Some of us have seen this behavior from her time and again over the last three years, particularly in relation to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration/Day for Adoptee Rights though usually it’s been in spaces such as the AAAFC/”Adult” adoptees board, behind logins.

What happened on the FB alt adoption board last night is a rare publicly available example.

For those of you who might have been trying to understand some of the many reasons some of us refuse to work with people like Joy and those who tag along with her seeing nothing wrong with what she does, this ‘discussion’ may provide some illumination.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging and ‘National Adoption Month’.

*UPDATE*

Not surprisingly, a number of Joy’s posts from last night have gone ‘missing.’

Fortunately, it’s never so easy to make information disappear as some might wish.

Instead of waiting patiently as the saga of the South Dakota open records bills play out, the past 48 hours have seen more than their due share of abject stupidity, along the lines of this from Kali/”Gershom’s” blog, pointing to Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change (AAAFC) message board:

I heart South Dakota and bill 153

Well the news broke in this thread thanks to Cathy OBC for Me that South Dakota is now…another free state. That makes 7, yes 7 states of the 50 United States that are now free states honoring rights to adoptees and their unconditional access to their original birth certificates.

which would indeed be good news, if it was true.

Unfortunately, the South Dakota process has not reached a compromise and no bill has been signed by the Governor.

“Gershom” (who still has not addressed the outstanding issue of where the finances from the first adoptee rights demonstration last year in New Orleans went) and her Adoptee Rights Demonstration (ARD) and AAAFC buddies have had no qualms about being butt-inskys into South Dakota (even while pointing at Bastards such as myself, who know damn well when to hold my tongue, as doing “more damage than good.”) Quoting her delusional blog entry again:

Something else you may notice is South Dakota kept very quiet about this bill. Something to be said for groups trying to pass their bills in their own states. Perhaps to keep the media out of it, perhaps to keep the opponents out, and I think something also very likely is to keep other adoptee rights groups out of it. I know from personal experience some Bastards do more damage than good.

Ironic that.

Why yes, yes, it HAD been very quiet, until certain online adoptees (a la AAAFCers) began flailing at it mile a minute.

Of course I’ve been paying close attention to S.D., but that hardly means I’m going be obtrusive about it or gloat about some completely non-existent victory long before it’s won.

Among the ‘usual suspects’ we’ve also seen posts the likes of this from Amy,

CONGRATULATIONS SOUTH DAKOTA ADOPTEES

Congratulations to South Dakota Adoptees!!! You did it. It is amazing how you guys did it. We in the adoption community are thrilled for you. We are all partying with you right now. Just one more step and we got it made. Please Governor Mike Rounds sign this bill. Treat South Dakota Adoptees as American citizens. South Dakota makes it the 7th state in the United States to treat adoptees as fully recognized American citizens.

Despite her “tense” issues, she did at least bother to note, in her own broken blogging sort of way that no, Governor Rounds had not signed it yet. She missed the conference committee step in which the S.D. House and Senate bills differing versions would have to be hammered out, but then civics doesn’t appear to be any of these bloggers strong suit.

For those “activists” in need of a refresher course, perhaps a brief musical interlude is in order (sure this is the Federal example, but the State version isn’t all that different:)

They would well to get their facts straight prior to sitting down to the keyboard.

As for us Bastard activists?

Yeah. Still working for adopted people’s authentic access, you know, the kind of bills Governors have actually signed.

To get readers up to speed, first a little history:

Ron has done a number of posts on CARE’s crap, including his latest, in which he nails the sappy overwrought emotionalism CARE is employing:

BB Church vs CARE, Nikfa and THE Adopton Institute, with one hand tied behind my back…

Marley also has a number of posts on her California Adoption Reform Effort tag, including her latest about the content of the CA bill itself:

CALIFORNIA: I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! BAD BILL HITS THE BOARDS!

While you’re there, be sure to note Maryanne’s comment on Marley’s piece:

maryanne said…

I am mad as hell! I am a member of the CUB Board and we were flat out lied to to get us to support CARE’s bill. We were told in an email from Jean Strauss that they were going to introduce a clean bill, with the proviso that it “might” have to be modified somewhere down the road. This clearly not what happened; CARE did not even try to introduce a clean bill, but came out with this travesty.This group deserves no support from anyone who cares about adoptee rights.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:45:00 AM EST

If this is how the bill’s “supporters” are interpreting current events, I’d say CARE has a rocky road ahead of it.

The full text of CA AB 372 as introduced can be found on the California Open page.

Read it and judge for yourself, but simply put, it is not by any stretch a clean open records bill.

As Marley pointed out in her latest piece CARE felt the need to add this disclaimer of sorts to their webpage concerning the bill:

(a word about reading a bill: Legislative language, and the language of statutes, can be confusing. The language is based upon existing legal code which encompasses thousands of pages that are all interrelated. The chane that we are requesting will allow adult adoptees over the page of 18 access to their original record of birth. The text herein is written by the legislative counsel for the California Assembly and is written for lawyers, not for lay people. What’s important is that it cretes a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records.)

In other words, it’s a nice little condescending pat on the head, saying essentially, ‘there, there all you adoptees, it’s in legislate-ese, just TRUST US, it doesn’t mean what you thought you read, see? It’s now a “rights” bill, trust us!’

Which of course is ultimately not what it is. This is not a rights bill, this more of the usual conditional psuedo-access predicated upon desires and whims.

Again, Bastards buying that old “trust us” line, I’ve still got that old CARE bridge on the wrong coast to sell ya … .

Bastards have every reason to begin asking the hard questions when someone begins selling us the just “trust us” line in relation to legislation.

These are people’s real lives CARE is being so CARE-less with. The consequences of getting it wrong means real people left behind, screwed over, and trapped behind walls of lack of access.

In Ohio, I’m precisely that class of “left behind” Bastards. Had I been born just a few years earlier, or perhaps a few years later, my chances of actually gaining access to my authentic records would be quite different, but as it stands now, purely due to a “political compromise” I’m locked into those middle, and fucked over, years.

Messed up legislation has real world consequences to those bargained away.

And that is precisely what the CARE bill does, set up a new and damaged system going forward. If their bill were to pass Bastards would be left begging judges for scrubbed of identifying information (unless such is deemed necessary to assist in establishing a legal right) copies of their paperwork.

It says so right there in the CARE bill:

The name and address of the natural parents shall be given to the petitioner or requester only if he or she can demonstrate that the name and address, or either of them, are necessary to assist him or her in establishing a legal right. In all other cases, that information shall be redacted from all records and information provided, including a copy of an original record of birth.

CARE’s pre-emptive answer to such is of course, another pat on the head, ‘there there, you just don’t understand it, TRUST US!’

Trust people who have the unmitigated gall to write such into a bill and then try to proffer it off as a bill that “creates a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records”?

Like hell!

Yes, by and large I’m pointing my readers to others writings on the CARE-tastrope, in part because

• Ron himself is a California adoptee (as well as his previous work with California Open)
• and Marley in her Bastard Nation work as a “9-year member of CalOpen Partners” is also in a position to have something to say here.

Both of them not only have something to say about this monstrosity, they come from places to know of what they speak.

What I have to say is mainly in support of the good work they’re already doing.

None-the-less, being a left behind Bastard myself, who has petitioned the court for my records repeatedly, let me tell you, I at least hold out hope that if the judge were to actually sign off on allowing me my own paperwork, it would at least be complete, not routinely redacted by law.

CARE is thus taking a bad situation and ultimately making it worse, setting up NEW roadblocks. This is not merely a bad bill, it’s actively counterproductive.

Living as I do on the other end of a not altogether dissimilar process in Ohio, let me be the first to tell you, “compromises” that create new obstructions and make the already bad situation worse are no answer.

LD 1084, An Act To Provide Adult Adoptees Access to Their Original Birth Certificates

In 1953 Maine took away adopted adults’ access to their own state held records, locking them away and forcing Adoptees to gain a court order before being granted access to their own information.

Now after 56 long years, the most basic human right, that to one’s own authentic identity, has at long last been restored.

Those 56 years represent an ugly chapter in the state’s history, a time when adopted people had their original identities confiscated by the state and withheld from them.

Some of those adopted as children lived and died in the space of those decades never knowing the truth about themselves. They were never granted the State’s permission to access the most fundamental aspects of their own lives, their authentic origins, the paperwork listing their original birthdate, in some cases, perhaps even the original names they were given.

Today, Maine has taken an important step forward, restoring access to these state impounded documents. Upon age 18, adopted people will once again have access to their own most personal information, putting an end to an era of secrets and lies and what had amounted to state held secret dossiers on those who had been adopted.

Original Birth Certificates for Maine, or OBC for ME has further information, including the link to the official state application form and the details of what will also be required when submitting a records request.

They have a lot to be proud of today. Tomorrow January 2, a set of opening day activities are planned.

Maine now joins the proud ranks of the five other states that have either never taken away or have since restored access to their adult adoptees since 2000 (Oregon having been the first to restore access.)

Bastard Nation’s map of full access states; Alaska and Kansas never sealed their records, Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and now Maine have restored after an intervening period of having our most basic identity rights stripped away from us:

These are the few states that treat adult adoptees who were born there as equal citizens.

That said, even in some states that have reopened, the State is still clearly uncomfortable with with the notion of adult adoptees as being able to conduct their own affairs free of the government cast as a third party to our interpersonal relationships.

Apparently we are not to be trusted to act as other citizens, assumed to simply be able to associate freely and control our own intimate associations free from the state maintaining files pertaining to our relationships.

Sadly, Maine, like Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire has added a (fortunately toothless) “contract preference form,” by which the state is to collect parents “contact preferences” and then hold such paperwork to pass along to adult adoptees upon their submitted records request.

We as adopted citizens must be free to conduct our most intimate interpersonal affairs, deciding whether or not to contact our own blood relations free from government’s insistence upon information collection “on our behalf” or “for the protection of those involved” and essentially the government insisting upon being a party to our interpersonal relationships process.

It’s simply none of the State’s business.

Today at least, such “preference” forms have no enforcement power behind them, but they set a terrible precedent, AND maintain the role of the state in how we conduct our intimate associations, insisting our private lives and associations or lack thereof ARE quite literally, the business of the State.

No other class of citizen has to endure such indignities.

If you are not an adoptee, the state does not keep track of whether or not your parents or other blood relations want to see you or not. Only adoptees are subjected to such State intrusiveness.

It’s insulting, and maintains the State’s ability to portray adopted individuals as a form of ‘forever children,’ constantly in need of the watchful eye of the State, allegedly forever unable to achieve full self determination.

All of which has it’s basis in the (adoption industry propagated) mythologies that many if not all adopted people could become stalkers or harrassers at the drop of a hat, that parents must be protected from them, and that most parents would not welcome the presence of their long lost children in their lives.

None of which are true.

The facts remain, not only are most adopted people NOT stalkers or harassers, but many parents actively wish to be found. Indeed, many were promised by agencies that when their children turned 18 they would have their paperwork released to them and that their children would come find them.

In those exceptional, rare circumstances in which individuals are unable to respect a “no” or “not interested,” the violators should be treated as any other adult would be. Restraining orders and such can be issued based upon a demonstrated pattern of misbehavior.

Any attempt to instead place any form of pre-emptive restraint upon adoptees as a class, interferes with our constitutional right to free association.

Fortunately Maine does not include an actual form of pre-emptive restraint, for now at least, but it sets up the systems by which such could become possible at a later date.

The Maine law does however, continue in the fine tradition of infantalizing adopted adults, even as the concrete effect of such is to finally restore adult adoptee rights.

Sadly, it is even less kind to our parents.

Along with the contact preference form, the state has coupled the act of affirming that they wish to restore contact (or even that they do not prefer contact, at least that was their feeling at the time the form was filled out) with their adopted children with the parents’ own medical histories, something that adopted adults have no legal right to.

While adopted people may contact our blood relations and REQUEST their familial medical history, there is no legal requirement that our parents divulge their own personal medical information. They may do so at their own choosing, but they cannot be required to do so.

The contact preference clause is spelled out thusly in the law:

3. Contact preference form. The state registrar shall develop a contact preference form on which a birth parent may state a preference regarding contact by an adoptee. The form must contain the following statements from which the birth parent may choose only one.

A. “I would like to be contacted. I have completed this contact preference form and a medical history form and am filing them with the State Registrar of Vital Statistics.”

B. “I would prefer to be contacted only through an intermediary. I have completed this contact preference form and a medical history form and am filing them with the State Registrar of Vital Statistics.”

C. “Do not contact me. I may change this preference by filling out another contact preference form. I have completed this contact preference form and a medical history form and am filing them with the State Registrar of Vital Statistics.”

While contact preference forms and medical histories are not required as a precondition to records release to the adult adoptee, for a parent to affirm that they wish contact, the state has essentially coupled a medical history form to the contact preference form unnecessarily.

Created in the name of protecting alleged “privacy”/confidentiality, this new set of state held files actually is quite the opposite, and becomes yet another layer of the State injecting itself into our interpersonal affairs.

Personal medical information is best shared between the individuals directly affected, not between our parents and the state, who will then file and hold such, releasing it to adult adoptees if they submit a records request.

The State needs to stop treating adopted adults differently.

What we want is equitable treatment, to be treated just like anyone else, no preference forms held by the State, none of this unnecessary nonsense. We want the ability to conduct our own interpersonal affairs without the State injecting itself as a third party into our relationships, collecting and holding information pertaining to our families.

The entire section of the law quoted above creates another NEW layer of state held files pertaining to our lives, our relations, and our interpersonal relationships. More bureaucracy and meddling that “normal” (i.e. non-adopted) citizens do not have to endure.

Just because such “preferences” are not enforced today does not necessarily mean they will not be at some future date.

States need to simply restore what they took from us, records access. Period. Not utilize such legislation as an excuse to go build NEW sets of files pertaining to adopted people and their families.

Legally speaking the personal “preferences” of our parents do not factor in. Records access restoration is a matter between adoptees and the state, and also between parents and the state.

By putting parents preferences in files for adult adoptees, the state is falsely pitting the desires of parents AGAINST their own children. This is built on the false notion of adoption as a “triad,” (parents, adoptees, and adopters.)

The reality is our records are not sealed upon relinquishment.

And despite all claims of “privacy, often raised by industry or those with what certainly appear to be dirty hands, such as the Illinois Catholic Conference (who have admitted in Illinois, that opening records would likely produce lawsuits against them, and that information contained in original birth certificates could be false) never once has a single document actually promising “privacy” to parents ever surfaced. Even if such ever should, there was no force of law behind such supposed promises. Further, parents were often promised the precise opposite as part of the process of getting them to sign away their kids, they were assured that such wasn’t forever, the kid would come find them when they turned 18.

Records access is not a matter between adoptees and their parents. Parents do not hold the power restore records access to their children.

Records are sealed upon our adoptions.

Records restoration is a matter between adoptees and the State. Similarly, parents are also battling the state to gain records access as well. The State confiscated the records, and the only place that we can turn for restoration is the State.

There is no “adoption triad.”

Adoption is built instead, upon an adoption pentagon:

1. parents
2. adoptees
3. agencies/lawyers/intermediaries/lobbyists/industry/etc
4. the State
5. adopters

It should be noted, some parties to adoption have more power and control than others.

While it serves the State’s interests to have adoptees and parents at one another’s throats in some false game of “conflicting interests” the bottom line is, our genuine interests are not at odds.

The “preferences” of those who were not parties to our records being closed cannot be used by the state as something to hide behind in the process of re-opening them (or not.) Our parents were legally out of the picture at the point in time when our records were closed.

It’s past time the State begins to trust adult adoptees to conduct our own lives. No more state held files, no intermediaries (unless directly personally chosen by the individuals involved, preferably non-commercial/non-contracted) etc.

We’re grown ups, it’s time for the State to start treating us as such.

In the end, it’s a damn good day for Maine adoptees.

The real bottom line here is that people who have waited their entire lives for the most personal and basic of information about themselves have finally had their civil and human right to access their own information restored to them.

It’s just a shame that states insist upon insulting adoptees and their families in the process and building yet new bureaucracies upon false notions that we still are unable to conduct our own lives without the State butting in.

Finally be sure to see both Marley’s piece on Bastardette- MAINE: RECORDS OPENED, GRINCH CRINGES! and Robin’s piece on Motherhood Deleted- New Year, Same Old Myths both about Maine.

***

Tragically, at the moment there is only one place in the United States that infants are protected from State enabled child abandonments, Washington DC.

Only there can every newborn rest assured that being dumped is not ok, not state encouraged, and never legal.

How could it have come to this?

Over the past nine years the dump laws have spread across the country like a cancer. State after state has fallen to the siren calls of the dump marketers, seduced by false promises of ‘no more dumpster babies’, or that these laws would become some form of a magical panacea, somehow “saving” both newborns and their mothers as well.

In state after state, in the period of time before the vote, a ‘dumped baby crisis’ almost always seemed to materialize. So legislators jumped to a reaction rather than a response, they rammed through dump laws with little understanding of the consequences.

Those most directly affected, the kids themselves, and (in most states) anonymous abandoners had no voice, no means to speak to their long term needs and what the law would do.

Anyone who dared raise a criticism or objection to legalized child dumping, often adult adoptees, child welfare advocates, and those who actually work with womyn in desperate circumstances were instantly painted as inhuman monsters who would rather find dead babies.

Likewise, in state after state legislators set common sense aside, lest they too be tarred as those wanting baby corpses, or as those voting for dead babies. Dump law opponents were given the usual set of “so when did you stop beating your wife” sorts of questions.

Unfortunately, the reasons for opposing legalized child abandonment are complex, nuanced, and rarely soundbyteable. Professional dump marketeers waving pictures of cuddly babies and making overly simplistic unburdened by evidence propagandistic arguments along the lines of (the compulsory pregnancy advocates’ line) “live baby good dead baby bad” shouted down voices of reason.

Never mind the fact that the mythical “dead baby” alluded to by the dump law advocates was likely never headed toward death in the first place. Yes, there are dead babies. But to claim the two poles are “safe haven” or dumpster misses reality.

The womyn with the wherewithal to utilize the dump law, who packs up her baby to drive him or her across town to the hospital is not the same womyn as the womyn who tiptoes over to the dumpster a few blocks from her apartment to deposit a trash bagged bloody bundle.

The hospital abandoner under other circumstances may have been able to connect with a program or a relative, or even a traditional (non state anonymized) adoption plan. She wants her kid to be ok. Trash bag abandoner on the other hand?

There remains no evidence what-so-ever that these laws reach her.

She is often in a crisis situation, sometimes has been in denial of her pregnancy, and in her panic is often merely her own version of just trying to make it all go away. She is in a severe mental health crisis, no amount of spending on PSAs is going to touch her right that moment. Up until the moment of birth she may not have ever acknowledged her own pregnancy. She’s not looking for a program, or to a law, or to a hospital with surveillance cameras all around, she’s looking for a T-shirt to mop up the blood before someone sees it.

Add in a rural component of having to go to a hospital where neighbors might see you, or other circumstances such as lack of access to transportation and the bottom line is state approved dump sites make a lovely fantasy, but they reach those who are open to such already. They’re not going to reach those who feel so trapped that they commit acts of desperation.

While dump marketers can trot out former abandoners doing their court ordered community service with their kitchen table organizations who on cue with give the soundbyte, “but of course I would have used the safe haven had I known about it,” hindsight is cheap and easy. Even cheaper and easier when you’re trying to get your judge off your back. They can only speak for themselves, not other womyn in similar circumstances. I don’t presume to know what they would or would not have done, but what I do know is that for some law or no law the desperation clearly continues.

Abandoned infants and dead babies have not disappeared with the passage of the 50th state’s dump law. Dump laws are never going to “clean up” 100% of the problem. In Nebraska, not a single one of the kids was facing down danger. That would be if anything a 100% failure rate, by the criteria of whether or not the law is protecting kids from immediate harm. Which means it’s all the more important to weigh carefully the harm dump laws cause.

(For example, here’s an important question that remains unanswered: prior to dump laws being passed were prosecutors often utilizing their discretion, but after a dump law is enacted are womyn being penalized much harder? Do these these womyn end up bearing the brunt of the state’s anger when the law fails to work? A scholarly study of the outcomes and sentences womyn have received both before and after dump laws would be a very useful thing right about now.)

Still, dump law marketers bemoan the lack of funding (often into their own programs) for ever escalating dump law publicity, and with each dead baby found they call for yet more funding, insisting that if only everyone was “educated” about their law the baby corpses would stop. Some state have even put ‘how to dump a baby’ programs into school curriculums as part of their ever escalating attempt to teach womyn how to abandon babies.

Dead babies must not serve as fodder for an ever needy marketing maw. Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

When it came to the state by state legislative battles, those who work with both kinds of abandoners, those with expertise, experience and yes adoptees themselves went unheeded.

Worse, as those most directly affected had no voice (in part by the very nature of the fact that an infant cannot politically advocate on their own behalf) legislators,, media, and others saw no down side to passing the laws. They saw no harm. They didn’t understand or refused to understand that the long lasting effects of the dump laws could actually cause lasting harm to the very people they were passed in the name of. The dump laws are short sighted.

Nebraska of course has IDed dumps, but in other states, abandoners are anonymous. This permanently strips the dumped kids of any genetic, social, cultural, or familial history. A dumpling can be “saved!” via dump law at age 1, only to suffer years later due to lack of genetic information such as breast cancer in the familial history. I’m loathe to make the medical argument as the issues therein are complex. That said, I think it is fair to say that shortsightedness is a hallmark of the dump laws, and that any definition of baby “saving” has to be carefully examined in the cold hard light of lifelong consequences of the state’s actions on/against such a vulnerable population.

Kids need long term answers, and at the very moment they are least able to protect their own interests (being a newborn and all) the state abandons it’s own role as acting on behalf of the child’s welfare, instead becoming a key participant in the abandonment process itself. If ever kids needed the state to step up and help them, it is when they are completely defenseless. But rather coming to the child in need’s aid, “Safe haven” states are central to the act of cutting access, information, and family away from the child permanently.

Let me make this as clear as I can, child abandonment is NEVER a good thing. It should not be enabled. It should not be held up as a positive outcome. It does lasting damage to everyone it touches, the kids most of all. Rather than working to stamp out child abandonment, the dump laws turn every last shred of child welfare best practices on their head, advocating womyn do precisely the thing that child welfare advocates have tried to prevent. Child dumping is always failure. It doesn’t matter if the name is prettied up, or if it’s done under the bright fluorescent lighting of hospitals, child dumping is evidence that things are really, REALLY broken.

Legalized child dumping does NOTHING to change those root causations, instead it is the state desperately trying to plaster over the place on the wall where the things that make us uncomfortable intruded, however briefly. ‘Sure she was in a desperate pregnancy with no money and no way to afford another child, but that’s “dealt with” now’. Not so much.

As state after state fell, caught up in the delusion that these laws were somehow going “fix” things, those of us who empathize with the kids knew that the consequences to the kids would become apparent, but only later, as every other state has only applied the law to kids much younger.

Nebraska short circuited that 18 year wait time while the dumped kids grew to age of majority. By passing the older kid dump law and by not making the dumpers anonymous Nebraska suddenly provided for the first time a sad window into the lives and circumstances of both the parents and guardians and the kids themselves. Nebraska is in so many ways a very special case due to the unique nature of its law.

But what it has shown us is precisely what those of us who have tracked dumps as best we can across the country (as most states laws make the dumper anonymous) have known for a long time now. Utilizing legalized child abandonment systems is often an act of desperation. These are people who by and large do not want to lose their kids, but feel trapped, and have nowhere else to turn.

Legalized baby dumping may happen as a result of poverty, or it may be utilized to cover abuse, domestic violence, or even incest. Dumping the baby makes the ‘evidence’ go away, but it does nothing to change the circumstances that lead to the act of dumping. Having dump sites available may actually function as a means to keep womyn in dangerous situations, as now instead of having to deal with a pregnancy and a child, the dump laws forms a means by which abusers can simply continue to hide everything going on.

The dump laws encourage womyn to hide and keep secret their pregnancies, avoid prenatal care, and deliver in secret, far from medical care, risking their very lives in the process. They bet their very lives, holding out hope that if they can just get the kid to a dump site no one need ever know.

With the American health care crisis, many womyn may not even be aware of what resources could help them through a pregnancy or keeping the child. Some may simply find themselves pregnant and panic not knowing how they would afford to give birth in a hospital, much less raise a child. Lack of information and economic pressures both perceived and real, may lead womyn into incredibly dangerous circumstances.

The States, rather than working to educate, destigmatize, and actually connect womyn with what programs and funding do exist, are instead maintaining the stigma and shame basis, insisting that it is better that a womyn deliver alone in secret and utilize the dump than access medical care and connect with existing programs.

The existence of the dump laws takes the pressure off the States to actually help families in need.

Just dump the newborn and go on back to your circumstances. The kid, (in most states) now stripped of all genetic, cultural, social, and family history, is a tabla rasa perfect candidate for adoption. The adopters get a kid with no history and no family of origin to come looking for him or her later. The State now that it has decoupled the child from any notion of their medical history can present the kid as “no known problems”, and collect their federal “adoption bonus” for placing the kid. And the kid themselves… well, they’re supposed to sit down shut up and be grateful for a lifetime that they weren’t dumpstered.

Which for some of the kids, if they turn out anything like other adoptees, begins to fall apart over time.

“Be grateful you’re not dead,” while the constant refrain used to shout down adoptee’s genuine concerns is ultimately a very poor excuse. Doubly so when one begins to look at whether or not dumped kids were ever really in danger in the first place. The Nebraska DHHS concluded that not one of the older kids dumped was ever in any immediate danger.
We have no determination of immanent danger for the anonymous states, but I would be willing to bet the parents and guardians who have abandoned the kids in other states loved them too, loved them so much that they turned to the final avenue they had open to them, which was of course just as in regular adoptions, sold to original parents as some sick form of gateway “to a better life for your child.” (See my previous dismantling of the “better life” marketing pitch here.)

Ultimately these laws betray the real long term interests of both womyn and children. The laws cause further harm, and prevent families from accessing genuine help.

Now as Nebraska legislators take up the law in the special session, they have before them a rare opportunity, a second chance to do what’s right.

Repeal the dump law, age it down to never.

Ensure that never again will a child be “legally abandoned” in Nebraska.

In short they have the opportunity to make Nebraska a real haven for kids and their families, a place where kids don’t fear going to the hospital because rather than hospitals being places of health and healing they have been transformed by legislation into the places parents go to get rid of their kids. Kids, of any age need stability and support, not uncertainty and abandonment.

While Nebraska legislators up for re-election ran their campaigns this fall, the kids kept pouring in. Kids after kid, and yet from the legislature, there was little more than foot shuffling and uncomfortable looks, coupled with promises of getting to it come January. While the legislators felt they could wait, Kids, speaking nationally here, can’t. They can’t wait another day for the doors to the Nebraska dumping grounds to be closed.

Aging down (dump law 2.0) just means older kids are off the hot seat, if they made it to age X (whatever Nebraska legislators ultimately decide) they’re in the clear. But for kids younger than the cut off date, whether 3 days or 30, or four months of even a year, the dump law “returns department” doors would remain open.

That’s a damn sad state of affairs.

In Washington DC dumping a child is never ok. Dumping a child is not legalized. It’s not enabled by the government, nor encouraged. ‘Child dumping 101/how to abandon a baby’ is not in the school curriculum.

When it comes to “safe haven” laws, DC is the only haven kids have left.

DC represents one last little island, surrounded by the rising tide of the normalization of child abandonment in America.

joy Says:

July 26th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

good news, you don’t have to delete your account, you have been relieved of your membership.

to my earlier blog post from last night about me removing my own work from the adult adoptees forum, yet retaining my account there (in which I explained my reasoning for doing so thusly:)

In light of the recent trashing of Bastard Nation, Marley/Bastardette, and myself in the wake of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration

The “adult” adoptees thread in question, entitled “Comments to Baby Love Child’s blog that’ll never see the true light of day”, based around a comment Catherine Robishaw (obcforme.org) had attempted to post to my blog last night that I had not let through YET:

Catherine Robishaw | obcforme.org

Unfortunately for everyone, you’ll never post this comment.
Honestly, you have no idea what you are talking about. But you’re just like Marley, with your hands over your ears saying “Lalalalala I can’t hear you!”.

You guys are so on the outside looking in, and you don’t even know it.

You just look pitiful, posting these entries in your blog. You are your ilk are a dying breed. Thank God.

See ya next year in Philly! Oh then again, probably not! *snicker*

Jul 25, 7:39 PM — to Adoptee Rights Demonstration updates their page, now that it’s mostly over

has apparently been removed as well.

After all, the “adult adoptees” folks wouldn’t want Bastard Nation members to be able to register at adult adoptees and actually see the way they talk about us behind our back in their forum space, now would they?

But fear not, you can certainly find Joy’s and others’ trashings of Bastard Nation other publicly available places such as this thread she started on alt.adoption, HEY THANKS BN from the protest, as but one example. (Naturally, there are many responses that could be given to such, but it’s not going to happen in this post.)

Let’s just say “adult adoptees” is anything but a “support forum” for adoptees despite claiming to be just that:

Our main feature is our support forum where our members can come together and talk about whatever they desire; whether it be adoption related or not.

Despite the flowery language in their home page:

Here at AdultAdoptees.org, our second, and equally important issue is adoptee rights. We believe in equal rights for all people. We believe that everyone should have access to their original unaltered birth certificate.

WE BELIEVE IN OPEN RECORDS!

nor are they about ‘political activism’ as they have locked threads about such, claiming to not be about activism, but instead about getting back to their real mission, “support.”

With support like this… .

They are however many of the same people behind nuARD/DAR.

That said, I’m hardly the only person who has felt the petty vindictive ugliness of the admins of the “adult” adoptees board. Here, on a page entitled “Joy is our admin” for example, is a pre-existing earlier website about Joy’s tactics, complete with a filk of her petty antics.

Finally, as a special present for those of you collecting such, a screen shot of my personalized insult on the login page, geared to my IP:

(Click to see a larger sized version.)

The text itself beneath the ironic “support” message reads:

Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!

ByeBye Loser Child

Considering the “adult” adoptees (lack of) appeals process, I detailed here, My brief statement on what happened on the Adult Adoptees forum, let’s just say I won’t be bothering to appeal the banning.

Yup, meet the real face of certain ARD/DAR organizers. Petty, vicious, and anything but “adoptee support.” You’re either part of their dysfunctional clique or you’re banned.

In light of the recent trashing of Bastard Nation, Marley/Bastardette, and myself in the wake of the Adoptee Rights Demonstration on the Adult Adoptees forum, I have removed the over 40 posts there that were under my control (locked topics are of course not under the author’s control.) Essentially, I have removed my body of work from that site. Posts that started threads cannot be fully removed, but I have removed the text thereof.

I have not deleted my account.