legalized child abandonment advocate bragging about their alleged number of “baby saves.” How many babies turned in under the safe haven program? ‘Oh we’ve “saved” tons!’

Just don’t look too closely, or you might realize how many of those were exactly the problem we’ve had all along, boarder babies, now just moved out of one column and into another. Which is to say the “baby savers’” stats are for shit at this point.

Lumping in the boarder babies not only vastly inflates the “safe haven” numbers of alleged baby “saves,” (a pure mis-characterization, as it’s pretty damn difficult to “save” said babies from mothers who are abandoning them after birth at the hospitals where the children were born. These were babies who never had any genuine chance to be “at risk” of anything outside hospital walls, in some cases, they were never outside a nurse’s care.) but it also sets up one hell of a conundrum.

You have state and federal programs geared towards preventing boarder baby abandonment, trying to encourage womyn to take their babies home rather than walking out the hospitals without them while SIMULTANEOUSLY creating a separate program going the exact opposite direction, wherein the state actively encourages womyn to abandon their newborns or infants.

On the one hand, you have the state putting programs and funding towards family reunification and getting the kids out of the system whenever possible, on the other you have the safe haven program working at cross purposes in most states encouraging anonymous child abandonment making family reunification an impossibility, dumping kids into the system.

Articles such as this, New program hopes to keep ‘border babies’ in arms of their parents are common. Unfortunately even within existing boarder baby programs you have programs already pulling in opposite directions. You have the mothers themselves, as but one number, 63% (link opens a PDF) of them want to keep their kids, and yes, you have programs geared towards either keeping them together or working towards reunification, but at the same time you have Child Protective Services (often encumbered by guidelines created in relation to American drug law policy) making the final determination as to whether or not the child will ultimately be discharged to go home with their parents.

Boarder baby policy(ies) is already more than enough of a conflicted mess without adding “safe haven” laws into the mix.

Boarder Babies are not only a huge drain on the entire health system, they are the ongoing “background noise” of health care itself. This has led program after program aimed at dealing with such, (and the media) to label the ever mounting numbers of abandoned at hospitals post birth and after the mother’s discharge an all out “boarder baby crisis.”

Let’s be clear here. The alleged raison d’etre for the legalized abandonment/”safe haven” schemes was to “save” babies who were supposedly at risk of immediate harm. A boarder baby born in a hospital, and either abandoned by its parents or forced to be left behind by a child protective services determination is NOT and NEVER WAS in any danger. It was born in a hospital and in most cases has been in hospital care its entire life up to that point. To lump boarder babies into baby-dump/”safe haven” stats is not merely disingenuous, a BLATANT fabrication.

Unless of course, the whole point was always to increase the supply of adoptable history free infants, permanently separated from their parents of origin.

Seeing as to how the legalized abandonment laws were the (sick) spawn of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), and the primary organization pushing for the dump laws, the National Safe Haven Alliance grew out of the NCFA, I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about said motivations.

More recently of course you have the federal adoption ‘bonuses’ to states that move children from the public system into “permanent homes.” Children who are abandoned are automatically categorized as “special needs” and states placing “special needs” kids get even larger adoption bonuses.

When you hear the term “safe haven” keep in mind that much of what we’re really talking about here is fast tracked, so called “non-bureaucratic placements,” i.e. adoptions whenever possible.

While the preferred mythology of the “safe haven” babies is that of the alleged young and desperate (preferably white) teenage mother with nowhere else to turn, “safe havening” her (preferably equally white, or at least passable) newborn only to be adopted as soon as possible after relinquishment with (yet another preferably white, preferably heterosexual) loving couple out in the ‘burbs with a white picket fence and a dog, add the reality of boarder babies into the mix and clearly there’s more to to all this than first meets the eye.

When boarder babies are lumped under those same words, adopters may find themselves with a kid going through weeks of withdrawal or even lifelong effects after drug additions, lifelong effects that even experts can’t predict, or they may be receiving an HIV+ child. Due to the lack of prenatal care and the facets of their mother’s lives (poverty, inadequate food in the household, mental illness, addiction, etc) the adopters’ newly acquired little bundle of joy may turn out to be quite a bit more than they bargained on.

Under normal conditions, boarder babies are some of the least desirable kids in the adoption food chain, for many of the reasons I listed above. That said though, via re-branding, boarder babies can now go up for adoption as “saved” “safe haven” babies, suddenly now a desirable commodity to some.

This is tremendously beneficial to the state, as without the re-branding, boarder babies tend to languish in hospital care for months, only to eventually be bounced around the foster care system, they’re the kids nobody wants.

Take this older story out of the New York Times, BOARDER BABIES FIND COMFORT IN FOSTER GRANDPARENTS’ ARMS, in which the low income elderly are being recruited to deal with the them:

Besides providing a support system for the babies, the foster grandparents’ program tends to counter stereotypes of older people, said Marcia Vogel, the director. ”It shows how useful they can be,…

“Safe Haven” babies come “as is.” Most states actively make no point of collecting medical information or histories on the kids. The less known about them, the more marketable they are.

So it’s “buyer beware” for the adopters who clamour to get a hold of the little media friendly “saved babies.”

But that lifelong question mark of lack of information while a downside for the kids, is an upside for the state and its marketing. Phone lines buzz with desperate infertile couples trying to get a hold of “Safe Havened” babies after news reports.

So, how many other states are padding out their numbers of “safe haven saved babies” with boarder babies?

Perhaps more importantly, how many states are ’solving’ their boarder baby problem by sliding them over a column?

I can just hear it now:

‘Wow! New Jersey, fewer boarder babies? That’s great! How’d you manage that?’